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Fic of doom Chapter Ten
Ten
The control room was still pitch-black. Candy paused to the side of the doorway, trying not to give anyone inside a good shot at her head. "We need flashlights."
Jo shrugged and disappeared back down the corridor. She returned in a few moments, carrying two flashlights, her side-arm out again. "Ran into some unfriendlies on the way back," she explained.
"Oops," offered Candy as she took one of the lights, flipping it on.
Rolling her eyes, Jo nodded, "You first?"
"Me, first." Candy agreed. She crouched down and slowly slipped around the lip of the hatch, light on and out, shining where she pointed her gun. Someone had definitely shot up the place, leaving behind dead Fives and Fours. On first glance, she couldn't see a One, but she figured he had to be around, somewhere.
They moved carefully towards the center of the room, making sure the others were dead before Candy straightened at the center data stream console. She played the light over one side, raising her eyebrows at the blood and other things that coated one side of it. "Well. Someone had a party without us."
"What the frak happened here?" Jo was standing at one of the other stations, a Four skewered on a broken strut.
"Death," Candy quipped. She considered for a moment, then nodded at the data stream, "Keep an eye out, I'm going to check on the ship's systems." One of their fears was that Cavil would be able to cripple them before they managed to take him down. Being stuck in space wasn't their idea of a good time, especially since the other base stars in their fleet might begin to notice their problems. A boarding party from one of Cavil's allies would be a bad idea.
"Should I shoot you if you go insane?"
"Yeah."
Jo nodded, then smirked, "Leg, arm or torso?"
"I like my legs. Better go for an arm." That dealt with, Candy closed her eyes and reached down into the data stream. For a moment, there was nothing. And then there was everything, every system flowing over and through her, tumbling her head over heals into what felt like nothingness.
Sometimes, Candy had wondered if this was what the hybrids felt, this strange mix of life and knowledge and universe. But then again, hybrids were half-insane already, so maybe they felt green and red and orange, not symbols and words with meaning. Candy steadied herself, querying the stream, searching out the knowledge she needed, the systems that needed repair, and the signs of life on the rest of the ship.
With a gasp, she opened her eyes, glad to see the lights were back on. "Looks like we did it. There are no Ones left on this ship. But I'm pretty sure the others are starting to notice something. One of them is trying to hail us."
"Shit. Now what?"
They hadn't really discussed what to do once they'd succeeeded. Hell, Candy was pretty sure Boomer had thought they'd fail. She weighed their options, then pursed her lips. "We could go back to where the battle was. See if we can pick up the trail of Natalie and the others?"
Jo nudged the Four that was skewered, then shrugged, "Sounds as good a plan as any. Do you think we should clean up in here?"
"Nah. Leave that to the others." Candy slid her hand back into the stream. "Coordinates located," she said, her voice echoing oddly. "Ship secured. Atmosphere still mostly-vented. Jump."
-=-
Ellen Tigh sat in her sealed quarters and looked down at Boomer, wondering how it had come to this. The younger Cylon had been shot in the back as she'd been heading for Ellen, to warn her. She'd been covered in flecks of blood and Ellen shuddered to think what she'd done before she'd come here, how many she had killed--
The ship had decompressed. Ellen had felt that through the deck, and she'd felt something terrible press against her chest. That her children would fight among themselves like this! It was hard on a mother, hard on anyone, but hardest most on Ellen, who was the only one with the memories of watching them change and grow as they created them from nothing. She and Saul had been so proud when Eight took her first steps, when Six smiled with innocent wonder, when Five tried on his first well-cut suit.
It was in Boomer's favor that the hub was close by. Ellen couldn't say how she knew that, but it made sense. John would never leave himself that vulnerable, and the few resurection tanks on board every base star would never be enough for his ego.
Stroking her fingers through Boomer's hair, she still mourned, her tears falling while she waited to discover if she herself would die soon.
The base star gave a shiver and jumped.
-=-
Cylons who wanted to be good guys. Who wanted individuality and names. Athena shook her head as she listened to the explanation from Starbuck over the comms. It sounded too fraking good to be true. She knew how the Cylons could twist shit around, could say one thing and 'believe' it right up until they shot you in the back.
Which meant she wasn't trusting this Natalie, she wasn't trusting any of them as far as she could throw a base star in Caprican gravity.
Starbuck could trust them all she wanted: Athena wasn't sure she trusted Starbuck, anyway. No one knew what she really was, after all. No one even knew that she wasn't a Cylon herself.
