CHAPTER 21

REVELATIONS

Alexander Phillips knelt down, and used a stout branch to poke at the embers of the dying fire. It was a chilly night, and he really did need to stoke the flames, but the colonel wasn't about to kid himself. He was as nervous as a thirteen year old on his first date.

Will somebody please tell me how to make small talk with a Cylon? The question kept bouncing around inside his skull. Sonja's never been to a movie … doesn't know the first thing about music. She doesn't know any jokes; she doesn't seem to have a favorite food. This is worse than when I took Moira home to meet my parents …

For her part, Sonja Six was stretched out on the other side of the fire. Comfortably wrapped in blankets, and with her head propped up in the palm of her hand, she was contentedly watching as the human fussed about, obviously stalling while he tried to figure out how to make his approach. This was her first date, and the experience intrigued her. She wanted to frak, and she was pretty sure that Alexander had brought her out into the wild for just that purpose, but he didn't seem to know how to get to the point. She made a mental note to ask her sisters whether dating always involved so many arcane rituals.

"You love it out here, don't you?" Sonja decided that she would have to follow Caprica's advice and engage in what the humans called small talk. "The nebula is so luminous … like a blanket that God has provided for our comfort."

And would you please frak me? Do I have to get down on my knees and beg?

"When I was a kid, my dad used to take us camping every summer." Alexander tossed some more kindling on the fire, and then carefully began to add logs from the stack that he had cut earlier in the day. "We used to catch fish, and grill them in the flames. Yeah, this brings back memories … all of them good."

"And now we're making new memories; I hope that these will be good for you as well." Sonja hoped that her words were suggestive enough for Alexander to get the message.

Perhaps I should remove my blouse. The Eights all say that the human male is invariably aroused by the sight of the female breast. And it's also supposed to be a 'dead clue', whatever that means. How can a clue be dead?

Sonja sat up, allowed the blankets to fall away, and stretched her arms out high over her head. Her eyes met Alexander's, the challenge and the invitation hopefully plain enough for even the thickest male to see. All she wanted to do was frak.

Alexander gulped, and plucking up his courage, came round the fire to kneel at Sonja's side. He reached out, and ran his fingers tenderly along the side of her cheek. "You are so incredibly beautiful," he breathed.

Sonja smiled enigmatically, and reached out to clasp the back of Alexander's neck. She pulled him close, using rather more force than the moment required, and kissed him firmly on the lips. Sixes were dominant by nature, and Sonja had quickly grown impatient with Alexander's version of small talk. Her hand fell away, and drifted down to caress her mate's loins. She much preferred her own way of communicating, which was direct, and very much to the point.

. . .

"Bring me up to speed, Six. What's happening out there?" Adama was intently studying the DRADIS screen above his head, but the system was supplying little in the way of useful information.

"Admiral, the Diana and the Delos are still closing, but they're slowing down and appear to be maneuvering into high orbit. They have one Heavy Raider, and a full squad of Raiders for escort. I've issued hostile challenge and ID, but there's been no reply. The baseship is launching Raiders to screen the fleet. Rhodope has ordered the alert Vipers to launch as well, but they're still in the tubes. Sir … we're getting slower."

Adama winced at the implied rebuke because it was fully merited. Maintaining discipline and morale on a ship reduced to picket duty was every commander's nightmare. In a garrison behind the front lines, tedium was like a corrosive acid, slowly consuming everyone and everything that it touched. Sonja was a superb XO, but Bill wasn't about to kid himself: he and the Six were barely holding their own.

Under his breath, the admiral cursed his bad luck. Shelly was a very determined matchmaker, and once she had sensed the depth of Alexander Phillips' feelings for her no nonsense sister, she had begun campaigning to push them together. She had pressured Bill to grant Sonja shore leave, and with nothing happening upstairs, he in turn had urged the Cylon to take it. He hadn't quite dragged her onto the colonel's waiting Raptor, but the Six had been visibly reluctant to abandon her post.

Well, they say that no good deed goes unpunished …

"Well done, Dionysia; now, let's do this one by the numbers. Rhodope, have they got nukes?"

The Six slowly shook her head, and watching her body language, Bill instantly concluded that she was as puzzled as he was. If this was another cylon trick, it was one that his blond haired tactical officer hadn't encountered before.

