INTERLUDE– 'The Agony of Defeat'
Unbridled terror gripped Brakar in its unrelenting embrace as the queasy shudder of the transition into hyperspace wormed its way through his flagship. As his stronghold dropped out of phase with real space, his heart was heavy. Less than half of the vanguard had survived to follow his ship into the comforting bosom of alternate space. As his ships fled the depredations of both the demon star and the crèche hunters' fury, Brakar had come to realize the atomized nestling may have had it right all along. Could these crèche hunters be the very scions of the demonic Pan 'Doraz? What kind of preternatural powers did the Talish-damned crèche hunter vessel possess allowing it to drag most of the vanguard into the demon star's infernal snare yet allowed it to be unaffected by the dark star's hyper-gravity, its avaricious force so unrelenting it stranded several greater eights of his vessels?
While his Defenders struggled to escape from the crèche hunters' diabolical trap, a greater eights of the crèche hunters' large vessels transitioned from hyperspace safely outside of the star's hyper-gravity influence. Then, shockingly, surprisingly, the largest crèche hunter ship released a swarm of gnat-like craft, vessels far smaller than his spotters. The tiny crafts' size, unfortunately, belied the deadliness of their stings. The gnats' missiles and photonic weapons destroyed or crippled so many of his wallowing Defenders' ships as they attempted to extricate themselves from the gravity well, it reminded Brakar of the legends of the Xinti gorging themselves on vulnerable nestlings during crèche raids long, long ago. Although the foul Xinti had been driven to extinction on the home world by his ancestors, how in Talish's name could they wipe out these demon spawn when even their gnats virtually destroyed half of his force in mere minutes?
Brakar bowed his head low. He'd accepted that the price of this failure was his alone to pay. Before he could perform the final duty and place his spirit in Talish's hands, he had to ensure the vanguard survived to rendezvous with Lord Shilak's Minor Hunt. He was certain the Hunt Lord would know what to do with the knowledge Brakar's nestlings had gained at such terrible cost at the hands of the Talish-damned crèche hunters.
#
Chapter 9
Battlestar Galactica – Baltar's Laboratory - Colonial Fleet
Gaius Baltar stared off into the distance while he sat in a comfortable chair and barely noticed the other man who paced the room beside him.
"It's all over, Gaius," Tom Zarek snapped before he sighed heavily. "You were already trailing in the polls but once Roslin and Adama go public with the discussions they've just completed with the Thirteenth Tribe's officers, that school teacher simply can't lose. For gods' sake, the people may not stop at electing her president; they'll probably crown her Queen of the Twelve Colonies! What's worse about that is the frakking bitch would probably act all sweet and innocent as if the people were the ones who'd force the mandate of heaven upon her!"
The scientist nodded slowly, his face drawn and despondent. "Although this is unfortunate from a personal standpoint for us, Tom, I suppose it's a happy day for the fleet," he noted.
"That's only because the people don't realize how unstable she truly is! She's a frakking religious zealot who constantly defers to the military, except for that one time over Kobol. Other than that, she continues to give in to the ones who oppressed us for forty years after the first war and still managed to frak it up and allowed the Cylons to obliterate our entire society. Now she'll be the one who negotiates with the Thirteenth Tribe and be the point person in dealing with them. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it!"
"It seems Tom is quite the oracle, Gaius," the phantasmal blond he could only see purred in his left ear while she pressed her lithe body against his shoulder. "It might not be a bad idea for you to get started on writing your concession speech, lover."
Seeing Six gave Baltar sudden inspiration, or, perhaps, encouraged him to act in desperation. "The Cylons..."
"What about the frakking Cylons?' Zarek asked.
"We could tell the electorate we need to keep moving to escape from the Cylons."
Zarek regarded him thoughtfully for a few seconds then shook his head. "I don't know, Gaius. The people have been stuck inside these ships for almost an entire year. They won't want to keep running particularly if the Thirteenth Tribe commits to protect us after we settle down on one of their nice planets."
"Unless the Cylon's track you to your new home," the blond whispered in Baltar's ear salaciously.
"Unless the Cylon's track us to our new home," Baltar parroted Six's words to his campaign manager.
"Well, if the Thirteenth is more capable than the Colonial Fleet was then that shouldn't be a problem. If not, the machines will run us down either in space or on a planet and kill us all. Look, I'm not sure your idea serves as a good platform; despite the fact I hate having that school teacher running things, I'd rather have her in charge than get nuked by the skinjobs and their toasters any day."
"The Cylons haven't given up on you," Six cooed as she plopped her lanky form down on Gaius' lap and wriggled her bottom against his crotch. "They've hung back after Adama and the not-so-dearly-departed-may-that-bitch-suffer-in-Hell-for-an-eternity Cain destroyed their resurrection ship. But, make no mistake, Gaius. They're still searching for you all and will find your fleet in due time."
