== Part 9 – Where Are They Now? ==

Even before the Cylons had vanished, the Colonial Fleet has had its critics. The Fleet was too much of a political tool, they said. The Fleet was used more to oppress the smaller, less prosperous Colonies like Sagitaron than to actually defend everyone from the Cylons, they said. The military industrial complex was too much in bed with the politicians and the Fleet Admiralty they said. And of course, the most popular complaint was that with no major conflict in the three generations since the Cylon War, the Admiralty had become corrupt, full of political hacks who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag and were more concerned with politicking and good PR than with keeping the Fleet in fighting trim.

Up until Sharon had assumed command of the Galactica, she had discounted that last bit of criticism. But when she saw her ship had come with a frakking dedicated ballroom of all things, she started to seriously revise her opinions. On every other Battlestar Sharon had ever served on, large social events with lots of people were typically held in one of the flight pod hangar bays. But on this new Galactica, there was an open space just as big sitting in the middle of the ship. As far as Sharon could tell, it's only purpose was to handle large social events. On the official deck plans, the ballroom was labeled as "Admiral's Personal Cargo Bay". But the fancy floating chandeliers, faux marble flooring and walls, and the completely useless decorative columns that served no structural function at all but couldn't be removed without cutting torches and heavy moving equipment? They pretty much all gave away what the ballroom was really for.

The Lords class Galactica was a good twenty percent bigger than the older Mercury class in terms of volume. But Sharon had spent a year getting to know her ship, and as far as she could tell, it only had the same combat power as the Mercury. All that increased volume had gone into useless fripperies like the ballroom.

If the CO of the Earth Expedition Fleet gave Sharon their permission, Sharon was going to junk the chandeliers, cut out the decorative columns and toss them out an airlock, and really use the ballroom for extra storage space. Unfortunately, there was no CO yet because the Admiralty was still arguing with the President and Quorum on who should actually be in charge. From what she had heard on the Fleet grapevine, the Expedition CO might wind up being a frakking civilian bureaucrat!

And that was a problem because right now, the Galactica's ballroom was holding the launch party for the Earth Expedition Fleet. If the Expedition's CO wasn't declared before the end of the party, then the Expedition Fleet would be jumping out of the system as soon as it offloaded all the visiting politicians, reporters, military officers, and whatever miscellaneous other guests who weren't going. Fleet command would go to the most senior Battlestar Commander in the Expedition, which was a problem because that wasn't Sharon. And Sharon commanded the newest, largest, most (theoretically) powerful Battlestar in the Expedition which was traditionally a fleet's flagship.

Sharon would scream in frustration if she could. Unfortunately, it was her job right now to smile for the cameras and hob nob with VIPs.

It wasn't all bad though. The guest list had included virtually all of the surviving crewmembers from the decommissioning of the old Galactica. That meant her husband Galen was at Sharon's side and she got to meet and talk with people that she actually liked, even if the only reason they were invited was because of the PR department.


'Boomer! Galen! Great to see you again!"

"Helo! May!" Sharon greeted back. Karl Agathon had been Sharon's ECO back when she had been flying Raptors off the old Galactica. He'd left military service a couple years after the Old Girl had been decommissioned for a civilian job, and had met and married May then. "It's good to see you guys too. How are the kids?"

They made small talk for a bit, catching each up on the goings on of their respective families before the one Subject that Sharon dreaded inevitably came up.

"Sharon, I have to say, you are looking fantastic for your age," May was saying. "Could you let me in on the secret of your youthful looks?"

"Oh, come on, honey, we all know that answer," Helo replied before Sharon could speak. He winked at Sharon. "It's because she's a Cylon."

Everyone else laughed, but Sharon just rolled her eyes in exasperation and said in as fake a robot voice as she could manage, "Yes. I am a Cylon. I am really just a robot pretending to be a human who somehow had two kids with a human male and fooled every doctor that I have ever had a health checkup with." She dropped the act and spoke more normally. "Seriously guys, that joke is really getting old."

Of course, what she didn't tell them was that everything she had said was true.

"But you're not," Galen told her as he gave her a one armed hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I don't care if you're a Cylon or not. I am an eternally lucky man to have you, and even luckier that you'll seem to stay beautiful forever."