"No, sir; they haven't triggered the radiological alarm. Even the Raiders … they're carrying missiles, but conventional ordnance only."

"Then, we're missing something," Bill ventured, "and it's probably something obvious." He thought for a moment, smiling enigmatically as he remembered one of the fundamental truths of life that his father had drilled into him so long ago: more often than not, the first answer that comes to mind is the right answer. Instinct had served Joe Adama well in the courtroom, and the son had inherited his father's sixth sense. Bill decided to play a hunch.

"Dionysia, ignore the two colonial vessels. See if you can contact the Heavy Raider. Use the scrambled channel, and if that doesn't work, start running through the combat frequencies."

Wordlessly, the Six shifted bands, and a moment later all but snapped to attention. "Admiral, we're being hailed! It's an Eight!"

"Put her on speaker … let's see what she has to say."

"… say again, Galactica … I repeat … do not fire! The Diana and the Delos are under our command. There are Colonial officers aboard … I say again, Galactica … I repeat … do not fire!"

Bill picked up the phone, and made a deliberate effort to keep his tone light and casual. "Eight, this is Galactica Actual. Who's in charge over there?"

"Lieutenant Gaeta, sir; Natalie tasked him to bring these ships home." Adama heard the Sharon breathe a loud sigh of relief. "Cynthia Six is piloting the Delos; Felix is on the command deck of the Diana."

"Eight, I came this close to giving the order to shoot you down. Why are Lieutenant Gaeta and Six observing radio silence this close to New Caprica?"

"No choice, sir; the engines are in good shape, but the comm links on both ships are shot, and we don't have the spare parts to rebuild them. That's why I'm out here … why I've been trying to reach you. Felix thinks that he might find what we need to repair the arrays on one of the older civilian transports, so he wants to go shopping ASAP. Coming out of jump, we've been using jury-rigged signal lights to pass messages back and forth. It's been a long couple of weeks."

"Then I won't keep you. Get back to the Diana, and instruct Lieutenant Gaeta to proceed with the orbital insertion. We'll worry about your parking slots later. I'll expect all senior personnel, both human and Cylon, in my quarters in two hours."

Bill hung up the wireless, but only to collect his thoughts. This suddenly had the makings of a very busy day.

"Dionysia, get the President's office on the line. I want to speak with Billy Keikeya. Then find Polyxena and tell her that she's got two hours to organize a reception. Notify Doctors Cottle and O'Neill that I'll be sending a Raptor to collect them, and have somebody track Lee down. He's Baltar's security advisor, so he should be here as well."

Rhodope looked curiously at the admiral while she decided how to phrase the question that had to be on the minds of everyone in the CIC.

"Admiral," she softly queried, "these two ships … is there something about them that we should know?"

"The Delos is a medical frigate. I've never been on board, but I'm familiar with the class. This is really going to make Doc Cottle's day; I promise you that, in just a few hours, he'll be urging us to consign Hippolyte to the scrap heap."

"And the Diana?" Rhodope had been serving in the CIC long enough to recognize that the vessel was personally important to the admiral.

"It's a ghost ship," Adama conceded, "and it's been haunting my dreams for more than forty years. It's time to lay the ghosts to rest."

. . .

"They've found us," the blond Six at the navigation console groaned.

Natalie was also immersed in the stream, but when it came to maneuvering through the data she was neither as experienced nor as quick as her younger sister. It took her precious seconds to isolate the contact—a lone Raider that had jumped in for the few moments needed to scan her small fleet before flashing away and reporting back to its parent ship.

"John?" Natalie was waiting for the First Born's input.

"Cavil has baseships both coreward and rimward of our current position," Bierns declared. John could feel the presence of his hybrid sisters. They were so close, and their mood was so … expectant. But he still could not sense the hybrids on the newer baseships, and that frightened him. It was like trying to fly with one eye permanently closed. Still, he was getting better at the very macabre game that Cavil was forcing him to play, and Natalie was making it easy for him by following a fixed routine. She would bring the fleet out of jump, set the clock for six hours, and then settle in to wait. Six hours without enemy contact would mean that they had finally eluded the pursuit—but only once had they even reached the four hour mark. Far too often, it would take the Ones less than forty minutes to find them.

