"You've lost your way, Sergeant. You've lost sight of the purpose of the law: to protect its citizens, not persecute them. Whatever we are, whatever's left of us – we're better than that."

- William Adama

Chapter 10: Litmus

The explosion rocked Galactica, tearing open one of the passageways destroying the hallway near where Adama and Tigh were standing, and blowing up two small storage rooms. The blast knocked the two of them back and killed three people.

Adama and Tigh were alright, but three crewmen died during the explosion. It had been a copy of Aaron Doyal who had been the one who had killed the three crewmen in the blast.

Adama ordered the ship's master at arms, Sergeant Hadrian, to launch an investigation. More information would be needed to find out what had happened and how he had managed to get explosives. He had not brought explosives in as everyone who entered the Galactica except military personnel and presidential staff was checked for weapons or explosives.

First, she began interviewing the members of the ship who were a part of the deck gang and suspiciously heard three different responses for where Galen Tyrol was. That was concerning in her opinion so she had him brought in for questioning.

Tyrol was reluctant to come and his testimony was interesting, to say the least.

"Did you leave hatch 392 open?" She asked. This hatch led to one of the ship's small arms lockers.

"No, I'm not responsible for internal ship security unlike you. That is a hundred meters away from one of the flight decks which is my authority area." He retorted.

"So what explains you being in three different places during this time."

"Sergeant when I'm off duty I have the right to be wherever I want on the ship unless it's a restricted area and none of the places you've claimed I've been in are restricted."

"Answer the question!" She yelled.

"I was in my quarters!" He yelled back.

"How can you prove that you were there?"

"Specialist Henderson verifies that I was there." He replied.

"You're a Cylon collaborator then." She said,

"That's a baseless claim!" He roared. "You have no evidence of that at all!" He responded, getting up. Hadrian didn't have any evidence for that so she had little choice but to let him go.

In truth, Tyrol did know why the hatch had been left open. He and Sharon had been meeting in one of the more private spaces on the ship and had said that she had passed through that. So in reality he did know but that was an easily deniable fact. But that wasn't exactly what she was going to do. Motioning to the marine guards, they raised their rifles.

"I think that we have our confession." She said,

Meanwhile, Colonial Marine Captain Cecil Marks was on his way towards where the investigation would be taking place. The young captain was a company commander in the 37th Marine Special Recon Unit, which was attached to the 93rd infantry brigade currently on the marine assault ship. He had come over to Galactica to take command of its marine detachment. There were only 36 marines on the Battlestar which amounted to a single platoon, with no commissioned officers and only a handful of NCOs. Master Sergeant Hadrian was the highest-ranking officer, followed by Gunnery Sergeant Terry Burrell. This was due to the decommissioning of the ship. them as the only marine officers onboard the entire ship. Due to the decommissioning of the ship part of the detachment along with most of the officers had left, leaving an understrength marine complement. It was going to be augmented with reservists and recruits which should hopefully bring it back up to full strength, and due to a large amount of unused space aboard the ship, it would be used to train these marines.

The good thing is that they had more options than others on who they could draw from. The marines were of course focused on shipboard security and planetary assault but a lot of the basic skills were still transferable from the colonial army or one of the independent colonial defense forces.

Adama had first ordered him to check in on a matter of ship security, as the investigation was currently being overseen by the master of arms he had been ordered to check on how it was going.

He walked in just as the two marines were pointing their guns at Galen Tyrol.

"I didn't fracking do anything, you have no evidence that I'm a Cylon collaborator!"

The Captain drew his sidearm. "What the frack is going on in here?" He demanded. "Stand down and tell me calmly what's going on!"

Hadrian told him the evidence against Tyrol while being almost constantly interrupted by him. He then listened to what Tyrol had to say, and while there might be reason to suspect that he had something to do there was not a lot of plausibility to the allegations. There wasn't anything to prove that he had done anything wrong.

"Sergeant, release him and don't come back to him unless you have some more substantial evidence that he left the passage unlocked!" He told her and then exited the room. He'd have to have a talk with her in the future, but first, he had to look at the marine complement of the Battlestar.

