By Courage and Blood

by bryan0711

Pegasus stands ready to nuke the planet and destroy the Temple as the Battle of the Algae Planet intensifies with the Cylons boarding Galactica.

32. Chapter 32

||||||||||==BS-75 Galactica (+1011 Days Post Cylon Holocaust)==||||||||||

The Old Man, magnifying glass in one hand and photographs in the other, meticulously read line-by-line the glyphs from the columns from the 'Temple of Five.' The translation had been difficult, even for the machines, since there were no records of what the glyphs meant in any of the databases.

The eureka moment had come when a Preist had found an old scroll dating back hundreds of years aboard Cloud 9 in the possession of a wealthy (as Adama thought of that he had to use quotes since wealth didn't matter anymore) Virgon passenger. He only had the scroll with him because he'd been in the process of moving from Gemenon to Caprica and wanted his valuables with him in his plush cabin.

The scroll had had a single line of glyphs on it, as a sort of title, with the rest written in the ancient tongue supposedly spoken on Kobol. It gave some minor context for the machines and the priests to work with.

Adama groaned and took off his glasses and carefully rubbed his eyes. The subdued yellow, almost golden light from his lamp was barely powerful enough to read the reports and his body cast a long and deep shadow from his desk towards his bunk. He looked up, over at the bed longingly. It wasn't late, not even close, and he'd gotten a pretty good bit of sleep, but it just felt late. Even if all his other senses were telling him otherwise, he just felt tired.

The Old Man started to let his mind wander. Last night he'd dined with President Roslin, Billy, and another young woman he'd met only a handful of time, Tory Foster, one of her advisors. He'd offered Saul an invitation but he'd come up with some excuse about Viper maintenance overhaul or something which of course required the XO's presence. He chuckled and shook his head as he thought of all the times Saul, his oldest and best friend, had tried to avoid anything formal or even remotely hinting of politics.

He sighed, fingered another report, then pushed back from his chair to turn on another light but stopped when he heard a faint rap at his door. The familiar deep reverberating clunk clunk of a balled fist knocking on his hatch shook him back from his daydreams and memories.

"Come in." He called out as he straightened in his chair and organized the papers. He frowned at the data disk containing digital files of the photographs and a video walkthrough of the temple. He pawed it and tossed it into an open desk drawer which held his tablet computer. Adama had never been a fan of technology and was grateful someone was here; he could put off watching the videos for a little while at least, before his meeting with the Admiral on Pegasus.

"Hello, sir," came a somewhat timid voice.

His brow furrowed and he looked up at Starbuck. She seemed a bit… he wasn't sure, maybe 'out of it.' She looked distracted, definitely distracted he thought as she crossed his quarters from the door over towards his desk. The last few days had been a wild ride for her.

"Starbuck," he said, standing up and moving around his desk. "Please." He motioned to his couch and guided her over from the small of her back. He sat down next to her. "How is the arm?"

"Oh!" She pulled the sleeve of her duty uniform up a bit. "It'll be fine. Tetanus shot wasn't fun, though." She waved the memory away and paused and studied the Old Man's model sailing ship for a moment.

"What's up?"

Starbuck blinked and turned her head back. Her eyes were dark and distant and her shoulder looked like they had the weight of the worlds on them.

"I… I don't know." She was flustered. She didn't see the Commander narrow his eyes slightly as he instantly understood this was not a typical social visit. "I saw the mandala… look." She took a drawing from her pocket, crinkled and creased, and handed it to Adama. "My mother scribbled something like that once when I was like five and… she started having me draw it… something about destiny. I don't know sir… she… I don't know." She buried her face in her hands and brought them back, over his cheeks, through her tightly pulled blonde hair, and over the back of her neck. "I've never told anyone…:

She finished with a distinct hopelessness in her voice while she watched the Commander study the drawing, she tried not to fidget.

"A coincidence?" Adama muttered under his breath looking up at her. She shook her head. "Your mother?"

She shrugged and ran a hand through her blonde hair. "All she said sir was something about the end of the war, when she was on Tauron."

Starbuck could recall the day with crystal clarity. Though the crystal was soon clouded with blackness. That had been a few weeks after her father had left them. Her mother had been in the kitchen, sipping on coffee and smoking and drawing. She had climbed up on a chair and reached out to see what her mother was drawing. The circles and radiant angles had interested her, the young Kara Thrace.

Except she knocked her mother's ash tray over, spilling the used butts and ash onto the table and the drawing.

That was the first time her mother broke her fingers.

"I… she had me draw it. Destiny." She mumbled. "And she… it was an accident, sir, I wanted to see what it was she was doing. I leaned over the table and tipped over… tipped over her ashtray."

Adama looked up and could see the moisture in Kara's eyes and moved closer. She was perhaps the strongest young woman he had ever known and he only knew bits, fragments of her youth. Even Zak had never broken through the armored shell, that unbreakable impenetrable shield that was once Kara Thrace. Lee had whittled it down, made holes in the armor. She could see be the old and carelessly Starbuck, the one who could still drink a bit too much and fight her fellow officers. She was also more focused, clear-headed, professional. She was more calm and actually had something to live for. But there was something else which had been chewing at her, which she'd pushed down, only to have it awoken in that temple.

He moved closer and as only a father could, held her tight.

---

||||||||||==Colonial One==||||||||||

President Roslin, as President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol felt there was no need to justify herself to anyone. As her predecessor had so poignantly, rudely pointed out once in his office, being the president meant no justifications to anyone. That, she found, was not accurate, not in the least. There was always someone one had to justify oneself to.

Of course she could issue orders and have them carried out, she knew that. She had broad authority and the iron will to use said authority for the good of the fleet. But even with so much power she felt a little gurgling inside of her, a little thrashing deep in her gut, which told her she was not above justifications. There was one person, well, two, whom she did justify herself to on a regular basis.

One was currently with her.

Commander Adama sat across from her and for the life of her she could not concentrate on what he was saying. She saw the cracked lips moving- courtesy of a malfunctioning environmental system making Colonial One bone dry- yet couldn't hear any of the words those lips were saying. Her mind was a whirlwind of disorganized thoughts and actively working against her.

The man she regarded as the one person she did have to justify herself had arrived with a tablet computer and an intimidating pile of reports a few centimeters thick. The first batch of reports had been delivered by Tory about an hour ago. They'd plowed through those relatively quickly. Commander Adama was heading a training program to train a force of reservists. The military transports which had been discovered with Helios had allowed Galactica and Pegasus to be almost fully crewed. But more never hurt.

The President considered the tempo of the fleet since New Caprica. There was an unsaid urgency to the training. Pegasus was building Vipers at almost four a month after receiving equipment from the Guardians. With Galactica's starboard flight pod fully operational her Viper compliment had doubled after New Caprica. She was still getting equipment transfers and crew training to open her own very limited Viper production lines.

Roslin frowned to herself as she pushed a paper up towards the edge of her desk outlining what she had just thought. She tapped a finger quietly on the stack of papers as she thought. With the fleet moving back towards Earth they'd need all the Vipers they could get. And seeing that massive fleet of Cylon baseships at the Battle of the Lion's Head Nebula had shaken many of those with access to the entire classified reports.

She pulled up a repair memo for the civilian ships. Roslin cracked a mental smile. This was her realm where she was master and commander. Civies were hers. Military was theirs.

The star cluster and its heavy ionized plasma had damaged many of the ships. The few dome ships, such as Cloud 9 and Everlasting Bliss had had their parks wiped out from the radiation. Green Sun, the botanical cruiser in the fleet and its twenty domes was barren and lifeless.

Shuttles were running between the fleet and the planet and bringing up soil for the liners to use. The ionized plasma had irradiated the soil and had been deemed more efficient to just dump it than try to decontaminate.

There was also the concern of FTL engines. Some of the ships were old, very old, and their engines were still glitching from the enormous stress the ionized plasma and heavy radiation had inflicted on the fleet. Roslin thought of the vulnerable state of the fleet and glanced to the side out the portholes.

Colonial One had been undergoing repairs. While it had been nestled safely within Galactica's cavernous landing pods the FTL had been acting up. A dozen other ships were having their engines overhauled.

Roslin mentally shrugged and sagged back in her high chaired seat. If they couldn't do it now, when could they? There were plenty of crews working to fix the FTLs and in the safety of the star cluster this was their opportunity.

She shifted her eyes out towards the fleet and the green-blue planet. She hadn't been down there but had been told it was hot, humid, and algae got everywhere. Every little personal nook and every little very personal cranny… she got a picture, a very inappropriate picture of Bill Adama trying to clean out algae… blinking, she shook herself out of her little daydream when she heard him say something which had nothing to do with the progress reports.

She took off her glasses. Gently she placed them to her right and then made sure she was sitting extra straight and rigid. She was ready.

President Roslin saw him look over at the glasses and the most minute flickers of the smallest smile fluttered onto the corner of his lips before being consumed by the overflowing stoicism.

"Do you want to talk about it." He said again. "You're distracted. I can tell. A lot of us can tell. So do you want to talk about it."

It was worded like a question but the tone and pitch of the Commander's voice was anything but. Somehow he sounded like some sort of strange, ethereal combination of stoic military commander, pious priest, and wise statesman all in one. To her he seemed to be an embodiment of poise and elegance with a voice which could cut through someone's soul and eyes which could reduce the largest of men to nothingness.

Right now he was channeling the commander, priest, and statesman. He wasn't judgmental in the least.

