== Part 52 – Party Time ==

"Admiral. Commander. Welcome back aboard the Galactica," Colonel Slate greeted his senior officers with a salute as they stepped off the Admiral's shuttle.

"Thank you, Colonel," Admiral Lee Adama replied, returning the salute. "It's good to be back."

"Speak for yourself, sir," Sharon said. "I love my ship, but I dread the stack of paperwork waiting for me."

"If it makes you feel better, Commander, my stack of paperwork is probably several times larger than yours," Lee replied with good humor.

"Ma'am, if it makes you feel better," Slate began, "there's no actual stacks of paper waiting for you. All the forms are still electronic."

"That just makes it worse," Sharon all but wailed in mock horror. "Colonel, you know how much easier it is to create more reports electronically than doing it by paper. Sir, my recommendation that you execute me somewhere between here and the Colonies still stands."

"So noted," Lee replied while Slate's eyebrows tried to reach the ceiling . "Colonel, is there anything that needs our immediate attention?"

"Not immediate attention, no sir," Slate reported. "Engineers expect the Galactica to be fully rearmored in two weeks. Per your orders, the rest of the Expedition has arrived here at Frozen City and the remaining Battlestars have also started the rearmoring process, but given how much armor the Vespa and Galactica have already taken, one or more of the other three might wind up needing patched together scraps instead of whole plates cut out of mostly intact hull plating."

"Well, we do what we can," Lee sighed. "Hopefully that memory core will tell us how to make our own plate. Anything else?"

"Yes, sir," Slate said. "The Cylons have been swapping out the Harpies watching us. Some of them have been pretty chatty with our people. We've got all the conversations recorded with intel going over them with a fine tooth comb. One of them mentioned something about Commander Tyrol defeating one of their Commanders while refighting the Battle of Ragnar Anchorage?"

"Oh yeah, that was great," Sharon said cheerfully. "Remind me to tell you about it sometime, Colonel."

"Yes, ma'am," Slate said uncertainly. "And finally, a courier arrived from home while you were at Langhorne. Mail and email are already in your respective inboxes. Also, the courier used some experimental navigational algorithms pulled out of Greystone warehouse. It got here in two weeks rather than the month it normally takes."

"Outstanding," Lee said approvingly. "The faster turn around time is going to be extremely helpful given what we've got to send back now."

"However, the courier captain says the new algorithms aren't one hundred percent reliable yet," Slate continued. "Something about some of the jumps getting 'really hairy' in his words."

"Huh."

Something about Sharon's tone drew Lee's attention. He turned and saw his flag Commander staring at a digital clock on the wall. It was one of the fancier ones that had both the time of day and the date.

"Is something wrong, Commander?" Lee asked, concerned.

"It's nothing, sir. Just an attack of homesickness," Sharon told him sadly. "Today's the day where we Colonial Cylons get together every year to catch up with each other. This year, everyone's bringing their families to meet each other for the first time and I won't be there to introduce mine to everyone else."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Commander," Lee said sympathetically. "It can't be easy to have them meet up with a bunch of strangers who are supposed to be their relatives."

"It's not all bad, sir," Sharon said with a fond smile. "There's going to be at least one person there that my family knows. In fact, I think you know her too."

"Who..." Lee began, his mind running over the list of people he knew that Sharon's husband might also possibly know. Only one person came to mind. "Oh, you don't mean..."


"Galen!" Kara Thrace cried in greeting. "Glad you could make it!"

"Starbuck?" Galen Tyrol said, flabbergasted. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was the last person he expected to meet here. She was one of the old Galactica crew and came to nearly every yearly reunion. "You're a Cylon?"

"Me? Nah!" Kara laughed. "I am however the daughter of one, so I guess that makes you my uncle in law!" She turned to Galen's kids and swept them up into a bear hug. "And I guess that makes you two my actual cousins instead of my honorary nephew and niece!"