-=-
Boomer opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Dammit. Damn. Frak. Shit. One of them had managed a lucky shot, one of them had killed her before she could get to cover. She wanted to curse and scream, but she'd been here before, lost without any of her plans coming to fruition.
The resurrection fluid felt colder than it should and she pushed herself into a sitting position, cursing softly.
There was no one in attendance. Somehow, that didn't surprise her. Climbing out of the tank, she looked around and realized that she wasn't on the base star. Any base star.
Boomer's eyes widened as she looked at the rows that went on forever, lifeless, brainless Eights just waiting to become something.
She'd resurrected on the hub.
She'd frakking resurrected on the frakking HUB.
A part of her wanted to laugh hysterically. The laughter started to bubble up and she throttled it down. She needed to get dressed and find herself some sort of armament, and hide. There would be Ones here, Fours and maybe a Five or two. None of them would take kindly to a rebellious Eight, especially once the rest of the fleet realized what she had done. Cavil would resurrect, after all. If he hadn't already. And at least it didn't appear that he'd stuck some sort of protocols into her resurrections that would revert her to his puppet.
She spared a thought for Candy, Jo and the others, and hoped that they'd succeeded. Right now, they weren't her problem. There was no way to no where they'd end up, and no way to find them. At least not yet, while she was naked.
"Pants," Boomer muttered as she began rummaging in the lockers lining one side of the cavern of Eights.
Once she was dressed, she would get armed and consider her options.
-=-
The problem was, being told that the Cylons were friendly wasn't much of a warning for jumping to a system where a base star loomed. Not that it was anything but a large dradis contact. There were dozens of others, debris floating in a slowly turning orbit of the giant gas planet below.
"Demetrius, Starbuck. Glad you could join the party." Kara sounded almost like herself, and Helo found himself grinning.
"Yeah? You sure it's safe here, Starbuck? No lurking base stars?"
She snorted. "Not from what we can tell. And the base star's been here a good couple weeks, apparently."
Karl exchanged a glance with Athena. Did they dare trust these Cylons? She looked apprehensive, but that could simply be because she still didn't trust Starbuck.
"This is ridiculous!" Stomping into CIC, Pike glared at him. "Sir, this in direct disregard of our safety. Those frakkin' Cylons are going to shoot us down, or use us for frakking experiments! You know we can't trust them!"
"Shut up, ensign."
"You can't do this, sir!"
Seelix turned from her position and shook her head. "I agree, sir. They're frakking Cylons. We don't know what the frak Starbuck is, this is a trap."
"Oh, now you're worried it's a trap?" Helo scoffed at her. "Fine time to remember your suspicions, ensign. Both of you need to shut the frak up." He raised his voice. "Starbuck, you hearing his?"
"Loud and clear, Demetrius. I don't know if we can trust them, Helo. But I believe they don't intend to harm us."
Good. "All right, Starbuck. You need some company over there?"
"Actually, what I need are qualified engineers. The base star's engines are down, and if they're not fixed soon, we're screwed."
"That's not our problem," Seelix muttered.
Cylons asking for help from humans. Helo recognized the irony in it, and he wondered why Kara had agreed. "Starbuck, they holding a gun to your head?"
"No. Helo..." she trailed off and the radio went silent before she continued, her voice sounding odd, "They're different. They want to be people and not machines."
He could have scoffed. He could have mocked the very idea that machines wanted to be human. But looking across the table, he could see Athena, and he knew that the yearning to be more than what they were had to be ingrained in more than just one Cylon. He raised his eyebrows at her, but she turned away, not giving him an answer.
"People, huh?"
Starbuck snorted, "Just get me some engineers. We'll worry later."
"Should just let 'em die." Pike mumbled, subsiding when Helo glared at him.
The man was going to be a disciplinary problem, but then again, he was simply voicing what the others obviously felt. Helo wondered if it was his own marriage that made him more likely to believe, despite what he knew. Sharon had been ordered to seduce him, and she'd done it. Sometimes, he wondered how he could forgive that, and then he looked at her, or felt her curled into him, smelling her hair and seeing her smile. He could forgive because she loved.
He wondered if that was why these Cylons had changed. Who did they love?