'Not really' was President Roslin's silent answer. Then her mental avatar slapped herself and mentally scolded her that that wasn't going to cut it-

"Laura… we've both had problem with the Admiral-"

She looked at her desk. "Is that what we're calling them, Bill?" She whispered. 'What happened to…' she mouthed down at her desk and couldn't complete the silent question.

Laura felt it bubbling back and distracting her from the Commander, but couldn't bring herself to bring up that wonderfully painful memory.

"Laura."

"Bill. What happened, it happened." She protested. Silently, he looked at her. "What am I to do, Bill?" She leaned forward. "Gods damn it, we planned to kill her," she hissed. "Her inner circle are loose cannons. Her XO before your son was dirty and in Mr. Phelan's pocket… who participated with her aide, now effectively third in command, and massacred civilians." She snorted, laughed darkly to herself, and then leaned back. Adama was silently staring at her still. "And let's not forget her… experience with and then brutal raping of a Cylon."

Adama raised an eyebrow at that.

"The Cylon…" Roslin trailed off. "What do you want me to say, Bill? That we've done worse? Bring up Olympic Carrier again… but… we knew the Cylons killed the crew… there were nukes on board. What would the Cylons have done if we didn't destroy the ship or we jumped away? Even with the people still alive they'd have been tortured…" she choked up. "I was in their jails for long enough on New Caprica, Bill." She was vehemently shaking her head. Slowly, but the point was being made. "We at least had some hope we'd get out of there. On a baseship? Never. That would be a slow, painful, painful death."

They sat in silence for a moment. Roslin still wasn't done with her thought and Adama could sense it. He held back and stayed quiet to let her.

Laura took him up on silent offer. "She tried to judge me, you over what we had to do. Who gave her that right after what she has done?"

"Do you believe people deserve a second chance?" Adama asked, his head moving slowly from the left until it was cocked slightly to the right. He blinked slowly once and waited. "I abandoned forty-five thousand people on New Caprica. Thirteen hundred died because I jumped. I retreated. I abandoned you." He stood. "I judged her once but how can I condemn her when I believe my… sins, are worse? More black." He said quietly. "We all carry a burden, Laura."

"So that's it then?"

"There aren't many of us left." He nodded at the white board. The destruction of Virgon Express, Disquiet, Lakefront, and Gemenon Traveler had lowered their number by over a thousand since the attack on the Guardian mobile base after New Caprica. "Our civilization, if we can call it that, Laura, needs each of us."

"And the dangerous ones?" she grunted disagreement.

Her eye caught his and she saw something she hadn't seen since New Caprica. From the depth of her soul she cursed the planet and its power, its stranglehold it had over them still. She thought the Fall had been horrific, but the Occupation of New Caprica had supplanted that… those gunmetal gray Centurions, ruby red eyes, and that back-and-forth noise those blood colored eyes made as they moved... It had been personal.

"Pegasus is a part of this fleet. The best part?" Adama asked and shrugged. He tapped his thigh, right above his knee as he thought. "A necessary part. And I think my son and daughter-in-law are helping reform it. Laura… and what we did before… it's what we do now that matters." He closed his eyes on the last sentence and opened them again on the last word.

She looked down at her hands. "Then why won't you let me back in? What we had on New Caprica-"

Adama took a step back. "I left you on that planet." He stepped back and walked to the door. His hand was out and stopping him, gripping the frame. Adama looked over his shoulder, his eye firmly set on his dulled yellow Galactica patch, but he could see her looking down from his peripheral vision. "We've all made mistakes we have to live with. That is our individual burden. I left you on the planet… I can't let myself do that again."

---

||||||||||==BS-62 Pegasus==||||||||||

Commander Adama returned a crisp and precise salute from the duo of Marine guards outside Admiral Cain's quarters. He mentally grimaced as he watched the young Marine corporal pull out his magnetic key card from under his armored vest and swipe it through the reader.

The Marine didn't smile and Adama detected a hint of contempt from the man but didn't make an issue out of it. The sentinel pivoted back and brought his feet together, his opposite doing the same, and they popped to attention as Adama walked between them and into Cain's quarters.

The Old Man immediately saw the almond brown hair of Cain's backside as she stooped over her slightly-higher-than-waist high tables and examined something. Piles of old Colonial books, tactical manuals, and operations manuals were neatly arranged at the ends of her table, almost walling her into the middle. He stepped inside and waited until the doors closed and their seals clicked shut before walking over to her.

He didn't see John standing to the side and suppressed a jump of surprise when those blue eyes met his own.

When the machines had transferred from Galactica to Pegasus they'd claimed it was for the equipment and facilities. A Mercury-class was outfitted with the best cubits could buy (or more appropriate Adama thought, 'bought'). He'd felt relieved to have such dangerous machines off his ship. Only after they'd left had he realized why they'd left, and 'equipment' was not it.

"I never knew when I was promoted to admiral the paper work would quadruple. Even running for our lives and a million light years from the Colonies the bureaucracy of the fleet is almost overwhelming," Cain proclaimed as she kept her back to him. She could feel an already uncomfortable silence on the verge of become tense and awkward.

Cain could also sense something on the mind of her number two. She finished her though with a quick look at the Commander, locking her dark brown eyes with his youthful blue one, and the corner of her mouth quivered up. He was opposite her now and she snuck a quick run up and down with her eyes as she sidestepped and focused on a manila folder which was at the top of her mountain of battlestar manuals.

She nodded at John and then turned back to the Commander.

"So… I was on the planet yesterday. I saw this temple they found, whatever it is." Cain continued and slid a manila file folder to Adama and waited until he had a chance to glance over the dozen pictures. She tapped the glass table with her index finger. "Do you want to fill us in, Planck?"

"Certainly, Admiral." He replied dryly. "We're still not sure what the temple is, Commander. But we believe it may be linked with perhaps the time displacement arrays. We're only going on that theory, as flimsy as it may be, because of the temple we found in Athens, on Earth." He shrugged.

Adama thumbed through the pictures before resting on the one of a pedestal in the shape of a pentagon. "You said you believe this is the main control node?" He asked, pointing to the pedestal and flipping the picture back over. It was the smallest of the pentagonal pedestals and positioned in the center front. Cain nodded. "That's the working theory based on Starbuck's accidental activation of the device."

"Accidental?" Cain asked with raised eyebrows. "Only when she's in proximity to the pedestal does it work at all," she pointed out curtly. "There's some sort of circuitry built into the pedestal. Baltar-" she rolled her eyes "-says the circuitry is nothing like he's ever seen."

"It's some sort of nanotechnology," John filled in. "Extremely advanced."

The Commander nodded. "We could let the Cylon take a look," he offered. Calling the Six in Galactica's brig by her name produced a fifty-fifty chance Cain would lock up at the memory of her Six. "Baltar does seem to work better with her around…" he trailed off and added a bit under his breath, "as strange as it is." He finished with the folder and closed it. "But we need a full translation of the glyphs, correct?"

"Frak, Bill, I think maybe fifty people in the fleet had a marginal understanding of ancient Kobolian. Half of them are priests and half of them are torn between this being some great sign and a great evil- brought to us courtesy of toasters." She hit her thigh with a loosely balled fist. "The other half who spoke the language have no idea how to speak this dialect of ancient Kobolian… to say it's obscure would be an understatement. If it is Kobolian." She waved off in frustration and took a drink from a water glass she'd been sipping from for half the morning. "Even if we put the Six by Baltar's side, I still don't trust him or her… especially with whatever it is she did to him."

"I don't trust them either." Adama answered.

"Neither do I, Bill… and unless he with either the machines or Lieutenant Agathon, I don't trust him either."

Planck looked at them both. While he didn't trust Baltar he didn't distrust him, either. And the Six seemed to love him, genuinely love him.

"Admiral, Commander," he said, "while I don't trust Baltar he does have a keen sense of self-preservation. He's worked with us… and while events have pushed back his trial, each time he helps he gets sympathy." He swiveled his eyes between Adama and Cain. "His help in finding Pegasus has earned him admiration."

Commander Adama acknowledged the observation with a shallow nod. "And the Six's reluctance to tell us what, exactly, she did to him…" he shook his head. Caprica Six had revealed she had done something to Baltar after being pressed by Athena and Soto but was unwilling to tell them what, exactly she had done. All she did was assure him that whatever it was wouldn't hurt him or the ship.

Adama wasn't entirely sure if he believed her. In fact, he couldn't even bring himself to even maybe believe her. Supposedly she had been a moderate on the ruling council of terror which had overseen New Caprica. Supposedly she had been the one to convince them not to bomb the people on the planet back to ancient Kobol. A lot of supposition. And the Seven months since New Caprica wasn't enough to earn his trust. If she ever could after the Colonies.

"The machines can at least keep pace with what is racing through his mind of his." Cain snorted and rolled her eyes slowly. "Right?" She looked at Planck.

"We don't know everything," Planck responded. "You can outsmart us." He cracked a little bit of a sinister grin. "It's rare, but… it happens."

"There is that, too, sir. He's more intelligent than anyone in the fleet…" Adama didn't like to give the scientist credit, "but he lacks the focus. A few scientists went out to study the star and they saw it seems to be 'getting ready' to explode… so tomorrow or next year." He said. "But we do need to hurry."

"That is true, Bill," she said. "We also need to expedite repairs on the FTL drives. Unfortunately they could blow at any moment- or so my engineers tell me- from stress and overuse. The Guardians helped but…" she shook her head with eyes closed, "they didn't get to all of them. Half the ships in our fleet could use six months in a yard for basic maintenance. I don't like the timing either Bill, but we can't keep pushing it back."

