I do not own Battlestar Galactica
Chapter 27 – The Daughter Ascends
As the raptor lifted off from its mother ship, Sheba Cain became more nervous. She had been tasked by Admiral Adama to conduct an inspection tour of the Battlestar Pegasus. Setting foot on her deceased mother's old spaceship was a daunting task. However she was a qualified officer and would complete the task to the best of her ability she thought with resolve.
The great spaceship loomed in the distance, she could see its great bulk from the cockpit window her nerves intensifying every moment that it took for them to get there. It was a Mercury class Battlestar like her own ship but the shadow of her mother still hung over the vessel despite her death over three months ago. As the pilots started landing procedures she took a moment to collect herself and after the raptor settled onto the pad she stood up and straightened her uniform. When the small shuttle was lowered into the pressurised bay she straightened her back and waited for the hatch to open, there waiting for her was the chief communications officer for the ship lieutenant Hoshi.
"Welcome aboard Colonel" the older man said to his superior officer while this saluting "the commander sent me down to guide you on your inspection"
Sheba frowned this ship was identical to her own ship Telmaya where she served as first officer. She had heard rumours of Barry Gardner's micro management of this ship but had dismissed them as mere rumours but apparently he had chosen to override her own wishes and assign an unnecessary guide.
"Well then we had better get started" Sheba told Hoshi, she stepped out of the raptor "Escort me to the CIC"
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Meanwhile in a cell on-board Galactica Boomer was brooding as to when someone would come to visit her. Her brooding was ended when the hatch opened revealing Galen Tyrol. The man hesitantly made his way inside but his eyes never left hers, she could see the confusion in them but also the warmth that she had expected or rather hoped that might still be there.
"When they told me it was you I wasn't sure what to expect" Galen said, she waited with bated breath for him to continue "I thought that I would never see you again"
"Or I you" she said her heart thumping in her chest. Without further word he open the cell and stepped inside not realising the danger he was putting himself in. She could have easily knocked him out or killed him and escaped but all she could do was stand and wait as he came up to her and without further word grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into a steamy kiss that instantly sent her senses reeling. She instinctively started pushing his jacket off before he forced her arms above her head and pulled her tank top clear away from her body. She began attacking the zipper on his pants while he pushed her slowly backwards towards the bunk in the cell.
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Unaware of what was happening in the cell far from his quarters the Admiral's welcoming an old friend that he hadn't seen in nearly 42 years.
"Coker" he said seriously before pulling the older man into a one armed hug as both men chuckled.
"Husker" Coker said back happy to see his old partner again. True they had only known each about a month during the first war but in action, your buddy, your partner was closer to you than your brother. You depended on each other to survive and with that first mission together on Djerba, they had truly had to work together to stay alive, especially with the betrayal of Doctor Becca Kelly selling the whole of the Colonies to the Cylons.
They released each other from their hug and went to sit on the couch were Adama poured a drink for himself and Coker handing the glass to him. Coker took a sip and hummed in approval
"Good stuff" he said before taking another sip
"Well rank has its privileges" Adama said taking a sip himself "So how your life go after leaving the fleet?" he asked. They had tried to stay in contact but with the war still going on it had been impossible. By the time it was over, both men had given up
"Moved back home, took up a position teaching music at the local university. Me and Katie had a kid, a girl named Leela, she got married to a bastard had four kids of her own. You?" Coker asked
Adama nodded "Stayed in till the end of the war, got washed out. Married, got back in to the fleet, had two sons, divorced then my wife has a daughter she never told about, found her years later" he said and Coker gave a short laugh
"Don't take this the wrong way but you have lousy taste in women" and Adama poured them another round as the two old friends got reacquainted
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On Pegasus, Sheba was very quickly losing patience with Commander Gardner. Each department on a ship had a specific set of jobs to do with officers trained to do those jobs who all reported to the XO and through the XO to the Commander, and providing the officers were competent and stayed true to their duties the system worked. But Barry Gardner was undermining their authority by butting in on the decisions of every department whether he was right to or not. The man was clearly way too paranoid to trust anyone with any decisions. The confusion surrounding the two missing raptors only highlighted this, blaming the CAG Captain Cole Taylor for the error while telling the pilots not to discuss the matter with him in the first place so he had no idea they had even left. The CAG had been relieved of his duties and confined to the brig and Gardner hadn't even replaced him with another officer, leaving the flight squadrons without a CAG.