-=-
Cally was sitting in Starbuck's viper, her fingers limp on the console as she stared into space when Tory found her. She was off-duty, but it would be at least an hour before she could pick Nicky up from daycare (Cally had discovered that time all to herself was more precious than she'd ever thought, before; she loved Nicky, but she needed her space, too). As always, Starbuck's viper wasn't known for being a hot spot of interest, though she did know some of the younger crew members were beginning to use the closed-off hangar area as a new frak spot.
"Pretending?" Tory asked, her tone idle as she stroked a hand along the viper's cockpit, finger tracing over the letters of Captain Thrace's call-sign.
"What do you want?" Feeling utterly weary, Cally shifted in the seat and turned to face the Cylon.
Tory's fingers finished their lazy movement and she looked up at Cally, letting the silence stretch. Cally wondered what was going on behind those dark eyes, what secrets and lies she sorted through, which truths she wanted hidden forever. "What would you change?"
A laugh bubbled out of Cally, humor-less and dry. "I don't think that's a question you want to know the answer to." She sighed. "Why are you here, Tory?"
"You know our secret." As if that explained everything, Tory pressed her thumb to the end of 'Starbuck'.
"Yeah. I do." There was no reason to deny it. Cally shook her head and stood up, climbing out to the ladder and slipping down it to the deck. Her boots made a hollow thump as she landed on the floor. "And you know mine. That makes us even."
Hating the Cylons wasn't as simple as it once was. Not with Tory looking vulnerable. Not with Tigh still in CIC, doing his damned job. Cally shivered as she turned to face Tory. "I don't like you."
"I know," Tory tilted her head down, hair sliding over her face for a moment before she smiled and looked at Cally, "I don't like you either."
Stalemate. Cally didn't know if she was out of her depth or if Tory was just giving her the impression she was. Drawing herself up straight, she changed the subject. "What do you know about Starbuck's viper?"
"It's brand new, Chief Tyrol isn't interested in risking it being a fake, Roslin thinks it's a sign from the Gods," Tory rattled off.
Cally nodded. "It's also picking up a signal that nothing else in the entire fleet can."
Something shifted and Tory blinked, her head turning as though she were unwilling to look at the viper. But she did, and a shudder went through her. Cally put a hand on her back when she swayed. "I guess that explains it."
"Explains what?" Cally prompted, letting Tory step back into her.
Tory sucked in a breath, shaking for a moment before she had herself under control. "I think it's been calling me."
-=-
chapter eleven
The control room was still pitch-black. Candy paused to the side of the doorway, trying not to give anyone inside a good shot at her head. "We need flashlights."
Jo shrugged and disappeared back down the corridor. She returned in a few moments, carrying two flashlights, her side-arm out again. "Ran into some unfriendlies on the way back," she explained.
"Oops," offered Candy as she took one of the lights, flipping it on.
Rolling her eyes, Jo nodded, "You first?"
"Me, first." Candy agreed. She crouched down and slowly slipped around the lip of the hatch, light on and out, shining where she pointed her gun. Someone had definitely shot up the place, leaving behind dead Fives and Fours. On first glance, she couldn't see a One, but she figured he had to be around, somewhere.
They moved carefully towards the center of the room, making sure the others were dead before Candy straightened at the center data stream console. She played the light over one side, raising her eyebrows at the blood and other things that coated one side of it. "Well. Someone had a party without us."
"What the frak happened here?" Jo was standing at one of the other stations, a Four skewered on a broken strut.
"Death," Candy quipped. She considered for a moment, then nodded at the data stream, "Keep an eye out, I'm going to check on the ship's systems." One of their fears was that Cavil would be able to cripple them before they managed to take him down. Being stuck in space wasn't their idea of a good time, especially since the other base stars in their fleet might begin to notice their problems. A boarding party from one of Cavil's allies would be a bad idea.
"Should I shoot you if you go insane?"
"Yeah."
Jo nodded, then smirked, "Leg, arm or torso?"
"I like my legs. Better go for an arm." That dealt with, Candy closed her eyes and reached down into the data stream. For a moment, there was nothing. And then there was everything, every system flowing over and through her, tumbling her head over heals into what felt like nothingness.
Sometimes, Candy had wondered if this was what the hybrids felt, this strange mix of life and knowledge and universe. But then again, hybrids were half-insane already, so maybe they felt green and red and orange, not symbols and words with meaning. Candy steadied herself, querying the stream, searching out the knowledge she needed, the systems that needed repair, and the signs of life on the rest of the ship.
With a gasp, she opened her eyes, glad to see the lights were back on. "Looks like we did it. There are no Ones left on this ship. But I'm pretty sure the others are starting to notice something. One of them is trying to hail us."