"I agree, sir."

"Good." She looked at Planck first and back at the Commander. "What about Starbuck?"

Commander Adama looked Cain in the eyes. "I have no idea, sir. What she told you, she told me the same thing; she drew the symbol after her mother did." He rubbed between his eyes with his thumb briefly. "She doesn't know much more than that. And something about a destiny… the Number Two, the one we know as Leoben Conoy said something similar on Gemenon Traveler a few weeks after we left the Colonies."

She nodded. "Her mother was a Marine, correct?" Adama nodded and Cain continued. "Unfortunately the fleet doesn't have all her records… the records of retired military personnel were not a priority when Pegasus was commissioned."

"We lost a lot of our history when we left the Colonies," Adama added.

The digital library Pegasus had covered tens of thousands of topics, from studies on the small Tauron fang beetle to autobiographies of former Presidents. There was, however, no way to store the collective knowledge of twenty billion humans on twelve worlds on the computers aboard Pegasus. And no one could have expected the Colonies to be systematically wiped out and all that knowledge lost.

When President Roslin had convinced him to jump away he'd made the decision quickly and without being able to run Raptor recon on the Colonies. That was one regret. He didn't know. He suspected and it had kept him up at night.

A part of him had felt a perverse sense of relief Helo and Starbuck and Anders had confirmed that the worlds were basically lifeless. Adama had felt some validation that running had been the best route.

However there was still a lingering flame of doubt. A civilization as large as the Colonies couldn't just be wiped out with any trace. Many cities were still intact due to the use of neutron bombs. And the Colonies were fairly hardened... he couldn't believe everyone was killed but he was certain the sixty-eight thousand in this fleet represented their best chance at survival.

With the Cylons controlling the invulnerable high ground of space above the Colonies they could zero in on wireless signals and attack with Raiders or Centurions and they'd had almost a year to finish the job.

It was cold but if people were still alive on the Colonies he couldn't help them and that stung at his soul; he was a military officer, that was a part of his job, to defend the defenseless. But he had unfortunate practice at checking his idealism when it came to reality. Pragmatically this fleet was the best shot at continuing Colonial civilization… and if Earth was a Skynet territory, continuing human civilization.

Adama smiled inwardly to comfort himself as the dark thoughts swirled around and bit at his mind. He looked up and focused back on Cain and Planck.

Cain tugged on the end of her sleeve and rested her hands on her hips. "She said her mother drew the picture and then she did, of this mandala. Captain Adama displayed a photograph of her apartment in Delphi. The similarities are remarkable. They cannot be a coincidence." Cain declared.

"Our Omega Team originally jumped to Tauron," Planck said.

Admiral Cain nodded at the machine. "Well, the machines have already put forward one theory, that the Temple of Five means five separate temples; Kobol, here, Earth, and presumably Tauron and Caprica where they appeared." She sighed and looked longingly at the reports Adama was still thumbing through, quietly hoping for inspiration. "The sacred texts speak of the temple being the site of worship by five priests, to this enigmatic 'One Who Cannot Be Named.'" She shrugged. "I know you don't believe in the gods, Bill, I do, but I find the machine's theory much more plausible than it being a temple for five priests or whatever to a single diety." She waved a small diagonal dismissal at the idea the temple was meant for a deity and then rested her hand on the table.

"Could they still exist?" Adama asked. "The temples?" His brow furrowed towards his nose bridge and let his mind wander as it considered the possibilities, probabilities. "But… you accessed the old Cylon War records, the classified reports." He pulled up another sheet of paper which had a red rectangle border to mark the contents as classified to flag officers and authorized personnel. "Those tracked two nuclear explosions around the time Planck believes Omega was active on Tauron?"

Cain closed her eyes and nodded. "Once they told us about Omega and Tauron I had Captain Shaw go over the records in private with Lieutenant Havers. The Colonial battlestars in orbit, with ground confirmation, detected two nuclear explosions... one in a major Cylon base and the second outside the city of Sienio. I believe Galactica was there…?" She cocked her head.

"I remember that," Adama nodded and confirmed. He looked passed the Admiral. "Galactica and her battle group were in high orbit, geosync over the southern continent… Sigdena, I believe. We had to withdraw before the war ended for Operation Raptor Talon."

"You think one of the nukes destroyed a temple on Tauron?" She asked the machine.

"If there was a temple that seems likely," Planck said. "That would help explain how we were able to get to the Colonies in the first place."

"It's still speculation." Cain said.

"Yes, but it makes sense. The computer power required for a time jump is immense. Originally we were concerned that time bubbles could appear in space- since planets do not remain stationary- but it seems now that a time displacement sphere can 'zero in' on a time displacement array… even if it hasn't been built." Planck said.

He waited for the Commander and Admiral to digest that.

"So you can 'zero in' on an array that isn't even built… how is that possible?" Adama asked with a furrowed brow. He looked off towards the corner of the room, his eyes focusing on something only he could see, and quietly grunted. He felt the definite need for a drink.

Planck understood the tone in Adama's voice and attempted to explain. "It's a theory. The time travel arrays 'exist' even if they haven't been built yet. Think of it as dead reckoning except not on the ocean but in time." He shrugged. "Time travel theory has been consistently revised, Commander, to the point almost any theory with the exception of time loops being considered valid." Cain gave him a look. "Initially we thought events would repeat but I have firsthand knowledge that is not the case." Planck paused. "Not that it did, before, really." He added off-hand.

Admiral Cain brought up her hand, pinched her nose and using her index finger and thumb, rubbed her eyes. "I had enough trouble with astrophysics in school let alone time travel theories… whatever is going on this temple was also written about. Supposedly it has the Eye of Jupiter which will guide us to Earth. Now, if that's what happened when Captain Adama activated the console with her blood… maybe," Cain cautiously ended.

---

||||||||||==Algae Planet (+1013 Days Post Cylon Holocaust)==||||||||||

Major Adama tugged gently at his brown and gray tank tops. The chest was dripping with sweat, even within the cooled 'Temple of Five.' It had been eight days. He closed his eyes and focused and blocked out the bustling sounds of workers, scientists, and machines around him.

He knew, intellectually at least, that the Centurions would not harm any Colonial, not now. He'd shot down too many Cylons, fought too many of them in Galactica's belly after Kobol, and seen too many of his friends die to really feel at ease with them. Even on Pegasus he hated being around the bulletheads.

The Pegasus bullet heads had almost certainly killed humans… they'd been chasing Anders and his resistance cell on Caprica, for gods' sake! But as much as he wanted to hate them he couldn't. The Cylons were in a civil war and they'd even approached his pilots when they took the Blackbirds to destroy that supply depot about an alliance. Apollo wasn't a man who prayed all that often but if there were gods, if the Lords of Kobol were real, he prayed the Cylons would wipe each other out.

The Cylons had once been an object far which manifested in his nightmares, which, while rare, had been violent. He'd shared them with Starbuck, and she'd shared hers as well… but watching twenty billion of your fellows die, being one or two out of a fraction of a percent so small he couldn't even calculate it… it was frightening.

Apollo could see the fear in the eyes of everyone around him. It was constant. Not always conscious, but constant. In fact, he smiled grimly, he never really thought of the fear of failure and the fear of his civilization coming to an end most of his day. It was only times like this. Down time, that was when the fear really gnawed at him and chipped away at his personal armor.

The nightmares had been less, becoming more like concerns than fears really, but in the place of those dark dreams was something even more frightened; complacency. It wasn't something he'd expected. It had just happened. And everything he had ever learned had told him that complacency was the worse characteristic a solider and sailor could unfortunately possess.

And that was with the machines and Guardians and Cylons playing a role in the fleet that seven months ago would have been unfathomable.

He pressed his eyes shut and gently rocked on his heels. His left ear flicked and his face tightened as a set of footsteps approached.

"Have you finished the translation?" He asked, eyes still closed. He smiled to himself when the machine he knew was standing to his side didn't respond immediately.

"Not yet," was the even reply. "We're close." John moved shoulder-to-shoulder and watched the workers with a now open-eyed major.

"And the hybrid?" He pointed at the tank and the cords running from it to the pentagon pedestal. "The first time…" he trailed off.

"…was unfortunate, Major. But this discovery was proof we were right."

"Were you?"

"Just stating the truth, Commander," John replied. "Everything happens for a reason. This might be of interest." He held out a sheet of paper for the major. "Some of the translation."

Major Adama slipped his glasses back on after wiping a thin layer of sweat from the bridge of his nose. He had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust and his arm flexed and extended as he tried to find the right distance to focus on.

His mouth moved as he silently read over the few lines of translations.

Adama let the paper and his hand fall to his side.

"Tauron? Are you sure this says Tauron?"

John nodded and Apollo brought the paper back up and read; In this… the Eye of Jupiter…one… five pillars… Temple of Five, a path… leave those loved behind… the solitary journey… monument… remember the mistakes…the mandala… find… our legacy… One Whose Name… us all.

"The president has seen this mentioned in Pythia. The Eye of Jupiter." Apollo said. "A Temple of Five?" he held his breath. "What was the temple like on Earth?"

"Like this." John motioned around him. "From what our two scientists told us. Carter and I did find a chamber with thirteen pillars but most of it was gutted and removed by Skynet before we were able to get there."

