Fic: Children of Gods, Chapter Twenty-One
Title: Children of Gods
Authors: miabicicletta and olga_theodora
Summary: This is a ship made by man.
Pairings: Bill/Laura, Sam/Kara, Lee/Kara UST, Lee/?
Rating: MA (series) T (Chapter 21)
Authors' Note: After an abysmally long hiatus, we are back! We promised this story wasn't abandoned and it isn't. It still holds a special place in our fandom hearts. Though we're both a little busy with life and school and work, we'll still stick with this. All your comments and encouragement are really great motivators, so please, PLEASE, if you enjoy reading this fic, please let us know. Comments and thoughts really do wonders for a writer, and we love hearing your feedback sooooo much.
Thanks for all your patience, Sweet Readers. This chapter is dedicated to all of you.
---
The story so far...
---
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THERE AND BACK AGAIN
For many years this story was told by maidens and mothers and crones, but it too was nearly lost to the dust as each and every one died. But listen, my small daughter, and remember:
Once there was a group of sojourners, philosophers from the capital city of Kobol. They traveled in search of truth, and one day, they found it buried amidst the roots of a tall, strong tree in a forest.
‘Let us,’ the leader said, ‘take this to Zeus, so that he might reward us for our pains.’
For in these days, daughter, the gods walked among men, and they listened.
Many of the philosophers agreed, eager for glory. But one- a woman, slight and frail, but wise- said, ‘Father Zeus is powerful, but fickle. Take this instead to Athena, the compassionate judge of us all.’
Many of the sojourners found her words wise, but in their hearts they craved the glory of recognition. Realizing this, the woman, her heart heavy, said, ‘I will not keep you from glory, nor will I badger you with my pleas. Rather, I shall accompany you; for as we started, we must end: together.’
The philosophers journeyed to the Temple of the Gods, and both grand and terrible it was in those days. Thinking themselves wise concerning the fickleness of deities, they said to Zeus, ‘We would live our lives as the cart-wheel turns: not only the ups and downs that make a life sweet and bitter in turn, but the full rotations of new hope.’
The woman heard this petition and sighed.
Zeus granted their wish- how could he not?- for the tiny lump of truth was a novelty to him, one soon confined to the same locked strongbox that held his lightning bolts. And for a time, life was as the philosophers wished: balanced in joy and sorrow. For- you remember, daughter?- just as salt makes honey sweeter, so too with joy and sorrow.
As happens, the philosophers died, one by one. The woman first, with a fiery glint to her eyes which disturbed all who saw her. ‘I go on,’ she said. ‘I will come back.’
They did not understand. But a small babe was born not minutes later to the woman next door, and the same fiery glint was in the child’s eyes, and the philosophers wondered, for stars fell and a cloud covered the moon.
They say the philosophers still live among us today, plagued by visions of the past (mind you, they will say anything) but when you were born, daughter, I saw that fiery glint, and I, too, wondered.
And yes, daughter: Before she plunged off the cliff, Athena stole that lump of truth from the strongbox. For of all the gods, she was the only one Zeus trusted to hold the keys, as well you know.
- From the journals of Judith Roslin.
---
The jump drops her into a gray room, alone. Laura stumbles against a metal wall, wincing at the impact, and drops awkwardly to the floor.
She has no idea where she is. A warehouse? Some kind of industrial facility? Maybe even one of the old Colonial Fleet bases. Perhaps she is even now in orbit above Scorpia. The room itself tells her nothing: gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling. The door is shut, and judging by the size it may well be a former janitorial closet. Cautiously she cracks open the door, peering out into the corridor through mere centimeters of space.
Nothing but a roughly curved hallway. She glances around her room once more, noting the presence of air vents. Corridor or vents? The corridor holds the possibility of running into other Tributes, but she may well run into a Tribute in the vents as well, or worse. Deciding she would rather have room to maneuver, she opens the door once more and slips out into the hall.
The floor betrays the presence of her footsteps. A mixed blessing; at least no one will be sneaking up on her. She follows the corridor for some minutes, noting the rusting signs on various doors. Military, she decides, noting the rooms designated for pilots. She peers into one cautiously, finding it to be filled with dusty bunks and lockers. Most of the bunks (she pauses, thinking. Bill had used a different word, hadn’t he?) are still made up with sheets and blankets. They are spotted with mildew, but still the most attractive sight she has seen in days.
Coming to a quick, though perhaps not wise decision, she shuts the door behind her and bolts it. First she thoroughly searches the lockers for anything of use. A weapon she does not even hope for, but perhaps matches, rope, even an ancient package of freeze-dried food.
She finds all three, as well as a stash of condoms that were probably made before her parents were even born. Eyeing the packet of stir-fried noodles (supposedly) with a grim expression, she considers her options.
Her last meal was over a day ago, but even starving as she is, she finds herself to be wary. The use-by date on the packet still lies at least a few years in the future (when she converts the years, she finds to her dissatisfaction that simple math seems to take a bit longer than it ought), and the main ingredient, strangely, appears to be seaweed.
She shrugs. What choice does she have? She has to find her teammates, who have probably all been strewn asunder on this ship (if that is where they are), and she certainly isn’t going to manage such a feat whilst swaying in an unsteady daze. She rips open the packet and begins eating it straight, not intending to waste any of her remaining water on reconstitution.