"Fear, Tom," Baltar said. "Our people are afraid both of what's behind them and what's ahead of them. Do we know if the Thirteenth still worship our gods?"
"I don't know," Zarek admitted. "My source didn't have any information about that."
"Well, that's something we had better nail down as soon as possible," Gaius said. 'If they don't worship our gods, we use that and campaign on the fear the Thirteenth may be too alien for us to swallow. Moreover, we make the people see that involving the Thirteenth with the Cylons is wrong because an innocent party would suffer for the sins our people had committed by creating the Cylons in the first place. If the Cylons attack and obliterate one of the Thirteenth Tribe's worlds, isn't it likely the Thirteenth Tribe would turn on us, perhaps even wipe us all out to appease the Cylons in the hopes our destruction would drive the Cylons away from the Thirteenth's sector of space? If we can raise enough questions about these things in the minds of our people, they may believe we're only safe if we continue to move on."
Zarek frowned. 'I'm not sure I buy into that, Gaius; however, it's the only hand we can play at the moment."
Six smiled lasciviously at the scientiest. "Well done, Gaius! Oh, so very well done! I knew I could count on your ego, narcissism and dreamy hair to save the day," she purred. "Placing your own cravings for power before the interests of your constituents? Why, you're just the consummate politician, aren't you?" She mocked as she swiped her tongue against his cheek. Then she gave him a look of sorrow that appeared to be all too genuine. "It's just such a pity that all your scheming will come to naught very soon," she observed ominously.
#
Battlestar Galactica – Port Hangar Bay – Colonial Fleet
"Skulls," Racetrack asked with a glance at her ECO, "is Commander Stenger secured?"
Her ECO shot a glimpse over his shoulder. "Aye, skipper, she's good to go."
After the pilot and her ECO ran through their checklist, Racetrack gazed at Chief Tyrol out of her cockpit windshield and held up three fingers spread wide. The Chief barked some instructions to his knuckledraggers and they hooked up her craft to a small tractor. The machine towed her Raptor onto one of the elevator pads, disengaged, and drove away.
"Engage magnetic grapples," she commanded to Skulls.
"Grapples engaged—lock secured."
The elevator then raised the craft into the vacuum of the battlestar's launch bay. She keyed her mike. "Flight Control, this is Racetrack. Request permission to depart port launch bay."
"Racetrack, this is Flight Control. You are go for launch," the assistant duty CAG announced over the wireless.
"Disengage grapples," the pilot ordered right before she engaged her craft's ventral thrusters.
"Grapples disengaged."
The Raptor pushed away from the deck and hovered momentarily until Racetrack switched on her aft thrusters and sent her craft hurtling above the deck and out into space.
"We have cleared the pod," Skulls reported.
"Roger that," she noted then keyed her mike. "Galactica, this is Racetrack. We have cleared the pod. Raptor 841 is now maneuvering to our jump point."
"Copy that, Racetrack," Dualla announced over the wireless. "Safe journey."
"Copy, Galactica. Racetrack out."
As the tiny craft sped away from the battlestar, Stenger connected her borrowed Colonial flight suit's mike into the craft's intercom system. "Racetrack?"
"Yes, Commander?"
"I was wondering what is the religious faith your people follow in the Colonies?"
Most of her attention focused on piloting her ship, Margaret managed to say, "For the most part, ma'am, we worship the Twelve Lords of Kobol. They were the gods who lived among our ancestors on our home world long, long ago. The first six were Zeus, the sky father, his wife and sister, Hera, their brothers Poseidon and Ascelpius, and their sisters, Aphrodite and Hecate. The final six were Zeus' offspring, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Aurora, and Hermes."
"I…see," the Commander murmured. "Were there other faiths practiced by your people?"
"Yes, ma'am, a small minority of our people, mostly some Gemenese, follow a faith called Mithraism. They believe in only one god and don't believe in the Lords of Kobol. Also, there are plenty of people who don't practice any religion or believe in any gods whatsoever."
"That's very interesting. Does your society allow the people who worship one god or who don't worship any gods the freedom to believe as they choose?"
"For the most part, ma'am. Now if we had a monotheistic group like the Soldiers of the One that was strongly anti-polytheistic and engaged in terrorism, the government would attempt to arrest the members of the group and disband it. Other than that, there was no official sanction against people who practiced differently from the majority. However, we did have some of the more devout followers of the Lords of Kobol who took a strong exception to the Mithrasaries and weren't as tolerant as they should be."
