Okies, since I had such positive feedback from the first chapter I thought I'd go right ahead and post the second. Especially since someone (you know who you are) was prodding me to update.

For those that want to know, Edric Adama is played by The Rock or Dwayne Johnson (I think I spelled that right) who is a surprisingly good actor and sings quite wonderfully (watch Gameplan, I dare ya).

Doctor Dana Colton (after much deliberation) is played by Julianne Moore, but with black, messy cut hair and probably contacts.

Geminon is also a representation of Great Britain the same way Caprica is a representation of America. Northern Geminon being similar to the celtic side of the country ie Scottish, Irish or Welsh. Her accent is somewhere mixed up in that. The animosity between the North and the South is the same as it is in Britain (which you will only get if you happen to be British, and that DOES mean from the whole of the British Isles and not just England).

The second in the series is giving me a little bother trying to get right soooo, it may be a while between the first and second parts.

But, on with the show!!

Hit that green buuutttooooooonnn!!!!!

Chapter 2: The All Important First Impression

"Back off!" Edric took the gun from the holster at his hip and aimed it over Roslin's shoulder at a blurred shape that he took to be an advancing crewman. "I'm only gonna say this once so listen carefully. I can't see very well at the moment and can't tell friendly from non-friendly. So, unless you want Roslin's suit redecorated arterial red, I suggest you stay very frakking still."

"Identify yourself."

Edric jerked at the voice. It sounded familiar. The woman in his grip, Roslin, winced when the knife was pressed harder at her throat but did not whimper or cringe. Odd.

"Major Edric Adama of the Caprican Colonial Fleet. Who the frak are you? Why the frak am I half blind? What's this about autopsies?"

"We thought you were dead. We wanted to know why." Roslin spoke calmly.

"You never heard of checking for a pulse?"

"You should be dead, Major. By all accounts your over a hundred and twenty years old."

Edric went very, very still.

"What…?"

"The Betty has been missing for the past sixty years. You were presumed dead." Roslin worked very hard not to struggle like she wanted to. The gloop covering Edric was now liberally smeared over her too and Roslin wanted to deck the man for crimes against her only pantsuit if nothing else. It was cold and sticky and clung to the skin of her neck and cheek. She wanted to wipe it away but refused herself the movement.

"Okay, whatever, where's the doctor?"

"Doc Cottle's in the medical bay." Adama, her Adama, answered. Edric jerked again at the sound of the voice and Roslin was yanked backwards so harshly she thought she might fall, her hands went to the arm across her neck and more of the gunge was smeered cold and disgusting across her cheek.

"Who the frak is Doc Cottle?" Edric gestured with his pistol. "Not THAT doctor, my Doctor. Doctor Colton. Where is she? I didn't come all this way to frakking lose her!"

"She's right here, on the gurney." Adama's voice was level and almost sounded calm, but Roslin could pick up on the icy notes of fury threading through it. If Edric really was Adama's great uncle, the family reunion wasn't shaping up to be a very happy affair.

"Take off her helmet. Check her pulse." When nobody moved the gun was swung around and dug sharply into Roslin's temple. "Now!"

"Don't!" Adama stepped forward and the gun then swivelled onto him, gloop splattered from Edric's arm and sluiced over Adama with a squelch. He made a small sound of disgust and smeared it from his face, but otherwise stayed where he was. "Alright, alright, but take the knife away from her throat. You're cutting her."

Edric glanced down and saw the thin trickle of read ebbing from the tip of the knife. The colour seemed lurid against the pale column of the woman's throat. He felt like a cowardly bastard taking a woman hostage, but he needed leverage and he needed information. She had been closest, if he'd been able to reach the guy, he'd have grabbed him instead, but he hadn't, so he couldn't.

Adama looked over to one of the techs, everyone was holding themselves in that hyper-still way one does when they don't want to spook the rattle snake coiled in their path. He nodded to the one nearest to the Doctor's gurney and, with barely shaking hands, the tech unclipped the helmet and carefully removed it. Colton's head lolled against the bed of the gurney and her mahogany and ebony hair spilled in a long trailing banner over the side.

