Chapter 9

Truce

Following cessation of hostilities, the President and other members of government were criticized by a vocal minority for waiting as long as they did to negotiate. Most of these critics were unwilling to concede that the Cylons had not made an offer of peace prior to that point.

-Bartell, History of the Second Cylon War

.

What Laura Roslin hated most about being underground was that she had to look at one of the twenty-four hour digital clocks to know whether it was night or day. Eighteen years earlier Bill Adama had told her that being on a battlestar in deep space was the same way…that you observed night and day by the clock only.

The President, his staff, his Cabinet and some of his advisors were sequestered in a multi-level bunker deep under Caprica City. The main entrance was disguised in an old hotel near the historic district of the city not far from her apartment.

Laura had a small three-bedroom suite on the fourteenth level down in the bunker. With her were Billy Keikeya and her secretary, Adele. The rest of the President's Cabinet had families who were occupying their suites. Their staffs were housed on higher levels of the bunker in dormitories. On the first and second levels were their Marine guards.

In the absence of a family, Laura saw no reason that her other two small but nice bedrooms should stand empty. Perhaps it was selfish on her part, but she wanted company as they all waited. They had been underground for four days since the first intercepted communication between the basestars.

There were update meetings every three hours from 7:00 each morning until 10:00 at night with the understanding that one could be called at any time of the day or night. The updates on the third day of fighting were progressively worse. The battlestars were taking heavy losses of their Vipers to Cylon Raiders. So far the basestars had not engaged any of them directly, but stood back waiting, launching wave after seemingly endless wave of Raiders.

The Colonial losses hadn't been limited to their Air Fleet either. The Cylons had launched Raiders that carried missiles with conventional warheads against all of the major cities. Vipers and other fighters had converged on the Raiders headed for Caprica City and Delphi, and very few had gotten through, but the large industrial cities to the north, Antioch, Sovana and Kinsdale, had suffered much worse damage.

It was almost too much to comprehend as news footage gradually became available showing the destruction.

Billy came out of his bedroom. Laura had finally convinced him he could stop dressing in a shirt and tie. Still, he had on a nice pair of charcoal gray slacks and a light blue sweater over his pin-stripe shirt. He looked causal, but very polished. She knew he was having a hard time, however. His parents had moved to Picon less than six months ago. Her secretary was struggling, too. Even though she was a widow, she had children and grandchildren on Gemenon and Aerilon.

"Good morning, Billy." Laura said as she noticed the dark circles under his eyes. "Did you sleep at all?"

"A few hours. What was the news in the 7:00 meeting this morning?"

"Not much change. The fighting continues. So far the government buildings in Caprica City are untouched, but more of the outlying precincts have been bombed. The Agios water desalination plant was damaged. The President plans to announce water restrictions later today as soon as plant managers can give him some better capacity figures." She looked at her notes. "The Verona shipyards suffered minor damage, which is not relevant right now since shipping is at a standstill. The worst is that our battlestars are reporting heavy losses of their Vipers. They're all that's keeping those Raiders off us…that and the Vipers and other fighters from the airbase."

"What does the President say about some kind of negotiations?"

Laura had told him that negotiating with the Cylons had been discussed for the first time in the 10:00 meeting the previous night.

"If they make a reasonable offer he's for it. The rest of the Cabinet and Quorum is split about fifty-fifty."

"Do you really think we should negotiate with them?"

"I feel that we should at least listen to what they have to say. Until I know their conditions, I'm not going to say whether we should surrender or keep fighting. They've given us twenty-four hours to make a decision to either listen to their demands or not. We're going to vote at the 10:00 meeting. The President has asked for some hard facts before we do. They're being prepared right now."

"You would negotiate with robots who have wiped out nine-tenths of the human race?"

"My concern right now is the one-tenth of us who are still alive. It may be that we choose extermination rather than capitulation, but until I know what they're offering, I'll keep some hope that I can live with their terms. Life is hope, Billy. We've come through some dark times before in our history. I can't bring myself to give up on us yet."

Billy was obviously thinking about what she said when he went over to the small table on one side of the sitting room and poured a cup of coffee. Finally he turned around. "Would you like a refill?"