“No wonder we frakking lost,” she mutters, grimacing at the taste. Pulling herself into one of the top bunks, she closes her eyes, sighing appreciatively at the feel of the thin mattress.
Sleep comes within seconds.
She dreams of being sixteen once more, shooting arrow after arrow under Saul’s instructions.
---
Kara wakes to a nightmare.
More specifically: the same metal walls and floors of her dream, albeit in a larger scale than the room with the star charts.
“Not good,” she mutters, scuttling behind a nearby defunct ship. She vaguely remembers pictures of this model- what did they call it? An Asp? A Cobra?
Viper. That sounds right. Long, lean, and slick beneath the thick coating of dust. She ponders the cockpit from her spot on the floor, feeling, as an amputee might, the phantom shape of buttons and levers beneath her hands, the weight of pedals against her feet, her eyes momentarily dazzled by the absence of bright light.
Visions. She frakking hates them.
She scurries from viper to viper, keeping to the shadows. Somewhere in these halls are her allies, as well as monsters: the human variety, and perhaps even the beast of her imagination.
She pauses at the door, hesitant to move into the hallways, where she might be easily pinned into a corner or trapped in a dead end.
With this thought in mind, she gazes around her, noting the still ships, the dusty floors, the ladders-
Ladders. To walkways, far above her head; walkways which surely attach to equally dangerous halls, but the animal portion of her brain argues that heights are intrinsically safer.
She scrambles up the ladder and slips from the catwalks to an empty hall. Her footsteps echo; she grimaces and slides her way along the floor, as if skating on a frozen pond. She catches, out of the corner of her eye, a crowded wall: photographs, altars covered with candles and incense and bronze figurines- and her picture- older somehow, sharper- smack in the middle of the chaos.
She whirls, her footsteps heavy on the floor, and finds herself facing a blank gray wall.
She’s obviously going crazy. Maybe she hit her head in the cave, or inhaled some suspicious cave dust, or maybe she isn’t here at all: perhaps she is slowly drowning on the sea floor, broken and bleeding from the rocks.
“I saw it, too,” comes the voice from behind her, and she turns to see Kendra Shaw. The girl looks almost hesitant beneath her tough facade; her eyes keep skittering to a spot on the wall to their left. “Pictures? A statue of Athena...”
Kendra takes a step back, as if distancing herself from the wall will reduce any chance of incipient insanity. “You allied with Apollo, yes?”
“Still am, assuming he still has his idiot head,” Kara replies suspiciously. “You’ve been keeping bad company.”
Kendra shrugs. “Thorne has few, if any, manners, I will admit.”
“You don’t seem very eager to kill me,” Kara states, wishing that she hadn’t lost her only weapon at the cliff-side.
“Well,” Kendra says slowly, her eyes remaining fixed on Kara, “after the last set of jump pads, I can’t help but think a partner might prove... helpful. For the moment.” She considers Kara seriously. “What do you say? A temporary alliance?” She smiles, a bit shakily, as her gaze flicks back leftwards. “I may kill you in the morning.”
From farther down the hall, a door slams. Kara makes an instantaneous decision, one not really considered.
“Run for your life,” she says with a quick grin, and sprints in the opposite direction of the sound.
---
Cavil does not consider himself to be an impatient man.
He waited twenty years before the start of the War to claim the prize that was the Colonies. He has spent the past fifty years considering his next step- and not just his, but the next step for the Cylon race as well. He is not in any great rush: managing as troublesome a race as humans beings is amusing, most days, and he rather enjoys the mundane, day to day shifting of pawns. When he grows weary of that, there are always the Games to consider. New twists, new hybrid opponents, new terrain.
New examples to be made, as ever. There will always be someone out there trying to undermine his work, and no matter who that person is- Peacemaker, politician, farmer, teacher- Cavil is ready and willing to teach a small lesson. He is equal-opportunity.
It is a bit difficult when the transgressor is a Cylon - or a natural hybrid - but even then there are options. Reassignment, for those too valuable to lose. Promotions, for those who require a closer eye. Destruction, for the rare soul; a punishment Cavil has only meted out once. A pity that his efforts had proven less than thorough. Not only did Daniel survive, but his daughter meets every challenge thrown at her with a stubborn will to live that even Cavil can (grudgingly) respect.
He swipes a finger across the screen, zooming in on Kara Thrace as she barrels down a hallway with surprising grace. Stubbornness, yes, and grit, but is her will yet young enough to prove malleable? Could her iron will be forged into something... useful?
Cavil is not searching for an heir- he does not intend to need one- but he requires certain staff. A right hand man, to be sure; one that knows how to take orders while still possessing the right kind of creativity to solve complex problems (it almost goes without saying that Thomas Zarek will not be this man for much longer). A steward with no opinions of his or her own. A propaganda specialist.
An assassin.
He contemplates Kara in action for long minutes. Grace. Fury. Balance.
Handled carefully- very carefully- she might prove an excellent investment. It is possible that if she were saved from a horrible fate- from the Two who has his eye on her, perhaps- she might prove responsive to his offer.
Not saved too soon, of course. She would hardly be open to suggestion if saved a bit too soon. Better to let her think about her life for a short while.