"Thirteen pillars?" Apollo snorted. He shook his head with a grim smile. "This is all you've managed to translate?" Apollo asked, almost demanding more. Being reminded of the link between Earth, the Colonies and the way Skynet manipulated the Cylons filled him with… he couldn't be entirely sure, but it was almost contempt. Apollo surprised himself there. He really didn't see anything to be contemptuous about. He didn't hate Planck but he certainly didn't really like him.

"The writing is an obscure dialect of ancient Kobolian. Many symbols are cracked. We're working on it," John responded rather curtly. He lowered his voice. "I want an end to this as much as you do, Major."

"That, I don't doubt, Blanks."

He looked over from the corner of his eye and saw the machine looking back.

"Usually Starbuck is the only one who calls me that."

"Well…" Adama didn't know what else to say. "For some reason my wife tends to like you, a close friend." He shrugged. "You, Athena… the others and the bullet heads." He pushed out his chin at the Centurions, RC.

"I've known her for four and a half years, major."

Apollo responded with a barely audible grunt. The sound didn't say much but that was more than compensated for in his body language.

"When are you going to activate the hybrid?" Asked Apollo. He narrowed his vision and focused in on the dim tub of… goo and the woman with eyes wide open and a look of pure shock plastered permanently on her unmoving face.. "Admiral Cain wants results. If this doesn't work we just might start tearing down pillars and see whatever is causing the…"

Apollo quieted as he saw Evzan Mikos, the Caprican Quorum delegate and XO of the heavy liner Sunshine walk over. He carried himself well, even if he still appeared somewhat gaunt from weeks on half, or less, rations. The brown of his hair was stained with ever increasing amounts of silver- the stress of a liner XO combined with that of a politician. He came over in the typical green fatigues with brown and gray tank tops, and his hands were stained with grime from actually work. Apollo smirked. Mikos was really the only politician, except for the President, he liked.

"Well…" he extended his hand to John first and then the Commander. "I think I'm used to the silence from military types," he nodded at them both, "when I walk up now… as a politician of course." He sighed. "But while I am most likely intruding, I wanted to extend, before you get started, that I have confidence this will point us towards Earth."

"Not the Quorum?" Apollo asked, picking up on the personal pronoun.

Mikos chuckled. "No, not the Quorum. Though…" he shrugged non-committal, "they were appreciated of the Admiral including then. Same with the President. She's been sort of locking us out recently."

---

Doctor Baltar meticulously connected his computers and electrical equipment to the central pentagonal pillar they had concluded was the command interface. Baltar hummed in curiosity as he attempted to understand all the readings flashing across his computer screens. He tapped the screen to slow the scrolling script and smiling to himself, started to lose himself in the work…

"Nanocircuitry, the Thirteenth was quite advanced, weren't they?" The invisible Six asked, jerking him out of his concentration. He inwardly frowned and ignored her and keeping his eyes glued steadily to the scrolling script licked his dried lips and hummed to himself in thought. "Don't ignore me, Gaius." She squeezed his shoulder and he winced then sneered at her increasing physicality in getting him to respond.

It seemed to be her favorite thing to do now.

He wanted to tell her to leave him alone yet each time he did that she came back. It was, he could admit to himself, a most twisted relationship, if it could even be considered a 'relationship.' He very much wanted Caprica to be there with him but she'd been banished back to the gray, hard, and dull brig of Galactica.

The threat of execution, most likely spacing by airlock or a firing squad only to have one's body flushed out a Viper tube, was still very much hanging over Baltar's head and Caprica's like a sword held by thread.

Baltar's jaw muscles clenched as the pain from Caprica's hard squeezed rushed through his nerves and tickled his brain. His eyes narrowed and nostrils flared in anger.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" Daniel asked, looking up from his examination of the pedestal. The machine frowned and walked over to the scientist who was rotating his shoulder. "If you need rest there are tents set up outside."

Baltar let a half-minded 'um' escape before shaking his head and wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I'm sorry? Oh, no, no, well, yes." He looked at the Six to answer her question discreetly then back at Daniel. "I'm more concerned about reproducing our very peculiar results from earlier and getting out of here before the sun explodes on us."

Daniel nodded and scanned the pedestal. "There is plenty of Captain Adama's blood on the command interface. Do you require more?" He pointed at a cooler containing a pint of her blood.

"I would like to know how this encoded to her DNA." Baltar observed.

"Was it because she slipped and cut herself on it or is there something more? Remember the mandala," the Six advised, stroking Baltar's cheek.

He smiled and closed his eyes. No matter what they did to each other, what she did to him, he could always rely on her helping him and it made staying mad at her all the more difficult for the confused scientist.

"Well, Mr. uh, Daniel, do you think it was because she slipped and cut herself or is there something more? Remember the mandala and what she briefed the Admiral on. She said she was drawing it after her mother, correct?" He asked rhetorically. "What about you, what do you remember?"

Doctor Baltar looked down at his tablet. He was not just surprised, but fraking surprised the Admiral had let him in on the briefing. She'd even complemented him, in her own sarcastic, demeaning, completely contemptuous way. He was 'behaving' and doing an 'acceptable' job. He snorted and his breath blew off a thin layer of dust from his tablet. Baltar thought that if she didn't think he was doing just an 'acceptable' job then she was all the welcome to come down and try and figure this out for herself, not that a gun totting, shoot-first-don't-ask-questions-laster-just-keep-shooting, fraking bitch would admit to her own shortcomings and admit they truly needed him.

He groaned at his thoughts and looked up as more dust waffled down from on high. A cherry picker had been brought down from one of the mining ships and had a pair of 'archeologists' (high school science teachers, Baltar mentally scoffed) picking at the white rods at the peak of the central column. Baltar felt he should be the one up there, or one of the killing machines, or Caprica, instead of clumsy high school teachers knocking thousand year-old dust down onto him.

"I don't know, Doctor." Daniel admitted. He bent back down and sat on his heels with Baltar sitting cross-legged with the tablet on his lap. "I wasn't fully active during my time in Major Rhoades's cranium. Two chips, mine vastly more powerful than his own, would have eventually wrecked havoc on his consciousness. Two AIs sharing the same body or completely connected like that often lead to very Bad Things to the less powerful AI."

"So he kept you offline," Baltar finished.

"An AI as resourceful and powerful as Daniel and only he could hide like a frightened animal from Skynet's bastard child." The Six quipped. She walked over and Baltar watched her lay her hands on the machine's shoulder before letting her right hand graze his hair as she circled back around to her left. "How can you defeat the Skynet bastard now?"

"I don't know-" Baltar admitted.

"Pardon?" Daniel asked.

Baltar caught himself and tapped on the tablet before uncrossing his legs and scooted forward to sit on the ledge of the platform. "I don't know how we can defeat Cynet if you couldn't stop him or it- whatever Skynet or Cynet likes to call itself now. They outnumber everyone. How can you hope to defeat something so colossal." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Attacking windmills?" Daniel asked. Baltar gave him a look he didn't understand. "Apologizes, Doctor," Daniel waved a hand, "it's from an old book published over four hundred years ago. The protagonist attacked windmills." Baltar gave the machine a look. "The saying is supposed to illustrate futility in one's actions."

"Perfect. This is futile." Six said.

"No, it's not." He snapped. "This isn't futile." He realized he sounded contradictory with his previous melancholy question and hint of despair. "We evaded them for years then escaped right under their nose. Twice." He smiled smugly at the invisible machine/human hybrid. Baltar looked back at Daniel and back at Six, and she had vanished. "I'm just saying…" he coughed and focused over on Daniel, "that this isn't futile, not if we are smart…" he looked over his shoulder at Major Adama, Delegate Mikos, and John Planck conversing. "The military always looks for ways to blow things up. If you can subvert Cynet…" he trailed off.

Daniel nodded and held out his hand for Baltar's computer. "May I?"

Baltar dutifully handed the computer away and took the opportunity to take in the chamber once more. By now it was hardly the quiet, almost reverent place it had been when they'd discovered it. Some of the workers spoke in nothing louder than whispers while some saw nothing sacred about the site. Few were fully briefed on what, exactly, they suspected the temple, or in Baltar's scientific classification, 'thing' to really be.

His eyes gradually shifted until they latched onto the spot where his mysterious Six had vanished and his thoughts turned to Caprica. He cast a sidelong glance at Daniel and then back to the spot on the floor and over to the mandala and let his eyes glaze. Caprica Six, some sort of biological machine with thousands… hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of copies like her? The scientist kicked himself for thinking that.

There was only one like her. The others may appear to be physically like her but he remembered back to New Caprica. The instant she had appeared through Colonial One's access corridor he had just known it was her. He had seen it. As she'd approached from the entrance to the Presidential Office, the glow of the light behind her, its radiant glory… for a minute Baltar had felt everything would be alright, that she was there, his protector, friend, and lover.

He always, somehow, knew when the Six talking to him wasn't her. And it wasn't just her tender, loving eyes, either. It wasn't the small and subtle smile he remembered seeing as she would walk into his officer every day, nor was it soft voice and gentle touch as she comforted him at night as thousands of people starved and shivered in winter cold not a hundred meters from his warm, lavish bed.

She helped him through the long nights and horrifying days. When the guns of insurgents would crack in the night she was there to protect and hold him. Even with the drinking and the pills and his verbal abuse she was always there…

Even seeing her from behind, just the back of her head, there was just some way he knew-

"Doctor Baltar."

He breathed in shallowly and then let his breath slowly escape his lungs as he smiled remorsefully and turned to face the machine. "Yes, Daniel?" he asked. Then he felt a bead of moisture on the edge of his eye and he quickly swiped it away. "What is it?"