"Yes, please." She knew that was his way of telling her he was considering her position even if he didn't agree with her.

He brought the pot over and filled her cup. "Where's Adele?"

"She went up to talk to a friend of hers in the dormitory. She's having a very difficult time."

"I know." Billy took the pot back over to the table and brought her a couple of the small plastic containers of cream. "Her youngest grandson on Gemenon was only six weeks old. She hadn't even seen him yet, just some digital pictures."

Laura sighed as she stirred the cream into her coffee. For the first time in her life she was glad that she didn't have any family to mourn or worry about. Both of her parents and her brother had been dead for ten years, killed by a suicide bomber on Tauron while her father was stationed there as Ambassador, killed so needlessly by a misguided man who objected to what the tylium mining consortiums were doing with their mining operations in the northern regions of the planet.

Her father had been attempting to broker a peace between the natives who felt they had been displaced from land they had occupied for centuries and the tylium miners. She had never been able to bring herself to read the official report of the incident, but she understood that they were very close to achieving a resolution when her father had been killed as he and her mother and brother were leaving a restaurant.

Marines had to be brought in to restore order in the wave of violence that had followed. The Marines had still been on Tauron ten years later when the Cylon attack began. The suicide bombings had never stopped despite the fact that the natives and the miners had eventually reached an agreement. Violence begats violence. Wasn't it her father who had once said that to her? The avenged becomes father to the avenger and the violence spreads, the cycle repeats. The Cylons had ended the violence forever now on Tauron. Is this what it took for humanity to learn? Near annihilation?

Laura had been twenty-six years old when her family had died, not much older than Billy was now, but she still remembered the mind-numbing grief she had experienced during those first weeks and months after their deaths. She had never felt as alone as she had when the reality of their loss had finally sunk in. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she had made such a misguided marriage two years after their deaths…because she was so tired of feeling alone.

Billy finished his cup of coffee. "I'm going up to the cafeteria and see if there's any breakfast left if that's all right with you."

"Of course. I'll be here until the 10:00 meeting."

After he left, she leaned her head back on the cushions of the couch and thought once again of the strange dream she had the previous night. She was dressed in an evening gown of iridescent blue and she was in Bill Adama's arms dancing to soft, slow music. The occasion was a mystery. That was the only part of the dream she could remember.

She hadn't seen Bill in person in eighteen years. She had kept up with his career, though. She had seen the pictures and read the announcements as he was promoted through the ranks, finally two years ago at the age of forty to commander of the battlestar Galactica, one of the youngest commanders in history.

To Laura, however, Bill was still the young lieutenant who had taken her to the debutante dance and who later that autumn had been the first man to make love to her. Now she wondered as she had so many times before if she had ever really loved another man, wondered if she would ever be able to love anyone else the way she had loved him.

Was there a man out there anywhere who could take Bill's place in her heart when no one in eighteen years had been able to do so? Could the reason no one had supplanted Bill be that she just refused to let go of him? Could it be her own stubbornness that was keeping her from finding love again? Was it simply easier and safer to hold on to a long-dead dream than to take another chance with her heart?

She closed her eyes. How many times would she revisit the past before it lost its power over her?

...

The first time he kissed her was during the last dance on the night of her debut into society. The lights were low, her parents already gone to see about the car. The feeling she had earlier in the evening, the hot spark that had flared between them had gotten stronger.

Finally, as other couples around them danced tightly against one another, Bill did it. He pulled her to him and kissed her, gently at first, but as the kiss claimed them both, it got deeper. There was never any awkwardness between them. It was like they had been born knowing how to kiss each other. They stopped dancing as she felt the desire that had been a tight knot in the pit of her stomach all evening begin to spread, to quicken her pulse and her breathing.

He felt it, too, the same desire that was claiming her. She had no doubt about that whatsoever. Finally he pulled back from the kiss and whispered against her ear, "If I call you, will you go out with me?"

She nodded and breathed, "Yes."

They saw each other every weekend until he finished flight school six weeks later. The next week he would be stationed on a battlestar and would be fighting Cylons. She was already at Caprica University.

Could you fall in love that fast? Could you fall in love after only half a dozen dates and a dozen late night telephone conversations? Could you really? The answer had to be yes, since that's what had happened to her.