He allows the screen to show to another feed, and grimaces at the face he sees.
He hardly would have guessed, so many years ago, that the sprightly, easy-tempered woman he knew could have birthed such a child.
Perhaps he has underestimated his own genetic contributions. But it hardly matters - as he has said many times, he has no need of an heir.
---
The long nauseous tumble through nothing and nothing, down and down and down. At least, Lee supposes it is down -- there isn’t any other way a person could fall, was there? Of course, strictly speaking, a jump isn’t a fall, neither is it a movement in any cardinal direction, if he is remembering his physics correctly.
Still, the feeling of being transferred across the aether has a distinct similarity to the time he had fallen out of the branches of their treehouse -- a sublime and disconcerting weightlessness that was as thrilling every bit as much as it was sickening.
His back hits something hard, shoving the wind from his lungs as the back of his head comes into firm contact with the ground. For a moment, as his vision resolves, Lee struggles to breathe, momentarily blinded. He gasps and gasps -- tries to, anyway -- and fails. Panic creeping in, he finally takes a huge breath successfully, his lungs filling with sharp, cool air. The room shifts, his eyes rolling back and forth as everything came into focus. His heart pounding, he leaps to his feet, searching for something, anything. An oncoming attack or a familiar face.
Silence.
He has been jumped into a dark room. Dark metals walls rise up around him, meeting in a sharp, high angle above his head, like an iron cathedral. A series of low lights embedded into the floor line the wall, casting a dim, gradient light up the walls. Around him, a couch is arranged on the carpeted floor. A chair. A love seat. Another set of folding chairs. All arranged to face...
Lee turns, and what he sees takes his breath away.
A length of the wall is gone, revealing in its place a swath of clear material (surely something stronger than glass, his mind wonders, not really caring, such is his amazement).
Beyond, nothing but an endless field of stars. Enraptured, Lee steps forward, eyes focusing from the far-off pinpoints of light to the cold, clear pane before him. Mesmerized, he places his hand forward, briefly, irrationally, fearful that it will shatter. Below his window, the gray-green clouds of Gemenon swirl in silence. The bluer, whiter Caprica lies just beyond.
For a moment, looking down at the pair of planets, so small in their universal context, he almost forgets where he is...why he is there...
Wow...
Beautiful though it is, and humbling, Lee regretfully shakes off the feeling of wonder. He comes back to himself, turning away from the brilliant starfield that, for all its beauty, will not help him.
The room seems to be some sort of observation deck on a star carrier, clearly enough. His eyes follow the low lighting, finding the handle of an unmarked door along the back wall.
The hallway beyond is silent, though Lee glances in trepidation each way before stepping out of the room completely. Wherever he is, it doesn’t look like any Cylon design he’s ever seen. Cylon-aesthetic has always been marked by a stark, bare minimalism. Everything from their buildings to the Raiders they fly and the packaging of products distributed to the human populace puts function at a premium. Form, a mere afterthought.
The walls of this ship arch with a hexagonal geometry; the rivets in walls, doors, hatches all bearing signs of rust and disuse. There are darkened EXIT signs; exposed lighting; fire extinguishers; a comm unit attached to the wall. All of it suggests one thing.
This is a ship made by man.
A sound echoes from down the hall. Footsteps. Lee glances back, knowing already that the door is too far for him to get to safety without whatever is coming seeing or hearing him flee, and then he’d just be trapped back in the observation deck, where there is no place to escape or hide. He could run, but run where? He has no idea what lies down that hall. A dead end, for all he knows.
He has only a few seconds to decide, at any rate. The footsteps draw closer, precise, deliberate. Making his choice, Lee grabs the nearest fire extinguisher. He creeps towards the sound, back against the wall.
At the moment the shadow breaches his cover, he swings the metal canister, breathing a silent prayer to Hermes that his reflexes are faster than his unseen enemy.
---
Athena has no good reason to be standing in an arms locker- at least not a reason she can share with the general public- and yet here she is, surrounded by enough guns to outfit a regiment. The arrow she holds her hand seems a paltry weapon in comparison.
If pressed, Felix would have even more trouble coming up with an excuse for his presence. Thank the gods Billy was summoned away by his tutor; there could be no possible explanation for him.
“If someone comes in,” he warns her, “I will sweep you into a tender embrace.”
She smirks. “Tender embrace? We’re having that kind of fake affair?”
He takes the arrow from her hand, examining it with interest. “I am only being tender out of respect for the child,” he explains absently.
“Otherwise it would be handcuffs to the ventilation pipes?”
“How cliche. Be more imaginative.” He frowns, thumbing the ornate head to the arrow. “While I am, of course, delighted to handle this piece of history, I have to wonder why you dragged me into an arms locker in the first place. Tired of the scenic joys of Ventilation Matrices?”
“We’re there too often,” she reminds him, an annoyed quirk to her brows. “We might as well put up a sign advertising resistance headquarters. Besides, we’ve swept and cleared this place.” She glances around the room, feeling a sense of unease that seems unwarranted for the situation. The location is as safe as they can make it, but she feels... exposed.
She brings her mind back to matters at hand. “We have to get it inside the arena,” she says in a somewhat stiff tone, nodding toward the slim shaft.
