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Fic of doom Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
"We need to go back for the Demetrius." Captain Thrace was leaning against the data stream, looking at Natalie with a calm that Sam wasn't feeling.
He knew Kara was right, though. Helo and the others were in danger, and they needed to get them away from where Cavil's forces might still be lurking. But the problem Sam was having was that the data stream, just being here in the control center of a Cylon base star, was giving him an attack of the heebie-jeebies, not to mention a huge dose of curiosity. He wanted to reach down into the colors of the stram, to find out if he could tap into it. To know what would happen.
But doing so was probably not the best idea he could have. Not when he didn't know what it could do. Especially not when Kara still didn't know who and what he was.
Lying to her was getting harder every day, though her search for Earth was at least enough of a distraction that she didn't seem to notice his pre-occupation. That shouldn't have been a good thing. Not talking wasn't doing either of them any good, and never had.
But getting Kara to talk about anything was usually like pulling teeth.
So he was waiting, he was trying not to just blurt it out, and he was being distracted.
And maybe being distracted was the best that could happen to him. He slid his hand down the side, but didn't dip his fingertips into the stream.
"Sam?"
He jerked his hand out, realizing he'd stopped paying attention to the conversation, "What?"
Kara was giving him a weird look. "I asked if you wanted to go with Punchline to rescue the others while Natalie and I work on the plan to take down the hub."
An insanely crazy idea, but Sam was a little impressed that they were thinking of doing it.
Being away from the base star would be good. He nodded, "Sure, I can go."
"Good. Suit up and meet Punchline down in the hangar," Natalie told him.
Sam looked at Kara, eyebrows raised, making sure it was all right with her before he left. Some part of him was worried that this was a bad idea, that aligning themselves with the Cylons was a horrible plan. But something was happening here, something he wasn't sure he understood yet. And it looked like it was a good thing.
-=-
Five was loitering outside a secondary control room while Four tinkered with the systems, setting things slightly out of wack and leaving a few surprises for anyone trying to fix the malfunctions. He knew this was the right thing: Natalie and the others had to be stopped. Being an individual was wrong.
"Done." Four touched his shoulder, "Thank you for watching. I think we should vacate the area and work our way down to another level for more sabotage."
The base star was a vast machine, capable of surviving on one system alone. They would have to disable several more before they could cause it to drift further down into the atmosphere. At least, that was Five's plan. He'd considered trying to just start the jets up, propelling them downwards and out of their orbit, but Natalie had too many people in the control room at all times, and there was no way to be discreet about that sort of thing.
"This would be easier if more of her people weren't so misguided," Four muttered to him.
Watching the passing walls, and letting the paisley shade itself to a nice orange and tan, Five shrugged, "Would you trust them if they did offer help?"
Four seemed to consider this as they went down a set of stairs and out into a different corridor. It wasn't like it was a hard question, and Five began to worry that his assessment of Four's brains had missed something important. Finally, he replied, "I suppose not. But it would still be interesting if they did."
"You and your experiments," muttered Five, shoving through another hatch and looking around the hangar bay. It was mostly empty, the base star's complement depleted to the point that many of the heavy raiders were stored in one location now. There were several derelict and damaged raiders waiting for repair. Something that would have to wait until they had other repairs finished.
There were a few centurions there, working on something in the back. Five didn't really care what they were doing. They'd soon be dead, too. It was so wrong to give their servitors their own minds and chance to destroy things.
-=-
Cally knew their secret. The mantra sometimes ran round and round and round Tory Foster's brain until she wanted to beat her own brains in just to make it stop. Cally knew. But she hadn't said she would tell. Tory sometimes watched her from a distance, making sure that she wasn't getting ideas. But just divorcing Galen had seemed to be enough for the little deckhand. For now. Tory wondered what would happen as the months wore on and the idea of Earth never became a reality.
Would Cally spill out of some sort of petty anger? Or would she see no reason.
They had both agreed that Nicky needed to be protected, that any knowledge of his parentage should be kept secret. There were enough troubles with occasional threats against Hera. Tory made certain that the Galactica marines believed it was an order from the president to keep the half-Cylon child safe. And Dualla seemed to be good at watching her, the little girl laughing and smiling at her when Tory checked on them.
It was almost ridiculous that both of her parents had felt obligated to go on Thrace's damned mission.
Standing outside the cell containing the Six, Tory studied her, wondering what is was like to have known what you were from your inception. She knew what it was like to lie and shade the truth, now, but from the beginning? It would be different. Strange.