"Check her pulse." Adama ordered in his gravel tones. The tech hesitated and earned a flint glare for his troubles. His hand went to the pale neck under the bulky helmet seal collar and groped for a pulse.

He didn't even see the leg before it swung up and cracked into the side of his head. The tech went sprawling, people started swearing and swinging to take aim at the new threat and Colton tumbled, choking, from the gurney. She flipped over to roll to a crouch, staggered backwards to her feet and went crashing straight into Adama's chest. He automatically grabbed hold of her to steady her when she began to cough in great wracking heaves, struggling clumsily against Adama's hold. More of that gunk both of Betty's passengers were caked in, smeared copiously all over his uniform and a great deal of it over his face. He was disheartened to realise that some of it got into his mouth. He grimaced but held grimly onto the struggling woman.

He had Edric's just as Edric had his.

"Give her to me." The gun was levelled at Adama again. Edric's rapid blinking and bloodshot eyes made Adama think that the other man might not be sure enough in his aim to blow Adama's head off without risking his Doctor's life.

"Trade. Yours for mine."

Edric squinted blinked a few more times and then nodded. "On three. You lie to me and I'll blow you away."

"Likewise." Adama gritted.

"One…" Edric started.

"Two…" Adama seconded.

"Three!" Both men shoved the women away from them and caught the one stumbling towards them in an almost perfect mirror image of each other. Both Adama's slung the shocked women behind their backs and faced off against each other with matching glowers. When seen together like that, the familial resemblance was really quite glaring.

The racket of several safeties being flipped off, clipped through the hanger as the entirety of both the Presidential and Admiral's security forces took aim at the two incomers in their gunky silver flight suits standing in the shadow of the battered wrong shaped flyer.

"Major, what in the name of Hades are you doing?" Colton used one of Edric's shoulders to hold onto and keep from becoming more closely acquainted with the deck.

"Saving your ass." Edric gritted. "Again."

"My arse, toned as it is, is none of your business." Colton snapped and stepped around him without pause, at least six guns tracked her every move. She looked about herself, apparently able to see quite proficiently. She unzipped her flight suit and stripped it back to her waist, tying the sleeves around her slim hips to hold it there. "Look around you, Major, we're on a Battlestar, that's an Admiral and he's wearing a Caprican insignia. Betty did it, we're home."

"That's not, technically true." Roslin poked her head around Adama's shoulder and was firmly pushed back for her efforts. She shot a glance at the back of his head but resolved herself to craning around as much as she could to see the other woman. "You're on board the Galactica, but we're nowhere near Caprica and…the first Cylon war is long since over."

"Where are we then?" Edric still hadn't lowered his gun. He was ignoring the whole security force, deeming them not worthy of his time, and had his sights set squarely between Adama's eyes. He still couldn't see all that well, but he could make out enough to get a clean headshot in.

"Shush, honey, adults talking." Colton petted his outstretched arm and took a few steps closer to Adama and Roslin, effectively blocking Edric's shot. He glared, exasperated, at the back of her skull. "'First Cylon War'? There's been more than one?"

"Yeah, welcome to the end of the world, folks." Adama growled and Roslin did her best to try and skirt around him again. The vice like grip on her wrist kept her from getting out of arm's reach though.

"Wait, what?" Colton demanded, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Care to explain that last in more than grunts?" She turned away and slapped at Edric's hand when he tried to pull her back. "Gawd! Military men!" She huffed at him. "Can't you see I'm trying to have a conversation? And put that thing away, you're going to have someone's eye out." She flicked the gun away from her with a bat of her hand and earned an incredulous look from just about everybody. "They're more afraid of us than we are of them. Like spiders, mice and other small animals." She explained slowly, as if to a child and turned back to Roslin and the other Adama with an orbital eye roll. Roslin didn't know how much she liked being compared to a small animal.