"I want to do something different this time," the spook added. In an effort to shake the Cavils, John had been avoiding the dimension that even the Cylons were beginning to call V-world, choosing instead to communicate with Reun through the stream. He remained in hiding until they were discovered, at which point he would enter the virtual universe for the psychic equivalent of precisely one full DRADIS sweep. Get in, locate his sisters, and get out. Minimize his virtual footprints. Neutralize the Ones' advantage. Make them rely on the Raiders instead of the extra-sensory talents of their third generation hybrids.

"Let's reverse course … two straight-line jumps in rapid succession. We should come out rimward of the ships that are dogging us below the galactic equator."

"Major, that heading takes us in the wrong direction," Racetrack protested. "The longer we fool around out here, the more likely it becomes that the Cavils will take New Caprica by surprise."

"No," Hoshi demurred; "the Major's right. If we can lead the Ones on a wild goose chase, we increase the odds of Felix and Cynthia getting through undetected."

"But …"

"No 'buts', Margaret." Bierns was adamant. "You know damned well how hard that planet is to find, even when it's literally right beneath your canopy. Well, Cavil doesn't have the coordinates, or he wouldn't be out here shadowing us, hoping that we'll get sloppy and lead him to the doorstep. Yeah, sure, the Raiders he captured gave him the nebula, but by now he should have long since guessed that that's where the fleet has gone to ground. More to the point, we only have one Cylon pilot MIA … and Boomer is too well trained for the Cavils easily to extract anything beyond the disinformation we pumped into her. We have time."

"But they will use the stream to interrogate her." Leoben shared Racetrack's skepticism. "It's the ultimate lie detector."

"And like any other lie detector," John scoffed, "you can beat it once you figure out how it works. If you don't believe me, then stick Angela's hand in the goop and ask her if she's Hera's maiden uncle. She'll say 'yes', and she won't be lying."

"A lie is not a lie when the person speaking it believes it to be the truth," one of the Fours neatly summarized. "Brother, the behavioral modification regime that the Colonial Secret Service used on their field officers is quite sophisticated. Our programming makes the conditioning even more effective on us. Our First Born knows whereof he speaks."

"Does this mean that we're going to get back in the fight," the Eight at the weapons station growled. "I'm sick and tired of running … and for the last three weeks, that's all we've done."

Natalie looked at John, and silently beckoned for him to continue. This was his plan, but he had run it by Hoshi, and her XO had signed off on it without hesitation. She was ready to proceed.

"We are going to resume our original operational plan—hit and run attacks against choke points in the communications grid, and weakly defended server nodes in the resurrection network. We'll try and make our attacks seem random and unplanned—the actions of a wounded and somewhat desperate force that doesn't have the stomach for another set-piece battle. Our movements will appear to be opportunistic, and therefore unpredictable and directionless. In reality, we're going to try and put Kobol beyond Cavil's reach, and with that build another layer of protection for Gemenon. At some point, the Ones will lose track of us, and that's when we can make a dash for home. But if the Ones commit a major tactical error somewhere along the way … for example, dispersing their baseships in order to expand their search radius? Yes, Eight, when the odds favor us, we're going to hit them … we're going to hit them hard!"

. . .

"Felix," Gaius said with genuine feeling as he rested his hand on the younger man's shoulder, "it's good to see you again. I've missed our little chats."

"Thank you, Mr. President. It's good to be home, although I wish that we had been able to bring you better news."

"You've done well out there, Felix. Granted, so far I've only seen your summary report, but still … I don't want you to minimize what you've managed to achieve. Now, I sense that young Polyxena is anxious for us to get started, so why don't you grab yourself something to drink and find a seat?"

"That's right, Mr. President," Xena grinned. "I would like to call this meeting of the Pregnant Cylons Club to order, and try and finish up today's business before one of our charter members goes into labor!"

"Indeed," Adama chuckled. Since Creusa and Sharon had chosen to accompany their husbands, his quarters were positively bursting with pregnant cylon flesh. "We have a lot to talk about, so everyone get comfortable. I want Mr. Gaeta and Cynthia to walk us through what's happened out there, and then we'll talk about where we go from here. Lieutenant, you have the floor."

