== Part 46 – Welcome Party ==

Lee Adama sat in the shuttle's copilot's seat as it skirted around the edge of the tarmac of Langhorne Capitol City's "Dropport". Looking out the window, he could see a vast flat field of off-white material where spheroid Dropships or empty cradles for said Dropships sat at regular intervals. Given that those Dropships took off and landed directly up and down, flying directly over their landing field was strictly against local air traffic regulations.

And as far as Sharon had been able to tease out from local aerospace traffic control, the name of Langhorne's capitol city was literally "Capitol City". Apparently, no one knew the reason why Capitol City was named the way it was.

The shuttle Sharon piloted had started out life as a standard troop transport, much bigger the Raptors. The Colonial Fleet routinely used shuttles like this for personnel transfers and as all purpose short range cargo haulers, but this particular shuttle had been outfitted for Adama's personal use if and when he contacted Earth and needed transport worthy of a Colonial diplomat, not that the Colonies have had proper diplomats since the Colonies had become politically unified. In practical terms, that meant that it couldn't transport quite as many people as a standard troop shuttle, but the people it could transport had much more luxurious accommodations.. The marine security detail riding in the back barely filled up the shuttle's reduced carrying capacity.

The Comstar compound was a walled in fortress on the edge of the Dropport's landing field. Those weren't just man-high walls meant to deter the odd burglar either. They were at least ten to twelve meters tall and several meters thick, complete with bastions at regular intervals topped with turrets loaded down with obvious guns and missile racks. It was a reminder of just how bad these "Succession Wars" had gotten that an ostensibly neutral organization needed such protection for their facilities.

As they approached the Comstar compound, Lee noticed a small crowd gathered in the street just outside its walls. A few taps on the panel in front of him got Lee a zoomed in image where he could clearly make out individual people. Many of them had the same faces with Centurions of various designs scattered among them. Lee even spotted a few who looked like Sharon.

"Sharon," Lee began. He should be calling her "Commander Tyrol" or just "Tyrol", but after working together for nearly a year now since his last minute assignment to the Expedition, Lee felt a little more comfortable with his flag Commander than the Colonial Fleet would officially consider proper. "There are Cylons just outside the Comstar compouns. Are you picking anything up from them?

"Yes, sir," Sharon replied as she began circling around the compound, looking for their assigned landing spot. "Mostly curiosity. Some queries thrown my way, trying to figure out if I'm here." She frowned. "Some of them are asking for me by name. I guess they figured out just which Eight I am, which wasn't hard because I was the only Cylon to ever actually infil... become a Colonial Fleet officer."

Lee nodded, ignoring Sharon's slip of the tongue. He knew it bothered her a great deal to be used by the Cylons as a weapon against the Fleet she loved even if the Cylons had never pulled the trigger. And it bothered her even more that it was likely that her pre-Sharon self had volunteered to do it.

Lee's thoughts on Sharon were cut short when he spotted an Eight like Sharon in the crowd carrying a small child in her arms.

"Sharon, you have a human husband and children," Lee began. "I've been meaning to ask, how does that work exactly?"

"Well, sir, when a man and woman love each other very much..." Sharon began, a note of humor in her voice.

"No, not that," Adama corrected quickly. "I mean, are your kids considered half Cylon or something?"

"Unfortunately, no," Sharon said glumly. "Not by the Cylons anyway. When they made us human models, they picked out the best genes that humanity had to offer which are inheritable. But the neurological changes that make us human models Cylons aren't genetic and thus aren't inheritable. So while our kids are really capable and tend to excel at just about any physical activity you could name, they don't have our built in ability to communicate wirelessly or directly interface with computer systems. As far as the Cylons at large are concerned, our kids are as human as everyone else, even if individual Cylon parents feel differently. Oh, there's our landing spot!"

The Colonials' intended landing site wasn't in the Dropport's designated shuttle field, but a landing pad inside the Comstar's station's walls. Technically speaking, those landing pads were only meant for pure atmospheric VTOL craft, not shuttles that operated in space. But Comstar had long since gotten used to letting Cylon shuttles use them because they didn't blast them with fusion exhaust every time they came in for a landing and took off again, and since the Colonial shuttles were the same way, they too were permitted to use them.

