|||||||||||==Rebel Cylon Baseship (+935 Days Post Cylon Holocaust)==||||||||||
Not even a week had passed since the great Cylon race had devolved into the so-human scheme of civil war. Already baseship after baseship lay dead and burning in space, crumbling under the weight of destruction until what little remained of the broken ships fell apart and drifted away into space.
Miranda, a Number Six, stood silently over the docking bay, watching as hundreds of Centurions were loading into dozens of heavy raiders. She rapped her fingers on the pistol which was holstered on her hip, a common sight on all the Sixes now that they were in a state of civil war. Her black boots caught the light, and she looked down. Miranda took a moment to look herself over.
Many of the Sixes were now wearing black or gray combat fatigues, with matching tank tops or jackets. The wardrobe of the Sixes had changed almost overnight, from provocative, sexy attire to more utilitarian designs. But still, the Sixes, for some reason, always dressed a certain way. Miranda had black arm gloves which came up to her elbow as an accessory for her war kit.
She looked down, nodding as a platoon of Twos, Sixes, and Eights snapped their armored helmets and vests on, and checked their automatic weapons. While the Centurions were immensely more powerful, stronger, and faster than the bioengineered biological Cylons, the Centurions always fought with more ferocity and vigor when a bio-Cylon model was in the fight alongside.
The dozens of her brother and sister Cylons who were preparing looked up and saw her look down with pride on them. She nodded to them. They returned the gestured, and in one, communal movement they turned and headed towards their heavy raiders.
Miranda watched them silently until her red stripe assault troops and brother and sister Cylons had loaded into their heavy raiders. She could hear the whine of their engines as they activated and began taking off. She prayed for them asking the One True God to bless them, before quickly spinning and quickly heading towards the command deck.
The rebel baseship had jumped in thirty seconds after the initial assault wave of sixty heavy raiders and fifteen squadrons of raiders. Miranda had under her command four baseships and a resurrection ship, which she deployed on the edge of the battle, guarded by four squadrons of raiders.
She could feel the data stream information coursing up through her silica relays, painting an extravagant and beautiful picture of the events happening outside her baseship. Her mind was one with the other baseship commanders; Lucia, Mara, and Tess.
There were two Cynet baseships guarding the depot and shipyard, but
…Mara, there are Cynet raider squadrons coming in from below your ventral disc… Miranda warned. …Mara's baseship has suffered explosive decompression along ventral disk, pylon seven, frame eighteen and nineteen… radiological alarms!... raiders have intercepted nuclear missiles… radiological alarms!...brace for impact!...
Miradna watched two different aspects of the battle occurring simultaneously. Mara's baseship had been hit by a nuke, half of the third pylon star of the ventral disk had been severed.
The commanding Six could hear the reassuring call of Mara: My baseship is still intact… damage control teams… Miranda, I am still in the fight…
Miranda then refocused her attention as the guns on her sister's ship realigned and fired flak volleys and anti-fighter missiles at the raiders. The Cynet raiders attempted to back, only to be caught in the cross fire between one of the first-wave attack squadrons which had FTLed in less than a minute ago.
The Cynet raiders attempted to evade, but were forced between either attempting to break through Mara's flak field or take a precious few seconds, seconds they did not have, to stop and reverse. And in that time the Cynet raiders would be cut to ribbons by the pursuing rebel forces.
They chose the latter. Fifteen of the twenty raiders which had been in formation stopped, with three immediately hit by flak fire and small anti-fighter missiles, the dark red blood of the raiders biological brains was thrown out into space, flash freezing.
Within the time it took the Cynet raiders to slow, the rebels had closed and had fired their missiles and activated their chain guns. Bullets ripped apart the Cynet fighters, tearing wings from bodies and bodies from wings. Armor piercing rounds penetrated the armored casing of the raider brains, the force of impacts and the concussion turning what little remained to destroyed red jelly.
… launching nuclear missiles… nuclear missiles have been intercepted… fire in auxiliary ventral hangerbay… fire contained… raider squadron alpha three and bravo six report combat ineffective… heavy raider alpha two destroyed… boarding parties have had seals on supply depot…
Miradna again divided her mind and split her attention now between Tess's baseship and an approaching Cavil vessel. She zoomed in the baseship's telescopes, attempting to see behind the baseship. It was guarding a resurrection ship. They needed to take it out or capture it.