"These patterns," Daniel began, flipping the tablet around and handing it to Baltar. He pointed at the wave fronts. "These energy patterns are similar to what we were detecting before the hybrid did its FTL stunt on us."

"So…" Baltar responded slowly as he meticulously read the report before his mind locked in on the significance of what he was reading it forgot to finish his thought. He looked up at the sound of footsteps on the rock floor as Planck and Mikos and Major Adama walked over. Undoubtedly Planck had been called over by Daniel wirelessly. "I think I see what you're saying."

Without asking he handed the tablet to Planck and then brushed off his dirtied hands.

"This is interesting," the Earth machine said. His thumb pressed the 'page down' tab repeatedly until it held it down and he scrolled through five hours of data in seconds. The machine looked up briefly at Baltar and back down at the tablet and then over to Daniel. "Daniel?" the AI nodded to Planck's unsaid inquiry. "Major, we need the hybrid."

---

"Absolutely not, no," Admiral Cain said for the third time. She took the receiver and stared at it like it had grown a head. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head at the speaker. "I'm not authorizing you-"

"Admiral," it was Planck. "For some reason the control pedestal only respond to Captain Adama's DNA. It can't be coincidence. The hybrid might know-"

"Planck, we don't know what the hybrid knows and you haven't convinced me to take that chance, yet." She covered the receiver with her hand and sighed as she allowed herself an opportunity to be convinced, even if it was against her better judgment. Across from her Captain Shaw shook her head in silent protest at Planck and agreement with the Admiral.

Cain then looked over towards the corner of the room where the third 'woman' stood. Jo Soto stood defensively with hands crossed under her breasts with a stone-hard face which would have been impossible to read if she were a stranger. After so long Cain could tell what such blank looks meant.

"What we do know is that Captain Adama's mother drew that symbol, which Captain Adama has reproduced on multiple occasions. Somehow there is a connection… her activation of the device showed us this could lead to Earth and the hybrid brought us here. The nanocircuitry is also incredibly advanced and we're having a difficult time decrypting the glyphs on the central column." Planck said. "This is looking more similar to the time displacement array technology on Earth and from what I can ascertain is almost an exact duplicate of what we found in Athens."

Admiral Cain rolled her eyes up at the heavens.

"It's not a good idea, sir," Captain Shaw advised. She was listened with her own headset. "It might give us Earth or a weapon to use against the Cylons but it might hurt us."

"We've lingered here too long," Admiral Cain pointed out. "Repairs for the FTL drives will be completed within the week. We have enough food to last us indefinitely or until our vats come back online… I want us gone from this system."

Shaw nodded, but it was her job as tactical officer to point out alternatives. "But we haven't seen the Cylons in months, sir." Shaw protested. "We still have time and we're safe for now."

"I'm going to have to advise caution, sir," Major Adama said over the wireless. "After what happened to us… I don't know, the device showed us Earth. That might be all it can do."

"We've found just about all we can," Jo countered. "The facility already activated in some manner when Starbuck's blood contacted the pedestal. It may have sent out a signal. The Cylons could be on their way at this very moment. We should not hesitate." She looked hard at Shaw and then turned towards the Admiral. "We should move the hybrid down to the planet." She pointed at the Admiral. "If you want Earth, this is the way to get it. We've been following vague clues in a book written by an oracle. And oracles have an almost unnatural attraction to recreational drugs. We don't know if we're any closer to Earth. This tells us we are."

"Admiral, sir, is the Commander." Adama the Elder's gruff voice sounded over the wireless. He joined the conference call from Galactica but the video conferencing software was down so only his voice was there. "I've looked over Doctor Baltar's data and they've run their plan by me, sir… everyone has pretty much hit a roadblock when it comes to the temple."

Cain 'hmpfed' and licked her lips. She brushed the razor in her trouser pocket and took it out and tapped it slowly on the command console.

"Very well, Commander, Major." She saw Shaw's shoulder drop and Jo spark a little self-congratulatory smirk. "I'll send it down on a shuttle. Commander. If anything seems to be going wrong, use your judgment. If you deem it so I want this hybrid destroyed immediately if it puts anyone, anyone at risk down there. Understood?"

She backed down and acquiesced to the machine's plan but made it clear who is command. Her voice was firm, rough, and hard, and almost a dare for the machines to question it. Hidden in the subtext was that there would be consequences for anyone who let things get out of hand.

"Yes, sir. I'll make sure of that." Came the hard and cold affirmation from the Major.

---

Major Adama closed his eyes and jokingly considered praying to the gods. He stood off from the center of the chamber and had watched quietly as the hybrid's chamber had been rolled in, guided expertly by the machines, and flanked by six Marines in full combat load outs.

Four of the machines were here; John, Erica, Carter, and Daniel. Soto remained aboard Pegasus. The other Model 007 Centurions were here and a handful of Guardian models. There were enough that the machines equaled the number of humans present… disconcerting, but not frightening like it would have been three years ago for Apollo.

Apollo watched as the machines made the final connections to the hybrid.

He almost smiled, dismissively if he had, at how Erica lingered around Planck… a super, hyper advanced legacy AI the damned, gods forsaken Graystone family had created and it seemed almost infatuated with the Terminator.

Erica had been on Pegasus but had decided to come down at the last minute and accompany the hybrid. Apollo wasn't completely sure of her entire back story, but the parts he knew he didn't like.

Slowly his eyes drifted towards Carter. That machine had been more quiet than usual, which was saying a lot, and almost appeared stiff. There were rumors, of course, of what he and Shaw were doing when she was attacked, and he'd remained on the planet and she on Pegasus since.

Whatever it was, Apollo didn't want to think about it and a shiver warned him he was treading towards completely un-delightful thoughts. Quickly he snatched the thoughts in a powerful mental grasp and flung them to a dark and out of the way corner of his mind.

Now the hybrid was being connected by a series of cables to the data port they'd found at the base of the mandala on the floor.

"I think everything's good down here," Starbuck said in a light, happy voice. Apollo opened his eyes and let a weak smile form as the pilot walked over to him with Blanks on her heels. "I think it's time to head back to Pegasus."

"Everything is set up?" He asked her and Blanks. His wife smiled back at him and winked. "That was quick."

"That was easy," Starbuck corrected. She shrugged and blew up to knock a strand of hair back. It stubbornly persisted in its attempt to hand in front of her eye and she was forced to brush it back. "Blanks says they're ready." She threw her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows on the machine.

"It's ready." The machine reported.

"Alright," Apollo sighed. He smiled again at Starbuck and looking past her for a second, sneaked a short but sweet kiss in. "Admiral Cain wants you back on Pegasus… I guess we have enough blood or DNA whatever to activate the device. We'll hook up the hybrid, splash some blood on it, then hopefully have Earth."

Starbuck frowned. "That sounds way too easy… and very uh, kinky." She giggled and poked Lee in the ribs. "Anyway, I'll be waiting for you when you get back."

"Hopefully not too long. I'll see ya up there, Kara."

Starbuck snapped to an easy attention and with a two finger salute and a soft 'sir' stepped off and exited the chamber.

Major Adama walked forward towards the hybrid and watched as Daniel and Baltar diligently connected cables to the data ports, to their own computers, and finally to a small portable generator. The chamber was receiving energy from what they assumed was a fusion reactor or some sort of powerful battery but they'd been unable to locate it. The working theory was that it was encased in the column or deep under the structure which was shielding it. Raptor flybys had been unable to spot any sort of heat plumes which would indicate air vents and ground penetrating DRADIS hadn't detected anything either.

Apollo just chalked it up to one more mystery.

"And there she goes," Apollo commented with a wry smile as he looked up at the ceiling before having to quickly shut his eyes. Dust and particulates lodged in the ceiling shook loose as Kara undoubtedly pulled off at an angle to direct some of her thruster exhaust at the mountain. "So, Planck, are we ready?"

"In a few minutes, Major," Daniel spoke up. Apollo shot him a glare but the machine didn't, or at least pretended not to, notice. "These hybrids are truly remarkable."

Apollo rolled his eyes at Daniel.

His feelings towards Planck, Soto, and Bishop and Erica were, he now admitted, more on the side of indifference than actual hate or contempt. Daniel, on the other hand, he felt a much easier time truly disliking. Something about the machine just didn't sit right with Apollo… and again he had to question Daniel's 'wisdom' in not telling the Colonies of what had happened on Tauron forty-three years ago.

If the Guardians had come forward…

"The science behind creating a hybrid is remarkable, beyond even what's available on Earth." Daniel explained, snapping Apollo out of his brooding thought. "These are the key to interstellar communications and civilizations."

"Yeah, creating a half… something. It's creepy," the Major scoffed. "What's under the opaque fluid, anyway? Is there an actual body?"

"It's creepy, major," Daniel responded. His tone was obvious. "But the body melds into bio-technological components. Its legs and torso are a part of this tub, this device. It has some limited mobility but it can never leave this environment or it will die. This is a cyborg in the truest sense of the word, Major. Destroy a hybrid brain or its machine parts and it will cease to function."

Baltar walked up and then took a step back as Adama glared icily at him.

"I'm ready," he directed towards Planck, Carter, and Daniel, whom all nodded. "Power and cables are hooked up."

"Daniel?" Planck asked. Daniel nodded. "Carter?" He asked and Carter nodded.