"Shit. Now what?"
They hadn't really discussed what to do once they'd succeeeded. Hell, Candy was pretty sure Boomer had thought they'd fail. She weighed their options, then pursed her lips. "We could go back to where the battle was. See if we can pick up the trail of Natalie and the others?"
Jo nudged the Four that was skewered, then shrugged, "Sounds as good a plan as any. Do you think we should clean up in here?"
"Nah. Leave that to the others." Candy slid her hand back into the stream. "Coordinates located," she said, her voice echoing oddly. "Ship secured. Atmosphere still mostly-vented. Jump."
-=-
Ellen Tigh sat in her sealed quarters and looked down at Boomer, wondering how it had come to this. The younger Cylon had been shot in the back as she'd been heading for Ellen, to warn her. She'd been covered in flecks of blood and Ellen shuddered to think what she'd done before she'd come here, how many she had killed--
The ship had decompressed. Ellen had felt that through the deck, and she'd felt something terrible press against her chest. That her children would fight among themselves like this! It was hard on a mother, hard on anyone, but hardest most on Ellen, who was the only one with the memories of watching them change and grow as they created them from nothing. She and Saul had been so proud when Eight took her first steps, when Six smiled with innocent wonder, when Five tried on his first well-cut suit.
It was in Boomer's favor that the hub was close by. Ellen couldn't say how she knew that, but it made sense. John would never leave himself that vulnerable, and the few resurection tanks on board every base star would never be enough for his ego.
Stroking her fingers through Boomer's hair, she still mourned, her tears falling while she waited to discover if she herself would die soon.
The base star gave a shiver and jumped.
-=-
Cylons who wanted to be good guys. Who wanted individuality and names. Athena shook her head as she listened to the explanation from Starbuck over the comms. It sounded too fraking good to be true. She knew how the Cylons could twist shit around, could say one thing and 'believe' it right up until they shot you in the back.
Which meant she wasn't trusting this Natalie, she wasn't trusting any of them as far as she could throw a base star in Caprican gravity.
Starbuck could trust them all she wanted: Athena wasn't sure she trusted Starbuck, anyway. No one knew what she really was, after all. No one even knew that she wasn't a Cylon herself.
-=-
Boomer opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Dammit. Damn. Frak. Shit. One of them had managed a lucky shot, one of them had killed her before she could get to cover. She wanted to curse and scream, but she'd been here before, lost without any of her plans coming to fruition.
The resurrection fluid felt colder than it should and she pushed herself into a sitting position, cursing softly.
There was no one in attendance. Somehow, that didn't surprise her. Climbing out of the tank, she looked around and realized that she wasn't on the base star. Any base star.
Boomer's eyes widened as she looked at the rows that went on forever, lifeless, brainless Eights just waiting to become something.
She'd resurrected on the hub.
She'd frakking resurrected on the frakking HUB.
A part of her wanted to laugh hysterically. The laughter started to bubble up and she throttled it down. She needed to get dressed and find herself some sort of armament, and hide. There would be Ones here, Fours and maybe a Five or two. None of them would take kindly to a rebellious Eight, especially once the rest of the fleet realized what she had done. Cavil would resurrect, after all. If he hadn't already. And at least it didn't appear that he'd stuck some sort of protocols into her resurrections that would revert her to his puppet.
She spared a thought for Candy, Jo and the others, and hoped that they'd succeeded. Right now, they weren't her problem. There was no way to no where they'd end up, and no way to find them. At least not yet, while she was naked.
"Pants," Boomer muttered as she began rummaging in the lockers lining one side of the cavern of Eights.
Once she was dressed, she would get armed and consider her options.
-=-
The problem was, being told that the Cylons were friendly wasn't much of a warning for jumping to a system where a base star loomed. Not that it was anything but a large dradis contact. There were dozens of others, debris floating in a slowly turning orbit of the giant gas planet below.
"Demetrius, Starbuck. Glad you could join the party." Kara sounded almost like herself, and Helo found himself grinning.
"Yeah? You sure it's safe here, Starbuck? No lurking base stars?"
She snorted. "Not from what we can tell. And the base star's been here a good couple weeks, apparently."
Karl exchanged a glance with Athena. Did they dare trust these Cylons? She looked apprehensive, but that could simply be because she still didn't trust Starbuck.