…control, launch heavy raider squadron delta one through six… Lucia, realign to my position Alpha 5-3-1 at karrim 5-3-7 and engage baseship bravo… firing missile salvo… eighty percent intercepted… Lucia, fire salvo on my command… mark… missiles impacting in3, 2, 1… impacts along baseship bravo central axis and ventral disk, pylons one and two… explosive decompression detected… Cynet baseship bravo leaking atmosphere… primary laser communication array damaged, realigning secondary… secondary array damage, tertiary array realigned…
Outside Miranda's baseship hundreds of missiles and nearly a thousand raiders and heavy raiders were engaged in sweeping dog fights, missiles fights, and daring attack rungs on the other's forces. The rebels outnumbered the Cynet/Cavil forces two to one in baseships, but the depot and shipyard had large reserve of raiders.
….Miranda…. Tess here… raider screen on Cynet resurrection ship has an opening… request permission to jump baseship behind and assault with Centurions… assault request granted, good hunting Tess…. Thank you Miranda… baseship jumping… jump successful… launching heavy raider boarding parties…
Miraculously dozens of the heavy raiders Miranda had watched depart had made hard seals on the depot. There was ammunition, fuel, and body husks for the resurrection ships under rebel command and every little sting would hurt the Cavils and their sycophant followers; the Dorals and Simmons.
There were hundreds of point defense auto canons along the pylons and ventral and dorsal bellies of the baseships. Their canon barrels were red hot with fury as they fired their accelerated spears of death towards the enemies.
By now, hundreds of raiders had been killed, destroyed, and hundreds, thousands of Cylons on both sides of the battle had been resurrecting.
…attempting infiltration of Cynet network has failed… attempt 1031… attempted 1031 has failed... initiating attempt 1032… warning! Ventral pylon three suffering extreme power surges… warning! Life support for all bio-Cylons on ventral pylon three will be depleted in two minutes… evacuation imminent… radiological alarm!... redirecting bravo three and bravo five to intercept… proximity fuses… raider squadron bravo three destroyed, bravo fire is combat ineffective… merging bravo five with delta two… new designation epsilon one…
Miranda jerked at the minute physical pain caused by the data link as her ship was hit again. The raider bays on the ventral disk were heavily damaged, but luckily the two squadrons in reserve were undamaged.
…Miranda, Tess here… boarding parties have secured outer decks… attempting to secure… resurrection ship has jumped away… two companies lost… receiving signal… resurrection ship has jumped back… explosion on port pods… our forces have succeeded in securing resurrection ships… awaiting orders…
Miranda opened a part of her mind to the Centurions on the resurrection ship. She could see tens of thousands of body husks, mostly of Cavils, Dorals, Simmons, and Threes. There were tens of thousands of small meta-cognitive processors linked up to download receivers, and in ancillary chambers there were hundreds of raider brains.
She could see some Cavils, Dorals, and Simmons already resurrecting.
…block signal to resurrection ship… summary execution of all Cynet-loyal Cylons is authorized… prep resurrection ship for our own downloads… primary communication dish destroyed, backup systems online…
The Six saw Lucia and Mara's baseship both pounding away at the depot's defenses and the two Cavil baseships will swatting down raiders like they were flies. Miranda received instant updates on weapons and ammunition reserves. Large stockpiles of missiles and bullets were being expended to secure the strategic materials the rebels would need here.
…Lucia, realign on position Bravo 7-3 karrim 5-9-1 and hold fire… Mara, begin missile barrage… Lucia, fire on baseship alpha… all forces fire on baseship alpha… raiders… continue fire on baseship bravo…
||||||||||==Cynet Resurrection Ship==||||||||||
The metal corridors were covered with bio-Cylon blood. The red liquid coated the walls and was sprayed ion the metal masks of hundreds of rebel red stripe Centurions.
"Cover me!" Yelled a Number Two, a squad leader for six of the two and a half meter tall armored Centurions. He fired a three round burst down to the end of the corridor and saw the flashes as metal bullets hits metal wall. The two Cavils, both naked from having just been resurrected, ducked, and pulled their own pistols from fallen comrades and fired.
The Leoben copy ran as he ducked, and felt the wind of a near miss bullet by his ear. A Centurion fired his automatic built-in weaponry down, keeping the Cavils pinned. But two loyalist Centurions had joined them, adding their own firepower to the two naked Cavils.
Looking over a bulkhead, passed the gratings lining the corridors the Leoben saw them. The Cavils were distracted, but he didn't have a clear shot. He said a quick prayed to the One True God and brought his hand up. He saw there was blood on it. Quickly he wiped it down the length of his black fatigue pants, rubbing the remnants of blood off on the thigh armor and knee pads.
Now that his hand wasn't slick he grabbed a grenade from his vest. Shouldering his rifle he pulled the pin with the other and released. He counted to two and using his enhanced bio-Cylon physiology to perfect and deadly affect, threw the grenade with two seconds until it would explode.