About half of the marines were assembled in the ship's dusty marine briefing room, large enough to hold six times the amount. The room next to it was the ship's largest armory, big enough to hold weapons to equip a tenth of the ship's standard complement. One thing that they wouldn't run out of would-be small arms, which had been left by the marine detachment. There were some 2000 rifles, pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, light machine guns, and every other type of small arm along with over a million rounds of ammunition for them. Small arms weren't the only weapons here however, in one of the cargo bays there were a few dozen vehicles from ATVs and utility vehicles to infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks.

Manpower was the far greater issue, and there were barely enough marines to oversee the basic functions that they were supposed to do on a ship, much less provide effective security. Their normal role would be facilitating ship security, defending against borders, guarding sensitive areas, and performing planetary assault or infiltration missions. However, they were barely enough to guard sensitive areas of the ship, much less perform other roles.

Galactica would normally in theory support several ten times her current complement, which explained the difficulty of undertaking their assigned roles. She could carry over a thousand if the need arose, more if not for a sustained period.

"Attention!" He barked and the marines saluted and entered formation.

"Well it looks like you're ready for anything, would help if there were more of you." He said, looking around. "Who's the senior most officer here?"

Gunnery Sergeant Terry Burrell stepped forward. "Me sir."

"Alright, you'll come with me after this is done." He said to him and then glanced back at the marines. "Your numbers look a little small, so we're going to be moving a few squads from other ships to reinforce you. It won't be what we need going forward but we have another solution for that. There are a few hundred recruits that have been identified across the fleet, reservists, and those with former marine and army experience. We're going to be snagging them and training them here so that hopefully we can have a more substantial complement. Some of you will have reduced normal duties and be used to help train them, so watch out for me telling you about that." He said. "Return to your normal duties, dismissed." He then turned to Burnell. "Come with me."

"I need some officers, Sergeant, commissioned ones who are experienced and can lead their troops effectively. Therefore I'm going to make you a lieutenant, even though this is very rare and unusual I've decided that it's the best course of action. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." He replied. "But sir isn't Sergeant Hadrian the seniormost marine officer? Wouldn't it make sense for her to be promoted?"

"Yes, but certain actions of hers have made me decide that she needs some time before she advances in rank if she dies." He said. "You are a better fit."

Adama was in the CIC, going over some reports as to the status of the fleet. He turned his head to see Hadrian coming into the room, flanked by two marines.

"Commander, I request that you come before the tribunal."

"What for, sergeant?" He asked. The bridge crew was looking around and trying to figure out what was going on.

"Under the authority that you granted me, I have the ability to call everyone on the ship to be questioned." She said,

"Commander, I recently received reports from Captain Marks. This investigation is getting out of hand and I am ordering you to not go after anyone unless you have probable cause for their involvement. If you have probable cause against me, spit it out right now." He said. She couldn't provide anything substantive.

"You've lost your way, Sergeant. You've lost sight of the purpose of the law: to protect its citizens, not persecute them. Whatever we are, whatever's left of us – we're better than that. Now these proceedings are closed. The board of inquiry is disbanded. Sergeant, you are confined to quarters. Get the hell out of here." He ordered and the two marine guards who had just been enforcing her orders now took her away.

Meanwhile, in one of their hiding spots, Boomer saw Tyrol coming over.

"This, what we had, ends now." He said. "Our relationship has led to the deaths of three people, and if Hadrian wasn't so crazy we would have been found out."

"I understand," Sharon said sadly as they both left in different directions.

Author's note: The Tigh never told Sharon and Tyrol to call off their relationship because let's be honest he probably forgot that they were doing anything due to being drunk half the time on duty. And also that appeared in the Water episode so that explains it. Also, it seems that that policy is a bit inconsistent. We see several colonial fleet personnel in relationships that they shouldn't be in if the rules were being obeyed. I'd imagine that Roslin's order to start making babies took priority…

Marines are not shown a lot in BSG and there really aren't any main marine characters. I guess this is because there are very few so therefore they don't play a big role. They will play a greater role in this series, don't worry.