He shoots her a sharp look. “Going for the symbolism of the occasion, are we?”
“Perhaps that is what Bill Adama is going for,” she says wryly, reclaiming the arrow from his hands. Deftly she twists a section of the fletching, revealing a patch of wiring. “Still perfectly balanced,” she notes, “but now capable of some... interesting things.”
“Interesting, in the explosive sense?”
“To quote your earlier words, how cliche. Be imaginative.” She catches his gaze. “Felix, martyrdom is all well and good, but we cannot finish this without Laura Roslin.”
He flinches slightly, so slightly she almost thinks she has imagined it. “So you would snatch Laura from the arena and leave her ragtag army to hang?”
She shifts her glance guiltily, feeling the child within her twist and offer a flurry of kicks against her midsection. “No one has ever called war fair.”
“No. How cunning you are, Athena, to use the deaths of those children to light a fire beneath her.” His tone is flat and cutting. “No matter. I know what you need me for.” He carefully tucks the arrow in his bag. “Return ticket, right? There and back again, but the back again is not for the likes of me.”
“Who else can we trust?” she asks him, the first tears slipping down her cheeks. “There is no one but you.”
His gaze softens a fraction, and he lightly place the tips of his fingers against her cheek. “They’ve never yet called war fair,” he replies, and exits the room quietly.
She props herself against a nearby metal table, struggling to slow the flood of tears. How clever her creators must have been, she finds herself thinking in a daze. To wire so many emotions into the mind of a machine surely took a delicate touch.
She is not quite sure how to name her current state of emotion, but she suspects it is akin to loss.
---
Tom Zarek has never gotten far in life by putting the utmost trust in those around him. To the contrary, in fact. His greatest successes have come from calling into question the thought and actions of his superiors.
And his enemies.
To the man’s credit, Sherman Cottle has flown under the radar for longer than Tom cares to admit, playing the part of a soft-hearted caregiver, beholden to one too many oaths.
But the reach of the Governor of Saggitaron had been far, and the Vice President’s reach even farther. Many men have their prices, though.
Cottle, Tom dismally reflects as he pours through a thick file, its contents yellowed in places that suggest a long and idle history, was not one of those men. He might have been, but at the moment most of the chips that might have been played against him are already out of his hands.
Still, Tom figures. There are other ways to bend a man - human or otherwise - to one’s will. One need only know the right pressure point.
And though he’s never been a fan of cliche, the metaphor of birds and stones is too good to overlook.
---
“Godsfrakkingdammit!”
While Lee has taken care to throw the whole of his weight into swinging the canister at his unseen stalker, what he did not account for was a difference in height. Instead of catching his enemy in the head, the fire extinguisher makes solid contact with his chest...knocking the wind from Longshot’s lungs and sending him breathless to the floor.
Although he is glad he has not come across a Centurion or mutant freak, Lee cannot bring himself to feel particularly upset.
“Sorry,” he says lamely as Anders groans, forcing himself onto all fours. “My mistake.”
“Yeah,” Anders grumbles darkly. “I’ll bet. Remind me not to ‘mistake’ you for a punching bag next time.”
Lee isn’t in the mood to trade half-hearted threats at the moment. “Come on,” he says, offering a hand that Anders begrudgingly accepts. “I’m guessing you didn’t jump in with Kara or Laura?”
Sam follows him down the hall. They tread carefully, listening intently and keeping their voices low.
“No,” Sam replies with a huff. “Ended up in some storage locker or something. No one else with me.”
“Another change in the game,” Lee decides. “First they keep us together while they pare down the teams to the strongest, then split us up. Send us off on our own. We’re weaker that way.”
Something terrible occurs to Lee as he says it. Sam, it seems, has similarly grim thoughts, and reaches out to grip his shoulder. There is a crease across the taller teen’s brow as his eyes narrow in thought.
“If we jumped in alone,” Sam says slowly, “chances are Laura and Kara did, too.”
Lee nods.
“Cain has it out for Laura. She’ll kill her without a second thought, if she can. And Thorne’s still in the running...”
A black, terrible feeling gnaws deep in Lee’s belly at the idea of either Kara or his stepmother coming up against Alistair Thorne on their own. Both have proven themselves to be more than adequate fighters, each with their own brand of toughness, equally powerful though very different.
But Thorne, if he is remembering his Games lore correctly, was a Career Tribute, raised to compete from the time he was a small child on Tauron, where some still prayed to the God of War. From what Lee has learned of the richer Colonies like Tauron, Virgon and Picon, Careers fall somewhere just below the children offered to the Cylon priests. On the scale of reverence, the Careers are adored. Thorne, then, would have spent most of his young life learning the brutal art of war-craft until his name was called. He’d been a behemoth at seventeen and neither time nor age had diminished his strength. His strength, or his cruelty.
Although Lee hadn’t been born when Thorne won the Games, he knew enough about the man now for Lee to be certain he didn’t have any desire to learn more.
“We find them. We stick together. That’s the plan,” Lee says, ducking past a metal door labeled Ward Room.
“So say we all,” Sam agrees.
---
Coming soon in Chapter Twenty-two:
The arrow weighs heavy in his hand, small and slim. It is the culmulation of his life’s work, his redemption, and most likely the agent of his death.
