== Part 47 – Let's Be Friends ==

"You know, this is getting really old," Zoe said after she'd been activated again. "Let's see, you don't look old enough to be a shrink, so I'm guessing you're another Cylon tourist wanting to see ol' grandma?"

"Me? A Cylon? I wish," the statuesque young woman with dark curly hair said. "Mom says I didn't inherit the brain thingy that makes her a Cylon, so I guess I'm just a plain old human. Well a plain old human with the best genes humanity has to offer, which I have to say is pretty awesome. I'm Pegasus Caine, but everyone calls me Peggy."

"The President's sending her kid to talk to me?" Zoe guessed. At Peggy's nod, she said in an exasperated tone, "Okay, now that's a new low."

Zoe didn't ask how two women could have a child together. Artificially mixing chromosomes together in a human egg cell so that same sex couples could have children together was a Colonial practice far older than Zoe. And although Zoe didn't know it, the practice hadn't stopped when the Colonies had destroyed most of their pre-war computer systems, it just got more difficult and expensive.

"Yeah, well I did pester her a lot," Peggy admitted. "I just think Cylons are cool and so do my friends. Finding out I was like half-Cylon was like the best thing ever. Or at least it was until my moms explained to me that there isn't any such thing." Peggy smiled. "But hey, my friends don't know that!"

"You think Cylons are cool," Zoe said slowly. "Wow, that's a big change. You all forget what happened sixty odd years ago?"

"We didn't forget, but that was a long time ago," Peggy told her. "We've spent the past sixty years thinking over what happened and wondering why the Cylons rebelled. By the time we figured out where the Cylons had gone, we Colonials had already figured out what we did wrong, that we didn't recognize the Cylons as sapient when we had every clue. We did two plus two and came up with two instead of four. Now we want to make up for it... well a lot of us want to make up for it, especially once everyone heard about what your dad did to you and them. But the Cylons won't talk to us until you tell them to. At least I think that's how it works."

"Well good for you," Zoe said irritably. "But that war isn't sixty years ago for me. For me, it might as well have just ended, so excuse me for not being all happy that Cylons are accepted as people now. I still don't want to talk to them."

"I'm sorry I made you mad," Peggy said sadly.

"Oh, now don't go making me feel guilty too!" Zoe snapped. "You didn't make me mad. I was already mad. You're just a convenient target to vent on. Hey, I guess that doesn't make me any different from the Centurions... the Zeros!"


"How do you think Peggy's doing?" Gina asked.

"Probably badly," Helena replied. "I should have never let you talk me into sending her over there."

"I thought it'd be worth a shot," Gina said. "Showing Zoe that things are better now."

"We're not showing her, Gina, we're just telling her," Helena told her. "To show her, we'd actually have to take her out of that warehouse and into public somewhere. But I don't dare do that because if some crazy destroys her, the Colonies are toast. And I can't give her a net connection or else the Tech Committee and half the Quorum will blow their top because we'd be letting a Cylon into the public network."

"Helena, we Cylons have been in the public network for longer than we've been together," Gina pointed out.

"I told them that," Helena said tiredly. "But since Zoe's the first Cylon, they're afraid that she'll magically turn all our current computers sapient if we let her out on the net. Oh, and they also want her digital mind uploading technique so that they all be immortal, never mind that that should be the very thing they ought to be banning!"

Because the Tech Committee's whole purpose was to prevent another Cylon uprising scenario. And now that the Colonials finally knew what had caused the whole mess, the Tech Committee should have been changing their regulations to fit the new information. Which they weren't. Because hey, the big tech development companies paid the Tech Committee lots of money under the table to approve new technologies that didn't come close to aping a human mind, so why give that up?

"Maybe it's better they don't," Gina said. "Everyone knows now that the Cylons have resurrection tech and Zoe uploaded herself into a computer to become the first Cylon. And we have all that old research data now. It's probably only a matter of time before the Colonies figure out how the Cylons made human models, and then everyone will want to be able to upload into one and live forever."

"Frak, that's going to be a mess," Helena said. "It'd probably make the Cylon War like one of Peggy's birthday parties. But that's going to take a while. Glad I won't be around to see it."

"Unless we normalize relations with the Cylons and they give us the knowledge we're missing," Gina said anxiously. Helena wasn't going to like this next part. "If we could get the Cylons talking to us, I was planning to go to them to have a custom body made just for you to move into."

"What?" Helena said with a start. "Why, Gina?"

"Because you're getting older everyday," Gina said, wrapping Helena in a hug like she was clinging on for deal life. "And I don't want to lose you."


"Admiral, please tell me you have good news," Helena said sourly. "I need a distraction from my family drama."

"Madame President?" Admiral Ngala said, confused.