For their last Saturday together before he left, he took her to a park outside the city. They rented a small sailboat and sailed out to the island in the middle of the lake. She'd taken the leftover sandwiches from a tea her mother had that morning and he'd brought a bottle of wine. They'd docked the sailboat and wandered along the shore until they found a secluded spot.

He spread a blanket. They ate the sandwiches and drank the whole bottle of wine. Both of them knew what was going to happen. They took their time. She was ready when it finally happened, but it still hurt. She barely made a sound, but he realized right away.

He put his mouth against her ear and said softly, "You should have told me."

She just shook her head because she didn't trust her voice at the moment.

Later when he was holding her, he apologized for hurting her. She told him it was all right. That she was okay.

Finally he said, "I can't believe I'm the one you chose to be the first."

She tried for something witty, but nothing came into her mind so she simply told him the truth. "I knew the night of the dance it was going to be you."

"We're so different. Do you think this thing with us stands a chance?"

"If we want it to. I do. Do you?"

"You know I do. But I'm not going to ask you to wait for me. I want you to enjoy the University. Go out and have fun. There's still a war going on. I might not come back."

"You will come back. And I'll wait for you."

She wrote to him at least once every week. He wrote to her, not nearly as often, but she understood. He never wrote about his missions or the friends he lost. Mostly he wrote about his childhood, sharing little slices of a life she knew he cherished. She wrote to him about campus life, about being elected to the Freshman Council, about being the Freshman Homecoming Representative and about the occasional embassy party her parents still liked for her to attend. She tried to put some humor into her letters. She felt like he needed it.

They saw each other once during the late winter when he was back on a two-day leave. He was different. Combat and seeing death had affected him in ways she struggled to understand. He didn't want to talk, just wanted to spend the time in her arms. She did something she had never done before. She cut her classes to be with him. He didn't mention the future at all.

The next time she saw him the war was over. The Cylons had withdrawn after years of fighting, left to find a homeworld of their own, or so everyone thought at the time. She was home from the University for the summer. As soon as he got off the transport at the airbase, he came straight to her house. No one else was home and foolishly, she later realized, very foolishly, she took Bill upstairs to her room.

Their lovemaking was intense and incredible, as passionate as she knew it could be. For the first time he told her that he loved her and wanted her to marry him. She said yes an told him how much she loved him, too.

They began making love again. He finally pulled her down to him, kissed her mouth and moved to the spot on her neck that was so sensitive. It was the most amazingly wonderful feeling. To feel this with someone you loved the way she loved him. In retrospect she realized that they were probably both a lot noisier than they thought.

That's the only reason her mother, who had just come home and was on her way down the hall, would have opened the door.

She immediately called Laura's father. Nothing was wonderful after that.

Laura tried to get Bill to leave. She told him she could handle her parents, but he stayed and faced them with her.

The disappointment in her father's eyes was harder to take than her mother's tears. Laura had never told either of them that she had even seen Bill after the debutante dance. She was just stubborn enough that she didn't want her father to know she had fallen for his choice of an escort, the pilot she had initially scorned.

She stood up to her father, though, with what she imagined was a certain amount of defiance in her eyes, even when he turned on her in fury.

"Gods damn it, Laura, is this the way your mother and I raised you to behave? To disgrace us both in our own home? To behave like…like…" Apparently he couldn't think of a term that described exactly how he thought she had behaved. At least not one he could bring himself to say.

"I love him," Laura said quietly yet with conviction.

"Love?" her father's voice was incredulous. "Is that what you call it? What you were doing up there in your room is not love. It's…copulating. Like animals."

"That's not true, sir." Bill said.

Her father turned on him. "You stay out of this. I'll deal with you in a minute."

"No, sir. You're blaming the wrong person. What happened up in her room was my fault, not hers."

"While it's admirable of you to try to take the blame, the fault is clearly hers. It was her room, her bed, she was…she was…" Again her father stopped. Laura dropped her gaze and tried to imagine what he was unable to say. Naked? Noisy? What had her mother told him?

Bill broke the silence. "I love her. I want to marry her."