"Thank you, sir," Felix replied as he paused to collect his thoughts. "I'm not sure that Major Bierns would appreciate the analogy, but the battle plan that he drew up was very similar to Admiral Cain's. In the beginning, we zeroed in on vulnerable communication relays. They were lightly defended-generally, nothing more than a single squadron of Raiders- and the Blackbird gave us an enormous tactical advantage. On the whole, I'd say that we did a pretty good job of disrupting Cavil's information flow. Then we upped the ante, and started going after the resurrection network. The individual nodes were much more heavily defended, and we took some casualties, but we did enough damage to force the Cavils to come after us. Drawing them off was always part of the plan, but if you don't mind, sir, I'll let Cynthia go over this part of the operation."

"There is more to resurrection," the Six explained to her human audience, "than the Hub and the various ships where we download. The Ones have constructed a matrix of servers throughout cylon space that vastly extends the range of the few resurrection ships currently in operation. The Cavils keep the ships themselves close; as a rule, they are less than one jump away. They want to keep their most important asset safe from any nasty surprises that we might send their way."

"I suppose that makes sense," Adama agreed.

"I don't know, Dad," Lee objected. "We captured an entire supply convoy, including a resurrection ship, when they made the mistake of getting too close. If it was up to me, I'd want that ship as far out of reach as possible."

"Which brings us back to the network," Cynthia observed. "Envision a system of relays that stretches from the current location of the attack fleet all the way back to the Colonies. Cavil can die a thousand parsecs outside the range of the nearest resurrection ship, and his consciousness will be shuttled from one node to the next until it finally reaches a location where the download can occur."

"So, if you start blowing up individual servers," Cottle snorted, "the bastard's consciousness suddenly slams into the electronic equivalent of a brick wall. I would imagine that has to hurt."

"A better analogy," the Six suggested, "would be falling off a cliff, and belatedly discovering that the pit now yawning beneath you is bottomless. You would continue falling … forever."

"My God," Baltar whistled, "no wonder the Cavils came after you! You were threatening them with something far worse than being boxed!"

"Precisely," Cynthia agreed, "but in the meantime we jumped into the Acheron system, and discovered the planet we named Tartarus. The civilian transports that our centurion forefathers captured during the first war were all mothballed in one of the deeper craters. Captain Katraine insisted that we salvage the Diana; she told us that the ship was personally important to you, Admiral. As for the Delos …"

Cynthia simply shook her head, and her voice trailed off. She was depending on Gaeta to describe what they had found in L-7 and L-8. The Six didn't trust herself to continue: just thinking about the twin chambers of horror was enough to send her into a towering rage.

"The Cavils were using the Delos as a storage facility," Felix murmured in a voice so low that the others had to strain to hear him. "For their … lab experiments," he weakly added.

"Go on, Mr. Gaeta," the Admiral commanded. This section of the preliminary report had sickened him; now, everyone present was going to learn what John Bierns had been coping with since early childhood. For his part, Bill couldn't stop wondering how the man had held on to his sanity.

"Yes, sir," Felix acknowledged. "One chamber housed the well preserved remains of a Three, a Six, and two Eights. They were floating inside large, transparent jars; Commander Six ordered the chamber to be sealed, so we were unable to identify the solution. Miss Karanis speculated that it's either formalin, or something similar. There were two smaller containers housing a pair of male infants, one aborted in the third trimester, the other murdered shortly after birth. All but the Six had been surgically dissected. Major Bierns has confirmed the identities of everyone in question. The Six … the Six was Kara's mother."

Creusa winced, and reached out instinctively to grip Apollo's hand. Lee felt as if his head was about to explode.

"Aspasia! Oh, gods on high … when Kara finds out …"

Adama waited until the shock wave had worked its way around his quarters before grimly beckoning for Gaeta to continue.

"The adjoining chamber was much larger, and it held a wider range of … exhibits." Felix was speaking in a subdued monotone. "The Cylons were all first generation. Phryne … the first Six, and her daughter … Sharon and Rebecca, the first Eights … John's mother—it was pretty much the same arrangement. But there was also a one-eyed humanoid with hooves instead of feet … a kind of … of … weird cross between a centurion and an animal of some kind. And then there was the …"

Felix paused again while he searched for words to describe the strange creature that had seemed part human and part cephalopod.

"Sitting off by itself … it's kind of hard to describe. There was this thing that looked vaguely human from the waist up, but there were no eyes, and the nose and mouth were thin slits. But below the waist, there was nothing but tentacles … like an octopus or a squid. It looked like something designed to operate in an aquatic environment, or maybe it was a failed attempt to fashion a purely organic hybrid." Felix shook his head in frustration. "There were no notes or charts explaining any of this, so we have very little to go on."