"Sorry about that, he's a little twitchy about strangers. Give him a biscuit, let him sniff yer hand and he'll be fine."

Roslin snorted in amusement and promptly wiped the expression from her face when Adama glared at her.

"Now, I do believe we got off on the wrong foot with the hostage taking there." Colton smiled congenially, her Northern Geminon brogue matching her green eyes and dark hair almost to stereotypical proportions. "I'm Dana Colton, certified genius and this," she turned to Edric with a look of long suffering disdain, "is Major Edric Adama. Commonly known as the hired help."

"I should have let you suffocate." Edric snapped, finally holstering his weapon and glaring at his companion.

"I should have let you stay a gimp, steampunk." She shot straight back, folding her arms over her chest and kicking her head back at him with attitude. She looked back at Roslin, Adama and the assembled throng and arched an expectant brow. "Traditionally, introductions go both ways, but I can understand if manners somewhat escaped you, being Caprican and all." Her smile was a little like a shark's.

"Laura Roslin." Roslin stepped away from Adama and yanked her hand from his grip in order to extend it towards Colton. "President of the Twelve Colonies."

Colton's brows flew up.

"Shayzus bloody Hades, a woman President. Who had to die for you to get that job?" Colton shook her hand and Roslin hid her wince with a strained smile.

"About ninety nine percent of humanity and forty six members of the cabinet." She answered bluntly, she had the feeling that Colton would want nothing less. The other woman was clearly caught off guard for a moment, her fingers white knuckling around Roslin's. An instant of something stark and hollow passed over her face before she cleared her throat and shrugged.

"Ah well, no big loss. I always did hate politicians and ninety nine per cent of people are not worth my time of day anyway." She reached behind her back and removed several files from where they had been tucked down the back of her tank top. "Hold these, darling, make yourself useful instead of glowering at folk." She thrust them into Adama's hands and planted her own on her hips.

"So, before we get carted off to the medical bay and inevitably the brig, can we stop by the showers because I've been at least sixty years without one and, quite frankly, can't stand his smell any longer." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the perpetually frowning Edric.

Adama nodded and two of the President's bodyguards stepped forward and gingerly clasped Colton's arms. She smiled up at them and looped her arms through theirs like they were escorting her out for an evening. Another two men cautiously approached Edric and carefully disarmed him, a process which took several moments considering how many dangerous objects he had secreted about his personage. He did snarl at them when they tried to take his arms though.

"Don't pay any attention to him, darlings, he's just grumpy because he's not eaten in a few decades. Give him some chow and he'll be fine. In fact, make that a double." Colton turned back to look up at her guard conversationally. "I'm absolutely starving!" She turned to the other. "Oh, and I'm dying for a decent cup of coffee. You don't know where I could get one do you?"

Roslin and Adama watched the odd pair, misplaced in time and, apparently, personality, pass them by, shared a look out of the corner of their eyes, shrugged in unison and followed after them.

$inister $cribe

So, it was several showers (for both Adama's and two gunk covered women), a half gallon of coffee, an improbable quantity of food and a change of wardrobe later that they found themselves in the Medical Bay with Doc Cottle staring at his latest patients with something akin to terrified awe as he drew blood from Edric's massive vein roped arm. That would be the arm that wasn't mechanical from the bicep down.

Roslin looked over Edric, clad in a set of sweats and the standard issue military tanks (current ones rather than retro) and tried not to gawk like a slack-jawed yokel too much.

He was tall, well over six feet, nearly half that at his broad muscle packed shoulders, bronzed skin, silvered by the scar that ran down over one eye and cheek and with inky black hair that was cropped close to his skull. His face was not typically handsome, but rather a rugged kind of beauty to it. His metal arm was attached by a thick cuff to his bicep and it whirred and clicked quietly with every fluid motion that he put it through. It was made of a mostly chrome coloured metal but decorated with plating of an etched bronze alloy. The artistry in it was quite impressive.

