Echoes: Chapter 32 of 38
Title: Echoes
Author: EcstaticDance
Summary: All
of this has happened before, now we're going to see it happen again.
But the Lords of Kobol want to see if they can possibly change it, so
key characters have retained the echoes of memories which cause them to
make different decisions, or experience things at different times, than
in previous cycles.
Spoilers: Through Season 4
Warnings: Heavy mysticism. This is not scientifically sound, folks. It's myth-driven.
Pairings/Characters: Kara/Lee, and canon couples
Rating: M
Disclaimers: None of it is mine.
Cross-posted: Not yet.
Beta: ez_as_pi (Most sincere thanks to you, darling!)
Previous Chapters: At My LJ
Return to Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Roslin had kept him out of the meeting, but he could do the math.
Hera.
Tom remembered working with her on New Caprica, remembered seeing the little girl around the school. The half-cylon baby had returned with the Cylon baseship after the destruction of the Resurrection Hub, not from the dead but from a lie created to maintain Laura Roslin's power. And now the Cylons had chased her here. Hera was important to them, somehow.
Madame President had ruled the fleet with an iron fist for far too long, and Lee had continued them all down that same dangerous path with his impromptu treaty with the Cylons. Someone had to put a stop to it, and since no one else was stepping up, it looked like he would have to.
He had business to attend to on Colonial One, but that could wait. He settled himself in an isolated corner of Joe's Bar. He watched the crowd for hours. They were all the same, generic military sort that followed orders and held misplaced loyalty higher than self-determination and true democracy. They made him ill.
At long last, the Final Five filtered, one at a time, into the bar and started up a low conversation. He could tell they were involved in some sort of argument. He moved closer and their voices rose slightly. It was enough for him to hear what they were discussing. Tory argued with the others, trying to convince them to leave the fleet, head out on their own. She'd seen what humanity had done to Cylons, and had no desire to stick around for it.
That was a smart machine, Tom thought. Self-preservation was, indeed, the mark of a sentient being. Unfortunately, survival of the fittest was the rule of the wild. He intended to prove that humans were far more fit than any machine could ever hope to be.
Tory, however, didn't need to know that. He sidled up behind her as the other Cylons left the bar.
“Tory,” he said conspiratorially, “I think I know of a way we can help each other out.”
Her cynically raised eyebrow made him smile. Convincing them was always the most entertaining part of any plan. He leaned in, shared what he knew and what he planned. It was slow work, touch and go at times, but by the end, they'd reached an agreement, and Tom was confident that she'd follow through.
﴿﴾nbsp; Galen left the bar alone. His deck shift was over, and he needed to see Boomer again. He needed to see what she'd tried to show him last time. There was a truth in her projection that he had to see, had to accept. He just hadn't been ready last time. Cally's hospitalization, Nicky's near-death, had been too fresh.
He stopped outside the long term holding cell. Caprica had been moved out - partly a reward for returning Hera, and partly a convenience, to make room for Boomer. She looked so small and lost inside the metal mesh of her cell.
Finally, he picked up the phone and waited.
He watched her head turn toward the comm that had been installed in the room. Waited while she slowly stood and walked over to pick up the phone.
“Hey.” Her soft voice still tugged at him, reminded him of dreams he'd thought long buried.
“Hi.”
“I wasn't sure you'd come back.” Her hesitation, her doubt, broke his heart.
“How long have, uh... have you been visiting that place?” He squinted at her.
Boomer shrugged. “A while. Maybe a year or so.”
“You loved that house...” Galen scuffed his foot against the floor, and allowed his eyes to wander over the walls of the cell.
Her light laugh brought him back. It was the sound of joy in his best memories. “You're the one who spent hours drawing up floor plans.” Their eyes met as she paused. Her voice was more sober when she continued. “I just wanted to share it with you.”
He wondered if she could forgive him. He reached his hand up, placing his palm on the glass in invitation. After staring at it for a full minute, she blinked rapidly and held up her own palm against his.
And they were there.
The house was everything he'd ever dreamed. Bright and sunny, with a fenced yard and a deck. Everything was exactly where he expected it to be. And Boomer... Boomer was stunning. He would have poured wine for them to share before a kiss, but he found marks on one of the walls, a crude growth chart. Her smile grew, and he followed her nod up the stairs to the first door which held a plaque with the name Dionne. The girl on the other side was as beautiful as her mother.
He lost track of time. Uncounted minutes, maybe even hours, passed while he wandered through the realization of a fantasy they'd built on lies when the universe was a simpler place and truth was something you could see and touch and hold in your senses. The projection receded, and he was crying and smiling and overwhelmed by a joy that he'd thought lost. His fingers pressed hard against the glass, seeking hers, never wanting to let her go. He leaned his head against the wire mesh and breathed more freely than he had in ages.
Boomer leaned her head toward his, and whispered, “I've never stopped loving you.”
Galen's head came up quickly to look at her, and he moved his free hand toward her face, tracing the shape of her cheek. “I never will.”