That was something Sheba was going to have to remedy, but as she moved through the corridors of Pegasus she felt the crew's eyes on her. Some looked at her with awe, others with hope, some even looked at her with suspicion. It took a moment for her to realise why.
Despite having softer features she did are a striking resemblance to her mother, the late Admiral Cain. The crew would know by now who she was giving how fast scuttlebutt spread even on a ship this size. When they looked at her, they didn't really see her, but her mother. Sheba had still to come to terms with her memories of the woman that had given birth to her, the last night before her death they had talked long into the night sharing all their secrets and feelings with each other. She now knew that it hadn't been a lack of caring on her mother's part that had kept her away but rather fear of abusing Sheba as she herself had been abused by her own mother. She still couldn't reconcile the different feelings about her mother that were swirling inside her mind.
Shaking herself back to the present, Sheba kept on walking to the barracks where the pilots had gathered, she entered the room to see and hear them grumbling. The strict hand of discipline was required here, Sheba thought to herself fixing her expression in a blank mask
"Attention on deck" she said loudly and only just managed to avoid laughing as the previously mutinous pilots all leapt from their bunks to stand to attention, one of them falling over as he tried to stand to attention while putting on a set of pants. They all stood however ram rod straight till she said "At ease" and all relaxed their stance slightly. She walked in to the leading lieutenant Marcia Case also known as 'Showboat' and asked "You Showboat?"
"Yes sir" Marcia answered, her blonde hair cut short of the base of her neck with her grey bluish eyes staring straight ahead. Sheba took a moment to stare into them before asking
"What do you think of this situation lieutenant?" Sheba asked sternly gauging the crew's own feelings towards their new leader.
"With all due respect sir, Commander Gardner is a martinet trying to micromanage this ship like some piece of equipment sir" and a quick look around the room showed Sheba that Marcia was not alone in these thoughts. The deckhands were okay with Gardner as was the engineering crew but that was because he was so sympathetic to their needs being a former engineer himself. The rest of the crew, the marines and pilots especially thought the man was a disaster not fit to lead a scout troop let alone a Battlestar.
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On the Battlestar Astoria, the newly promoted Commander Maureen Epps was running a young woman through a series of; push-ups, sit-ups and weight lifting. The young woman in question was Katy Harwood, her parents had been the owners of a famous Pyramid team the Sagitteran Dancers. They had all been on their way to Caprica for a big game when the ship they'd been on had been sabotaged by a Cylon poisoning the ship's life support. She had been in the ship's freezer and protected till the cruisers Vanguard and Thermopylae had happened upon the ship. Colonel Epps the ship's XO had led the boarding parties and found her on the verge of hypothermia. Epps had carried her to safety and later evacuated her when both cruisers had been shut down by the Cylon virus. She had told Katy that she was going to make her a survivor
Whatever it took
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Sam was curled up in his new bunk on Galactica, happy to be on a different ship than Kara. He had heard she had taken up with Admiral Adama's son. He could not deny that he was disappointed but he sighed before wishing them the best of happiness. He then felt the warm body that he was holding in his arms move slightly and he smiled pulling Jean Baroley closer.
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Sheba having heard Marcia's theory about the raptors being lured away by a fake distress call was rushing to the CIC when she heard the preparations for an FTL jump being made. She saw Commander Gardner standing at the centre console issuing orders when she walked up to him before asking straight out
"With all due respect what are you doing Commander?"