He was large, intimidating and, overall, not impressed with the current time he found himself in. When it had become clear that he and the current Admiral were indeed related he had subjected Bill to a piercing mismatched glare for several long seconds (a glare that Bill had met and held, it should be added) and declared him shorter than he had expected.

At that point, it had taken all of Roslin's diplomatic negotiating skills to make sure the current Adama didn't airlock his ancestor at the soonest opportunity. She still wasn't entirely convinced that she had succeeded, but Edric was still with them so she supposed that was something.

Doctor Colton, however was his opposite. She appeared friendly, chatty and utterly comfortable with the situation she found herself in. When she had found out that Cylons could take on the human form (one of the topics of several conversations that she appeared able to carry on at once) her eyes had lit with something that had been both fear and some kind of manic interest.

She sat, cross-legged on one of the gurneys in the infirmary, reaching behind her back to lace her fingers together before bending forward and lifting her arms as high as she could behind her back. Roslin winced at the popping crack of bones but Colton didn't even blink. She was an odd looking woman. Long and lean, one would have even have said she was willowy had it not been for her slim but definitely there curves. She tied her dark hair back into a messy knot secured with two thermometers that she had 'borrowed' from Cottle and gestured effusively with her thin arms and long fingered hands. When she wasn't trying to dislocate them at the shoulder, that was.

"So these…skin-jobs?" Roslin nodded at the slang term at Colton's question, query number one million and sixty four, if Roslin's guess was right. Skin-jobs was one of the more polite ones she had heard, so they were going to stick with that one. "Can completely mimic the human form, there are twelve models, you've seen seven and the other five are still a mystery?"

"Yes."

Adama grunted from where he stood with his arms folded, between Roslin and Edric, a position he had been careful to keep up for the entirety of the afternoon. He wasn't impressed with sharing information, but it was common knowledge, they'd probably hear at least that much in the Brig, which was where both Colton and Edric would be held for the time being after medical checks were completed.

"And there's no way for you to tell them apart? They even bleed? Mimic human emotion?"

"That's right."

"Huh." Colton nodded to herself. Roslin could almost see the wheels of that obviously powerful mind spinning away behind her eyes.

"Unless you count their day-glo spines during sex." Cottle muttered and Colton whirled on him.

"REALLY?" She ticked her head to the side. "How extra usual…how many hybrids are there?"

Everybody turned to stare at her.

"How did you know…?" Adama stepped towards her, almost menacingly and halted only when Edric shifted his weight and looked like he was about to launch himself at the other man. Apparently, mutual feelings of dislike aside, he was going to follow his orders to protect Colton to the letter.

"Oh puh-LEAZE!" Colton looked between them. "Can we dial the testosterone down a touch? You boys can whip 'em out and measure later but right now I'm trying to be the genius I'm paid to be."

Roslin pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. She had to admit that Colton had a certain way about her.

"And hybrids are the next logical step from biblical knowledge of glorified sentient sex dolls." Colton dismissed it. "So?"

"There are none." Roslin answered before anyone else could. Her voice flat. "There was one, but it died. Some kind of cellular degradation."

"Hmm." Colton crossed her legs under her body in a peculiar half kneeling position. She tapped her fingers against her lower lip, frowning slightly and deep in thought. "So they've evolved. We just had the raiders and the chrome centurions…another five faces out there that need finding…" She snapped her fingers and rocked back on her heels with a clap of her hands. "Ceramics!"

"Uh…pottery?" Adama looked sideways at Roslin. He was beginning to suspect that too much time in space had fried the good Doctor Colton's mind.

"No, the skin jobs, they can't be metal, because y'all would have detected it but they could be ceramic instead…made of nanotech…hmmm…" Colton sat forward again and propped her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist. Her other hand cupped the opposite knee and she drummed her fingers there in a rapid tempo.

"Nanotech?" Roslin queried.

