Disclaimer – I do not own Battlestar Galactica
No Cylons in this chapter sorry. They'll meet the Cylons soon enough
Mentions of rape nothing graphic
Sheba's origins explained
Chapter 4 – Memories of the Daughter
The two ships Telmaya and Shovel travelled at sublight speed through an asteroid belt looking for the source of a transmission they'd picked up. It had been on the colonial waves so they hoped to find them before the Cylons did.
It had been three days since they'd left the broken planet and so far nothing. But all things concerned the crew was adapting to life onboard ship well. They had a surplus of parts and supplies to last three months. The crews of both ships decided to share what they had.
As they entered the densest part of the belt and began looking for contacts with DRADIS. The problem was that with all the floating rocks there were too many readings. That's what made it such a good hiding place.
So they were using their comm. System tied in with their DRADIS, this way if there was another transmission DRADIS could lock onto it and guide them to the location.
Small short distance messages were being intercepted so they were slowly ranging their target. These must be civilians because they were transmitting in the clear without scrambling or coding.
Eventually they came to a space in the field where they found what they were looking for, six civilian ships; 5 cargo ships and 1 Botanical ship.
They were contacting them over the wireless and still in the clear so Seth sent a signal of his own
"To all civilian ships this is the Battlestar Telmaya, please stop transmitting before the Cylons use those signals to find us. I'll send a Raptor to each of your ships to bring you hear so that we can talk. Telmaya out"
Twenty minutes later in the war room on Telmaya the seven captains of the gathered ships met. Seth gestured for them all to take a seat around the table with himself at its head and Kendra at the opposite end.
"Well ladies and gentleman, I'm glad we found you, but please stop transmitting in clear or you'll have the Cylons on us in a flash, literally" Seth said seriously. "Right now we need to combine forces and stay together, so if you're willing you can come with us while we look for other survivors"
"Why can't we just stay here or run now?" asked the Geminon captain of the Baltic.
"Because if we stay here the Cylons are sure to find us and we are still hearing communication echoes from other ships so we know that others are out there" Hal Forrest answered, he and Seth had both discussed this situation well prior to the actual meeting.
"Why don't we just run now?" demanded the red faced captain of the Ortis
"Because we'd be leaving those people to die…I know were risking contact with the Cylons but if we're going to survive as a species then we need to find all the people we can and get out of here. If we leave then we leave all those men, women…children behind to die" Seth said, his voice firm
The captains of the ships nodded their agreement, albeit the captain of Ortis reluctantly and the captain of the Botanical Ship Eden brought something that was rather important
"Commander, my ship doesn't have an FTL Drive"
Seth's eyes narrowed, this was a big problem. If they were cornered by the Cylons the FTL's were the only chance of escape and they'd need them when they left system.
"I'll send my chief engineer over to see if we can adapt your ship with an FTL drive, until then captains I need you to start pulling lists of your ship's cargo, compliment, status, the works." He got up, signalling the meeting was over. He had to go see Sheba
Sheba Cain was in the starboard hanger fixing up the launch systems for the new Mark 8 Vipers, they needed a small anti-gravitational self-sufficient field with its own power source to help the Vipers move along the launch tubes on a separate system so that even with main and auxiliary power off-line then the systems would still be operational. She also had to adapt the ship systems to operate independently without networking and purge all traces of Baltar's dangerous program from the systems of both Telmaya and Shoval.
Then she got an inter ship call from CIC and went to the phone to her right, she picked up the receiver and her commander spoke to her
"Sheba, I need you to get together an engineering assessment team and head over to Eden and see if a FTL can be fitted to her and fast if the Cylons detected those transmissions we won't have long before a ship is sent to find us" Seth's voice said in a serious tone. Since the attack he had taken a much more serious attitude; settling into his new role seemly very quickly.
"I'll be there soon sir" she said putting back the receiver and left one of her new deputies to handle the job she'd been doing while going to gather her surveyor team from the workshops.
Today was her birthday not that anyone remembered, the situation meant things like celebrating birthdays weren't important
These days her thoughts led back to her mother Admiral Helena Cain. Her mother and she had never had a good relationship, she'd never wanted Sheba
Flashback… Tauron about 19 years ago
Helena Cain stumbled out of the bar with her arm around a man who was she'd just met. She'd just made Commander and all she wanted to do was celebrate. She was so drunk that she didn't realise that the man she was holding her had more in mind than getting her home.