Gardner had been so caught up in doing what he was doing that he hadn't heard her approach, jumping with her sharp words. He turned to face her and for a moment he could swore that Admiral Cain was staring at him with her normal piercing eyes burning into his soul as they had done every day from the moment he stepped on board. Then he blinked and saw that despite the similarities it was not Admiral Cain that was staring at him but her daughter Sheba Cain, the Colonel from Telmaya that Admiral Adama had sent to conduct an inspection tour's first few weeks of command.
"I am preparing to mount a rescue operation for our missing raptors Colonel and I do not appreciate being questioned on my own CIC" said Barry Gardner. Sheba stared him intently on the line before telling him her own and Marcia's opinion
"In the past the Cylons have tricked our ships trapping them by emitting a distress call to lower them away from the main fleet. Admiral Adama and Commodore Trakiss have both faced such traps in the past, this far out it is unlikely that there are any colonial vessels so there is only one culprit for sending a distress call and that is the Cylons"
Gardner dismissed her thoughts and told her "I don't care about what they would do I am going after those raptors right now" he turned to his navigation officer and said "Commence jump"
And before Sheba could say a word, the navigation officer made the jump. The feeling of compression that always came with a jump was immediately felt by all when they looked up at the dradis display and saw the missing raptors just floating in space Sheba immediately felt a little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end she remembered being in this position several times before could say nothing as Gardner told the communications officer to launch the SAR raptors which quickly left the ship and sped towards the drifting shuttles.
A report quickly came back over the radio when the raptors had drawn close to their stricken brothers "Pegasus actual this is raptor 821 I have a visual on the cockpit they're all dead Sir"
Then to everyone's horror three Cylon Baseships jumped in surrounding the Pegasus, in front and on both sides
'I hate it when I'm right' Sheba thought to herself as missiles began flying towards the trapped Battlestar
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Tobias Nash was settling in to his new office on board the Astoria. The civilian assembly had accepted his proposal that he had up the new Colonial intelligence bureau amongst the fleet and his agents were already stationed on-board every vessel that they could manage keeping an eye out potential saboteurs, dissidents or anyone else who may cause damage to their potential's chances of survival in the future. And they had the potential to have a good future now inside the Black Archive there had been pallets and pallets food supplies, weapons, building equipment, building materials, vehicles, hydroponic facilities and so much more that once it was all set up they would have everything they needed for the immediate future and when they settled eventually on the planet if they have found one.
He was viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by the assembly members that was to be expected given that his own organisation in the past had undermined many labour movements in the past under the guidance of presidents like Adar who wished to maintain the status quo at all costs. But he was just government servant who did his job, there was no maliciousness to it and he would continue to serve in the capacity that he always had. His own father had taught him that, Silas Nash had been the commander of Galactica during the first time on war and he had had to manipulate things in the public's view so that he and soldiers like him could fight the real war save the colonies from that machine foes.
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Hanna Rand was shifting through the paperwork that have been supplied to her of all colonial ships that carried Marine detachments. The Marines had been relatively unaffected by their continued exodus from the colonies as it was the pilots who took the brunt of the assault in space dogfights. Still they were essential in maintaining order and protecting the interiors of their vessels from saboteurs and potential Cylon boarding actions. She had elevated several of them to officer rank in order to better coordinate this new Colonial Marine command which she was heading up when her daughter Lacy stepped into the room.
"Mom" Lacy asked uncertainly and Hanna looked up knowing from her tone that this was not a private speaking to a superior officer but a daughter who wanted to speak to her mother
"Yes sweetheart are your right?" Hanna asked her daughter who bore a striking resemblance to her great-grandmother the original Lacy Rand, monotheist and leader of the church of the one God prior to the first Cylon war. Lacy had escaped the destruction of the Temple of the one God with her closest followers and fled to Virgon where she had raised her own mother Zoe Sinclair Rand in secret to prevent polytheist retribution after the war. When Zoe had been but a teenager she had had Hanna who signed up to be a part of the Colonial Marines and had her own daughter years later. Both the elder Lacy and Zoe had perished during the Cylon attack but not before passing down the stories of how the war came to be and how everything had reached this point. When Hanna had asked how they knew all these details even think about things they haven't seen like the part the Adamas had played in the birth of the Cylons, grandma Lacy had just hold her that "an angel" had told her.