Adama leaned back in his chair, and began sifting through memories that he would have much preferred to leave untouched. "Mr. Gaeta's full report includes photos," he remarked as he glanced around the room, "which you can all study at your leisure when we're done. But for now, maybe I can help. I graduated from the Academy near the end of the war, and I was posted to Galactica—the newest battlestar in the fleet. I was still in my teens … a cocky, hot-shot pilot who knew that he could win the war all by himself if everyone else would just get out of the way. I was insufferable. Anyway, I expected Commander Nash to give me a Viper; instead, my first assignment was piloting a broken-down old Raptor called Wild Weasel on what was supposed to be a milk run. But it turned out to be a black ops mission. The idea was to take one of Graystone Industries' top cyberneticists behind enemy lines, to an ice planet called Djerba. There we would rendezvous with a SPECFOR unit that had gone ahead to reconnoiter, and the marines would lead Dr. Kelly to an automated cylon transmission array. Her job was to upload a virus that would spread across their network and give us the ability to neutralize their defenses at a time of our choosing. Only it turned out that Beka was working for the other side and we knew it, so the whole thing was an elaborate sting operation cooked up by the spooks to get the Cylons out of position and set up an offensive that bought us another six months in a war that at the time wasn't going very well."

Adama sadly shook his head, the bitter taste of the long buried memories eating at him the same way they had on the day of the decommissioning ceremony. Beka Kelly had been right, but for all the wrong reasons.

They value life far more than we do.

More than forty years after the fact, he could still hear the conviction in her voice, her indictment of the human race ringing as loudly in his ears now as it had then. Surely Beka's ghost had been standing beside him in the corridor a few weeks earlier, when he had somehow found the courage openly to admit to Amy that humanity had been wrong all along. Perhaps, seeing the depth of his affection for the Eight, Beka would finally be able to forgive an old man who had once been so very young and foolish. Perhaps, seeing the life growing inside Shelly and Creusa, her tormented spirit would at last find peace.

"A lot of people died carrying out that mission, including the entire Special Forces unit. They were attacked by giant snakes … very aggressive cylon constructs that were half animal and half machine. What you were looking at on the Delos, Lieutenant Gaeta, might well have been something similar."

"We need to investigate further," Baltar interjected. "I will take charge of the project myself, but I will expect senior medical staff to lend a hand." The President looked meaningfully at Sherman Cottle and Simon O'Neill. "The Cavils have an unhealthy interest in recombinant DNA, and at some point it could cost us dearly. I want to retrace their steps, and see if we can determine what it is that they are trying to accomplish."

"Mr. President," Gaeta sighed, "I'm afraid that we have already discovered at least part of the answer."

Gaius frowned. He couldn't remember anything in the summary report to this effect, so he hazarded a guess. "This has to do with the loss of Cynthia's baseship, doesn't it?"

Felix nodded. "It does," he agreed. "We had brought a new command and control system on line, and Commander Six decided to test it out against the most heavily defended server node we had yet encountered."

"We're talking about cyber warfare," Cynthia cut in, "on a very sophisticated level. Our child was trying to straddle both dimensions at once so that he could simultaneously network the hybrids and direct the battle in real time. The simulations had gone well, but John was already under a lot of stress when the Ones showed up. After that, things got really ugly."

"Gods in Heaven, but I frakkin' well don't believe this!" Lee was outraged. "You turned your own child into a battle computer? What were you thinking? This is exactly why Cavil created John and Kara in the first place, and you went and did it? Kara told me that she would kill herself before she let this happen! It's her worst nightmare … it's at the very heart of John's psychotic episodes … and you went and did it?"

"Our child volunteered for this … it was his idea!" The anger that had been threatening to engulf the unfortunate Six ever since she first set foot on the Delos now came surging to the surface. If this human wanted to fight, he had come to the right place!

"Besides," she snarled, "this is a direct extension of the tactic that our First Born used to secure Natalie's victory against overwhelming odds at Caprica. Humans! You know nothing of the stream, so you know nothing of the boundless love that binds brother to sister. Our hybrids have opened their minds to John in a way that you cannot even begin to imagine … and he returns their trust full measure for measure. They are a community with many hearts but one mind; how ironic, therefore, that what you see as perversion goes to the very core of their existence!"