The timing was perfect. The Cavils saw the grenade fly towards them, but couldn't react in time. It exploded in mid air, two meters to the left and three meters above the head of the two Cavils.
A flash. A loud boom and pop as the pressure waves reached the Leoben's ears was the most immediate affect. Then, the sound of flesh tearing, intestines splattering, and blood splashing everywhere was almost sickening. A strong stench of cooked flesh washed over the corridor, thrown towards the Leoben copy by the overpressure waves produced by the grenade.
"Move up!" He yelled to the Centurions.
The seven quickly and carefully advanced, using the bulkheads and gratings as coverings. The Centurions reported no movement for twenty meters. But shipboard jamming was intense, so the seven Cylons kept alert.
One of the loyalist Cynet Cylons was still partially functional from the Leoben's grenade. A rebel Cylon receiving two glancing bullet hits in the left flank armor before responding and placing a quick burst of half a dozen rounds through the armored bullet-shaped cranium of the offending Centurion.
The Leoben snickered at the sight of the Centurion's annoyance with being shot. "You'll live," he joked. The Centurion just shot him an over-the-head glance, his optical sensor stopping mid-way. That forced the Leoben copy to snicker again.
On the opposite side of the resurrection ship, a pair of Sixes and another squad of Centurions were carefully clearing the main corridor and outer ancillary chambers to the resurrection ship.
They'd already executed fifteen Ones, twenty Fours, and half a dozen Fives and smashed the MCPs of over two hundred downloaded Cynet Centurions. The Sixes had left the smashing of the MCPs to their metal comrades. And their metal allies had left the summary executions of resurrected bio-Cylons to their flesh and blood allies.
"Over here," the first Six, a dark haired copy, called to her sister Six, a blond haired copy. "Auxiliary controls. Six, can you hack it?" She asked. Her blue eyes met the unconcerned blue eyes of her sister.
The blond haired woman nodded, handing her sister Six her assault rifles and peeling the front of her armored vest off. She unzipped a breast pocket and took out a small computer device. Motioning for her sister to hand back her rifle, she slung it over her shoulder and patted her vest back.
"I need two minutes," the Six informed her sister. Her sister nodded and ordered the Centurions to defensive positions.
The Six at the auxiliary resurrection controls and opened the side panel to a biological-technological hybrid port. The smell was rank, it was like vivisecting a human of bio-Cylon. The living tissue melded with technology was a hallmark of Cylon technology, and a testament to their merging of God's creation with God's science.
The blond haired Six methodically searched for the proper data port. She dug in with her hands, chipping her meticulously groomed and styled nails as she searched for the proper nerve relay. The Six brought out her hand, covered in a red-gray slime, the living nutrient and conduction gel which sustained Cylon bio-technological hybrids.
She grinned. She unraveled the cord from her device, a black box, and wrapped it around the nerve bundle.
"Hurry, Six!" The dark haired copy yelled. They both heard gunfire coming their way. There could be a running gun battle between rebel and Cynet factions. And most likely there were reinforcements coming their way if the blond haired Sixes transgression in opening the auxiliary panel set off site-specific alarms.
Quickly the blond haired technician pulled a knife from around her ankle and cut into the nerve bundle, allowing her to wrap the wiring of her device around and into the actual bundle for increase conduction and data processing. She wiped the bloodied knife off methodically on her pants, giving each side one pass on her clothes before slipping it back into its holster.
Flicking open the top of the box there was a small, portable data stream entry point. The point was already shining with a brilliant red and yellow shine. Data was flowing in, the connection with the nerve bundle was holding. Quickly, the Six jammed the tips of her fingers in and began taking control of system after system.
"We're jumping!" She warned her sister Cylon and metal brethren.
They could all feel the spatial distortions and the slight tug of temporal-spatial compression, decompression, transportation, disappearance, and reappearance.
The dark haired Six raised her rifle as a Doral stumbled into her line of fire. He had time to only look up in fright, or amazement, before the Six put two rounds through his heart, center mass.
"Again!" The Six warned.
The ship jumped back.
"I've restricted download access!" She yelled, after seconds of returning.
Now if the Cynet Cylons attempted to download the buffers would hold and wipe their download attempts. The Cavils, Dorals, and Simmons would die. Truly die. The Centurions and raiders would also die along with the bio-Cylons.
"…Boarding parties…. Bo…. Is… Miran… copy?" The dark haired Six which had just put a burst in Doral's chest brought her hand up to her ear, trying to listen to the transmission from the command baseship. Cylon-Cylon links at this range and with this much interference needed augmentation with physical wireless gear. Innate abilities would not be adequate.