Deciding that enough paperwork was done for one night, Hanna got up from her desk and walked to the couch where she took her daughter in arms and they sat together talking long into the night.
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Missiles slammed into the hull of the Pegasus, detonating with normal explosions and one nuclear blast. The entire ship shook at the heavy armour plate struggle to keep the exterior of the ship from being breached and exposed to the vacuum. On the CIC Commander Gardner was a very quickly falling apart with no clear idea what to do visibly panicking while Colonel Cain took command
"All batteries begin full defensive fire, shoot down those missiles. Begin jump prep as soon as possible" she ordered to the bridge officers who didn't even think twice about following her as opposed to the commander and on the outside ship the vast number of defensive and offensive batteries began to fire ship trying to shoot down all the incoming projectiles creating a vast field of fire to buy them time to jump.
But back on the CIC the news went from bad to worse as the engineering officer on the bridge told them that the FTL drive was off-line
"We need those FTL drives online soon or we're dead" Sheila said considering at the display with fear that masking it as best she could behind her officer mask when Commander Gardner turned her and said
"I'm going down the engineering crew is in chaos I can fix those drives you take command" and without another word he quickly fled from the CIC making Sheba realise that she was completely in charge in a life or death situation. The entire bridge crew looked at her hanging on her every word when Sheba finally came to self and told the tactical officer
"Line-up main battery on the forward baseship" she told them and the tactical officer followed orders before she added "Fire"
At the front of the ship, the massive forward batteries of the Pegasus fired sending large explosive projectiles into the starfish shaped vessel in front of it. The explosive shells were ripped huge chunks out of the centre of the vessel causing it to stop firing as it slowly limped away to try to retreat from the battle as its fellows provided cover.
The battle continued on for 10 minutes till all of a sudden just as the missiles began to get through the defences again the FTLs suddenly came online and Sheba ordered immediately
"Jump"
And thankfully this time shift leapt away to safety as the familiar sights of the fleet appeared on the dradis screen they all breathed a sigh of relief before Sheba asked for a damage report
"Slight damage to the outer hull, some of the batteries are off-line and 117 wounded" the communications officer told her when she suddenly received an new report from the engineering and smile that had been on her face disappeared "Sir engineering is reporting one fatality, its Commander Gardner Sir"
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A few hours later Colonel Cain was standing in the office of Admiral Adama facing him and her own CO Commodore Trakiss she finished her report over the unexpected action against the enemy.
"Some of the other crew are less forgiving in regards to Commander Gardner's decisions then you are Colonel" Seth told her, that she had feeling the man's sacrifice deserved more appreciation added
"He gave his life to save the Pegasus" but Admiral Adama told her
"Gardner was my decision, his failures on my responsibility" Sheba then decided to broach the subject that was on her mind
"Who is to be the new CO of Pegasus Sir?"
Admiral Adama looked over to his second-in-command who nodded and Seth produced box that he opened to reveal two commander rank pins that he placed in Sheba's hand
"Congratulations commander Pegasus is your command"
Sheba was stunned, she had never seen this coming and almost didn't hear Seth as he told her "With Colonel Shaw returning to duty and childcare has been arranged for the children we can free you up to take charge Pegasus I know Sheba that your make her the pride of the fleet"
But Sheba objected "But sir I'd rather remain on Telmaya, I'm not my mother sir"
Looking towards Adama for a moment Seth turn back to look at her and told Sheba "Look I know that you're not your mother Sheba, a fact that I'm thankful for but he may be the only person in the whole fleet that can get that ship to not only have its pride back but also its honour I will miss you on my ship but I can take comfort in knowing that you will be where you need to be"
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Two weeks later…
Boomer sat in the infirmary on Galactica where Doc Cottle had just finished examining her. He turned to her and said quite bluntly
"Well Boomer somehow you manage this although I'm not sure how, you're pregnant"
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Sorry for the lateness of this chapter but my Uni workload is astronomical, I hope that you all enjoy it