"A hive mind," Lee spat with as much contempt as he could muster.

"Lee," Creusa said as she laid a restraining hand gently on his arm, "don't. We are all awed by what we see in the stream. You know that Cylons are capable of love. Will you not let us experience it in our own way?"

"There'll be time enough for recriminations later," Bill harshly remarked. He wanted to get back to the business at hand. "So, what went wrong?"

"The Cavils jumped in right on top of us … two baseships that we conservatively estimate to be roughly fifty percent larger than anything we've encountered before. They took us completely by surprise; even when we were close enough to engage, the Major still couldn't pinpoint their hybrids. He said that it was like trying to climb a greased pole."

Felix pursed his lips as he sorted through his memories, trying to decide what to bring up and what to ignore.

"Then they began taunting us. They brought a resurrection ship right to the edge of the battlefield, with two basestars for escort. They were daring us to attack. Commander Six sensed a trap, so she refused to take the bait. Still, we had to bring our own resurrection ship out into the open. We couldn't risk having our pilots download in enemy hands."

"This is positively bizarre," Baltar exclaimed. "How can anyone fight in such an environment?"

"It got worse, Mr. President," Gaeta said with a resigned sigh; "a lot worse. The Cavils had Mara and D'Anna … the Major's mother … in one of their control rooms. They made contact, and then started torturing them. It was a distraction … misdirection … and it worked. We were off balance, and that's when they sent in a third baseship. Again, Major Bierns didn't sense that it was out there. It came out of nowhere, and hit Cynthia's ship with a staggering number of missiles; she didn't stand a chance."

"The after action reports," Adama quietly added, "all indicate that these new baseships can cycle their missile batteries much more quickly than we can. If we can't find a way to compensate, our tactical situation will be less than optimal. Mr. Gaeta, please continue."

"Yes, sir. Commander Six … Natalie's baseship was also badly mauled. Its full recovery will take weeks if not months. It's still out there. Major Bierns has been crawling all over V-world trying to find a way to pin down these third generation hybrids, but at the time we slipped away from the fleet …"

"We made over two hundred jumps in less than ten days," Cynthia continued. "We pushed our ships to the limit, and John tore V-world apart, but he never found them. Unfortunately, the more aggressively he sought them out, the easier it became for the Ones to find us. We only escaped because they were so intent upon following the trail that he was marking."

"They weren't quite coming every 33 minutes," Gaeta said with a weak smile, "but at times it sure felt like it."

"So, let me get this straight," Lee said. "You're telling us that the Cavils have achieved a superior rate of fire that gives them a distinct edge in ship-to-ship combat. Sure, I can handle that … no problem. But are you also telling us that the front lines in this war have shifted to another dimension? Because if that's the case, then the President is absolutely right: only 'bizarre' doesn't even begin to cover what we're talking about here."

"No," Gaius objected, "this part of it actually does make sense. Years ago, I did a project for Defense. They wanted me to come up with a way to mask the electronic wake of our ships as they came out of jump. The ministry was afraid that the Cylons would be able to track individual battlestars on the basis of their unique electronic signatures. The problem that Lieutenant Gaeta is describing sounds fairly similar. Cavil's hybrids have found a way to avoid detection; or, if you prefer an Aquarian submariner's analogy, we can't 'ping' them. However, they are able to follow the Major's wake as he moves in and out of V-world." Gaius frowned for a second as his agile mind raced through the possibilities. "What is the Major doing to avoid detection," he queried.

"Maintaining a very low profile," Felix conceded. "Right now, it's the only way we can level the Pyramid court."

"Is it working," Shelly pressed.

"We're here, sister," Cynthia bluntly answered. "Two weeks ago, I would not have given odds on our safe return."

"So, at the present time we are at both a serious tactical and strategic disadvantage," Adama summarized. "Sonja and I will deal with the tactical issues when she returns from her shore leave, and I'm confident that in time we will be able to solve them. But I see no way for us to address our strategic dilemma. Precisely because this matter is completely out of our hands, we now have to ask ourselves: is New Caprica so at risk that we should begin evacuating the colony?"

"And where would we go, Admiral?" Sharon Baltar spoke up for the first time. "There are only so many canyons leading into the nebula, and the Ones must have Raiders picketing the various exits. We cannot evade contact, so wherever we go, they will pursue us."