"This is Rachel," the dark haired Six reported. "FH, can you boost the signal?" She asked to the closest Centurion. He came over and retrieved the wireless, modulating it while Rachel listened for Miranda's orders.
"Rachel…jump the resurrection ship to Alpha Nine Bravo Three… ten heavy raiders there with troops to help secure it… we need prisoners. Half a dozen of each model… over."
"Copy… jumping to Alpha Niner Bravo Three, over." She nodded for the Centurion to resume his sentinel position at the entrance. "See if we can get this door closed, now," he suggested to her metal soldiers.
Behind her, the blond haired Six was working furiously. Her eyes were closed, darting back and forth, with her head making quick, small jerking movements as the rebel Cylon was overriding each of the resurrection ship's protocols function by function and line by line.
The lights on the ceilings and walls flickered, the air vents shut odd and turned back on, and for a brief second they all felt weightless as the artificial gravity shut off, before coming back on. Loud clunks and clangs echoed in the room as the Centurions fell back gracefully onto their feet.
She lifted the jamming on the ship and Rachel could finally see the nearly two hundred transponder and locator signals from her rebel comrades.
As the rebels moved deeper into the resurrection ship, from outer chambers to the central resurrection facilities more and more bio-Cylon Cynet sycophants were falling to the bullets of the rebels and the claws of the Centurions. Soon those following the False God would all be killed.
||||||||||==Rebel Cylon Baseship==||||||||||
Miranda felt a trickle of blood seep down her forehead and follow the lines of her face into her mouth. Reflexively she licked the substance away, before realizing it was blood and spitting it out. Still, she kept her concentration and her hand steady in the data stream.
The rebel baseships had focused on baseship bravo, pummeling it with missile after missile. Fires were raging out of control over most of the central axis on bravo, and three of its six disk pylons were on the verge of cracking and collapsing under the weight of missile explosions.
Lucia had launched two low-yield nuclear ship-to-ship missiles, but the raider clouds were thick, and they swatted the missiles down. One of the raider squadrons even sacrificed itself, a necessary act to save a baseship.
Mara's baseship, while heavily damaged, had rotated the damaged pylon out of direct line of fire and positioned itself sat an angle with the Cynet baseship, presenting a small silhouette. The quick acting Centurions had sealed the entire damaged pylon from the cold grasp of space. Dozens of bio-Cylons had been killed when the pylon had been severed from the baseship whole, and hundreds of Centurions had been killed in the explosions and attempts to stabilize the baseship.
…DRADIS contacts bearing Alpha 5-9-9 karrim 1-4-3… realigning ventral disk, pylon three, portside canons… firing… four raiders destroyed… infiltration attempt 1452 has failed… attempt 1453 initiated…
The Six felt her baseship shiver and shake as two missiles hit the lower central axis. She quickly accessed damage control and could see the remnants of six raiders which had come in to re-arm were now floating, dead in space and wrecked. They would be resurrected, but it would be weeks, months, before their minds could be joined and integrated with a raider bio-technological hybrid fighter.
…energy buildup from baseship bravo… baseship bravo has been destroyed… forty friendly craft caught in explosion…. Downloads progressing at normal rate… eleven thousand, three hundred and seven enemy downloads buffered… deleting…. deleting…. deleting… all enemy downloads deleted…
Miranda grinned. Her enemies were now truly dead. The grin faded to alarm when the data stream was interrupted with new, deadly contacts.
…alert… DRADIS contact… radiological alarms… Cynet baseships incoming…
The Six cursed. She prayed to God the numbers would not be overwhelming. She dared access the data… five Cynet baseships, a resurrection ship, and two support ships, plus independent raider squadrons. Luckily they had not jumped near the resurrection ship. They'd jumped in nearly ten thousand kilometers opposite the main battle, twenty-five thousand kilometers from the rebel baseship.
…this is command… all forces, eight minutes until contact with Cynet reinforces… begin immediate evacuation… jump the supply depot… jump successful to position Alpha Niner Beta Three… all ships begin raider retrieval and jump…
There was last thing objective to this mission Miranda had not told Tess, Mara, or Lucia about. She targeted the planet below, the Tomb of Athena. While useless without the Arrow of Apollo Natalie had given strict orders to destroy the Tomb. Miranda armed half a dozen cluster nuclear missiles, ground assault, high-yield. She also armed three ship-to-ship missiles to target the remaining Cynet orbital facility.
The Cylon race was nomad and this was the closest facility to their 'home' territory left. Everything else was following the Colonials or being moved, ordered by Cavil to assist in the single-minded pursuit of the Colonials and Guardians. Now the rebels knew that the Skynet-Cynet AI had been moving their resources closer to where it believed Earth was. Miranda could not leave any structure in orbit, or any ground facility intact.