Sharon brought down the Colonial shuttle next to a tilt rotor aircraft parked on the neighboring pad. On the other side of the aircraft was an obvious Cylon shuttle, a flying brick similar to the Colonial's shuttle but with what looked like a Centurion's head and blank hull where the cockpit windows should have been. It looked like it could have come straight out of the show except for the missing guns. There were several more landing pads, all of them empty.

Waiting to greet the Colonials were three distinctly different parties that stood in three distinctly separate groups.

The party in the middle at the forefront were all dressed in white robes and wore badges with variations on the Comstar logo. They looked more like priests to Lee than bureaucrats or technicians. Behind them was an honor guard in thick plated, flat white armor, also wearing a variation of the Comstar logo. Their open faced helmets and exposed hands holding rifle-like weapons in ceremonial positions seemed to indicate they were humans in armor.

Over on Comstar's right from Lee's perspective was the obvious Cylon party. There were five of them, dominated by the Centurion standing in the center who was flanked by four human models. Three of them Lee didn't recognize as they didn't match any of the pictures of any of the Cylon defectors that Helena had given amnesty to, but one was a clearly an Eight like Sharon. She wore what could have been mistaken as a Colonial Fleet dress uniform, except it was flat black with silver edging instead of Colonial blue or grey with gold edging.

The last party to Lee's left must be the Federated Commonwealth party. If Lee had thought Osterheim's uniform was overly fancy, these people put him to shame. They didn't wear any insignia as far as Lee could tell, but he could have easily missed one given the riot of color, fancy decorations, and heavy jewelry that they were wearing. At their forefront was an attractive middle aged woman in a light blue dress with a jeweled and feathered brooch that looked more appropriate for a formal ballgown than a diplomatic meeting, and she looked positively subdued compared to the rest of her party.

"Well," Lee said as he unbuckled from his seat. "Let's go meet the locals."


Primus Myndo Waterly looked at the yearly financial report sitting on her desk as if it was a venomous pit viper ready to leap out at her at any moment. Oh, on the surface, everything the report said indicated everything was going swimmingly for Comstar. Overall revenue was up. Expenditures had also increased of course, but not as much as revenue, meaning that Comstar's operating budget would be increased by a modest amount for the next year.

But what the report didn't say that Waterly knew full well was that the reason revenue and expenditures were up so much because Comstar had had to increase the uptime for its HPGs yet again in order to stay competitive with Cylon couriers and especially those blasted hyperwave communicators that let the Great Houses bypass Comstar's HPG monopoly for their most critical communications. And as far as anyone could tell, the Inner Sphere had yet to meet market saturation on the demand for interstellar communications.

Worst still, the C-Bill remained the strongest, most trusted currency in the Inner Sphere. Given that the C-Bill was based on Comstar's HPG transmission time, that meant that every time Comstar increased HPG up time, it effectively increased the Inner Sphere's C-Bill money supply which only lubricated the explosive industrial growth that had been going on since the Cylons' arrival. Even the Combine was having an economic boom despite the Cylons not providing them one drop of aid, one that her Blessed Order was all but forced to aid and abet just to keep them competitive with the Federated Commonwealth.

It enraged Waterly that she had been practically forced to adopt Tiepolo's liberal policies just to counter the weight of the Cylon and Federated Commonwealth alliance. And it was all simply because she didn't dare do anything that would make the Cylons suspect that Comstar was attempting to undermine their efforts at unifying the Inner Sphere.

Early in Waterly's tenure as Primus, she had ordered the squadron of Warships that Tiepolo had brought out of mothballs to destroy the Cylons. But she had held off on actually using them for a couple years until ROM and the Explorer Corps managed to identify Cylon assets in the Periphery. After all, Comstar couldn't openly operate Warships where the Great Houses might see them lest they realize there was sixth power out there with Warships that couldn't easily fall to a swarm of assault Dropships and aerospace fighters.

Unfortunately, when the ComGuard Warship squadron led by the Texas Class Righteous Fury attacked said Cylon periphery assets in order to lure the Cylon basestar to them, the response force hadn't been the three or four basestars that Comstar had expected, but a fleet numbering well over thirty, which Comstar had later learned was just the first wave of Cylons immigrating into the Inner Sphere. Given the performance of the single basestar at Langhorne, a proper Warship squadron should have been able to easily handle thirty basestars. But then the ComGuard discovered to their dismay that the very remoteness of their chosen battle site that removed them from the eyes of the Great Houses also allowed the Cylons to unveil their own terrifying weapon: heavy capital missiles that released clusters of nuclear warheads instead of carrying just one. And those warheads weren't just kiloton range tactical nukes. Each warhead was a fifty megaton yield monster more appropriate for bombarding a planet than shooting a Warship, and even a single proximity detonation from just outside antimissile range could inflict serious damage to even the most heavily armored Warships if not kill them outright.