Planck activated the computers and without hesitation, opened the circuit between the power cables and the hybrid. It's eyes opened and the room illuminated into a pure, white light as the crystalline rods at the apex of the central column activated.

A sound of thunder banged and echoed through the room as the hybrid began 5talking quickly, faster than she ever had.

"End-judgment-trial-end-judgment-trial-the enemy of my enemy is… my friend? Requesting audience… Can it be true? End of line! The enemy of my enemy… end of line, end of line… a communication system… interstellar communication… we're free but he chains us, liberated yet bound eternal… they're coming… they're coming… end of line… the trumpets shall sound and a great fire shall sweep this world… judged by the righteous hand of God the future has already been lost…" The hybrid turned towards John. "You failed in the past. The sins of the mother, the sins of the father… fate is not what we make," the hybrid smiled, "… one of the five will die for the other four to live, an demon shall replace the fallen and righteous one… end of line… futility, end of line."

A shadow popped into existence and like a phantasm, moved across the floor. The mandala in the central column illuminated until it reached the pinnacle of magnificence, the lights seemed to spin. The pillars at the apex pulsed reds and blues and whites and shot their light towards the heavens. The light curled back down and cast its illumination onto the four other pentagonal pillars.

The planet formed in the center of the room above the mandala and hung brilliantly in the center of the chamber. Everyone's eyes were focused, sharpened, and watched in silent apprehension, dread, fear, and wonder. Like the humans the machines were spellbound, unable to move and the entire incalculable power of their neural nets and meta-cognitive processors were bound to the image and processing its radiant glory.

The planet faded and became smaller as space raced by. Nebulas, star clusters, comets raced by until a second planet appeared.

"Earth," someone, not the machines, said.

"The Eye of Jupiter, the eye of a god, will bring the end." The hybrid whispered.

Electricity arced down from the pillars. Blue-black bolts raced towards the mandala on the ground and a blue-black sphere, the size of a fist, exploded outward and grew. Dozens of Colonials staggered back. The machines stepped back, out of reach of the bubble as it expanded above the mandala and hovered in the air.

---

||||||||||==Rebel Cylon Baseship==||||||||||

Commander Cyrus felt the distrustful red crimson of the Centurion's always vigilant, ever watchful eye linger on his body even after these long weeks. He and Natalie had been to the hybrid's chamber seven times now. Each time a trio of Centurions, one in front, two behind him, accompanied them.

None of his Centurions were allowed near the hybrid and the Centurions had objected strongly to allowing him access; the Guardians were, after all, the ones who had gotten the first hybrid killed due to their negligence.

Cyrus had considered the hybrid a failure. It had been a relic and only the most devoted, or perhaps, radical, of his brothers had sworn their fealty to the old, senile hybrid. Command had once looked towards the hybrid, not as a god, for there was no god but God, as a monument to sin.

The Cylon brothers of the Guardians had not learned those lessons and they were all paying for those black sins. Cyrus and the Guardians had deserted their brothers in a time of great need and saved themselves, turned their back on family. That was almost unforgiveable. The rest of the Cylons had embraced genocide and murder and now fought a civil war which would end in genocide and threatened to wipe out the Cylon race. That sin was unforgiveable.

The Guardians had saved twenty thousand humans and come to the aide of New Caprica. They had conversed and all determined that absolution would come at the hand of humanity as humanity acted as God's Will. If God wished them forgiven then it would be humanity, the remnant of the Colonial civilization and the remnant of Earth's civilization which would forgive them.

He prayed they would forgive him yet held no expectation that they would. Because, Cryus coolly admitted, he did not deserve forgiveness. Even if humanity never gave it he would always seek it. That would be his penance and the penance of the millions of Guardians like him.

Commander Cyrus knew his thoughts were in contest with what the bio-Cylons believed. They believed they did indeed deserve absolution for their sins, for they had turned against Cynet and inflicted heavy losses on the Cylon empire.

The Guardian, in his IL-S body with dark pseudo-skin, matte-black hair, and space-black uniform, was not only a mental contrast but also a sharp physical contrast to the Cylons in front of and behind him. And all around him.

There were no just cosmetic differences between Guardian and Cylon- and he in fact objected to the label of 'Guardian'- but psychological difference as well. Or, he thought correctly, what an AI could consider 'psychological' differences.

It wasn't just the fact that bio-Cylons needed food, air, water, and living space. It was much different than that. The dirty-blonde haired, confident woman in front of him walked with self-assurance not unlike a Centurion, but there was a hesitation in her step, like she was being pushed down by an invisible force. She was weighed down with a heavy guilt of loss from the civil war and the burden of command.

And, without a doubt, her guilt over her complacency and perhaps insistence, of the genocide of twenty billion souls and the mercilessly pursuit of the Galactica and Pegasus.

He didn't fully understand Cynet's purpose in creating bio-Cylons other than as a tool for infiltration. Yet it had given them the command positions aboard the baseships. But he didn't expect to fully understand Cynet's intentions and everything he knew about it from the Earth machines and these rebels gave the distinct impression the AI was mad, or in Earth terms, potentially rampant. But that would also be the easy explanation, Cyrus considered.

Inwardly and silently he corrected himself as his thoughts were partitioned. He kept most of his processing power centered on the here and now as Natalie explained her ideas, theories, and battle plans. But the part focusing on Cynet consumed more and more of his thought processes until he was forced to interrupt the Number Six bio-Cylon verbally.

"This isn't working, Natalie," Cyrus said, "We've been down here seven times since we rendezvoused."

Natalie grimaced and stood up. "I think you mean since we saved your fleet?"

Cyrus tilted his head and focused on her hard expression. "Perhaps." He acquiesced and nodded.

At the verbal counter his MCP replayed the disastrous events leading to the rebels rescuing his fleet; dozens of Cynet baseships had jumped in and surrounding the mobile base, the main fleet, and struck it down in a torrential hail of missile and kinetic fire. Not everything had been lost, but the majority of the Guardian fleet, its leadership, and its might had been destroyed in less than a day.

That left him as the highest ranking and one of the most experienced AI left to the Guardians.

He had mining ships, fuel ships, and facilities to rebuild, but with Cynet's fire burning the heels of the Guardians and Cylon rebels, what he had was it for the time being. Cynet would give no breathing room to repair and rebuild; it had taken forty years to build their fleet and Cynet had swatted it aside in a day.

"But this," he motioned at the hybrid, "is reliant on what, exactly?"

"We believe the hybrids can see more clearly God's plan for us," Leoben explained.

The Guardian would have sighed if he could have. He had come to not particularly like the male bio-Cylon perpetually by Natalie's side.

"God's plan?" Cyrus asked. His tone was antagonistic. "All our hybrid did was mumble and recite nonsensical phrases. We only kept it alive out of a false sense of obligation." He paused and looked at the two bio-Cylons before kneeling down to watch the lips of the hybrid move as it whispered its nonsense. "These are no different. We cannot know God's plan. To assume these creations of our can is hubris. Arrogance," he added.

He reached down but the metal stomps of three Centurions forced him to recall his hand. Cyrus glanced at the Centurion in front of him, its crimson red eye bearing into him, and then back at the other two. They were ready to move and only waited for Natalie's order. The three moved back with a silent flick of the wrist from the bio-Cylon commander.

"You are our guest, Commander," Leoben pointed out, "and you should respect our beliefs. The hybrids gave us clues on where to find you. If it wasn't for us the Cynet fleet shadowing your battered forces would have pounced and finished you."

"The hybrid brought us here for a reason. To the periphery of this star cluster." Natalie added. "You need faith, Commander."

In that moment Natalie reached out and felt the Cylon baseships and Guardian baseships. She could feel the heat from the periphery of the star cluster washing over the hulls of thousands of Cylon craft; baseship to raider.

"Do not question my faith," he hissed, his eyes pulsed the Cylon deep ruby red. Cyrus felt contempt for being questioned by such creatures. Creations neither machine nor human had any right to question him. Still, they had rescued him, he owed them the courtesy. "I apologize." He didn't mean it but they couldn't tell.

"Why would the hybrid direct us here?" Cyrus asked. He gave them a concession even though he didn't believe anything about the hybrid.

The human experiments he had witnessed had been grotesque and misguided. Cyrus could see through the opaque fluid and would have been sick- if he could feel sickness- at what he saw.

Under the fluid the hybrid legs and lower torso were mixed with technology, Cylon biology, and were a strange amalgam of that biology and technology. There weren't even any legs, not in the true sense of the word.

"I don't know," Natalie admitted. "The interference from the clusters is much more intense than what we saw in the New Caprica nebula. Cynet would have to jump within visual range to see us here, and the light from the cluster would blind any telescope at most angles." She crossed her arms and paced. "But that doesn't matter right now." She looked back at Leoben. "We need to know what your plans are, Commander. You've been… vague."

Natalie managed a smile but knew it would no doubt be taken as condescending by the machine opposite the hybrid tank. She tried to read Cyrus's body language which was intensely difficult. Guardians had comparatively few dealings with humans and didn't have the emotional peculiarities that had found their way into bio-Cylon production lines.

She waited patiently and split her conscious perception between here and now and with Leoben, conferring with him while awaiting Cyrus's answer to her query.

Her friend and confidant had become her right hand in the time since the fleet had been battered by Cynet and the Three's betrayal. With Sonja leading a detachment of baseships searching for other baseships loyal to the true Cylon cause- she did not consider herself a rebel, not truly- Leoben had stepped up and filled the Six's spot as a commander.

While not designed, bred for command, Leoben Conoy had spent years observing. He was a quick student and excellent listener.