"But if they know we're here, doesn't it stand to reason that they will eventually find us?" Gaius' highly tuned sense of self-preservation had already begun to kick in.

"It's a big nebula," Billy Keikeya noted thoughtfully. "It might take them several lifetimes to stumble upon a world this well hidden."

"So, you see us as the proverbial needle in the haystack?"

"Yes, Admiral; just because you know it's there, it doesn't automatically follow that you're going to be able to find it."

"Mr. President, the question of settlement is political, not military." Bill's instinct was to dance around this particular issue. "It's your call."

"Admiral, I should have thought that the survival of the human species was the quintessential military problem. Are you passing the cubit?"

"Yes, Mr. President, I am.

"Well, I would still appreciate your input. You realize, of course, that I have no choice but to take this entire matter before the Quorum?"

"Sharon's point is well taken. We cannot flee pointlessly across space and hope to escape. Our best option is to wait for Kara's return, and use the available time to continue repairs to the fleet. If we do leave this planet, we want to know where we're going, and we want our ships to get there in as few jumps as possible. In the meantime, I would advise your National Security Advisor to hold evacuation drills, and organize resistance cells modeled on the old Soldiers of the One. Make sure that our marines don't get bunched up in the settlement, and continue to cache weapons out in the wilderness."

"Dad, we're way ahead of you," Lee countered.

"I know, son. But the question is: how far ahead of the Cavils are you?"

. . .

Even with the swift current at their back, the journey northward had taken six long days, but Boomer had put them to good use. Her adoptive family was, by local standards, rich and powerful—but far more importantly, it was well-educated. The tempestuous Thuyu was distantly related to the family that governed the entire valley, and she had a resumé that would have put any Colonial priestess to shame.

But then, Sharon reflected, these people need every priest and priestess they can lay their hands on because, compared with the gods of this land, the Colonial pantheon seems pretty pathetic. And the Cavils would really be in their element here. Yeah, they'd probably try to carve out sinecures for themselves with the priesthood of Sobek. Waiting on crocodiles hand and foot, mummifying the damned things … they would revel in the absurdity of it all. On this world, humanity has definitely ventured far off the beaten track.

Thuyu was a Singer of Hathor, one of the innumerable national divinities, but Boomer was increasingly convinced that the older woman couldn't carry a tune, much less sing a song. The job seemed like the perfect resumé enhancer for an obvious social climber—a prestigious title with no real duties attached. But to her credit, the female did take her local responsibilities seriously. She was at once Chief of the Entertainers, and Superintendent of the Harem for Min, the town's protective divinity. More intriguingly, Thuyu held the same posts in the capital city of Thebes, only this time in the service of its tutelary god, Amun.

In her innocence, Sharon had pressed Yuya to explain what possible use a solar cult could have for a harem, never mind entire troupes of entertainers. The older man, who was himself a Prophet of Min, had responded with a cynical laugh. The god who ruled the Two Lands had acquired many human wives, and he had chosen generously to house them in the temple precincts, where they earned their keep by weaving the linen garments favored by the elite. As for what went on in the long hours of the night …

Boomer smiled at the memory. Yuya was intelligent, but he was also quiet, thoughtful, and irreverent. Between them, Yuya and Twosret had devoted many hours to teaching her to speak their language, and now she was learning to read and write the exotic script that was the province of priests and scribes alone. The syllabary was a complex and often capricious mix of pictograms and ideograms, but mercifully, the predominantly religious texts were also highly formulaic. She had memorized many of them in their entirety.

Yuya had gone to elaborate lengths to make sure that Boomer understood the difference between a prophet and a priest, and from the beginning he had stressed that he was not native to the valley, but from one of the desert lands somewhere well to the east. In turn, as she grew more confident in her mastery of the language, she had entrusted him with the details of her own strange existence and far-flung travels. He had accepted it all at face value; indeed, nothing that she said, however outrageous, seemed to surprise him. Unable to reconcile the prophet's sophistication with the primitive culture and low technology that daily engulfed her, Boomer had grown steadily more nervous. She was missing something. She knew that it was important, but she had run out of clues to decipher, and still she could find no solution to the mystery.