"Aw, thanks Galen," Sharon replied, blushing.

"Hey, Boomer, you know how my Johnny has become a big science nerd?" Helo asked.

"I believe May went on at length about that just now, yes," Sharon replied.

"Well, he's started watching That Show," Helo began. Sharon groaned. There was no need to specify what show he was talking about. "And he talked about how it got all kinds of scientific facts wrong."

"Helo, it's a TV show," Galen told him. "They get scientific facts wrong all the time. For example, you and I know that that stupid 'Blackbird' concept would never work in real life."

"Right, but this was about biology," Helo agreed. "Johnny pointed out that if a human and a biological Cylon could have a kid together, the 'Cylon' would by definition be human. The most scientifically accurate explanation of the show's human models is that they're just human clones, perhaps with some well hidden cybernetics grafted in to explain all the extra abilities like resurrection."

"Huh, that's... uh." Sharon was stunned by the idea. It had never even occurred to her before. And for all she knew, it might not even be wrong. "I never thought of it that way before."


"Madame President! Gina! So wonderful to see you both again!"

"Oh dear, God," Gina whispered to Helena, "What is he doing here?"

"He was in the show." Helena whispered back. "Plus he's a big campaign donor. Oh, and stop swearing to a singular god in public!" She pasted on a fake smile and they turned around. "Gaius Baltar, how long has it been?'

"It's been far too long Madame President since I set eyes on your lovely self and your equally lovely wife," Baltar replied in what he probably thought was his most charming manner. Twenty years of a life of excess had not been kind to him. He was balding, pot bellied, and showing more than a little flab in all the wrong places. What might have been charming twenty years ago was just grossly repellent in the present. Baltar didn't seem to realize it because he was rich and has an ego that dwarfed Battlestars.

"Oh, I remember now," Gina said slowly. "We last saw you shortly before you were arrested for... what was it again? Something about underaged minors? Or wait, that can't be it. I think there something about traffic violations..."

Helena jabbed Gina with an elbow. Gina took the hint and shut up.

"Oh, pish, the charges were total nonsense," Baltar said dismissively. "Just a bunch of liars leveling false accusations in hopes that I'll pay them to go away. Didn't work of course, because I am completely innocent of all wrong doing."

Wow, Gina thought. She had seen more convincing lies from Helena's new puppy after it had pissed all over the carpet.

"That being said," Baltar continued, "I have this lovely private tropical island in the East Caprican Sea. If either of you two ever have the spare time, or better the both of you together," Baltar leered disgustingly at them, "I'm sure we can all go there together and have some fun in the sun as it were."

"Oh gods, Baltar, that sounds really lovely," Helena told him that sounded even more fake to Gina than Baltar's denial of criminal charges. "But as President, I'm really busy, and on the rare occasions that I do have off time, I prefer to spend it with Gina. ALONE."

"Ah, how disappointing," Baltar said. He didn't seem offended. Must be that ego. "If you ever change your mind, I..." Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a sudden shriek.

"GAIUS! HOW ARE YOU!" shrieked an elderly, bewrinkled woman wearing a scandalously skimpy party dress that might have been considered sexy if the woman wearing it were twenty or thirty years younger. "IT'S BEEN SO LONG!"

"Ah, um, hello ma'am," Baltar said, his veneer of faux charm and suave cracking for the first time. "Maybe you could jog my memory..."

"What? Don't you remember me? It's Ellen!" the harridan screeched.

"You two look like old friends," Gina told them. She had no idea who this woman was and clearly neither did Baltar. But Gina wasn't about to let a good exit opportunity go to waste. "We'll go and let you two catch up, right Helena?"

"Oh, yes, yes we should," Helena agreed quickly. "Have fun you two!"

"But..." Baltar began as they turned and walked away into the crowd, but Ellen began blathering on about some fun they had back in the day, drowning out whatever he might have said.

"I don't care what that show says," Gina whispered to Helena. "There's not a redeeemable bone in that man's body." Gina ought to know. When the recall order had come, the Six that had written the CNP code for Baltar had gone in an instant without hesitation. If the Cylons had gone through with the attack, Gina was sure that Six would have tried to murder him personally, not save his life.