"All things considered you might think that's the right thing to do, but it won't happen. You're a pilot. My daughter will not marry someone who will drag her all over the Colonies from military base to military base, leaving her alone for long stretches to serve on battlestars. She deserves a better life."

"Shouldn't that be her decision?"

"She isn't mature enough yet to make a decision like that. Now leave. I don't want to find out you've come around my daughter again. She has a future. If I find out you've tried to see her, I'll cut her off without a cent…no more education, no benefit of the connections I can provide her in a career, nothing. You persist in this and she pays the price. Do I make myself clear?"

For a terrible moment Laura thought Bill was going to hit her father. Finally he said, "So I was good enough to escort her to a dance, but I'm not good enough to marry her."

Her father's tone softened. "I'm sure you're a fine young man, Lieutenant Adama. You're just not the man for my daughter."

Laura put her hand on Bill's arm and whispered, "Please leave. Give me a chance to talk to him. He'll calm down. I know him. Don't push this now. It's not the right time. Please."

Bill looked at her. "Leave with me right now. We can make it together without him or his money or the future he has planned for you. We can make it. Come on. I love you. If you love me, let's just go." He took her hand.

"I'd advise you to think very carefully, Laura, before you make your next move," her father said.

She hesitated. To give up everything she had dreamed of, her education, her family, her future career because she loved Bill Adama. Could she do it? Could she be happy being dragged around the Colonies from base to base, being left alone for long stretches while he served on battlestars? And something her father hadn't mentioned, to raise their children by herself?

Bill read her hesitation for exactly what it was.

She saw the pain in his eyes as he pulled away from her. "Have a good life, Laura, a good future. I wish you the best."

Thirty seconds later the front door slammed. He was gone.

For nearly a month she called him numerous times and he hung up on her each time. She wrote him letters pouring out her heart to him, none of which he acknowledged.

It was only years later that she realized that might have been the only way he could be sure her father wouldn't carry through with his threat to stop supporting her education and her career. At the time the thought never crossed her mind. She saw only Bill's wounded pride in his silence, not his love for her.

Three months later her father made a point of telling her that Bill Adama had gotten married. "And you thought he loved you," he said as he opened the evening paper. "You're far too naïve, Laura. Love had nothing to do with what he was getting from you. One day you'll thank me."

For a few dark moments she hated her father, hated him because he was probably right. Three months. Three months was all it had taken Bill Adama to replace her, to fall in love and marry another woman.

She learned one thing in the months to come. Young hopes and dreams can die a very painful death.

She had her education now and her career. Her father probably never dreamed on the day that Bill Adama had forced her to choose which path she would follow that she would one day serve on the President's Cabinet, that she would stand on an equal footing with dignitaries throughout the Colonies and have a career every bit as illustrious as that of a Colonial Ambassador.

Had sacrificing her first and possibly her only love been worth it?

She still didn't know the answer.

...

"Madame Secretary, are you going to the 10:00 briefing?"

Laura opened her eyes. Billy was standing beside the couch. The clock on the wall read 9:55. "Oh, gods, I must have fallen asleep." She grabbed her notebook and left the room at a run.

The President had just walked in when she slipped into the back of the room and took a seat at the table.

"The Cylons want an answer," he said without preamble. "We either accept their flag of truce and listen to their terms or we tell them we aren't interested in talking. You all know my feelings on this, but I cannot ignore the wishes of the rest of you. Last night you were split almost fifty-fifty. We are going to need to make a decision before this meeting is over."

A low buzz started through the assembled group.

The President held up his hand for silence. "In a moment I'm going to ask you to let me know your position by a show of hands. Before I do that I'm going to have my top military advisor and good friend, General Nathan Vargas, explain exactly where we stand right now. I want this to be a very informed decision for all of you. General."

Vargas had a steel-gray crew-cut, was probably pushing fifty, and looked like he was in better shape than most twenty-year olds. He was wearing olive green regulation slacks, but instead of a jacket, he wore a military-issue sweater over his shirt with its collar pins indicating his rank of general. The epaulets at the shoulders of the sweater had five stars.

He stepped up to the podium and nodded to someone in the back of the room. The lights were dimmed and several successive images were displayed on the screen at the front. He told them they were looking at what was left of the city of Antioch. There were very few buildings left standing that hadn't suffered some kind of damage. Whole sections of the city were a smoking ruin.