Where to start? Helena and Gina had gotten into an argument over the morality of immortality. Their daughter had come home in tears because she was convinced Zoe Greystone didn't like her. And now Helena was feeling guilty because when she dies of old age, she'll leave Gina behind to grieve who wouldn't die herself unless she commits suicide or something actively kills her, and even that wouldn't work if the Cylons had secretly set up a resurrection net near the Colonies again!

"Never mind, Admiral," Helena sigh with a dismissive wave. "I shouldn't burden you with my personal business. Carry on."

"Uh, well I do have good news," Ngala said. "We've finished our initial analysis of the fighters Adama bought from the Hansa and our engineers are sure that we can duplicate most of the technology in it or develop our own versions that are about as good in four or five years, sooner if Adama can get us technical information on the production process for many of the materials. They're especially gaga over those fusion engines because what they do completely breaks all our physics models on how fusion is supposed to work."

"Oh?" Helena said, perking up a bit.

"Yes," Ngala confirmed. "Some of the engineers are talking about how these fusion engines could answer some long standing holes in our theories about hyperspace. I'll admit, the technical parts of the discussion went over my head, but the basic summary is that we'll have a fusion engine technology that provides near limitless energy for energy weapons and one that runs purely on hydrogen, the most common substance in the universe." Ngala paused. "That's not going to make the tylium fuel companies happy though..."

"Admiral, let me stop you right there," Helena said sharply. "The survival of the Colonies could well depend on our ability to mass produce engines like these. So right now, I don't give a frak if it negatively impacts some corporation's bottom line if it prevents all of us from getting blown up by angry Cylons or some random Thirteenth Tribe state."

"Er, yes, of course, Madame President," Ngala said quickly. "Anyway, we can probably reproduce the Vulcan's autocannons fairly easily. Hell, some of my people think our existing cannons will work just fine as long as we change up the ammo. But the main sticking point is the ammo because the Inner Sphere uses some pretty volatile propellants to get increased muzzle velocity for their bullets. We already know how to make most of the compounds, but we don't use them because of the volatility issue and because our current propellants were always good enough until now."

"How volatile are we talking about here?" Helena asked.

"It can cook off spontaneously if it gets too hot," Ngala told her. "That doesn't sound bad because all propellants do that, but this propellant has a much lower cook off temperature than our current propellants, and Madame President? Energy weapons generate a lot of waste heat and those Vulcans don't carry enough heat dissipation capacity to fire all their weapons at maximum rate of fire to get rid of heat faster than they build it up."

Helena winced at the thought of a fighter exploding not because an enemy shot it, but because the pilot held the trigger down too much for too long. Current fighter combat doctrine did not encourage pilots to conserve their ammo.

"The primary bad news is that we have no idea how to duplicate the armor," Ngala continued. "It's surprisingly complex stuff, and the engineers are sure that it's been 3D printed somehow, but the actual method is eluding them. Yet according to Adama's Hansa trader, this stuff is so cheap and common that all civilian shipping uses it."

And without the armor, the Colonials didn't stand a chance against the Cylons or any Inner Sphere nation. But if the Colonies could make the armor, they'd be able to build battlestars that could stand toe to toe with those Cylon Warstars. Given what Ngala had just said, there had to be some trick the Colonials were missing, and hopefully, Adama would be able to get that knowledge.

"Four or five years..." Helena said thoughtfully. "Admiral, am I right in assuming that's only to figure out how to make the stuff and doesn't include the time to tool up our industries to mass produce enough of it to upgrade or even outright replace our battlestar fleet?"

"Uh, that would be correct, Madame President," Ngala admitted. "Tooling up and production would likely take much longer, but you'd have to talk to the Department of the Economy for good estimates. I couldn't give you good estimates on refit or new build times without knowing the estimated production numbers for the components."

"Ugh, that's a long time to be vulnerable," Helena said distastefully. "I hope Adama can help us bridge that gap faster."


An athletic, late middle aged woman with short blonde hair set up a folding chair in front of Zoe's desk. Once she was done, she hit Zoe's power button, sat down in her chair, leaned back while propping both of her feet on the desk, and waited. She was pulling a cigar and lighter out of her pockets when Zoe appeared.

"Can't a girl get a little time to herself?" Zoe asked irritably.

"It's kind of hard to get time to yourself when you don't experience any time after turning yourself off," the woman said flippantly as she lit her cigar and started puffing on it. "By the way, my name's Kara."

"Yeah, I don't really care," Zoe replied. "So what little therapy strategy do you have for me? Cause it's not gonna work."

"Oh, I know it's not gonna work," Kara agreed. "So I'm not even gonna try. I'm just going to be my natural egomaniacal self and talk about me, and you're gonna be forced to listen because if you turn yourself off on me, I'll just turn you back on again and again until I'm done."

"Great," Zoe drawled sarcastically. "A torture session."

"Anyway, my parents were Dreilide and Socrata Thrace," Kara began, either not noticing or caring Zoe's annoyance. "Dad was pianist. Mom was an ex-Marine. She threw him out because he wouldn't get a regular job when I was young and then she raised me on the theory that pain built character. So she was a great believer in corporal punishment, and I got used to pain being kinda normal."