Authors: miabicicletta and olga_theodora
Summary: This is a ship made by man.
Pairings: Bill/Laura, Sam/Kara, Lee/Kara UST, Lee/?
Rating: MA (series) T (Chapter 21)
Authors' Note: After an abysmally long hiatus, we are back! We promised this story wasn't abandoned and it isn't. It still holds a special place in our fandom hearts. Though we're both a little busy with life and school and work, we'll still stick with this. All your comments and encouragement are really great motivators, so please, PLEASE, if you enjoy reading this fic, please let us know. Comments and thoughts really do wonders for a writer, and we love hearing your feedback sooooo much.
Thanks for all your patience, Sweet Readers. This chapter is dedicated to all of you.
---
The story so far...
---
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THERE AND BACK AGAIN
For many years this story was told by maidens and mothers and crones, but it too was nearly lost to the dust as each and every one died. But listen, my small daughter, and remember:
Once there was a group of sojourners, philosophers from the capital city of Kobol. They traveled in search of truth, and one day, they found it buried amidst the roots of a tall, strong tree in a forest.
‘Let us,’ the leader said, ‘take this to Zeus, so that he might reward us for our pains.’
For in these days, daughter, the gods walked among men, and they listened.
Many of the philosophers agreed, eager for glory. But one- a woman, slight and frail, but wise- said, ‘Father Zeus is powerful, but fickle. Take this instead to Athena, the compassionate judge of us all.’
Many of the sojourners found her words wise, but in their hearts they craved the glory of recognition. Realizing this, the woman, her heart heavy, said, ‘I will not keep you from glory, nor will I badger you with my pleas. Rather, I shall accompany you; for as we started, we must end: together.’
The philosophers journeyed to the Temple of the Gods, and both grand and terrible it was in those days. Thinking themselves wise concerning the fickleness of deities, they said to Zeus, ‘We would live our lives as the cart-wheel turns: not only the ups and downs that make a life sweet and bitter in turn, but the full rotations of new hope.’
The woman heard this petition and sighed.
Zeus granted their wish- how could he not?- for the tiny lump of truth was a novelty to him, one soon confined to the same locked strongbox that held his lightning bolts. And for a time, life was as the philosophers wished: balanced in joy and sorrow. For- you remember, daughter?- just as salt makes honey sweeter, so too with joy and sorrow.
As happens, the philosophers died, one by one. The woman first, with a fiery glint to her eyes which disturbed all who saw her. ‘I go on,’ she said. ‘I will come back.’
They did not understand. But a small babe was born not minutes later to the woman next door, and the same fiery glint was in the child’s eyes, and the philosophers wondered, for stars fell and a cloud covered the moon.
They say the philosophers still live among us today, plagued by visions of the past (mind you, they will say anything) but when you were born, daughter, I saw that fiery glint, and I, too, wondered.
And yes, daughter: Before she plunged off the cliff, Athena stole that lump of truth from the strongbox. For of all the gods, she was the only one Zeus trusted to hold the keys, as well you know.
- From the journals of Judith Roslin.
---
The jump drops her into a gray room, alone. Laura stumbles against a metal wall, wincing at the impact, and drops awkwardly to the floor.
She has no idea where she is. A warehouse? Some kind of industrial facility? Maybe even one of the old Colonial Fleet bases. Perhaps she is even now in orbit above Scorpia. The room itself tells her nothing: gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling. The door is shut, and judging by the size it may well be a former janitorial closet. Cautiously she cracks open the door, peering out into the corridor through mere centimeters of space.
Nothing but a roughly curved hallway. She glances around her room once more, noting the presence of air vents. Corridor or vents? The corridor holds the possibility of running into other Tributes, but she may well run into a Tribute in the vents as well, or worse. Deciding she would rather have room to maneuver, she opens the door once more and slips out into the hall.
The floor betrays the presence of her footsteps. A mixed blessing; at least no one will be sneaking up on her. She follows the corridor for some minutes, noting the rusting signs on various doors. Military, she decides, noting the rooms designated for pilots. She peers into one cautiously, finding it to be filled with dusty bunks and lockers. Most of the bunks (she pauses, thinking. Bill had used a different word, hadn’t he?) are still made up with sheets and blankets. They are spotted with mildew, but still the most attractive sight she has seen in days.
Coming to a quick, though perhaps not wise decision, she shuts the door behind her and bolts it. First she thoroughly searches the lockers for anything of use. A weapon she does not even hope for, but perhaps matches, rope, even an ancient package of freeze-dried food.
She finds all three, as well as a stash of condoms that were probably made before her parents were even born. Eyeing the packet of stir-fried noodles (supposedly) with a grim expression, she considers her options.
Her last meal was over a day ago, but even starving as she is, she finds herself to be wary. The use-by date on the packet still lies at least a few years in the future (when she converts the years, she finds to her dissatisfaction that simple math seems to take a bit longer than it ought), and the main ingredient, strangely, appears to be seaweed.
She shrugs. What choice does she have? She has to find her teammates, who have probably all been strewn asunder on this ship (if that is where they are), and she certainly isn’t going to manage such a feat whilst swaying in an unsteady daze. She rips open the packet and begins eating it straight, not intending to waste any of her remaining water on reconstitution.