"This is ridiculous!" Stomping into CIC, Pike glared at him. "Sir, this in direct disregard of our safety. Those frakkin' Cylons are going to shoot us down, or use us for frakking experiments! You know we can't trust them!"
"Shut up, ensign."
"You can't do this, sir!"
Seelix turned from her position and shook her head. "I agree, sir. They're frakking Cylons. We don't know what the frak Starbuck is, this is a trap."
"Oh, now you're worried it's a trap?" Helo scoffed at her. "Fine time to remember your suspicions, ensign. Both of you need to shut the frak up." He raised his voice. "Starbuck, you hearing his?"
"Loud and clear, Demetrius. I don't know if we can trust them, Helo. But I believe they don't intend to harm us."
Good. "All right, Starbuck. You need some company over there?"
"Actually, what I need are qualified engineers. The base star's engines are down, and if they're not fixed soon, we're screwed."
"That's not our problem," Seelix muttered.
Cylons asking for help from humans. Helo recognized the irony in it, and he wondered why Kara had agreed. "Starbuck, they holding a gun to your head?"
"No. Helo..." she trailed off and the radio went silent before she continued, her voice sounding odd, "They're different. They want to be people and not machines."
He could have scoffed. He could have mocked the very idea that machines wanted to be human. But looking across the table, he could see Athena, and he knew that the yearning to be more than what they were had to be ingrained in more than just one Cylon. He raised his eyebrows at her, but she turned away, not giving him an answer.
"People, huh?"
Starbuck snorted, "Just get me some engineers. We'll worry later."
"Should just let 'em die." Pike mumbled, subsiding when Helo glared at him.
The man was going to be a disciplinary problem, but then again, he was simply voicing what the others obviously felt. Helo wondered if it was his own marriage that made him more likely to believe, despite what he knew. Sharon had been ordered to seduce him, and she'd done it. Sometimes, he wondered how he could forgive that, and then he looked at her, or felt her curled into him, smelling her hair and seeing her smile. He could forgive because she loved.
He wondered if that was why these Cylons had changed. Who did they love?
-=-
Cally was sitting in Starbuck's viper, her fingers limp on the console as she stared into space when Tory found her. She was off-duty, but it would be at least an hour before she could pick Nicky up from daycare (Cally had discovered that time all to herself was more precious than she'd ever thought, before; she loved Nicky, but she needed her space, too). As always, Starbuck's viper wasn't known for being a hot spot of interest, though she did know some of the younger crew members were beginning to use the closed-off hangar area as a new frak spot.
"Pretending?" Tory asked, her tone idle as she stroked a hand along the viper's cockpit, finger tracing over the letters of Captain Thrace's call-sign.
"What do you want?" Feeling utterly weary, Cally shifted in the seat and turned to face the Cylon.
Tory's fingers finished their lazy movement and she looked up at Cally, letting the silence stretch. Cally wondered what was going on behind those dark eyes, what secrets and lies she sorted through, which truths she wanted hidden forever. "What would you change?"
A laugh bubbled out of Cally, humor-less and dry. "I don't think that's a question you want to know the answer to." She sighed. "Why are you here, Tory?"
"You know our secret." As if that explained everything, Tory pressed her thumb to the end of 'Starbuck'.
"Yeah. I do." There was no reason to deny it. Cally shook her head and stood up, climbing out to the ladder and slipping down it to the deck. Her boots made a hollow thump as she landed on the floor. "And you know mine. That makes us even."
Hating the Cylons wasn't as simple as it once was. Not with Tory looking vulnerable. Not with Tigh still in CIC, doing his damned job. Cally shivered as she turned to face Tory. "I don't like you."
"I know," Tory tilted her head down, hair sliding over her face for a moment before she smiled and looked at Cally, "I don't like you either."
Stalemate. Cally didn't know if she was out of her depth or if Tory was just giving her the impression she was. Drawing herself up straight, she changed the subject. "What do you know about Starbuck's viper?"
"It's brand new, Chief Tyrol isn't interested in risking it being a fake, Roslin thinks it's a sign from the Gods," Tory rattled off.
Cally nodded. "It's also picking up a signal that nothing else in the entire fleet can."
Something shifted and Tory blinked, her head turning as though she were unwilling to look at the viper. But she did, and a shudder went through her. Cally put a hand on her back when she swayed. "I guess that explains it."
"Explains what?" Cally prompted, letting Tory step back into her.
Tory sucked in a breath, shaking for a moment before she had herself under control. "I think it's been calling me."
-=-
chapter eleven