Being a Cylon at all was confusing at the best of times.
The marines opened the door and let her in.
The Six looked up at her, "Yes?"
She looked bored. Wearing the same clothes she'd been in since they locked her up (Tory had personally 'lost' the request to find her more clothing, a few months before. No one else had tried since Sharon Agathon). They had given her something to sleep in, but she rarely changed into it, almost as though she prefered to destroy her own clothing rather than accept their charity.
"I'm here on behalf of Laura Roslin, regarding this Final Five of yours. Do you remember anything more?" Do you recognize me as one of them?
The Six sighed, "I haven't. Thinking about them is hard, so very hard. As though... as though some part of us rebels against the very idea of them. But there is nothing more, no memory of who they were, or why they walked away from us when they did."
"Caprica," Tory could use names when it suited her, "why did you help Athena?"
It was a question the Cylon had answered before, and Tory really saw no reason to ask it. But her curiosity about who and what she was, was bubbling under her skin. And maybe if Caprica's answer could help, the question would be worth the repetition.
For a moment, Caprica looked down at her hands, fingers wrapped dociley around each other. Then she gave a soft laugh and looked at Tory. "On Caprica, there was a man, a resistance fighter. He asked me what we were once. At the time, I didn't have an answer for him. Because I was as confused as he was by our actions. We had killed the Three and Boomer and I had realized that we were different. There was something about us..."
Not the answer Caprica had given before, and Tory wondered if she were rambling for no purpose, or if she needed expiation as much as Tory needed to hear it.
"Why would he be confused?"
"I had killed Three to save his life. We set him free, gave him Kara Thrace's dogtags back." Caprica shook her head. "Mercy and kindness from Cylons to humans? That was unheard of then. It's mostly unheard of now. But if we hadn't, if we had killed him and still changed the tide of the war, so many of our people would be alive today."
That wasn't something Tory had expected at all. She blinked, "What do you mean?"
A dry smile crossed Caprica's lips. "Sam Anders led the resistance on New Caprica. Oh, Colonel Tigh and Galen Tyrol were instrumental in helping him, but Sam had the talent and the history. He knew where to hit us and how." She stopped for a moment, her gaze going distant. "And he had the hatred, too, with his wife gone."
Kara Thrace had been locked up. Tory remembered that, remembered trying to get answers out of Felix Gaeta and Baltar. Finding her whereabouts had seemed less and less likely as time went on.
There had been nights where Sam was so drunk that she and Jean had dragged him back into his tent, turning him on his side so he wouldn't drown if he puked. The life of a resistance fighter had seemed so glamorous, once. After that, Tory had focused on the practicalities of it all.
"I could have stopped it. I could have handed Sam over to our police, labeled him as the source. The back of the resistance would have broken."
"But you didn't."
"And so many died." Caprica closed her eyes, then laughed and the sound was hollow. "And now you ask me why I saved Hera Agathon. Why I put the fate of a small child over my entire race. I did it because Hera is the future, Tory Foster. And because saving life instead of allowing death made me feel as though I were redeeming some part of myself."
Sam Anders was a Cylon. Tory wondered what Caprica would say about that. She cleared her throat and stood up, "Thank you."
It seemed odd to thank a Cylon, especially one in captivity, but Tory did it anyway, feeling it was appropriate. She wondered how Sam was doing, then put him from her mind, heading down to the daycare to watch Hera and Nicky play. Soon enough, she'd be back on Colonial One dealing with the tedium of governing the fleet.
-=-
After ten hours, Helo had readied the ship to jump back for their vipers. Kara and Sam were alive, he believed that with all of his heart. Whether they'd managed to hide from the Cylons was another matter entirely. There had been a few asteroids and rocks in the area, and further out, there was a planet with rings and moons, orbiting the star they'd triangulated on. Helo just wasn't sure if they would have made it there in time. He hadn't asked Athena to confirm whether the Cylon would take them prisoner or not.
"Board's green, sir," Gaeta reported.
"All right. Jump back to where we were, but be prepared to jump out again." If only they'd been in raptors and not vipers, they could have jumped themselves out of trouble. But vipers were too small for FTL drives and Kara would have objected to flying their one raptor, probably by claiming it wasn't sexy enough.
"In three, two, one."
The Demetrius shuddered a little as they finished the jump, and Helo worried again about the drives. There was silence in CIC for a few minutes, and then dradis began to beep.
"Dradis contact," Gaeta reported, hands moving over his board as he narrowed down the type. "It's Cylon, sir."