And Baltar was such an unrepentant womanizer that when he had laid eyes on Gina for the first time, he hadn't recognized her at all.

Behind them, Gina heard Baltar's voice again.

"SECURITY!"


Admiral Lee Adama wondered what his father would think of this new Galactica if he were still alive to see it today. Oh wait, Lee knew damned well what his old man would think. William Adama was a veteran of the Cylon War, and he had been staunchly anti-network up until the day he died. All the networking bells and whistles on this Galactica would have given Lee's father enough heebee jeebies to induce a stroke and send him to the grave then and there.

Hell, Lee had the heebee jeebies about this ship because he had read Commander Sharon Tyrol's reports on its working up. They were still finding software bugs in damn near every system and every patch on them just seemed to create more bugs. None of them were life threatening, at least not in the safe confines of the Cyrannus System. But they were bad enough that a whole brigade of civilian contractors whose only job was to run down those bugs had been attached to the Galactica's crew for the Expedition. Commander Tyrol had let them know that if those bugs weren't fixed if and when they had to fight the Cylons, they could all die.

In his darker moments, Lee wondered if the Fleet should let the Cylons write their software code. At least that way he knew the systems would work. Well, they'd work until the Cylons wanted them shut off.

"Oh, my gods, what did they do to my baby?"

The voice of Admiral Barry Garner pulled Lee out of his own thoughts. Garner was in charge of the Fleet's Tech Division, making sure that the Fleet had the best hardware money could buy. Lee's professional relationship with him was mixed. Half the time they were bestest buddies defending the Fleet from the depredations of politicians who didn't know what they were talking about and corporate sharks trying to get the Fleet to adopt overly expensive hardware that didn't do a tenth of what they advertised. The other half was spent butting heads with each other on what constituted good designs and good upgrades.

The two Admirals were standing in front of one of the new Mark X Vipers, which had been set up on display in one corner of the ball room. It looked sleek, even sleeker than the old Mark VIIs that Lee had flown back in the day. And for all the years and billions spent on developing it, all the Mark X really was was just a Mark VII with lots of extra fancy bells and whistles that didn't do much and slightly beefed up engines to compensate for the extra mass. All the pictures and development models that Lee had seen were jet black, but this one was painted flat white with red striping as if it had stepped straight out of the Cylon War.

"What's wrong, Barry?' Lee asked.

"They painted it!" Garner told him. "I told them not to paint it and they painted it anyway!"

"So?" Lee asked. He knew the answer, but it amused him to see Garner get worked up.

"This paint is the same as used for commercial civilian shipping," Garner told him. "That paint enhances Dradis pulse reflections to make ships easier to spot. That totally neutralizes the stealth properties of the Mark X's carbon fiber skin!"

"You mean the stealth properties that are totally useless against Dradis' passive thermal and chemical analysis functions at any range where weapons might be effective?" Lee asked innocently.

"That's not the point," Garner told him exasperated. "The point of the stealth is to shield against long range detection on recon missions..."

"...which are primarily done by Raptors," Lee interrupted him, "a platform which has been in use since before my father was a Viper pilot and that the Fleet really needs to replace with something more modern and up to date."

"Look, we've been over this before," Garner said aggravatingly, "A whole new EW platform just isn't sexy and exciting to the appropriations committee, especially since the Raptor is so reliable..."

This was an old, old argument between the two and it wasn't ending any time soon.


"Galen, good to see you again," said Commander Felix Gaeta of the Battlestar Pegasus. Yes, THAT Pegasus. Gaeta and his ship had been assigned as part of the Earth Expedition Fleet, probably by someone who watched that stupid show.

Not that the older Pegasus was a bad ship. It was arguably better than Sharon's in some ways. Not that she'd ever admit that.

"Nice to see you too, Felix," Galen replied. Galen and Sharon hadn't know Gaeta that well back on the old Galactica, but they'd become friends over the intervening years when they met for periodic reunions. And Sharon of course had developed a working relationship with Gaeta and the other Battlestar Commanders since they had been officially assigned to the Expedition. "Excited to finally be leaving for Earth?"

"I'd be more excited if I knew who'd be leading us," Gaeta told him. "Sharon, have you heard anything on that front?"

"Not anything reliable," Sharon replied. "I did hear a silly rumor that it might be Admiral Adama leading us."