…Cynet forces in range in thirty seconds… firing missiles… four missiles have cleared raiders… terminal entry… massive nuclear explosions… Tomb of Athena has been destroyed… all Cylon ground facilities destroyed… warning! Radiological alarms… ship-to-ship nuclear missiles will impact in seven, six… jump!
||||||||||==BS-62 Pegasus==||||||||||
"Robots, in spaaace!" John sounded off next to Starbuck, who just started laughing and shaking her head at the randomness of that comment.
"What does that have to do with anything, Blanks?" She shot at him, still laughing. For a half hour they'd been talking about pretty much nothing, nothing important, anyway. She had gone down to The Cave out of boredom and John and Carter had finished their tasks, and Jo was on a medical mission to one of the ships in the fleet with Doctor Cottle and Roberts, so she and the two machines had just been walking, wandering around the corridors of Pegasus. And they were talking about nothing in particular.
"It's an old internet meme. I told you, Earth didn't have space ships," he reminded her, glancing over with a 'no-duh' sort of look. "If I have to explain it, it isn't funny."
"Bah!" She waved that excuse away with a flick of the wrist then gave him an open palmed slapped on the back of the arm. "Why would you even say something… uh, never mind," she threw her hands up in defeat. She couldn't let it go. "Why would you make an Earth joke to someone not from the fraking planet then say you can't explain it!" She just shook her head and bit her lower lip.
Carter was still laughing a little bit, replaying through the first time he, John, and Jo discovered the internet. 'Discovered', he corrected himself, would be more appropriate.
"And what are you laughing at now?" Starbuck shot off, leaning forward and looking towards Carter. She had to blow back a piece of her long blond hair that had come loose from the pony-tail tie in the back.
"When…" he laughed, "when John and Jo first saw the internet… General Connor had to threaten to cut the cable to get them out of his house. And burn their wireless modems. It was hilarious." He slapped his machine friend on the back. Hard enough it would have broken the back of a human, in fact.
John nodded his thanks. "It wasn't that serious. But when we weren't patrolling or on a mission… it was vital intelligence."
"Oh, yeah… 'intelligence.'" He snickered. He quickened his pace and turned around she he was walking backwards. Avoiding the crates and obstacles using his scanners was like second nature. He didn't even have to think about it. That let him concentrate on John, at John's expense.
"They'd never seen the internet; obviously it doesn't exist after J-Day. But they went to these crazy sites, like slash-b-slash and started reciting crazy internet slogans…" he clicked his fingers… "That squad of Trip-Eights we killed in '08, you and Jo stood over it and both said 'Epic Fail' at the same time. General Connor just stood there and face-palmed, which just added to the situation. Then they started Rickrolling-"
"What the frak is 'Rickrolling'? Do I even want to know… it isn't…" Starbuck asked. The internet sounded very familiar to the PlanetWeb she had read in the history books, taken down during the Cylon War.
Carter turned back around. "I don't think you should have asked."
They both got about thirty seconds in before Starbuck threatened to shoot them both then herself with her sidearm. Their voice vocalizers allowed them to perfectly mimic every sound of the old music video.
"Alright, alright, Gods… serious for a moment," she told them, rolling her eyes and snorting. "Seriously. I've been talking with some of the pilots, and as you know, Panathenaia is happening today in the flight pod…" she trailed off. She licked her lips quickly and pulled in a breath between her teeth. She put her hands on her hips and drew in a little more breath. She wanted something.
"Yes. It's sort of like Thanksgiving in the US, mixed with sports and physical activity… so not really Thanksgiving," John said. Carter understood. Starbuck didn't.
"So there's a boxing match," Starbuck threw out. "And myself and a few other pilots, and some others thought it would be pretty fraking awesome if you two boxed."
John looked over at her, grimacing. "We'd kill anyone we boxed," he said. He sounded seriously but when Starbuck's hopefully face dropped he smiled. He'd been joking. "You can't be serious?"
"Why not?" Carter asked, raising his voice.
"Because I'd win fairly quickly," John told him, looking at his friend.
"Like in the T-Eigh factory in '26?" he asked. Starbuck looked back behind John's back to get Carter's attention for an explanation. "He came in, thought I was a Skynet terminator, and attacked me. Kicked his ass," Carter stated proudly.
"I wouldn't call a destroyed optical sensor and a breached power core on you getting my ass kicked," John shot back.
"I'd say having half your arm ripped off, your knee and ankle joint smashed, and your flank armor ripped off is worse than what you did to me," Carter countered.