Dammit. Helo's gut clenched, and he opened his mouth to order the jump when something stopped him. He didn't know why, later, but he changed his order. "Are there any others?"
"Not that I can see, sir. Just the one. And it's not powering up weapons. It is definitely closing, though."
On the heels of that came a crackle from the communications board. Seelix was there, bent over it for a moment before the static cleared.
"Demetrius, Longshot. I repeat, this is not a hostile Cylon. We're here in peace. Please respond."
Across from Helo, Barolay's eyes widened, but she didn't crack a smile.
That was fine, she could be ecstatic about her one surviving team member being alive later. Helo needed to know something, though. "Is it him?"
She nodded. "They could be mimicing, but I don't think so."
"All right." Helo nodded to Seelix, "Open a channel." When she nodded, though she looked as wary as Helo felt, he picked up the phone, "Longshot, Demetrius. Please confirm you're who you say you are."
"Thank frak, Demetrius." Sam sounded more relieved than Helo did as he rattled off the correct protocols, though he stumbled once or twice. He ended with, "There's a revolution, Demetrius. We need to get the frak out of here before Cavil's forces return and take us out."
Sounded like Sam had quite a story to tell. Helo shook his head, "You crazy lucky bastard. All right, Longshot, send us your coordinates."
-=-
"Just as a warning," Sam added, as they Demetrius cycled up to jump, "There's a base star at the other side of this jump. They're friendlies, though."
Punchline snorted from where she had her fingers on the controls.
"What, you don't agree?"
"Maybe." She shook her head at him, "It's not that easy, you know. You can't just say we're friendly and expect both sides to just stop this stupid war."
"At least you think it's stupid," was his amused reply. For the time being, Sam couldn't help but find all of this hilarious. He was a Cylon, the Cylons were Cylons, Helo was married to a Cylon, Cavil was a Cylon who wanted all of humanity dead (not that Sam knew why or cared). And slowly but surely, all of the sides were shifting and changing, coming together in unexpected ways.
Maybe there was still hope that he could tell Kara the truth and she wouldn't shoot him in the head.
"Boards green, Longshot, we're ready to jump."
"Copy that, Demetrius. On my mark in three, two one. Mark."
-=-
chapter ten
"We need to go back for the Demetrius." Captain Thrace was leaning against the data stream, looking at Natalie with a calm that Sam wasn't feeling.
He knew Kara was right, though. Helo and the others were in danger, and they needed to get them away from where Cavil's forces might still be lurking. But the problem Sam was having was that the data stream, just being here in the control center of a Cylon base star, was giving him an attack of the heebie-jeebies, not to mention a huge dose of curiosity. He wanted to reach down into the colors of the stram, to find out if he could tap into it. To know what would happen.
But doing so was probably not the best idea he could have. Not when he didn't know what it could do. Especially not when Kara still didn't know who and what he was.
Lying to her was getting harder every day, though her search for Earth was at least enough of a distraction that she didn't seem to notice his pre-occupation. That shouldn't have been a good thing. Not talking wasn't doing either of them any good, and never had.
But getting Kara to talk about anything was usually like pulling teeth.
So he was waiting, he was trying not to just blurt it out, and he was being distracted.
And maybe being distracted was the best that could happen to him. He slid his hand down the side, but didn't dip his fingertips into the stream.
"Sam?"
He jerked his hand out, realizing he'd stopped paying attention to the conversation, "What?"
Kara was giving him a weird look. "I asked if you wanted to go with Punchline to rescue the others while Natalie and I work on the plan to take down the hub."
An insanely crazy idea, but Sam was a little impressed that they were thinking of doing it.
Being away from the base star would be good. He nodded, "Sure, I can go."
"Good. Suit up and meet Punchline down in the hangar," Natalie told him.
Sam looked at Kara, eyebrows raised, making sure it was all right with her before he left. Some part of him was worried that this was a bad idea, that aligning themselves with the Cylons was a horrible plan. But something was happening here, something he wasn't sure he understood yet. And it looked like it was a good thing.
-=-
Five was loitering outside a secondary control room while Four tinkered with the systems, setting things slightly out of wack and leaving a few surprises for anyone trying to fix the malfunctions. He knew this was the right thing: Natalie and the others had to be stopped. Being an individual was wrong.
"Done." Four touched his shoulder, "Thank you for watching. I think we should vacate the area and work our way down to another level for more sabotage."