"Aunt Ka... uh, Kara, you're the kid of a Cylon?" asked Galen's teenaged son Aelius. "But you're so... so..."

"Old?" Galen's daughter Claudia suggested. Claudia had just hit that age where she was starting to disrespect adults, but hadn't hit that full rebellious streak yet. "Kara, you're older than Dad!"

"Guilty," Kara said in good humor, not at all offended. "Turns out my dad's been in the Colonies a long time. Long enough to make enough money to buy this place!" She waved around them. They were standing in front of a mansion only millionaire or billionaires could buy, which was on a sprawling, well manicured estate. The driveway where Galen had parked his rental car was a literal parking lot filled with the vehicles of families that had arrived before him. "He's hosting this party."

"Oh, cool!" Aelius said. "Does that mean he can buy me my own car?"

"Aelius, if you want to mooch money off my dad, you're gonna have to get in line," Kara told him, still in good humor. "Come on, everyone's out back by the pool. And I want to introduce you to our special guest star and the reason you had to drive through and get your IDs checked by that small army of stormtroopers our President calls a 'security detail'."


"I can't believe you talked me into this," Helena grumbled.

"What? Coming to the Cylon reunion party or letting Zoe out of the warehouse?" Gina asked as she sipped on her fruit punch.

"Both," Helena said, looking over at the aforementioned Zoe.

The couple were relaxing together on neighboring deck chairs by Ron's enormous pool. Nearby on the even more enormous lawn but well away from the pool where she might get splashed by accident was Zoe. Her desk sat in the grass, sheltered from the sun by the roof of an unwalled tent. Her avatar had traded in the purple dress for an airier yellow sun dress, and sat on the desk's top, chatting with Peggy and the other older Cylon kids while the younger children ran around playing with each other. Helena was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but it sure looked like Zoe was enjoying herself for once.

Around the pool, knots of adults gathered and chatted with each other, the Cylons introducing their significant others to each other and catching up on what everyone had been doing for the past year. It still disconcerted Helena to see several women who looked just like Gina right down to the curly blonde hair hanging on the arms of other men and women and obviously in love with them. Helena had to keep reminding herself that these were Gina's sisters, like twins, except there were far more than two of them.

"Hey, talking to people who don't want something from her has been good for Zoe," Gina replied. She waved her cup at Helena. "And you have been in definite need of a vacation for a while now. Besides, if there was anything that really needed your immediate attention, no fast talking in the galaxy from me would have gotten you out here and you know it."

Before Helena could reply, an Eight appeared next to Gina. Unlike the other Cylons, this one didn't have any family members in tow.

"Gina, hi! How ave you been?" the Eight said. Unlike many other greetings that Helena had heard today, this one sounded less than genuine to Helena's bullshit sensors, which had been well honed by her political career. But that same career had also trained her how to hide what she was thinking, so Helena's face remained studiously neutral and Gina returned the greeting.

"Helena, this is Emily. Emily, I'm sure you know Helena," Gina said, introducing them.

"Madame President, it's an honor to meet you," Emily said, shaking Helena's hand. "I can't thank you enough for the Amnesty. I only wish it had come sooner."

"Oh?" Helena said. That last sentence was genuine, but not in a good way.

"Emily here just went through an identity change right before the Amnesty was announced," Gina explained, reading Helena's one word question correctly. "Unlike Ron, it wasn't cheap pocket change for her."

"Gina!" Emily exclaimed, clearly embarrassed.

"Identity change?" Helena said. "Wouldn't that make things hard on your family?"

"Oh, uh, I don't have any family," Emily said, her mood dropping. "The man I fell in love with, the man I decided to stay in the Colonies for... he died fifteen years ago. Orbit diving accident."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Helena apologized, suddenly feeling like a heel.