"It was my third mission alone. And no one told me we had an agent in the factory." The excuse was an admission of defeat.
Carter smiled. "See, Starbuck. I'd beat him fairly quickly. It just takes a while for him to admit it."
Two years, Starbuck noted, they never would have been this open with her, or anyone. But after sitting in orbit of New Caprica and working so close to rescue everyone, things had changed. Two years ago she would have been disgusted, and frightened, at hearing arms being ripped off and knee joints crushed. It would have reminded her they were just machines. Not now.
"Then there is only really, truthfully, honestly, one way to find out again. Right?" She raised her eyebrows and her Devious Starbuck Grin appeared. Her eyes were wide in anticipation. "Come on. Half the crew would kill to see that fight. Most of them have only heard of what you can do."
Carter was actually the first to point out the benefits of not everyone knowing their capabilities. Starbuck conceded, but made the point that many had seen what they could do on New Caprica and when the Guardians had boarded Pegasus.
"And isn't this a good opportunity for integration? You all hide away in… The Cave," she taunted, making 'The Cave' sound scary and forbidden, "And it would be good for morale. We haven't seen the Cylons in months but-"
"This sounds like ancient Rome," Carter commented. "Seeing the robots fight would be entertaining?"
"That's not what I meant. You know that," Starbuck countered, defending herself. "It would be… I don't know… what's an Earth slang word for 'neat' or 'exciting'?"
"'Cool' seemed to be the one which lasted the longest," John said. "So it would be 'cool' to see two robots fight each other," mixing Carter's and Starbuck's sentences together. "It wouldn't be too safe for two-hundred twenty kilo hyperalloy combat chassis throwing each other around…"
Starbuck shrugged, still not put off to the idea. "Maybe. But like I said… 'cool' or whatever the Earth slang is. And it's just like someone challenging the CAG or the XO. We're all there for everyone else's entertainment. Think about it."
Starbuck stopped and looked back. She had a gut feeling, that something was wrong. Something bad was approaching. She caught sight of this 'wrong' something and against her Devious Starbuck Grin appeared, though only on the left side of her face. "Hey… Carter, I gotta talk to John for a little bit, flight stuff. We'll catch up to you?"
John looked at her. He didn't need to talk to her in private. She gave him a wink before grabbing his arm. She gave it a tug, but moving a two-hundred twenty kilo hyperalloy combat chassis that doesn't want to move was next to impossible.
But the unstoppable object met the unmovable wall. And in Starbuck's case, her being the unstoppable object she motioned with her eyes. John caught on.
"I'll see you in a few, Carter," he said, playing along.
"Yeah, sure," his friend nodded.
At the next side corridor Starbuck and John headed down.
After a quick turn down a second corridor she turned around. "You can thank me later. Shaw was coming down…" she looked at John suspiciously. "She and Carter seem to have some… thing."
"Some… 'thing'?" He repeated, using her exact tons.
She laughed through gritted teeth and a beaming smile. "Yeah… like some weird competition or something. It's kind of obvious by now," she winked.
"Hey!" Carter heard a voice yell. He knew that voice. "Hey!" It repeated. He heard a quickening of the steps behind him. They were lightweight; the person was small, but fast. He planned to stop once she was closer. He counted a dozen clank-clank-clanks as her boots hitting the hard metal deck before he turned around abruptly.
Carter Bishop stood on the side of the corridor, removed from the center and close enough to the bulkheads he could feel the faint heat radiated by the vertical light strips warming his neck. He looked both ways down the long, port-side main corridor, the one which ran from Pegasus's forward compartments, down its 'alligator head' to the struts and braces leading to the walkways to the flight pods.
While Pegasus had received additional crew from the second refugee fleet, a vessel nearly a mile long and a fifth wide, with dozens of decks, still left many corridors and passageways devoid of life. And with the festival and activities in the starboard flight pod, not many were prowling the metal tubes between origin and destination.
So Carter stood there, waiting for her to catch up. She must have seen him from half a dozen frames back.
The steps slowed and Captain Shaw came up, file folders and a tablet computer in her hands. She wasn't out of breath from the mild exertion; she kept herself in excellent physical conditioning with morning jogs on the treadmill and time on the stationary bikes.
While her body was in shape her mind was stressed. And that was clear to Carter when he looked down, after remaining aloof to her presence for a moment.
Her body language was always aggressive when dealing with the machines. She stood there, glaring at him. "I know you heard me," she said through gritted teeth.
He remained motionless. "My name is not 'hey'," Carter informed her, completely serious.
"Fine. Carter-" she began, using his first name as usual.
"Kendra," he interrupted.