Laura could see virtually no difference when the images of Sovana and then Kinsdale were displayed.

The next thirty or so images showed only destruction. More damage to quite a few sections of Caprica City outside the ring of government buildings. Delphi was essentially the same. The final screens were listings of the Air Fleet's status. Of the thirty-five battlestars that had begun the fight, sixteen had "Lost" beside them, half of the remaining fleet. The list was in alphabetical order. Quickly Laura scanned down until she came to the Galactica. There was nothing beside the name.

She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to the gods. Bill was still alive.

The statistics on their Vipers and other fighter craft were much worse. Barely one-third left. The loss of pilots and ships was staggering.

Vargas continued. "The basestars haven't even gotten into the fight, yet. This is what they've done with their Raiders alone. What we're up against is not so much the skill of the Raiders but the sheer numbers. Our kill ratio is four to five of them for each of our losses, but for every one we destroy, they launch two more. We have no idea how many they're holding in reserve. As our fighters are destroyed there are more and more Raiders to go against fewer of our pilots. Every mission now is basically a suicide mission for a lot of them. As soon as a battlestar's Vipers are destroyed, a basestar takes on the battlestar. Ammunition is running low. We're running out of resources. Our best estimate is that in less than a week the fleet will be a total loss." He nodded at the back of the room again and the lights came up.

The President stepped up to the podium. "Thank you, General Vargas. The picture is grim. We can continue to fight until every battlestar, every fighter craft and pilot is lost and the basestars will still be out there, or we can see what they want. If they planned to annihilate us, I don't think they would have offered to talk. I'm going to ask for a show of hands of all those opposed to at least listening to their terms.

Of the twenty-four Cabinet members and the twelve Quorum members who had been on Caprica when the attack started, only three raised their hands. Three opposed to negotiating when last night it had been nineteen. Such was the effect of the sobering images and statistics they had just seen.

"I'll notify them immediately that we will negotiate under a flag of truce. Over the next few hours I will be putting together a negotiating team. Thank you all for coming. I'm going to a press conference next in order to release our decision to the media. I don't know how it will be received, but the people deserve to know what we're going to do."

The President turned and left the room followed by General Vargas.

Scott Mickelson leaned over and said. "I hope we're doing the right thing in talking to them."

"At this point I don't see that we have much choice unless we all want to die," Laura answered.

She already knew that the President was going to ask her to be one of the negotiators. He'd told her during dinner the previous evening with several of his staff that if it came to negotiating he wanted her on his team. He had also already chosen the senior member of the Quorum of Twelve as well as Scott Mickelson, his Secretary of Transportation. He was going to ask his friend Dr. Gaius Baltar the scientist. He had selected another friend, a Justice on the Colonial Supreme Court to be the legal representative. And he had asked a noted physician whose name escaped her at the moment to be the medical representative. He still needed a military man. His good friend and advisor General Vargas had refused the offer and Adar hadn't forced the issue with him.

"I want a man who has seen combat first hand," he had said. "Someone who fought them the first time, someone who's fighting them now. I've got a short list from Nate, but nothing is clicking with me yet."

Without stopping to think Laura had thrown out a name. Commander William Adama. The President had written it down.

"I'll have one of my aides get his dossier," was all he had said.

...

On the Galactica, Lee spent his time on the hangar deck doing anything he could to help during the three days and nights of fighting. He carried cups of coffee, towels and blankets, helped shaken pilots climb down ladders. John Gallagher was there, too, talking tactics with the pilots or down on one knee handing a tool to one of the deck crew or with his arm around the shoulders of a distraught pilot who had just lost his wingman and best friend, talking quietly to him. Neither of them had slept much in those three days.

Once during the second day of fighting or maybe that night Lee remembered sitting down on the floor outside the Tool Room, leaning back against the bulkhead and closing his eyes. He meant to rest for only a few minutes. When he woke up several hours later, he was lying on the floor. Someone had put a folded blanket under his head as a pillow. He knew who it probably was.

Then the inexplicable happened. The Cylon Raiders withdrew from the fight and returned to their basestars.