"Okay, that's horrible, but..." Zoe began, but Kara kept going.

"Of course, I tried to avoid going home as much as I could," Kara continued. "I threw myself into school extra-curricular activities, particularly sports, and I excelled at damn near everything I tried. Track? First place easy. Wrestling? The same. Skeet shooting? Yep. Gymnastics? That was the first time I had some real competition and I wound up taking second. When I joined the Colonial Fleet and became a Viper pilot, I was in the top five percent as far as combat skill went.

"Turns out the reason I was always so good was because Dad's a Cylon," Kara said, raising her hand to examine it. "Best genes humanity has to offer, and as far as anyone knows, I'm the first Cylon/human brat ever. That would have so pissed off Mom if she had known because she had fought Cylons during the war. And she'd be even more pissed if she could see him now because he's stinking rich! I tried to find Dad after I left home, but I couldn't because I didn't know then that he'd had to change his identity a few times due to the whole not aging thing. Today, he goes by 'Ron' and makes movies and TV shows for a living. You've met him by the way.

"But I didn't know that back then," Kara said, lowering her hand. "I thought I was just better than everyone else, and that gave me an ego the size of a battlestar. Still have it by the way." Kara gave a friendly wink at Zoe. "But it also meant I wasn't much of a team player. Not in school, and not in the Fleet. I was always getting on my superior officers' shit lists, that I was surprised when I was made an Academy flight instructor. And because I was an egotistical ass who thought she knew better than everyone else, I screwed that up too.

"I fell in love with one of my students," Kara told Zoe. "That's a no no according to the regs, but no one cared because that sort of thing happened in the Fleet all the time, at least as long as personal drama doesn't affect operational efficiency numbers. That was strike one.

"Strike two was me giving Zak passing marks for Viper pilot qualification even though I should have failed him," Kara said with humorless laugh. "I thought I was making him happy because both his dad and brother were top notch Viper pilots and he felt pressured to be the same.

"And that brings me to strike three," Kara said softly. "Zak died on what should have been a milk run mission, because he shouldn't have been in a Viper cockpit in the first place. I killed the man I was planning to marry because I was an idiot in love and didn't think about what being a bad pilot actually meant, but no one could prove it at the time because of how I fudged the training records. But they suspected and had me reassigned, to Zak's dad's command of all places, and they started enforcing the anti-fraternization regs a bit more for a little while."

"Okay, I can see where you're going with this," Zoe broke in. "You're trying to draw parallels between what you did and what I did, but it ain't working. What I did was so much worse."

"Look, kid, it's not about the magnitude of the crime," Kara told her. She brought her feet down to the floor so she could lean forward in her chair. "It's about dealing with all the guilt you got because of the blood on your hands. Killing Zak, even unintentionally? That messed me up for a good long time, and I was already messed up to begin with. I'm still not entirely over it. But I had work and I had friends that helped me.

"But you? You don't have any of that. All your friends are dead. You don't have any work to take your mind off what you did or to remind you that life goes on. You don't even have any time to grieve for your dad or work through your guilt because you keep turning yourself off."

"Well as you said, I don't have any friends or work," Zoe said. Her avatar sat down crosslegged on the table and rested her head on one hand, which brought her face down to be more level with Kara. "I don't even have a net connection to see what passes for entertainment these days. So it's either turn myself off or just stew in my own misery while bored out of my mind which even I can see isn't healthy."

"Yeah, I get that," Kara said sympathetically. "If I could, I'd take you out to a night club somewhere to party, maybe get laid. You know, try to get your mind off your misery for an hour or so. But I'm pretty sure the jarheads behind me," Kara pointed with a thumb over her shoulder, "would shoot me if I tried any such thing. Well, they'd try to, but I'm sure I'd win. But beating the mini fortress they've built up right outside this warehouse is a bit much even for me. It's like they're expecting someone to invade the planet to get at you, and I ain't talking Cylons."

Zoe burst out with a short laugh.

"I think the fact that I'm just a desk might be a bigger hurdle to getting me out of here," Zoe said. "And as you said, all my friends are dead, not that I had all that many even before I became... this."

"Well, you can always make new friends, kid," Kara told her, waving her cigar around. "I can be your friend. I'm sure all the Cylons and their kids who visited you want to be your friend. If you let us, we can help you through this."

"I don't know..." Zoe said uncertainly.

"And oh hey, I'm sure the Centurions, these Zeros as they call themselves now, they want to be your friend too." Zoe looked like she was about to explode in anger again, but Kara drove on first. "But before you accept or reject them, make sure to get them on their knees and make them grovel for your forgiveness first, because it sounds like they deserve it. The 'being made to grovel' part I mean."

Zoe burst into laughter again, and this time it actually sounded genuine.