The base star was a vast machine, capable of surviving on one system alone. They would have to disable several more before they could cause it to drift further down into the atmosphere. At least, that was Five's plan. He'd considered trying to just start the jets up, propelling them downwards and out of their orbit, but Natalie had too many people in the control room at all times, and there was no way to be discreet about that sort of thing.
"This would be easier if more of her people weren't so misguided," Four muttered to him.
Watching the passing walls, and letting the paisley shade itself to a nice orange and tan, Five shrugged, "Would you trust them if they did offer help?"
Four seemed to consider this as they went down a set of stairs and out into a different corridor. It wasn't like it was a hard question, and Five began to worry that his assessment of Four's brains had missed something important. Finally, he replied, "I suppose not. But it would still be interesting if they did."
"You and your experiments," muttered Five, shoving through another hatch and looking around the hangar bay. It was mostly empty, the base star's complement depleted to the point that many of the heavy raiders were stored in one location now. There were several derelict and damaged raiders waiting for repair. Something that would have to wait until they had other repairs finished.
There were a few centurions there, working on something in the back. Five didn't really care what they were doing. They'd soon be dead, too. It was so wrong to give their servitors their own minds and chance to destroy things.
-=-
Cally knew their secret. The mantra sometimes ran round and round and round Tory Foster's brain until she wanted to beat her own brains in just to make it stop. Cally knew. But she hadn't said she would tell. Tory sometimes watched her from a distance, making sure that she wasn't getting ideas. But just divorcing Galen had seemed to be enough for the little deckhand. For now. Tory wondered what would happen as the months wore on and the idea of Earth never became a reality.
Would Cally spill out of some sort of petty anger? Or would she see no reason.
They had both agreed that Nicky needed to be protected, that any knowledge of his parentage should be kept secret. There were enough troubles with occasional threats against Hera. Tory made certain that the Galactica marines believed it was an order from the president to keep the half-Cylon child safe. And Dualla seemed to be good at watching her, the little girl laughing and smiling at her when Tory checked on them.
It was almost ridiculous that both of her parents had felt obligated to go on Thrace's damned mission.
Standing outside the cell containing the Six, Tory studied her, wondering what is was like to have known what you were from your inception. She knew what it was like to lie and shade the truth, now, but from the beginning? It would be different. Strange.
Being a Cylon at all was confusing at the best of times.
The marines opened the door and let her in.
The Six looked up at her, "Yes?"
She looked bored. Wearing the same clothes she'd been in since they locked her up (Tory had personally 'lost' the request to find her more clothing, a few months before. No one else had tried since Sharon Agathon). They had given her something to sleep in, but she rarely changed into it, almost as though she prefered to destroy her own clothing rather than accept their charity.
"I'm here on behalf of Laura Roslin, regarding this Final Five of yours. Do you remember anything more?" Do you recognize me as one of them?
The Six sighed, "I haven't. Thinking about them is hard, so very hard. As though... as though some part of us rebels against the very idea of them. But there is nothing more, no memory of who they were, or why they walked away from us when they did."
"Caprica," Tory could use names when it suited her, "why did you help Athena?"
It was a question the Cylon had answered before, and Tory really saw no reason to ask it. But her curiosity about who and what she was, was bubbling under her skin. And maybe if Caprica's answer could help, the question would be worth the repetition.
For a moment, Caprica looked down at her hands, fingers wrapped dociley around each other. Then she gave a soft laugh and looked at Tory. "On Caprica, there was a man, a resistance fighter. He asked me what we were once. At the time, I didn't have an answer for him. Because I was as confused as he was by our actions. We had killed the Three and Boomer and I had realized that we were different. There was something about us..."
Not the answer Caprica had given before, and Tory wondered if she were rambling for no purpose, or if she needed expiation as much as Tory needed to hear it.
"Why would he be confused?"
"I had killed Three to save his life. We set him free, gave him Kara Thrace's dogtags back." Caprica shook her head. "Mercy and kindness from Cylons to humans? That was unheard of then. It's mostly unheard of now. But if we hadn't, if we had killed him and still changed the tide of the war, so many of our people would be alive today."
That wasn't something Tory had expected at all. She blinked, "What do you mean?"
A dry smile crossed Caprica's lips. "Sam Anders led the resistance on New Caprica. Oh, Colonel Tigh and Galen Tyrol were instrumental in helping him, but Sam had the talent and the history. He knew where to hit us and how." She stopped for a moment, her gaze going distant. "And he had the hatred, too, with his wife gone."