"Oh, don't worry about me. It's been a long time now. I'm fine," Emily said with a fake laugh, clearly not fine. "I've been trying new things, seeing new people. They're just... not him. I just wish we hadn't put off having kids until..." Emily shook herself out of the past. "But enough about me. Let's talk about you, Madame President. Rumor has it that a new courier just came back from the Inner Sphere. Is that true? And if it is, would you care to comment on what it brought back?"

"What, are you a reporter?" Helena asked. Sympathetic as she might be to Emily's loss, that didn't give Helena license to drop classified information to people without Need To Know.

"Well, yes actually," Emily said, embarrassed again. "I just started at The Gemenon Voice. When the Amnesty came down, I went from reporting the news to being the news. But now I'm old news and my boss is pressuring me to use my 'Cylon connections' to get the scoop on what's happening with the Earth Expedition."

"And you're doing just that," Gina said disapprovingly. "Emily, you should know better."

"I know," Emily said, hanging her head in shame. "I'm sorry."

"Well if it makes you feel any better, Emily, I'll give you one little scoop," Helena said. "There's no news except that Admiral Adama was planning to meet directly with Inner Sphere leaders and the Cylons. In fact, he should be done with that by now, but we won't hear about it until the next courier ship gets back here. Or Cylon basestars start jumping in and start blowing everything up, but I'm hoping that one doesn't happen."

"Oh, uh, thank you, Madame President," Emily said, clearly disappointed. "Oh, hey, I think that's Sharon's family with Starbuck. I should go say hello."

"She's so different from Adama's reports about Commander Tyrol," Helena mused aloud. "And the other Eights I've met today for that matter. I guess that's what loss does to you."

"It's kinda sad really," Gina said sympathetically. "Back before we infiltrated the Colonies, we Cylons would joke about how the Eights had really short attention spans. They'd keep finding something new, go on for a little while about how it was the greatest thing in the universe, and then lose interest and move on to something else. But every Eight here stayed in the Colonies because they had fallen in love with someone and they've stayed faithful and devoted to their families the entire time. Emily just... reverted to old behaviors since losing the man she loved. I've lost track of how many professions that she's tried by this point."

"Is that why you want to put me in a Cylon body?" Helena asked. "So that you won't have to go through the same thing?"

"Well, it did factor into my thinking," Gina admitted.

"Hmm." This was getting uncomfortable again, Helena thought. Time to change the subject. "The Gemenon Voice. I don't think I've heard of that one."

"It's a gossip rag," Gina sighed. "I'm sure by this time next week, they're going to be screaming about how you think a Cylons war fleet is coming to kill us all."

"Argh. You know what the worst thing is, Gina?" Helena said grouchily. "I wish I could say they were wrong."


"You know, you guys are really making me miss having a body," Zoe said as she watched Peggy sip a plastic cup of fruit punch. "It seems like it's been forever since I last tasted real food and drink."

"Hey, if we both ask my mom, I'm sure she can get a custom robot body made for you," Peggy suggested. "I hear they found a bunch of old Centurion parts in that warehouse you were in. Maybe enough to make a whole new Centurion?"

"Oh, no no no," Zoe said quickly. "Copying me into a Centurion body is how this whole mess started. I ain't doing that again if I can help it. If anyone is going to put me in a new body, they damn well better pull my hard drive and physically install it in one. And the new body better not be a frakking Centurion!"

"But that won't work," Peggy protested. "All our modern computer systems are incompatible with the pre-war stuff."

"Actually, that's not really true," Aelius disagreed. He'd only just arrived, but he was already fitting in with his new cousins. "All of the basic architecture and base level machine language on our modern computer systems are identical to the pre war stuff. The only stuff that's really changed in modern systems are standard port shapes and high level human readable programming languages. Zoe should be able to run just fine on a modern computer as long as she uses her own operating system and not a modern one and as long as there's a proper adapter for her hard drive. Uh, she might run a little slow though because modern systems are still less powerful than the pre-war stuff."