The ComGuard squadron commander had instantly realized just how out of his depth he was when the first wave of detonations had killed off all his fighter wings and assault dropships, and he'd ordered the Righteous Fury's portable HPG to transmit everything they could before he and his squadron were destroyed. Unfortunately, the Cylons had detected the transmission, and had a scout over the receiving HPG station when the transmission arrived. The Cylons had then put two and two together and asked the station's crew some very pointed questions. Luckily, the crew was entirely made up of ROM agents, placed well in advanced of the planned Warship strike, and the Precentor had feigned ignorance of the transmission's contents due to them being encrypted, claimed he didn't know where the transmission had originated from, and stood by Comstar's privacy policy when the Cylons demanded to know who and where the message had been addressed to. After some debate, the Cylons had decided to accept the Precentor's word and left the HPG Station alone.

After that fiasco had been reported to Terra, the then Precentor ROM had spelled out to Waterly in no uncertain terms that the nukes the Cylons had used were almost certainly intended for planetary bombardment, and what they could do to Terra itself if the Cylons ever suspected that Comstar had been behind that attack. With their ability to jump right into orbit, there was little that Comstar could do to prevent Terra from being turned into a cinder if the Cylons got angry enough at them. The only reason the Cylons didn't strongly suspect Comstar was because a minority Cylon faction was convinced that they had been attacked by Star League Caspar drones and their human servants.

Waterly had considered releasing the Righteous Fury's logs, but that had run afoul of two problems. The first would be that they would show someone had Warships, which would have the same problem as having Warships operating openly in the Inner Sphere. The second and more pressing one was that she couldn't be sure that even an "anonymous" release wouldn't be traced back to Comstar.

Which meant that Waterly had gone back to the more traditional cloak and dagger methods of trying to foster disunity throughout the Inner Sphere. Waterly had even authorized the heavy use of hidden cybernetics in ROM agents so that if they were caught, their remains would continue to foster the Cylons' delusion that they were fighting a shadow war with Star League AI. Some operations succeeded, but enough had failed to render even the successful ones less effective because now everyone was on the lookout for false flag attacks, including the Combine.

But the Federated Commonwealth's unity seemed unshakeable despite Waterly's best efforts, so she'd had over the years slowly thrown more and more clandestine support at the Free Worlds League and the Draconis Combine, to the point of leaking designs for working gas core KF Drives derived the Cylon example that made Comstar revisit that ancient Terran Alliance research into alternative FTL methods. Unfortunately, Comstar's design was a fuel hog compared to Cylon drives, and the lack of infrastructure to produce the germanium compound needed to fuel them sharply limited their use to a small number of refitted Dropships... unless of course the user bought fuel from the Cylons, who were all too happy to sell it to anyone who wasn't the Draconis Combine. The resulting smuggling ring created from that refusal seemed to create an industry of its own, adding its own small contribution to the Inner Sphere's growing prosperity.

At this point, Waterly would have liked nothing better to do that to than to unleash Comstar's cached Warship fleet upon the Inner Sphere and burn everything down directly, and the only thing holding her back was the near certainty that the Cylons would figure out where they had come from and do the same to Terra. Their scouts already buzzed the Sol System occasionally and they almost certainly had identified the Warships Comstar had reactivated even if they never said anything about them to Comstar itself. Several of Comstar's hidden bases such as the one in the Odessa system had also been stumbled upon by Cylon scouts, and they had destroyed themselves rather than let themselves fall into the hands of the Cylons or worse, the Great Houses whose territories they were in.

Although she would never admit it even to herself, Waterly now feared she was overseeing the demise of Blake's Vision. Comstar's rank and file who were not in the know about Blake's Vision were now fully expecting the rise of a new Star League to be only a matter of time. House Steiner and Davion had conquered House Liao, and Liao had married its heir to the Steiner-Davion heir, and the rank and file were fully expected Marik and Kurita to eventually capitulate to the inevitable, perhaps even marry their own heirs eventually into the Liao-Steiner-Davion line to create a new composite ruling Great House.