"Tiny machines. Teechie small." Colton held her thumb and forefinger together to indicate something too small to be measured. "Each one about the size of a human red blood cell…but their invention was a secret. There are only two people from the Twelve colonies who survived application."

"Application?" Adama questioned warily.

"Mm-hmm." Colton answered absently, most of her attention still focused inward.

"Colton, shut it."

"You shut it." Colton snapped back at Edric. "In case you hadn't noticed, the human race is somewhat less pandemic than it used to be. Which means that the pool of intellects equal to my own has just shallowed dramatically, at the very least, I may never have a decent conversation again. I'm not letting these bloody…SKIN-JOBS wipe out the rest of us and if that means spilling the beans on something your eejit sister and her admiralty cronies deemed classified then it'll just have to be another shitty thing that you live with."

A muscle in Edric's jaw ticked. "Don't talk about my sister."

"She's dead, Eddie. Everyone's dead. Everyone we knew, everyone we loved and loved us in return is nowt but space dust. Blasted to smithereens decades ago. Even their graves are now nothing but irradiated slag on a dying planet in an abandoned system several THOUSAND light years away!" She vented at him and it was Roslin's first clue that she wasn't entirely unbothered by what had happened to her. The situation she now found her in wasn't exactly to her liking and that went a long way to comforting Roslin for some reason.

"They're it. Hades, we're it!" Colton gestured wildly at them and nearly unmanned Cottle when he tried to approach her to take blood. She stopped suddenly and frowned, she turned back to Roslin. "What was I saying?"

"Application of nanotech was only successfully done to two people in the Twelve Colonies." She prompted immediately.

"Aye, that was it." Colton snapped her fingers. "Now, understand, they were designed with the intention of helping people. One of the subjects suffered from a rare type of bone cancer, terminal, it was going to kill her slowly and in an agonising fashion…the other had been crippled in an accident. The nanotech was grafted into their bodies, into their bone marrow, along with ten other volunteers in similar situations, one from each Colony. The project was highly classified, a mere handful of people knew about it and most of them are dead now."

"Enough!" Edric shot to his feet and moved to Colton's bed as if to physically restrain her from speaking. He didn't take a step before Adama moved between them and met Edric's gaze glare for glare.

"Sit your ass back down or it won't just be an arm that's made of spare parts."

Edric glared and seethed for a moment before falling back and throwing himself roughly onto the bed with a low snarl.

Adama turned back to Colton. "You were saying?"

"Uh…aye. If what happened is what I think what happened, and it probably is because I have a nasty habit of being right…then these twelve were the first Cylon skin-jobs, at least, partially so. I think, it's logical to assume that the Cylons somehow got a hold of this technology and…used it to evolve."

"Good Gods…" Roslin breathed and turned to Adama. "Is our past EVER going to stop coming back to bite us in the ass?"

"Probably not." Cottle answered for the room at large and lit a cigarette.

"You said that only two survived. Why was that?"

"The grafting process was extremely violent and dangerous. It involves the complete eradication of the hosts immune system so the nanotech can take over the job without being rejected. If you imagine the nastiest type of chemotherapy and multiply that by your worst nightmare then you're kind of in the ballpark…actually, two out of twelve was a lot better than the predicted survival rate." Colton shrugged.

"Frak." Cottle said, again, the voice of the room. "Right, hold still so I can draw a sample."

"Sure." Colton held out her arm without looking and turned at Roslin's next question.

"So, these forefathers of the Cylon incursion, who were they?"

"I should warn you, doc. You're gonna find a lot of weird shit in there." Colton was looking down at the thick dark blood being drawn from her vein and into the syringe. Cottle grunted. "Don't worry, I'll use small words to explain when you have your questions."

"Colton!" Adama demanded. She snapped around to look at him and nearly succeeded in lancing the syringe clean through her arm with the jerk of motion. "Who were they?"

"Oh, isn't it obvious?" She glanced between the two monarchs of the remnants of humanity.

"You're looking at them."