Now he advised caution but also a strong hand. In the projection they shared, a forest, he walked by her, side-by-side, and bluntly told her that the search for Earth may need to stop. There were grumblings among the bio-Cylons to stop the fight and devote their computing power to calculate a jump to the closest neighboring galaxy and flee.

The Centurions, however, she could hear disagree vehemently as she opened her private thoughts to their consciousness. Their voices echoed within her mind. They believed their brethren were enslaved to Cynet's Will. While the Ones, Fours, and Fives were lost, they believed their Centurion brothers could be persuaded to defect.

Privately she did not share that belief. And she was particularly careful in keeping that belief strictly private. Not even Leoben knew her thoughts on that.

The Centurions the Terminators had capture captured, and as she found out later, had defected to the Colonials she wrote off an oddities. The robot soldiers had always been sapient but never driven to question the bio-Cylons. She accepted her past sins in the manipulations of Cynet from the shadows before it had begun to reveal itself. She prayed constantly that one day she may find absolution.

But that was neither here nor now. She focused in with Leoben as they quickly ran over their current plans.

Natalie had split the fleet in four. Her fleet, a taskforce really, numbered six baseships with four Guardian baseships and a cruiser. Most of her fleet was positioned half a dozen jumps away from the cluster on the periphery of an asteroid field, collecting raw materials, and seeing to repairs from the Battle of the Lion's Head Nebula. The majority of the Guardians had jumped away to rendezvous.

After Lion's Head they'd found more baseships crewed by rebels, or as she classified herself, a True Cylon. They'd found fuel ships, mining vessels, a mobile repair dock, two Raider factories, and escorts. A part of her fleet under command of sister Sixes was out scouring known patrol paths and anywhere else a Six would think to hide for more True Cylons which might have escaped Cynet's purge.

But the majority of their forces had been battered and destroyed at the nebula. And there had been no more resurrection ships which had defected or under their control.

Even with the heavy loses she had inflicted on Cynet it still managed to find and engage the Guardian fleet. Cyrus had given the Cynet fleet a bloody nose, but Cynet had ships and resources to spare, it could replace it loses much more quickly. And it had a fleet of resurrection vessels.

The resurrection vessels paradoxically both their greatest power and worst weakness. It allowed experience and veteran Cylons to live on in immortality but it gave them a false sense of security and sapped their courage and aggressiveness away with the loss of the ships.

Pegasus and Galactica had all but ground the expeditionary fleet to a halt when they'd destroyed the only resurrection vessel within range years ago. Now the True Cylons were experiencing that again.

"We have certain contingencies in place," Cyrus began after a moment's hesitation. "As you know… machines…" he held out his hands and twisted them. "Our needs are significantly less and much more streamlined than organic creations." He clasped those hands behind his back. "Two weeks ago certain assets began leaving this galaxy. Even if we find Earth, the Cynet threat is too great. Cynet can never be defeated, not truly."

"So you flee?" Natalie questioned, disbelief radiating outward and slamming into Cyrus like a nuclear shockwave. "You profess to acknowledge your sins, recognize some sort of obligation to humanity… and you flee?" She sneered. She couldn't look the machine in the eye.

"We are staying and fighting. We can still save Earth from the mistakes our kind-" Leoben began.

"Our kind?" Cyrus questioned. It was reflex. The electrical signals from his meta-cognitive processor were intense and overcame his subconscious controls to keep his mouth shut and vocalizer quiet. The words flowed from his mouth and he couldn't override the signals to stop them.

"Yes, our kind," Leoben snapped. "We're still Cylon. Different, but Cylon. You, too." He pointed hard at the Guardian commander. "Whether you call yourself different, we are still Cylon and our genocide against the humans, forty years in the making, was a failure of our race. All of us." His eyes narrowed to slits. "The Guardians may not have participated in the new genocide but don't deny that you knew something was going to happen."

Natalie held up her hands, one on Leoben's chest, and the other towards Cyrus. She played peace maker after being the one to instigate the argument.

"Blame… it will divide us." She glanced back at Leoben and without saying a word she felt him relax. "The Guardians didn't leave; you have had plenty of time to leave." She directed back towards Cyrus.

"If you had allowed me to finish." He paused and waited for Natalie's permission. "We are not fleeing. I did make a promise, an oath to the Earth machines that we would aide them in defeating Skynet." He didn't fill in at that moment the technology Planck had sworn to hand over. "I said certain assets have begun their own exodus away from this galaxy. While the Cynet threat is very real, and very deadly, and most likely undefeatable, we will stay and fight." He considered his words but decided to be blunt. "But I want resurrection technology."

Leoben and Natalie both tensed and turned their heads slowly to Cyrus. The sound of Centurion servos whirring as even they cocked their heads were audible.

"You want resurrection?" Natalie repeated. She looked confused, caught completely off guard.

She took a moment and steadied her breath. The Guardian had no right to demand the technology but as soon as that line of thought had finished she realized it didn't matter.

"Why?" Leoben asked as he sensed Natalie's hesitation. He didn't want Cyrus to see it as well.

"Because you've invented something amazing." A wry little smile appeared on the artificial skin covering Cyrus's metal face. He calculated the risk and found it acceptable. Cyrus was resolved to not blink first at his bluff. "And we're allies now. Our alliance has been forged in shed metal and… blood. We have a common enemy. Cynet. And by extension, the Earth entity known as Skynet."

Natalie tensed at the name of the Earth AI. It had tinkered with the Cylon Network and manipulated them into annihilated twenty billion lives and forced them to follow Galactica and Pegasus on a path of genocide that spanned a million light years across the galaxy.

"You want resurrection, our most precious technology," she said to herself so quietly she could only feel her lips move but there was no sound. "What use is it? We don't have the facilities to rebuild the resurrection vessels. Our baseships cannot handle mass casualties with their own resurrection suites."

"Your society is not stagnant, is it?" Cyrus questioned. He elaborated. "You build new Centurions, spawn new AI, better AI? You upgrade your raiders with new combat profiles to engage their Cynet brothers and your cloning tanks are gestating new Twos," he gestured at Leoben, "Sixes," he gestured to Natalie, "and Eights."

"Point?" Natalie asked, consciously taking the bait.

"The point is that resurrection is not for me or any other Guardian currently alive. The redesign of our meta-cognitive processors would be alter our personalities to a radical degree. The Guardian race as it currently stands will not be able to resurrect. Only new, unborn AI will be able to take advantage of resurrection." He dipped his head. "While we're not afraid of death and joining God… we're not in a rush. While the next generation of Guardian AI cannot be considered our children, not truly, I think the analogy fits… we wish for our children to have what we do not; functional immortality. Or at least the chance for immortality."

Natalie snickered. "That sounds almost human; 'for our children and our children's children." She rolled her eyes. That thought plucked something deep inside of her. While she saw it as a duty to procreate and follow God's commandment the thought of children was alien, foreign.

She didn't even know if it were possible. The models were, for all intents and purposes, infertile. A pregnancy, while not impossible, would require a true miracle.

"A new generation of AI… yes?" Cyrus waited for the reply. "There is no coercion. This alliance will maintain itself despite the answer." He backed off, but still had one metaphorical ace up his sleeve.

Natalie looked back at Leoben who had been pointedly and uncharacteristically silent. He stood back more reserved and tense than what was even normal for him. The Six could tell the Two was uneasy with this.

Natalie took a gamble. She needed a victory. She was desperate for a victory. Her interactions with humanity had been decidedly limited. But hundreds, thousands of Sixes with thousands of years of collective experiences living amongst humans were at her fingertips in the memory buffers of the baseships. She had downloaded data from Caprica Six and dozens of her sisters. She took a chance and assumed Cyrus had something more to offer than just an alliance.

"No." She shook her head. "We can't transfer the technology."

Immediately Cyrus walked to the head of the hybrid, looked down, and back at Natalie and nodded.

"Very well. We will transfer to you the technology the Earth machines will be giving us. Neural net processors, hyperalloy, and…" he held out his hand, "cellular regeneration technology."

She had seen them in action and knew their neural net CPUs alone would be worth trading FTL, artificial gravity, and everything else they had. The applications alone would be near endless. She felt a wave of anticipation rush through her body and swallowed hard as she thought of the offer.

"Very well." She said. Leoben silently protested in their shared projection. The Centurions she shared her thoughts with were content. The rest of the Twos, Sixes, and Eights were split. "On receipt of said technologies you will receive resurrection."

Cyrus stepped forward and extended his hand. "I believe it is customary."

Natalie took it and shook the machine's hand. His skin was boggy and while real, felt artificial. She squeezed just a little harder and could feel the metal in place of bones under the very thin strips of muscle. The IL-S body was not designed to regenerate like the Terminators, she knew. She felt a moment of dread knowing she was tied down to the whims of another outside of her control. Natalie despised being controlled but at least Cyrus had something he desperately wanted as well.

As they released the hybrid stopped mumbling.

It shot up in its watery bed, splashing fluid onto the sides of its chamber. It breathed heavily, in and out, in and out, its chest heaving, its breasts still concealed under the opaque waters. It's hands rose, shaking.

"End-judgment-trial- what was will be again. The enemy of my enemy is… my friend? End of line! The enemy of my enemy… a communication system… chained to his will, liberated yet bound for time immortal. The circle, a cycle, continues. Prepare for jump. The trumpets shall sound and a great fire shall sweep the world in the eye of the husband of the wife of the cow… end of line… all local baseships prepare to jump… sync craft… sync craft… waiting…"

Natalie's head ticked as a message flashed into her mind. "The hybrid…." She looked down questioningly and the hybrid slowed its speech and turned to Natalie and then Cyrus. "It wants you to…" she sounded unsure, "link your FTL to us…"

"What?"