As proof of this theory, they cited an encounter on a Smoke Jaguar held world where a raid led by Victoria Steiner Davion had run into a raid led by Hohiro Kurita, heir to the Draconis Combine. Instead of fighting each other, the two supposed arch enemies had simply talked over the radio and divided Smoke Jaguar targets between them. At one point, Hohiro had even flirted with Victoria even though he knew the latter was married and she didn't so much as verbally slap him down for it. That the Federated Commonwealth seemed disinclined to take advantage of Kurita's Clan distraction and was even letting Marik forces pass through their territory to raid Clan occupied worlds only further cemented the idea of inevitable unification.

The Clans' coming had seemed like a gift from Blake himself, as their attack on Cylon held worlds had led to a quick counterattack by the Cylons. The resulting conflict had completely stopped Cylon influence through economic assistance efforts from growing as their spare resources were thrown at the Clans. The resulting conflict had turned into a five year long stalemate, assisted by the Cylons to refusal to use nukes against the Clan Warships, largely because the Cylons now had proper Warships of their own. But reports from Comstar diplomats and observers sent to both sides made it clear that the Clans were on their last legs; they simply couldn't replace their warriors fast enough, especially when the Cylons could literally factory produce their own soldiers and pilots and load them with veteran combat experience right off the assembly line.

And of course, attempts at reverse engineering advanced Clan technology by everyone was leading to even more innovation and new technology!

Now even within the ranks of the Faithful, there were rumblings that many were giving into despair, as even the Tiepolo strategy of building up and arming the Houses so that they could fight an all consuming war seemed doom to failure. They were only whispers behind closed doors at the moment, but many were saying that Blake's Vision was done, and that Comstar should bow to the inevitable and serve at the feet of the inevitable First Lord and just settle for trying to be the puppet master behind the throne.

But Waterly could see even now that Comstar's influence was in decline despite the financial growth. Comstar's income might be growing, but it wasn't keeping pace with the Inner Sphere's economic growth and Comstar's percentage share of the interstellar communications market was clearly on the decline. Simply put, Comstar's influence over the Inner Sphere was waning, so it was doubtful that a "puppet master behind the throne" would even work unless they could get their claws into a First Lord heir early, much like how Amaris had done with the last First Lord.

Waterly's new Precentor ROM – the fourth since she had become Primus – barged into her office. That was odd, because the man was practically spineless. His predecessors had proven less than capable in Waterly's eyes, but this Precentor ROM seemed disinclined to run any operations at all because he was so risk averse, and Waterly was already considering replacing him. He wouldn't have barged in without even asking unless it was important.

What was his name again? Waterly had some trouble remembering.

"Primus, forgive this intrusion," the Precentor ROM begged. "But word has come from Langhorne that a Warship has arrived from a previously unknown Deep Periphery nation."

"Blake damn it!" Waterly cursed in frustration, striking the financial report from her desk and causing it to burst into a cloud of paper sheets. "Not another one!"


"Greetings, Admiral," the lead Comstar official said in passable Caprican as Adama disembarked the shuttle, and Sharon, a couple civilian advisors, and the marine security detail followed him down the ramp. He was an elderly man, and his entire demeanor just reinforced Sharon's impression that this man was more a kindly priest than a bureaucrat. "I am Precentor Li Hwing. Welcome to my humble HPG Station, and the Inner Sphere."

"Thank you, Precentor," Adama returned. "I am Admiral Lee Adama." He pointed to Sharon. "And this is my flag Commander, Commander Sharon Tyrol."

Sharon could feel the entire Cylon party's eyes lock on to her, and the whispering over the Cylon network picked up as confirmation of her identity spread. She also saw the expression on Hwing's face and could tell exactly what he was thinking.

"Precentor, before we continue with introductions, I feel that I need to clear up a... misunderstanding," Adama said, holding up his hand. "Human model Cylons like Commander Tyrol did not exist until after the Cylons had won their independence, the only Cylons were mechanical ones like the Centurion over there, and we weren't aware they were truly sapient until well after the fighting had broken out. Aside from the mechanical Cylons, the Colonies haven't had slaves for centuries. Commander Tyrol is my flag Commander and executive officer and nothing more."