About have way back to her flat she fell asleep and he put her on the floor, pulled off her trousers and he quickly had his own lowered and once he'd got his release he pulled them back on and left Helena lying in the alley way dozing, to awake to find she'd been raped
End Flashback
When Helena had woken up and realised what had happened; that she had quickly got to her flat and cleaned up, not wanting to acknowledge what had happened. But two months later she found out after ignoring the possibility for that long that she couldn'r deny it any longer.
That she was pregnant.
With abortion illegal on Tauron and not wanting to bring shame on her career she'd had to take maternity leave and have the baby, Sheba and then the moment she was able Helena had left Sheba in a children's home on Tauron so she could go back into service. Once a couple years she'd come back to see her and those time were not happy, Sheba had never been under any illusions about the shallowness of her mum's caring and let her know it.
The last time she'd seen her mother had been on the day before she left for the academy and then they'd really been shouting at each other that day
Flashback
Sheba in the middle of packing her bag while ignoring her mother's ranting
"By the Gods Sheba if you're going into the service then at least go for command track then you'll at least have some prospects for advancement, once you reach chief engineer that's about as far as you go in that, and in Viper track then you get CAG but no further than that!"
"Because it's what I'm good at Helena" Sheba shot back, to her face she'd never called Helena Cain her mother because she had never really been a mum in her mind
"GODS DAMN IT SHEBA! WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME!? I ONLY WANT WHAT BEST FOR YOU!" Helena roared back, never a patient person it only took a bit to set her off
"NO! YOU WANT WHAT'S BEST FOR YOU! FOR YOUR DAUGHTER TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS! WELL I WON'T BE DOING THAT I ASSURE YOU! NOW I'M LEAVING AND DON'T EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN!" she shouted at Helena, grabbed her bag and stormed out of her room at the child home where she'd spent most of her life, leaving a shaking in rage Helena Cain behind. Enraged at her daughter's attack.
End Flashback
That had been the last time she'd seen or heard from her mother, and she was grateful in some way. If they'd had a talk, they'd have ending up arguing. But the little girl in her wanted to talk and make things right with her mummy, to try to earn her love.
But the jaded adult in her took those thoughts and crushed them. Her mother was a career minded bitch that only cared for herself. If she'd hadn't found it in her heart to put her career on hold for a few years so she could take care of her daughter then what kind of a person was she? With a maternity allowance from the Fleet and child benefit and her inheritance for her parents that she had barely touched, Helena could have lived quite comfortably for at least till Sheba was twenty five. But she was too focused on her career.
After gathering her team she took a Raptor over to the flying garden ship and docked. The team studied the structural integrity of the ship and the viability of installing an FTL.
She was back on Telmaya a few hours later and reporting to her CEO in CIC while he was studying reports from all the ships and training reports from both Serina and Tyber.
"How's it Sheba?" he asked from the other side of the main console looking up to meet her soft blue and green eyes.
"Good from the look of it. Her hull's strong enough to stand a jump so all we really need to do is install the drive and computer and then rig it into the systems. I'll need three engineering teams and sufficient parts from our stocks"
"How long?" he asked
"3 Days" she answered
"Alright take four to see if you can speed this is up a bit, I don't want to stay here any longer than we have too" he replied and she went to leave
"Sheba" he called and she looked back
"Don't use any unnecessary parts; we have to conserve what we have"
She nodded and left the room to get her team and parts together
The teams crawled around Eden installing the drive components and computers into the ship while being helped by engineers from other ships and the locals led by a man named Harold Keikeya, a retired colonial fleet engineer who had been travelling to Caprica with his entire family wife, daughters, grandchildren to be there as a surprise for his son Billy's birthday.
A birthday that Billy would never see
After a day and a half the FTL was installed, and the fleet was given the next place to look for other survivors. Sheba was back onboard Telmaya and on CIC with her friends.
The ships jumped and came to the nebula cloud with an asteroid field inside it. A perfect place to hide and to get some much needed Tylium.
After her shift was over Sheba walked wearily to the war room were Seth had just called her from and asked her to join a meeting.
As she walked into the room she was greeted by her friends yelling
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" and for the first time in weeks she smiled
Strangely as she enjoyed the surprise party her friends had put together for her something her mother said had come to mind, only good thing or valuable thing she'd ever said.
"The skies the limit Sheba, you make your own destiny"
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Eden is a Botanical Cruiser like the one seen in the movie at the beginning of the series.
The crew have been very lucky so far, but their luck changes soon
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