Kara Thrace had been locked up. Tory remembered that, remembered trying to get answers out of Felix Gaeta and Baltar. Finding her whereabouts had seemed less and less likely as time went on.
There had been nights where Sam was so drunk that she and Jean had dragged him back into his tent, turning him on his side so he wouldn't drown if he puked. The life of a resistance fighter had seemed so glamorous, once. After that, Tory had focused on the practicalities of it all.
"I could have stopped it. I could have handed Sam over to our police, labeled him as the source. The back of the resistance would have broken."
"But you didn't."
"And so many died." Caprica closed her eyes, then laughed and the sound was hollow. "And now you ask me why I saved Hera Agathon. Why I put the fate of a small child over my entire race. I did it because Hera is the future, Tory Foster. And because saving life instead of allowing death made me feel as though I were redeeming some part of myself."
Sam Anders was a Cylon. Tory wondered what Caprica would say about that. She cleared her throat and stood up, "Thank you."
It seemed odd to thank a Cylon, especially one in captivity, but Tory did it anyway, feeling it was appropriate. She wondered how Sam was doing, then put him from her mind, heading down to the daycare to watch Hera and Nicky play. Soon enough, she'd be back on Colonial One dealing with the tedium of governing the fleet.
-=-
After ten hours, Helo had readied the ship to jump back for their vipers. Kara and Sam were alive, he believed that with all of his heart. Whether they'd managed to hide from the Cylons was another matter entirely. There had been a few asteroids and rocks in the area, and further out, there was a planet with rings and moons, orbiting the star they'd triangulated on. Helo just wasn't sure if they would have made it there in time. He hadn't asked Athena to confirm whether the Cylon would take them prisoner or not.
"Board's green, sir," Gaeta reported.
"All right. Jump back to where we were, but be prepared to jump out again." If only they'd been in raptors and not vipers, they could have jumped themselves out of trouble. But vipers were too small for FTL drives and Kara would have objected to flying their one raptor, probably by claiming it wasn't sexy enough.
"In three, two, one."
The Demetrius shuddered a little as they finished the jump, and Helo worried again about the drives. There was silence in CIC for a few minutes, and then dradis began to beep.
"Dradis contact," Gaeta reported, hands moving over his board as he narrowed down the type. "It's Cylon, sir."
Dammit. Helo's gut clenched, and he opened his mouth to order the jump when something stopped him. He didn't know why, later, but he changed his order. "Are there any others?"
"Not that I can see, sir. Just the one. And it's not powering up weapons. It is definitely closing, though."
On the heels of that came a crackle from the communications board. Seelix was there, bent over it for a moment before the static cleared.
"Demetrius, Longshot. I repeat, this is not a hostile Cylon. We're here in peace. Please respond."
Across from Helo, Barolay's eyes widened, but she didn't crack a smile.
That was fine, she could be ecstatic about her one surviving team member being alive later. Helo needed to know something, though. "Is it him?"
She nodded. "They could be mimicing, but I don't think so."
"All right." Helo nodded to Seelix, "Open a channel." When she nodded, though she looked as wary as Helo felt, he picked up the phone, "Longshot, Demetrius. Please confirm you're who you say you are."
"Thank frak, Demetrius." Sam sounded more relieved than Helo did as he rattled off the correct protocols, though he stumbled once or twice. He ended with, "There's a revolution, Demetrius. We need to get the frak out of here before Cavil's forces return and take us out."
Sounded like Sam had quite a story to tell. Helo shook his head, "You crazy lucky bastard. All right, Longshot, send us your coordinates."
-=-
"Just as a warning," Sam added, as they Demetrius cycled up to jump, "There's a base star at the other side of this jump. They're friendlies, though."
Punchline snorted from where she had her fingers on the controls.
"What, you don't agree?"
"Maybe." She shook her head at him, "It's not that easy, you know. You can't just say we're friendly and expect both sides to just stop this stupid war."
"At least you think it's stupid," was his amused reply. For the time being, Sam couldn't help but find all of this hilarious. He was a Cylon, the Cylons were Cylons, Helo was married to a Cylon, Cavil was a Cylon who wanted all of humanity dead (not that Sam knew why or cared). And slowly but surely, all of the sides were shifting and changing, coming together in unexpected ways.
Maybe there was still hope that he could tell Kara the truth and she wouldn't shoot him in the head.
"Boards green, Longshot, we're ready to jump."
"Copy that, Demetrius. On my mark in three, two one. Mark."
-=-
chapter ten