She had been looking down at her file folder, opening it when he had interrupted her and stated her first name. Her heard shot up immediately at the transgression and she swore a small smirk had vanished just in time.
"It's Captain Shaw," she shot at him. "We have ranks, use them," she hissed.
"You call me by my first name." He looked confused. "I thought we were friends. Isn't that what friends do?" His tone was half question and half patronizing.
She knew there was no way the machine was that naïve. Shaw felt her body tense under the stress. She brought the file folders down to her left side and let her right hand grasp the tablet as she brought it down to her right, her fingers and knuckles white from the pressure. Shaw heard the file folder begin to crumple under her grip, and let up the pressure slightly.
Captain Shaw closed her eyes. She thought one day she would be able to get through a conversation with one of the machines without them annoying her. Unfortunately this was not the day, and she mentally sighed. The short woman barely came up to his chest, but she wouldn't let him 'win' this time.
She grinded her jaw horizontally as she opened her eyes.
She kept her voice steady. "You told us to call you by your first names."
He opened his mouth before speaking, looking down at her before sighing. "We have ranks," he immediately informed her. "And last names." He tilted his head.
Shaw thought she saw a little glow behind the dark blue eyes. And while Carter's face didn't twitch, she swore, she swore she saw a microscopic movement of pseudo-muscle on the edge of his mouth.
"You aren't in the Colonial fleet anymore. John made that clear to both Admiral Cain and Commander Adama after New Caprica." She motioned with her left hand and file folder about the black uniform he was wearing. "You have that Tech Com uniform on now… if you are forgetting?" She tilted her head mockingly. She'd picked up on the machine mannerisms quite some time ago.
"We have ranks in Tech Com," he said quickly.
Shaw spread her feet and moved the file folder from her left to her right hand so she could place the new empty one on her hip. She looked him up and down.
She grumbled her discontent. "Oh yeah? You're not on Earth," she said, pausing to gauge any reaction. Her sharp eye didn't catch anything. She relented. "And what it is?"
The Captain assumed an enlisted rating. There was no way humans on Earth would tolerate machines having higher ranks. It was unspoken, but Athena's rank of lieutenant was probably as high as the Cylon defector would go.
But with that Shaw slightly snorted. There wasn't much upward mobility in the fleet anyway so it probably didn't matter.
She waited and formed a condescending smile as she stood there, staring Carter down, waiting for the answer.
"It's General Carter Bishop," he said, narrowing his eyes.
To her he sounded completely serious. But the machines could do that, she knew. She also knew when they were trying annoy her... why her? She rolled her eyes, letting a long breath escape through her flared nostrils. "You're a fraking ass," Shaw told him immediately. "And it sounds like you have two last names," she pointed out, just to get some sort of an under-the-belt hit in.
He smiled. "You're right. I'm not a general." He didn't tell her what his actual rank is, or was. And he ignored the last comment. "Are you going to the Panathenaia festival, Captain Kendra Shaw?" Carter asked, changing the subject suddenly.
Captain Shaw decided felt these conversations were almost like a day dream. She would go through the motions again and play along. Still, she had to force herself to respond. "No. I have better things to do."
She honestly didn't. But she kept herself wrapped up in so much work she never had time to think about how few friends she had and how little people actually knew her.
"That's too bad. I thought you would enjoy it." He sounded disappointed. "There should be food and alcohol. Many of the crew enjoy becoming inebriated and losing their self-inhibitions." He was looking over her now. He had kept his tone flat and academic.
She didn't bother answering for a moment. She saw his eyes darting back and forth over her, scanning the bulkheads behind her. The low hum of the ship engines and the whirl of the vents circulating oxygen were the only two sounds she heard for a moment in addition to her own breathing. It was strange, she noted, the attention to detail on the infiltrator standing opposite her. She couldn't hear him breathing in the near absolute silence, but could see his chest rising and falling in mock respiration.
"I don't get drunk," she told him. Her voice held steady for those four words. She was afraid her voice would have cracked. But what she said was true.
He looked down at her. She felt he was studying her.
"That is good. In Tech Com soldiers are not permitted to drink except in certain locations behind our lines. And even then it is discouraged. Skynet attacks are unpredictable. Plasma weaponry is also very dangerous. An accidental discharge near another human could melt their skin. There is excessive drinking aboard these vessels."
She snorted, looking off to the side and half rolling her eyes. The imagery of skin melting was something she definitely did not want an hour before evening chow. "I don't think you can criticize us for what we do on our personal time." She shook her head slightly. "But I guess you can say they're human flaws. Living people tend to make mistakes."
"Yes. It is why I am glad not to be a human. I don't make mistakes, it has meaning."