Yuya and Twosret, with a grumbling Anen in unwilling attendance, had embarked upon this journey to answer Boomer's questions. The prophet had assured her that all would become clear inside the shattered homes of the gods far to the north. And now, as they coasted in to shore, Sharon could at last understand the reason for his confidence. Throughout their voyage pyramids had occasionally loomed on the western horizon, but here they were densely clustered, some of them well maintained while others had fallen victim to the ravages of time … and the covetous hands of man.

"Tomb robbers," Yuya had sadly observed only moments before. "The gods have ruled this land for thousands of generations, and some of them have suffered neglect. There is vast wealth here to tempt the greedy wretch, and the stone itself is a tempting prize for those with neither the time nor the inclination to quarry anew."

The four of them came ashore at an abandoned temple, but the causeway that led out into the desert was still largely intact. Boomer could feel it now, the sheer weight of antiquity pressing down upon her shoulders, eons of time looming like mountains all around her, threatening to swallow her whole.

This place is old, she belatedly realized. It was old when the twelve colonies of man were young. How much time has passed on this world? How long have humans flourished here?

At the end of the causeway, they passed through another temple, also long abandoned. Yuya led them outside, to the remains of an unpretentious chapel abutting the north face of the pyramid. He explained that herein lay the entrance to the pyramid proper. In its hidden chambers, Tiy would find the answers that she so eagerly sought.

With torches in hand, the quartet embarked upon the last leg of their journey. The corridors were so narrow, and the ceiling overhead so close, that Boomer could only shuffle along with her head bowed and her knees painfully raised. But soon enough, they reached their destination. The simple chamber was empty save for a free-standing sarcophagus, whose lid had been casually thrust aside by thieves in search of treasure. But the walls and ceiling were what drew her eye. They were covered with glyphs, and the Cylon quickly realized that they were an archaic variant on the script that she had been studying. She could make out a few characters, but without Yuya here to guide her, Sharon readily conceded that she would need days if not weeks to translate the dense strands of text.

Yuya drifted over to stand in front of a spot on the chamber's west wall, and beckoned for Boomer to join him.

"Child, can you read any of this text?"

"Part of it," Boomer acknowledged as she fingered the ancient writing. "You ascend with …"

"Sahu."

"You ascend with Sahu on the eastern side of the sky. You ascend with Sahu on the western side of the sky."

"Sahu is a constellation … a belt of three bright stars …"

"Orion," Sharon breathed. She had cataloged the distinctive belt, and named it for the mythical hero, while still in orbit.

Yuya crossed to the opposite wall, and pointed to a cartouche. "Long ago," he stipulated, "there was a god-king named Teti."

Boomer concentrated on the long string of glyphs. "Teti is pure," she read haltingly, "so that he can receive for himself his pure place, which is in Heaven.

Teti will remain; the …"

"Beautiful places."

"Teti will remain; the beautiful places of Teti will remain.

Teti receives for himself his pure place, which is in the bow of the barque of Re.

And the sailors who row Re, they also will row Teti.

And the sailors who take Re over the horizon,

They also will take Teti over the horizon."

Yuya retraced his steps to the west wall, and held his torch high in the air.

"He goes forth to Heaven, among his brothers the gods."

"You will find this line in the ka dwellings of the gods Unas and Pepi as well. They are both nearby."

"Take your place in Heaven, among the stars in Heaven," Twosret chanted from another corner of the room. "There are many references here to the Great Journey, when the gods made their way to the stars."

Boomer's mouth fell open. Suddenly, it all made sense. From the beginning, she had assumed that star farers, whether human or cylon, had made their way to this world, and had brought their plants and animals with them. Since it was not physically possible for two different planets to share common DNA, this seemed the only way to account for the genetic evidence.

"I was right," she whispered more or less to herself, "but for all the wrong reasons. I literally put the cart before the horse! This … this is the home world. Once, deep in the past, there was a high civilization here … one capable of interstellar flight. It's gone now, but it has left echoes in these writings, and now that I know what I'm looking for, perhaps I'll find traces of it in art and myth … the places where old legends die hard. Teti … Unas … Pepi … these are the true Lords of Kobol. And all of us, human and Cylon alike … we are all the children of Earth.

Author's note: the Pyramid Texts cited here are, in order, utterances 442, 407, 337, and 245. I have followed the translation of Samuel A.B. Mercer (New York, London, and Toronto, 1952), although I have made minor revisions which accord with my own sense of the relevant hieroglyphs.