"Wow, that's great," Peggy said, impressed. "But isn't the Tech Committee supposed to prevent that sort of thing?"

"Sure," Aelius replied. "But my dad says that the Tech Committee has never known jack about the things they're supposed to regulate, so this kind of stuff slides past them all the time."

"Wow," Zoe laughed. "Over sixty years and nothing's changed about the way government works."

"Hey, Zoe, maybe the Cylons could make you a new body you can plug into," Peggy suggested. "Maybe one with tastebuds and everything."

"Wow, Peggy," Zoe said sardonically. "That was really subtle." She paused and then sighed. "I'll think about it."


"Ma'am, a Union class Dropship has altered course towards us," the Petty Officer announced. "Their current trajectory will carry it into the edge of our exclusion zone in roughly twenty minutes. Its IFF says it's a civlian merchant flagged as a Federated Commonwealth national."

Commander Applebee glanced at the Vesta's tactical display. A diagram of the situation had already been put on one screen, showing the Vesta, a circle defining the exclusion zone around the Vesta, the Dropship, and a dotted line showing the Dropship's predicted trajectory.

Right away, Applebee could see something was amiss. While the Union's course suggested it was coming from the system's nadir jump point and that the Dropship would put itself into a perfect polar orbit around Langhorne, the Vesta was orbiting almost two hundred thousand kilometers from the planet itself. Cylon Dropship transports jumped in far closer to the planet than the Vesta's parking orbit. There was no reason for anyone to come out this far from the planet unless their destination was the Vesta itself. As far as Applebee knew, there were no deliveries scheduled right now, and the Union wasn't going for a zero velocity intercept with the Vesta anyway.

Admiral Adama had left Applebee and the Vesta in orbit of Langhorne, both as a communications relay to pass off messages between the Federated Commonwealth and the Expedition Fleet at Frozen City – it would have been impolitic to rely on the Cylons to relay messages for them – and to receive the cargo the Federated Commonwealth ambassador had promised the Colonials as it became available. So it was possible that this was just a normal delivery and someone had just dropped the ball when it came to informing the Colonials, but...

"Helm control, move the Vesta into a slightly higher orbit so this guy doesn't get too close to us," Applebee ordered. A one thousand kilometer exclusion zone had been negotiated with Langhorne traffic control, based on the theoretical maximum effective range of Inner Sphere capital grade weaponry. No non-Colonial craft was supposed to enter that zone without getting the Vesta's – meaning Applebee's - permission first, or else they'd automatically be considered hostile. Given the Vesta's aforementioned distance from Langhorne, that exclusion zone should have been easy for everyone to avoid. "Meyer!"

"Yes, Commander?" said one of the civilian linguists assigned to the Vesta. They usually chatted with Langhorne traffic control to improve their grasp of English. Meyer was currently the one on duty.

"Call your buddies at traffic control and see if they forgot to tell us about any scheduled deliveries," Applebee told him.

As Meyer was on the radio with traffic control, the Vesta's engines powered up and began maneuvering the battlestar away from the Union's projected course.

Applebee considered what she had been told about the Union class. It was one of the most numerous Dropship classes in the Inner Sphere, coming in a variety of configurations that filled damn near every role imaginable. So it could be a freighter. Or it could be loaded with troops from some Inner Sphere power who thought they could board and capture a Battlestar.

"Commander, traffic control reports that there's no scheduled deliveries right now," Meyer told Applebee. "They're attempting to hail the Union."

"Ma'am, the Union is altering course to follow us," the Petty Officer reported.

"Frak," Applebee cursed. Given what Applebee knew now, a single Union Dropship even with a full load of Inner Sphere fighters was hardly a mortal threat to the Vesta even before the armor refit. But getting into a fight with a Federated Commonwealth flagged vessel in Federated Commonwealth space was a diplomatic snafu waiting to happen. But Applebee also couldn't ignore the possible threat to her own ship and the lives of her people. So... "Sound Action Stations."