Shaw didn't expect that answer, and it she was slightly put off by the statement. He'd only addressed one part of her insult. Plus the last sentence didn't make sense to her. Why would he say that? To gloat? Claim he was a 'perfect' creation or some other nonsense? She'd heard that Earth religions, the two dominant ones, were monotheistic religions. Maybe the machines were as deluded about being 'God's Creation' as the Cylons? She wasn't sure. A machine believing in God certainly wasn't a crazy concept, not with the Cylons. But that was something she didn't have time to think about.
Her mind wandered and drifted back though, almost as soon as she swore she wouldn't think about it, and she compared the Earth machine with the skinjob Cylons and their quest to become more human, taking human form and even trying to reproduce.
Even though she knew it was impossible she shivered at the thought of a half human and a literally half-toaster baby. It was also slightly amusing to her.
But the Earth machines did not want to be anything near human.
But her thoughts drifted back to what Carter had said about being glad he wasn't human.
"What?" She wasn't sure why she'd asked, and the question was out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
"Each and every one the benefits with none of the flaws," he mused, smiling down at her. "But this festival, Panathenaia, there are games, did you know that? Starbuck suggested John and I box. What do you think?"
She licked her lower lip and shifted the tablet and file folder to her opposite hand, and rebalanced herself by shifting weight to her right foot. It was strange to her how no one had passed by.
"Maybe you two would destroy each other? That'd be a fraking sight."
"That is unappreciated," he said, deadpan, with the slight smile disappearing from his face and reforming into a blank stare. "Is there a reason why you tracked me down, Captain Kendra Shaw?"
She refocused back on the original purpose of why she had. "Ye… yes. You were not in The Cave."
'The Cave,' the nickname the crew of Pegasus had given to the series of interconnected compartments the machines had taken over. With computers, Centurions, work stations, and electronics spread throughout it was cluttered, but organized with a machine's obsessive-compulsiveness.
Carter considered suggesting to John and Jo they turn the lights off. Go along with the joke.
"Yes… 'The Cave,'" he grunted. "No. We have finished our work. John and I were bored and Starbuck came by so we were just walking and talking. Talking and walking," he switched the last words around for some reason.
"You were bored? I find that hard to believe. What of this machine-like, terminator-seek-and-destroy, single-minded precision?" A hint of sarcasm invaded her words.
"Yes. Bored. Jaundiced, fatigues, tired, turned off, disinterested, et cetera." This conversation was none of those. "Our neural net CPUs are incredibly advanced and require complex tasks. So yes, we do get bored. And we are waiting for a new shipment of electronic components before we can finish the missiles. It is in the report, on your tablet."
She placed the file folder under her tablet and hit the power button. "No, it's not-" and when the screen came up she saw she had a new file waiting for download. The time stamp was six seconds ago. She just looked up at him annoyed and shaking her head slightly, authorized the download. Shaw didn't admit that a tiny part of her was amused.
"So you have nothing to do?"
He shook his head.
"We still need work on the computers. There are networking issues in the port flight launch computers."
"Do you need help? Weren't you all able to do your own IT work before we came aboard?"
She blew out threw her teeth. "Fine. Here," she slammed the file folder into his chest. And she swore there was a slight ding sound of metal. He brought his hand up and took the folder, brushing against hers. 'I don't make mistakes, it has meaning' suddenly rang through her head. She shook it off. "There is work the engineering department needs done. And Captain Bing said you were his best FTL mechanic on Galactica. So if you're bored, read that, go to engineering. Okay?"
He opened the folder, flipped through the dozen pages and handed it back to her. "Fine."
"Fine," she echoed. She stood there for a moment. She jutted her head forward slightly. Carter wasn't moving. She figured he had something else to say. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes… you're very smart, Kendra," he observed. He sounded sincere, and he was. "So… why are the corners of your sheets of paper cut off? No one has been able to answer that question. Including time spent before the Cylon attack, I have been here one thousand, four hundred, and fifty three days, seven hours, five minutes, six… seven seconds and no one has been able to tell me why."
Her mouth hung open slightly. She didn't understand why the machines did this. She just rubbed her eyes, and then buried her face in her palm for a second. She murmured something under her breath. It sounded like gibberish, even to her. She swore if she saw any hint of gray hair before she was sixty she'd blame the machines for all the stress they put on her. Carter especially.
"I have work to do…" she faded off. "Uh… bye…?" She let the last word drag on for a second.
"Good bye, Captain Kendra Shaw. I will be in engineering," he declared with obvious fake excitement.
Both turned in opposite directions, one heading towards CIC and one towards engineering. One of them looked back.