“No wonder we frakking lost,” she mutters, grimacing at the taste. Pulling herself into one of the top bunks, she closes her eyes, sighing appreciatively at the feel of the thin mattress.
Sleep comes within seconds.
She dreams of being sixteen once more, shooting arrow after arrow under Saul’s instructions.
---
Kara wakes to a nightmare.
More specifically: the same metal walls and floors of her dream, albeit in a larger scale than the room with the star charts.
“Not good,” she mutters, scuttling behind a nearby defunct ship. She vaguely remembers pictures of this model- what did they call it? An Asp? A Cobra?
Viper. That sounds right. Long, lean, and slick beneath the thick coating of dust. She ponders the cockpit from her spot on the floor, feeling, as an amputee might, the phantom shape of buttons and levers beneath her hands, the weight of pedals against her feet, her eyes momentarily dazzled by the absence of bright light.
Visions. She frakking hates them.
She scurries from viper to viper, keeping to the shadows. Somewhere in these halls are her allies, as well as monsters: the human variety, and perhaps even the beast of her imagination.
She pauses at the door, hesitant to move into the hallways, where she might be easily pinned into a corner or trapped in a dead end.
With this thought in mind, she gazes around her, noting the still ships, the dusty floors, the ladders-
Ladders. To walkways, far above her head; walkways which surely attach to equally dangerous halls, but the animal portion of her brain argues that heights are intrinsically safer.
She scrambles up the ladder and slips from the catwalks to an empty hall. Her footsteps echo; she grimaces and slides her way along the floor, as if skating on a frozen pond. She catches, out of the corner of her eye, a crowded wall: photographs, altars covered with candles and incense and bronze figurines- and her picture- older somehow, sharper- smack in the middle of the chaos.
She whirls, her footsteps heavy on the floor, and finds herself facing a blank gray wall.
She’s obviously going crazy. Maybe she hit her head in the cave, or inhaled some suspicious cave dust, or maybe she isn’t here at all: perhaps she is slowly drowning on the sea floor, broken and bleeding from the rocks.
“I saw it, too,” comes the voice from behind her, and she turns to see Kendra Shaw. The girl looks almost hesitant beneath her tough facade; her eyes keep skittering to a spot on the wall to their left. “Pictures? A statue of Athena...”
Kendra takes a step back, as if distancing herself from the wall will reduce any chance of incipient insanity. “You allied with Apollo, yes?”
“Still am, assuming he still has his idiot head,” Kara replies suspiciously. “You’ve been keeping bad company.”
Kendra shrugs. “Thorne has few, if any, manners, I will admit.”
“You don’t seem very eager to kill me,” Kara states, wishing that she hadn’t lost her only weapon at the cliff-side.
“Well,” Kendra says slowly, her eyes remaining fixed on Kara, “after the last set of jump pads, I can’t help but think a partner might prove... helpful. For the moment.” She considers Kara seriously. “What do you say? A temporary alliance?” She smiles, a bit shakily, as her gaze flicks back leftwards. “I may kill you in the morning.”
From farther down the hall, a door slams. Kara makes an instantaneous decision, one not really considered.
“Run for your life,” she says with a quick grin, and sprints in the opposite direction of the sound.
---
Cavil does not consider himself to be an impatient man.
He waited twenty years before the start of the War to claim the prize that was the Colonies. He has spent the past fifty years considering his next step- and not just his, but the next step for the Cylon race as well. He is not in any great rush: managing as troublesome a race as humans beings is amusing, most days, and he rather enjoys the mundane, day to day shifting of pawns. When he grows weary of that, there are always the Games to consider. New twists, new hybrid opponents, new terrain.
New examples to be made, as ever. There will always be someone out there trying to undermine his work, and no matter who that person is- Peacemaker, politician, farmer, teacher- Cavil is ready and willing to teach a small lesson. He is equal-opportunity.
It is a bit difficult when the transgressor is a Cylon - or a natural hybrid - but even then there are options. Reassignment, for those too valuable to lose. Promotions, for those who require a closer eye. Destruction, for the rare soul; a punishment Cavil has only meted out once. A pity that his efforts had proven less than thorough. Not only did Daniel survive, but his daughter meets every challenge thrown at her with a stubborn will to live that even Cavil can (grudgingly) respect.
He swipes a finger across the screen, zooming in on Kara Thrace as she barrels down a hallway with surprising grace. Stubbornness, yes, and grit, but is her will yet young enough to prove malleable? Could her iron will be forged into something... useful?
Cavil is not searching for an heir- he does not intend to need one- but he requires certain staff. A right hand man, to be sure; one that knows how to take orders while still possessing the right kind of creativity to solve complex problems (it almost goes without saying that Thomas Zarek will not be this man for much longer). A steward with no opinions of his or her own. A propaganda specialist.
An assassin.
He contemplates Kara in action for long minutes. Grace. Fury. Balance.
Handled carefully- very carefully- she might prove an excellent investment. It is possible that if she were saved from a horrible fate- from the Two who has his eye on her, perhaps- she might prove responsive to his offer.
Not saved too soon, of course. She would hardly be open to suggestion if saved a bit too soon. Better to let her think about her life for a short while.