Stenger said nothing for several moments and Racetrack decided to take advantage of the opening. "Commander, what is the religious faith your people follow?"
"Actually, we're probably a bit more diverse in our faiths than your people, Lieutenant. I know there is a religion that worships gods similar to the Lords of Kobol. Others worship a slew of gods who are completely different from yours. Many others worship one god similar to the one the Mithrasaries follow, while there are plenty of people who don't believe in the existence of any god or gods at all. Like yours, our society protects our freedom to worship as we choose. In fact, I would go so far as to say our society encourages religious diversity among our citizens."
Racetrack simply nodded as her craft approached the jump point. Apparently, the Thirteenth Tribe had appeared to be, from the Commander's statements, even more liberal about the practice of faith than the other Twelve Tribes. Perhaps that was due to the alien influences from the non-human members of their alliance.
"All right," she said, "prepare to jump."
"FTL is spinning, skipper," Skulls said, "ready to jump in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…"
"Jump!" Racetrack announced right before her Raptor flashed out of the universe.
#
Cylon Basestar 101 – Control Room – Searching for the Colonial Fleet Remnant
The Three known as Sandra padded into the control room like the deadly predator she was. With hair as black as ravens' wings and eyes of cobalt blue, Sandra was atypical for an infiltration model. She was a warrior through-and-through who'd challenged prey almost as dangerous as she. She'd hunted down Colonial Secret Service Officers, Marine Combat Specialists and Special Forces soldiers on the irradiated Colonies, sometimes armed, oftentimes barehanded. The testament to her effectiveness was Sandra had only downloaded twice. The first was when she died during the nuclear attack on the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards. That time, she considered her death unfortunate because she had already crippled the shipyards' defenses by eliminating all the personnel in the CIC before the missiles had struck, so dying then was somewhat wasteful. The other was when a CSS officer with graying black hair and unusual eyes on Scorpia had somehow managed to defeat her by breaking her neck during hand-to-hand combat.
That defeat had truly irked her. She'd wanted to hunt down the bastard immediately to settle the score yet had been 'commanded' by the collective to take control of the two surviving basestars assigned to search for and destroy the Colonial Battlestars Galactica and Pegasus.
Now as her eyes scanned the other models who were assigned to her flagship's control room, she asked, "Any word from our scout patrols regarding the battlestars?"
An Eight shook her head. "There've been no traces of them so far."
"How unfortunate," Sandra purred. "It appears we've had problems finding them after you people allowed the most dangerous battlestar of them all, the Pegasus, to slip right through your fingers."
Shying away from direct confrontation against the battlestars after the destruction of the only Resurrection Ship in this sector, the crew of the two basestars had managed to capture and kill the crew of a pair of Pegasus' Raptors and used signals from the small craft to draw the Colonial warship into a trap. Somehow, though, the battlestar held off the basestars long enough to repair its FTL drive and jump away from the ambush.
At that moment, one of the Cavil's cackled and drawled, "I knew I liked you from the moment I first laid eyes on you, Three."
She narrowed her eyes at him, unamused. "Why, thank you, brother," she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "You don't know how much your approval means to me." Then she whirled on all of the humaniform models in the control room. "My God, you all are truly frak ups to allow a beaten remnant of humans to destroy your Resurrection Ship! That's why they sent me out to the frakking middle of nowhere to kick your sorry butts and fix the mess you've made of this situation!"
After her tirade, most of her fellow humaniform models dared not say anything further to incur more of her wrath. Unfortunately, a foolhardy Six with dirty blonde hair (for God's sakes, where in the Hell do these frakking bitches find so much frakking makeup on this frakking basestar? Why, they manage to make cheap Picon hookers look classy in comparison to them! Sandra fumed silently) apparently had decided to fling caution to the wind. "Sister, I understand your frustration. However, you should keep in mind we've agreed to not exterminate the remaining humans so long as they surrender their arms and allow us to control them."
Sandra glared at the hapless bottle blonde as an owl would size up a rodent. "That's right, Six. After I succeed at doing what you people should have done before they made me drag my sorry arse out here, your friends and you can play house with the surviving humans to your hearts' content for all I care. Yet, you should all understand this; as long as that wily old goat, Adama, and that psychotic cow, Cain, are out here running footloose and fancy free, I've got only one purpose in life—to blow both those frakkers and their frakking ships from my universe! After that, I'm outta here and you frakkers," she indicated the people in the control room with a sweep of her hand, "can do whatever the Hell you want with the rest of the humans in that God forsaken fleet!"
After that, she stormed out of the control room.
#
Author's note: My thanks and humble appreciation go out to jetsly for allowing me to use his character from his Long Journey Home series as Sandra's Scorpia opponent!