The basestars didn't withdraw, however, and word finally reached the hangar deck that there was a flag of truce. Negotiations were going to begin for the surrender of Caprica.

Lee was stunned. He couldn't believe it. None of them could.

He and Gallagher were back in his quarters, crashed in their bunks, almost asleep when his father called them to come to his quarters.

"Pack your bags, both of you. We're going to Caprica. I could take a Raptor, but I owe the captain. He's going to fly us there and then he can look for his daughter."

Gallagher immediately picked up on something that Lee had not. "Why have you been called to Caprica?"

Bill poured a drink but didn't offer either of them one. "The President himself called me about half an hour ago and asked me to serve on his negotiating team. I tried to refuse. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He's my commander in chief. I can't disobey a direct order from him. I just hope someday I get my hands on whoever put my name in front of him. He wouldn't tell me."

"Being on the negotiating team is not necessarily a bad thing," Gallagher said.

"How's that?" Bill asked.

Lee could tell from his father's tone of voice that he was in a terrible mood.

"You won't give them some of the things another man might. I feel a hell of a lot better knowing you're on the team. You're not a kiss-ass politician. You've got the backbone to stand up to them."

Bill finished the drink in a single swallow and nodded. "Let's do it then. Go pack. I'm going to call down and have your ship fueled. We leave in half an hour. I'm expected first thing in the morning."

Half an hour later they entered Gallagher's ship. Lee asked him if he could sit in the copilot's seat. He said yes. Bill took one of the passenger seats. His mood had not improved. It was probably better if he didn't have to talk to anyone during the flight. Lee was glad he didn't have to sit back there with him.

"It's not going to be pretty out there," Gallagher said. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"It can't be as bad as being back there with him," Lee answered.

He watched as Gallagher slid the harness straps over his shoulders and buckled himself in, then told Lee to do the same. Whoever had worn the copilot's harness last was smaller than he was. Lee had to lengthen a couple of the straps.

Then Gallagher put on his headset and started through his preflight checklist. When he was done, the crew chief had the ship towed to an elevator and they were lifted to the port launch bay. Lee thought he felt the moment they left the Galactica's artificial gravity field.

The LSO gave them clearance and Lee felt the ship lift and accelerate out of the launch bay. As Gallagher banked away from the battlestar, Lee saw the remains of the fleet, the debris from some of the destroyed ships…and the bodies and body parts.

Gallagher made a wide circle to avoid as much of it as he could.

Finally he said, "Now that the fighting has stopped, they can start recovering them. That was the worst thing about leaving Picon. It wasn't just the debris. It was the bodies. There were so many of them. You'd think with that kind of nuclear blast they would all have been incinerated, but they weren't or they weren't entirely. That was rough. Damn, that was rough."

Once they were completely clear of the debris, Gallagher keyed in some coordinates and engaged the autopilot. Lee could feel him retreat then, pull back mentally into some place or time that only he could go, a place or time where the world wasn't at war, maybe a time when he was with Kara's mother, a time when he was with the woman he loved.

Lee started thinking about Blaire Merric and wondered if he would ever see her again. He wasn't surprised to find that as unlikely as it seemed, he hoped he would.

They were both so tired that he and Gallagher didn't talk much for the rest of the trip.

When they got to the Caprica Airbase there was a car waiting for his father. He told the driver they were going to have to take Lee home first. Then standing out on the tarmac Bill shook hands with Gallagher and pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket.

"The name and address of a friend of mine who runs a cargo service. You need a job flying, you look him up and tell him I sent you. You'll have a job no questions asked."

"Thank you, sir. I've got to find my daughter and her friend first, but I'll need a job to take care of them. I'll definitely do it." He tucked the piece of paper into his shirt pocket, turned to Lee and held out his hand. "Good luck making that decision. I hope it's to be a pilot." He looked at Bill. "I'm counting on you to push the Cylons to let our pilot training continue. We lost too many."

Lee shook the captain's hand. "Good luck finding your daughter. I still want to meet her some day."

Gallagher grinned. "When she's eighteen."

It was a joke between them now.

"I hope I see you before then," Lee said.

"You can count on it."

Lee got into the car with his father, looked out the window and watched Gallagher get back into the ship. He had disappeared into the night sky before they got to the gate.