He allows the screen to show to another feed, and grimaces at the face he sees.
He hardly would have guessed, so many years ago, that the sprightly, easy-tempered woman he knew could have birthed such a child.
Perhaps he has underestimated his own genetic contributions. But it hardly matters - as he has said many times, he has no need of an heir.
---
The long nauseous tumble through nothing and nothing, down and down and down. At least, Lee supposes it is down -- there isn’t any other way a person could fall, was there? Of course, strictly speaking, a jump isn’t a fall, neither is it a movement in any cardinal direction, if he is remembering his physics correctly.
Still, the feeling of being transferred across the aether has a distinct similarity to the time he had fallen out of the branches of their treehouse -- a sublime and disconcerting weightlessness that was as thrilling every bit as much as it was sickening.
His back hits something hard, shoving the wind from his lungs as the back of his head comes into firm contact with the ground. For a moment, as his vision resolves, Lee struggles to breathe, momentarily blinded. He gasps and gasps -- tries to, anyway -- and fails. Panic creeping in, he finally takes a huge breath successfully, his lungs filling with sharp, cool air. The room shifts, his eyes rolling back and forth as everything came into focus. His heart pounding, he leaps to his feet, searching for something, anything. An oncoming attack or a familiar face.
Silence.
He has been jumped into a dark room. Dark metals walls rise up around him, meeting in a sharp, high angle above his head, like an iron cathedral. A series of low lights embedded into the floor line the wall, casting a dim, gradient light up the walls. Around him, a couch is arranged on the carpeted floor. A chair. A love seat. Another set of folding chairs. All arranged to face...
Lee turns, and what he sees takes his breath away.
A length of the wall is gone, revealing in its place a swath of clear material (surely something stronger than glass, his mind wonders, not really caring, such is his amazement).
Beyond, nothing but an endless field of stars. Enraptured, Lee steps forward, eyes focusing from the far-off pinpoints of light to the cold, clear pane before him. Mesmerized, he places his hand forward, briefly, irrationally, fearful that it will shatter. Below his window, the gray-green clouds of Gemenon swirl in silence. The bluer, whiter Caprica lies just beyond.
For a moment, looking down at the pair of planets, so small in their universal context, he almost forgets where he is...why he is there...
Wow...
Beautiful though it is, and humbling, Lee regretfully shakes off the feeling of wonder. He comes back to himself, turning away from the brilliant starfield that, for all its beauty, will not help him.
The room seems to be some sort of observation deck on a star carrier, clearly enough. His eyes follow the low lighting, finding the handle of an unmarked door along the back wall.
The hallway beyond is silent, though Lee glances in trepidation each way before stepping out of the room completely. Wherever he is, it doesn’t look like any Cylon design he’s ever seen. Cylon-aesthetic has always been marked by a stark, bare minimalism. Everything from their buildings to the Raiders they fly and the packaging of products distributed to the human populace puts function at a premium. Form, a mere afterthought.
The walls of this ship arch with a hexagonal geometry; the rivets in walls, doors, hatches all bearing signs of rust and disuse. There are darkened EXIT signs; exposed lighting; fire extinguishers; a comm unit attached to the wall. All of it suggests one thing.
This is a ship made by man.
A sound echoes from down the hall. Footsteps. Lee glances back, knowing already that the door is too far for him to get to safety without whatever is coming seeing or hearing him flee, and then he’d just be trapped back in the observation deck, where there is no place to escape or hide. He could run, but run where? He has no idea what lies down that hall. A dead end, for all he knows.
He has only a few seconds to decide, at any rate. The footsteps draw closer, precise, deliberate. Making his choice, Lee grabs the nearest fire extinguisher. He creeps towards the sound, back against the wall.
At the moment the shadow breaches his cover, he swings the metal canister, breathing a silent prayer to Hermes that his reflexes are faster than his unseen enemy.
---
Athena has no good reason to be standing in an arms locker- at least not a reason she can share with the general public- and yet here she is, surrounded by enough guns to outfit a regiment. The arrow she holds her hand seems a paltry weapon in comparison.
If pressed, Felix would have even more trouble coming up with an excuse for his presence. Thank the gods Billy was summoned away by his tutor; there could be no possible explanation for him.
“If someone comes in,” he warns her, “I will sweep you into a tender embrace.”
She smirks. “Tender embrace? We’re having that kind of fake affair?”
He takes the arrow from her hand, examining it with interest. “I am only being tender out of respect for the child,” he explains absently.
“Otherwise it would be handcuffs to the ventilation pipes?”
“How cliche. Be more imaginative.” He frowns, thumbing the ornate head to the arrow. “While I am, of course, delighted to handle this piece of history, I have to wonder why you dragged me into an arms locker in the first place. Tired of the scenic joys of Ventilation Matrices?”
“We’re there too often,” she reminds him, an annoyed quirk to her brows. “We might as well put up a sign advertising resistance headquarters. Besides, we’ve swept and cleared this place.” She glances around the room, feeling a sense of unease that seems unwarranted for the situation. The location is as safe as they can make it, but she feels... exposed.
She brings her mind back to matters at hand. “We have to get it inside the arena,” she says in a somewhat stiff tone, nodding toward the slim shaft.