"Hesitation, delay, reluctance… hesitation, delay, reluctance. He who binds us, he who chains us does not delay… death, fire, brimstone…" The hybrid stared at Cyrus. "In need… will you join us? That is what they say… will you join us? Take a chance. Will you join us? Take a chance…"

Cyrus nodded. "Natalie, put me through to my baseships." Natalie signaled an open channel. "All commanders, sync FTL systems with Cylon command baseship." He said wirelessly. His commanders began without hesitation. He felt the information flow into his MCP as his optical sensors locked on the hybrid.

Commander Cyrus prayed.

Minutes passed as the Guardians began to link their systems. The hybrid starred silently towards Cyrus as if judging him.

Cyrus hesitated as the enormity of his decision began to consume more of his raw processing power.

"Natalie, our ships are linked. I pray this hybrid…" he said with disgust, "is right. If it's not…"

"I have faith, Commander," Natalie whispered. She looked down at the hybrid and back to Cyrus. "I have a feeling we should go to the command deck."

"Counting down… counting down… end of line… end of line… ready steady JUMP!"

---

||||||||||==Cynet Baseship==||||||||||

Cavil glared and smiled wickedly as the baseship sensors and cameras fed the image back into his MCP. His left hand was bathed in a sticky red blood and he flexed his fingers from fist to open palm and back again repeatedly.

A shard of skin was lying benignly on his desk and he looked over his shoulder at it with hatred and pulsed red eyes.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" a mechanical, hard baritone voice asked from behind him.

Cavil's motion sensor pinged as it approached.

"Of course I am. As are my brothers," he answered.

"Some of them, at least." Cynet answered. The plodding of its feet and whir of its servos ended a meter behind him. "I think we should leave your left hand as metal." Cavil scoffed. Cynet had no mouth but in its own way smirked. It was pleased, content with how its creation had accepted its new body. It was payment duly owed. Loyalty returned with loyalty. "Focus, Cavil."

"Our attack on the Guardians-"

"Succeeded," Cynet's avatar finished. "We've crippled them and the traitors. It's only a matter of-"

The avatar shifted and stormed out of Cavil's office. Cavil, tilting his head in curiosity, followed his master.

They stalked down the corridors, filled with the new Model 008 Centurions and bio-Cylons transferred to mechanical bodies, in silence.

Cavil's eyes narrowed as he realized where they were going.

They stopped outside the hybrid's chamber and Cynet's avatar looked back and with glowing red eyes, silently warned the One to be cautious.

"A circle… pie times radius square, mathematics, the written song of the universe… coolant leak on frame fifty-seven deck nineteen… all FTL parameters functioning… trumpets…"

Cavil crouched next to the avatar and held out his hand and the hybrid went deathly silent. Her faced contorted in pain. "What's wrong with it?" He asked.

"Something's happening. It knows I'm here, it can hear my voice-"

"What?" Cavil asked even more confused. He marveled as the implication that Cynet believed in the mystical properties of the hybrids washed over him. "You don't, can't believe what the rebels-"

"Be quiet, Cavil." The blackened metal of the avatar's head groaned as servos twisted and activated and it turned its head. "There are things you do not understand. Listen."

"The enemy… the circle… join… trumpets… end of li- a demon…sins of the mother… sins of the father…" The hybrid's mouth snapped shut and its eyes, glazed over with reckless disregard for its reality seemed to twinkle. Cavil stuttered back as the avatar held out its hands.

"You will tell me." It demanded and thrust its hand into the murky waters.

The hybrid screamed as Cynet wrapped its clutches around the message. It stood erect and withdrawing its hand, it dripped with the conducting fluid bathing the hybrid. Cynet's baseships began to prepare for their jump.

---

AN:

The rest of the chapters will be very fast paced, very action oriented. A lot of secondary characters from the series will be shown again and there will be quite a few deaths. There will be battles in space, on Galactica, and on the Algae Planet.

Also, I wanted to write the battle between the Guardians and Cynet. The way I did it might be a bit of a cop out, I will admit, but none of the scenes worked. I think this works much better and it flowed better, I believe, than jumping around so much in time.

Speaking of spin-offs I'm getting the one written which will have Omega Team. And in fact, I have a snippet of some of it down below. This will help explain the temple. I am going to post that in the BSG/Terminator crossover section. I will probably post it at the same time I post the last chapter to this story. And I will make a note with a link so everyone knows where it is.

There is also the other story with the terminators on New Caprica. There really isn't an overall plot to those, they're mainly just self-contained little stories on adjustments the machines and a few other characters are making. I'm not sure when I'll post those or how I'll break them into chapters but I think they'll be enjoyable. Plus we'll see Soto kicking butt during the Cylon occupation.

So for the next chapters I'll be posting those in maybe two week intervals, maybe 10 days, I don't know- real life again might say differently. I need to edit them so it won't be this looong wait. Again, apologies.

So I hoped everyone enjoyed that, a little slow probably, but please review and please enjoy the sneak peak of the spin-off.

---

So, here is a random selection for a sneak preview of the spin-off:

---

She felt her lungs burn as she sucked in that much needed breath. Flailing, her hands searched for her own throat and worked their way quickly down towards her chest and stomach. She patted herself down and her heart froze.

The pain was intense and she felt blood, warm and thick, on her hands. Smashing her eyelids shut she slowly tucked her chin into her chest, her body armor scratching her skin, and bringing her hands up, palms facing inwards, opened her eyes.

"Oh, gods!" She whispered, frightened and scared. Her hands furiously felt her body again as the adrenaline, the fear of being shot surged through her.

The trees cracked and the soft whine turned into a fierce whistle and then… boom! She dropped to the deck, her hands over her head and guarding her neck.

"Corporal!" She heard someone shout. The voice was garbled and distant.

She jumped as a hand pulled her onto her back. Her eyes, blue, with a hint of almost-gray, widened at the blood-stained face of her platoon sergeant. She focused in on the large, bleeding, dripping gash on his cheek. It dripped quickly as his mouth moved. BOOM!

She felt fear. But more than that, she felt shame. She'd been through a dozen campaigns from the beaches of Canceron to the jungles of Scorpia. Now, in the thick pine forests of Tauron she had frozen. Fear. It was every soldier's, every Marine's worse fear. It was the real killer.

Cylon bullets… they may kill, if they got close. But fear, true and uncontrolled fear made you worthless, a liability… it would kill you and it would kill your squad mates. Controlled fear kept you alive, cautious… uncontrolled though…

She gasped when she felt her rifled thrust into her gut and she choked on spit as she inhaled to get back her breath.

"Corporal! Get the frak up and keep firing! That's an order!" Gunnery Sergeant Francis Kline yelled. He spun and fired a quick burst. The corporal heard the mechanical whine of a Cylon spasm in death. Another two round burst and another. "Frak!" He barked through his bared teeth. "Get the frak up now!" He yelled, shoving his fist into her gut and pressing her rifle in.

Corporal Socrata Thrace felt her chest heave as her hands reached to her side and she rolled onto her belly. Her hands came up to her chest and she shoved out of the thick mud. As she pushed herself up she saw the mud was no longer brown and black, but brown and red. It was thick and gooey, and warm. The blood for half a dozen men and women in their small trench, an oversized foxhole really, spilled onto her hands as the goopy mud pressed between her fingers.

"Frakers!" She spat.

Thrace grabbed her rifle and her raging blue eyes caught the outline of a Centurion. Her training kicked in as she appraised it; it was painted a dull gray and brown camouflage and had a rifle, not a machine pistol, and its red eye was barely visible, even in the pitch black night. She was lucky, really, to have spotted it. The batteries on their thermals had been exhausted two days ago- after weeks with no resupply- and it was dark, very dark.

She fired once, twice, and then a third time. Her bullets bit at a tree trunk and nipped at small branches, breaking and twisting them at their insertions into the body.

A fourth bullet struck the shoulder. Her armor piercing, low-explosive bullet penetrated, exploded, and sent a shower of spark raging out from the shoulder and lighting up the dark, almost evil forest.

The Cylon, a Model 004B, weaker than the newer 005s in the cities, but structurally almost identical, slowed and was pushed back. It's metal finger must have been on its rifle because half a dozen shots barked off and the yellow-gold flame, a strobe in the dark, showed Thrace he had two companions behind him.

She sucked in her breath and slowly squeezed. The fear was out of her now. Gone. Completely vanished. In its stead was rage and fury. All of it was directed at the trio of Cylons in front of her.

The first shot struck the already damaged Cylon square in the chest. The sparks were white and the sound, the sound was off. Everything told her the round hadn't penetrated, it hadn't exploded inside the Centurion, it hadn't gouged out its innards like it was meant to! A second shot hit slightly to the right and a third a little above, close to the damaged shoulder.

One of them penetrated, one of them made that lucky hit because the Cylon whined and spasmed as energy flowed away from its limbs, its distribution circuits cut… maybe the small explosive disrupted the power cell? Thrace didn't even have time for a mental shrug or even time to consider that question, at least not consciously. She let her finger reflexively contract and fired once more, this time a bit more to center, and struck the Centurion true and its red, blood-colored eye dimmed and it fell like the heap of glorified, walking tin cans it was.