"Adama?" Gaeta said thoughtfully. "Everything I've heard says he's really good. He'd be perfect for this operation. Except he's the Chief of Fleet Operations. He's way too senior. I can think of half a dozen Rear and Vice Admirals better suited for the position."

"I did say it was a silly rumor," Sharon laughed. "Can you imagine if the people planning the Expedition seriously used a stupid TV show as their guide on how to get things done? It'd be a disaster!"


The lights in the ballroom dimmed, except for the one spotlight focused on the podium on the stage at forward end of the ballroom. "Ladies and Gentleman," loud speakers announced. "The President of the United Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

The anthem played as Helena Cain stepped onto the stage. The anthem died as she took her place behind the podium to address the people in the ballroom, and through the news cameras present, all the people of the Twelve Colonies.

"My fellow human beings," Cain began. "Sixty years ago, our war with our own creations, the Cylons, ended. It ended not in victory or loss, but in an Armistice where we simply agreed to stop killing each other. We agreed to a line in space, dividing the universe between us. One side would be ours, and the other the Cylons. We promised not to venture into each other's space, and as you all know now, we have not kept to that promise, sending spy ships and eventually whole Battlestars over the border just to satisfy our curiosity.

"And as we recently learned, the Cylons haven't kept to their side of the border either. They've infiltrated our space, stolen our relics. And I'm sorry to say, despite a year of investigating every record and document we have, we can't say when they started doing it, or even if they've stopped. We have no hard evidence either way.

"I know some of you are afraid that there are Cylons are among us. Or because of the border violations that we are once again at war. And truth be told, we don't know that either. Still, I don't believe that there are Cylons among us. All the evidence we have points to the Cylons – ALL the Cylons – picking up and leaving our neighborhood of the galaxy. They've gone to Earth, the fabled Thirteenth Colony, which is almost a quarter of the way around the galaxy. We don't know why they went there. We don't know what they found.

"But what we do know, what I know, is that we have to find out. We have to. The people arguing to forget about the Cylons and to focus on our internal troubles are short sighted. If there is a looming threat out there, we need to know about it. If our long lost brothers and sisters of the Thirteenth Colony are threatened by our own creations, we need to know about it. We need to know about it, for our safety, for the safety of all humanity everywhere, and most of all for our own peace of mind so that we do not live every day looking over our shoulders fearful that the end might come from nowhere.

"To that end, the Colonial Fleet has assembled five Battlestars plus support ships to create the Earth Expedition Fleet. It'll be a long journey to Earth, taking approximately six months of FTL jumps through uncharted space. But once that first journey has been done, once that path has been mapped out and ships no longer have to stop every jump to build a new map for their next FTL jump, then the journey between here and Earth will become much faster, perhaps down to as little as thirty days.

"And after that, we'll do whatever we need to do based on whatever we find.

"But there is one thing we must do right now. One thing that we've been discussing and arguing and negotiating about for over a year now. And that one thing is to choose who will be leading the Expedition Fleet to Earth. I've discussed this subject with many people. I've discussed this with the Admiralty, with my cabinet, with members of the Quorum, with leaders of science and industry. For the gods' sake, I've even discussed this with my dog!"

A round of laughter rose up from the audience. Cain raised a hand and the laughter died down.

"But seriously," she continued. "Make no mistake, the Earth Expedition is quite possibly the most important endeavor that the Colonies have ever undertaken since the voyage from Kobol. Whoever leads the Expedition must be the very best we can find. He must know how to fight, but also know when not to fight. He must be a warrior, but also a diplomat. And not just any diplomat. He must empowered to speak on our behalf, to represent us as a whole, trusted enough to commit us to either war or peace, knowledgeable enough to know which will benefit us more, and virtuous enough to put the good of the Colonies as a whole above petty personal interests.

"I've had hundreds of names suggested to me. Many of them meet several of the high standards that I just described. But as I went through the names, I kept coming around back one person, one man, one name that meets ALL of these criteria. It's a man I trust unconditionally to do what is best for us all.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the leader of the Earth Expedition Fleet, Admiral Lee Adama!"

Applause rang out through the ball room as spotlights and news cameras spun to focus on Admiral Lee Adama's gob smacked face.