He shoots her a sharp look. “Going for the symbolism of the occasion, are we?”
“Perhaps that is what Bill Adama is going for,” she says wryly, reclaiming the arrow from his hands. Deftly she twists a section of the fletching, revealing a patch of wiring. “Still perfectly balanced,” she notes, “but now capable of some... interesting things.”
“Interesting, in the explosive sense?”
“To quote your earlier words, how cliche. Be imaginative.” She catches his gaze. “Felix, martyrdom is all well and good, but we cannot finish this without Laura Roslin.”
He flinches slightly, so slightly she almost thinks she has imagined it. “So you would snatch Laura from the arena and leave her ragtag army to hang?”
She shifts her glance guiltily, feeling the child within her twist and offer a flurry of kicks against her midsection. “No one has ever called war fair.”
“No. How cunning you are, Athena, to use the deaths of those children to light a fire beneath her.” His tone is flat and cutting. “No matter. I know what you need me for.” He carefully tucks the arrow in his bag. “Return ticket, right? There and back again, but the back again is not for the likes of me.”
“Who else can we trust?” she asks him, the first tears slipping down her cheeks. “There is no one but you.”
His gaze softens a fraction, and he lightly place the tips of his fingers against her cheek. “They’ve never yet called war fair,” he replies, and exits the room quietly.
She props herself against a nearby metal table, struggling to slow the flood of tears. How clever her creators must have been, she finds herself thinking in a daze. To wire so many emotions into the mind of a machine surely took a delicate touch.
She is not quite sure how to name her current state of emotion, but she suspects it is akin to loss.
---
Tom Zarek has never gotten far in life by putting the utmost trust in those around him. To the contrary, in fact. His greatest successes have come from calling into question the thought and actions of his superiors.
And his enemies.
To the man’s credit, Sherman Cottle has flown under the radar for longer than Tom cares to admit, playing the part of a soft-hearted caregiver, beholden to one too many oaths.
But the reach of the Governor of Saggitaron had been far, and the Vice President’s reach even farther. Many men have their prices, though.
Cottle, Tom dismally reflects as he pours through a thick file, its contents yellowed in places that suggest a long and idle history, was not one of those men. He might have been, but at the moment most of the chips that might have been played against him are already out of his hands.
Still, Tom figures. There are other ways to bend a man - human or otherwise - to one’s will. One need only know the right pressure point.
And though he’s never been a fan of cliche, the metaphor of birds and stones is too good to overlook.
---
“Godsfrakkingdammit!”
While Lee has taken care to throw the whole of his weight into swinging the canister at his unseen stalker, what he did not account for was a difference in height. Instead of catching his enemy in the head, the fire extinguisher makes solid contact with his chest...knocking the wind from Longshot’s lungs and sending him breathless to the floor.
Although he is glad he has not come across a Centurion or mutant freak, Lee cannot bring himself to feel particularly upset.
“Sorry,” he says lamely as Anders groans, forcing himself onto all fours. “My mistake.”
“Yeah,” Anders grumbles darkly. “I’ll bet. Remind me not to ‘mistake’ you for a punching bag next time.”
Lee isn’t in the mood to trade half-hearted threats at the moment. “Come on,” he says, offering a hand that Anders begrudgingly accepts. “I’m guessing you didn’t jump in with Kara or Laura?”
Sam follows him down the hall. They tread carefully, listening intently and keeping their voices low.
“No,” Sam replies with a huff. “Ended up in some storage locker or something. No one else with me.”
“Another change in the game,” Lee decides. “First they keep us together while they pare down the teams to the strongest, then split us up. Send us off on our own. We’re weaker that way.”
Something terrible occurs to Lee as he says it. Sam, it seems, has similarly grim thoughts, and reaches out to grip his shoulder. There is a crease across the taller teen’s brow as his eyes narrow in thought.
“If we jumped in alone,” Sam says slowly, “chances are Laura and Kara did, too.”
Lee nods.
“Cain has it out for Laura. She’ll kill her without a second thought, if she can. And Thorne’s still in the running...”
A black, terrible feeling gnaws deep in Lee’s belly at the idea of either Kara or his stepmother coming up against Alistair Thorne on their own. Both have proven themselves to be more than adequate fighters, each with their own brand of toughness, equally powerful though very different.
But Thorne, if he is remembering his Games lore correctly, was a Career Tribute, raised to compete from the time he was a small child on Tauron, where some still prayed to the God of War. From what Lee has learned of the richer Colonies like Tauron, Virgon and Picon, Careers fall somewhere just below the children offered to the Cylon priests. On the scale of reverence, the Careers are adored. Thorne, then, would have spent most of his young life learning the brutal art of war-craft until his name was called. He’d been a behemoth at seventeen and neither time nor age had diminished his strength. His strength, or his cruelty.
Although Lee hadn’t been born when Thorne won the Games, he knew enough about the man now for Lee to be certain he didn’t have any desire to learn more.
“We find them. We stick together. That’s the plan,” Lee says, ducking past a metal door labeled Ward Room.
“So say we all,” Sam agrees.
---
Coming soon in Chapter Twenty-two:
The arrow weighs heavy in his hand, small and slim. It is the culmulation of his life’s work, his redemption, and most likely the agent of his death.