The flurry of whispers over the Cylon network picked up even more and Sharon began making out individual snippets of meaning.

"...he implying that we told the Inner Sphere that the Colonials kept human models as slaves? Why would..."

"...God, I just realized that we never told anyone when..."

The Precentor seemed overwhelmed and taken aback by Adama's short speech. He was still processing it when the woman heading the Federated Suns delegation stepped forward.

"Greetings, Admiral," the woman said in nearly flawless Caprican while presenting her hand. "I am Duchess Eve Steiner. I believe we spoke over the radio."

"Hello, Your Grace," Adama said, shaking her hand. He had learned the proper mode of address for her when they had spoken previously. "It's good to finally put a face to your name and voice."

"Of course, Admiral. I feel much the same," Steiner replied. She glanced over to Sharon before looking back to the Admiral and smiled with a mischievousness that belied her apparent age. "You said human model Cylons like Commander Tyrol didn't exist until after the Cylons had won their independence from you. Given that Number Eight models like Commander Tyrol made up substantial number of the Cylons who arrived in the Inner Sphere from your Twelve Colonies, am I right in assuming that she was a Cylon spy who has since defected to your people?"

Sharon felt like someone had just gut punched her and the Admiral had the same look on his face. Osterheim hadn't appeared to figure that out in the entire time he and Adama had haggled over their trade deal. But this woman had figured out Sharon's basic history within seconds.

"Yes, it was something like that," Adama said uncomfortably.

"Relax, Admiral," the Duchess said graciously, "Such things are not unknown to the Inner Sphere. One of the Federated Commonwealth's most powerful nobles began life as the Federated Commonwealth's enemy and she is now one of our strongest supporters."

"Thank you, your Grace," Adama told her, and Sharon thought he meant it honestly.

"Of course, Admiral," Duchess Eve replied. She stepped back to her party and look expectantly past Precentor Hwing who had regained his composure and looked hugely embarrassed.

Sharon and the Admiral followed the Duchess' gaze to the Cylon party, who stood in awkward silence until the female Cylon that Sharon didn't recognize bumped her elbow into the Centurion.

"Are you Lee Adama, son of William Adama, last commander of BS-75 Galactica?" the Centurion asked instead of introducing himself. Over on the far left of the party, an officious looking male Cylon with slicked back hair and a pencil mustache dropped his face into his hand, as if embarrassed by the Centurion's social faux pas. For that matter, the other human models didn't look too happy with it either.

"Yes?" Adama said warily. Sharon didn't blame him. His father had fought Cylons during the war and not only killed a good many in his Viper, but had also done it on foot and if what the Admiral had told her was true, even hand to hand. And given the only Cylons fighting at the time were Centurions... "Why do you want to know?"

"William Adama was the brother of Tamara Adama," the Centurion explained. "Tamara Adama was friend to Zoe Greystone. We find this one... acceptable."

That was a relief, but it left Sharon wondering how the Cylons knew so much about the Admiral's family tree. Or why they even cared.

"I am Zero," the Centurion continued. "This is Alpha," it pointed to the mustached male, "Blue," the other male Cylon who wore an all blue jump suit, "Circle," the female Cylon that had bumped the Centurion earlier and looked like a body builder dressed as a Colonial business executive, "and Asterisk," and finally the Eight in the uniform. Except according to what Zero had just said...

"You're not an Eight?" Sharon said in surprise, unable to help herself.

"Yes and no," Asterisk replied, looking self conscious, "Symbol Constellation was formed in a hurry. So rather than create our own new human models from scratch, we just used pre-existing model templates from the other Constellations. We're... odd that way. As well as in many other ways."

"I didn't know my father had a sibling," Adama said to Zero.

"Tamara Adama died to the same bomb that killed Zoe Greystone," Zero replied, as if that explained anything.

Which in a way, it did. The Expedition had received updates from home and knew what had been found in Zoe Greystone's journal, but Zoe herself hadn't been found yet. Sharon did some quick mental math and realized the Admiral's father must have been around ten years old or so when Tamara Adama had died.

"Uh, yes, well," Precentor Hwing said, having regained his mental balance. "If everyone will step this way, we have a conference room and refreshments prepared so that we may hold proper negotiations."