He could have spent the rest of the night standing there with her, but a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that he had other responsibilities now. Nicky, for one, who needed to be picked up from daycare. He pressed his hand back to the glass, futilely wishing it to disappear, then hung up the phone and turned to leave. His eyes landed on a three foot long rent in the wall of the brig.
“Frak me. We waited too long.”
﴿﴾nbsp; “Sir, I nee--” the ship's deck Chief re-settled his son in his arms, then continued. “I need to re-run the structural integrity analysis on the Galactica. She's tearing apart, even where there aren't seams. I found one in the brig, stopped at a few critical places on my way to pick up Nicky. There are half a dozen tears in the engine room, already.”
Bill blinked and looked up at his senior enlisted officer. One of his oldest Cylon officers. They claimed they believed that humanity deserved to survive, claimed they wanted to keep fighting for that. After the duplicity and the lightning quick changes of direction from the Cylons, he was having a hard time believing these five. These three, he corrected himself. Tory wanted nothing to do with humanity, and Ellen was still an unknown. However, Lee had made the call as acting president, and until they, as individuals, gave the Admiral a solid reason to remove them from service, he was bound to honor the Amnesty terms his son had offered. Hell, he couldn't bring himself to remove Tigh from service even without that.
He sighed deeply, and brought himself back to the matter at hand. “How did this happen?” Galactica had always been the finest ship in the fleet. When did she get old and tired and worn out?
Tyrol's face went blank, as if he didn't understand that the question was rhetorical. The duty face that they all put on when they weren't pleased with something their commander had said, but were going to follow orders anyways, because they were soldiers, and that's what soldiers did. “The ship is 50 years old, sir. She's survived things that would have destroyed a lesser ship. And... we haven't seen a maintenance hanger in at least three and a half years.” A helpless shrug punctuated the end of the little speech.
Bill disregarded Tyrol's comment. He could feel his heart rate rising. He'd been given this assignment as a retirement “gift”, because he'd refused to undergo the lie test that was required for a frakking desk job. He'd recognized it as a bit of a slap in the face from the beginning, to be assigned to a ship that was being decommissioned, but he'd loved her and her crew. That she'd never been meant to see battle again became irrelevant in the face of his fury and his exhaustion after so many years of running and fighting. What if she hadn't held up? But the ones who had put them here were gone now, and it was too late to do anything about it. For all their quirks and challenges, these men and women had been a good crew and a good family. The questions spun through his head, and he was as offended on their behalf as on his own.
“Sir, the organic compound from the Baseship would help.” Galen's voice pulled him out of his thoughts temporarily. “It... It bonds with the metal, makes it grow back stronger.” There was desperation in Galen's voice that had nothing to do with acting or programming. He loved the ship as much as anyone else who served on her.
The entire structure of reality was collapsing around Bill and nothing made sense.
A treaty with the Cylons. Cylon crew members. Cylon officers. Cylon friends. And their hope for survival was supposedly tied up in the life of a half-Cylon child. Now they wanted to turn his ship into a Cylon.
“Get out,” he growled. He ignored the Cylon's departing salute, turned to the wooden model ship he kept building and rebuilding. It was a lie. All of it. Everything he'd believed in and fought for was a lie. His scream, loud and savage, did nothing to ease his frustration or his anger. He found his stash of ambrosia, carefully hoarded once the worlds ended, and drank straight from the bottle. Maybe he could drown himself in liquor, and make it all hurt less.
It had worked before.
﴿﴾nbsp; She'd brought them to a dead rock, and a dead end. The star patterns weren't a match for Earth, but then... why should they be? Humanity now drifted through space, following the path taken by the original Cylons. If the original Cylons hadn't ever managed to find earth, why should Humanity expect to do better?
Kara lay on the floor, watching Elpis reach for a plastic cup that was just out of her reach, ignoring the rosters she should have been putting together.
Thus shall it come to pass.
She looked up at Lee, sitting at their table with his papers, and smiled sadly to herself. They'd barely exchanged a dozen words since their argument over following the signal Sam had helped her find. Glancing down at the rosters, she admitted to herself that she was largely to blame for that. Her off-shifts for the last week had coincided with his time on Colonial One. She winced, her breath catching in her throat.
Once, she'd been afraid that loving him would make her weak, that it would take away from what she was and leave her less of herself. Now, she found that having him solidly on her six, even from a distance, was the only thing that kept her moving forward.
He must have felt her eyes on him, because he looked up from his paperwork and directly into her eyes. “I'm sorry.” Laying his pen on the table, he slid off his chair to join them on the floor.
“No, it's fine. Really. I get it.” And she did. He was moving them forward while she sat idle. Whenever he managed to influence the direction of their policy, she felt them all move a little closer to Earth.
The dying leader will know the truth of the forest.
“What have they got you breaking your brain over this time?” She rolled over and sat up, reaching out to smooth down his hair, which was standing on end from the attentions of his own restless fingers. “You look like you've been tearing your hair out. Literally.”
He carefully stacked some blocks in front of Pea before answering. “The treaty with the Cylons. The Quorum's put together the first draft, but it's so pedantic it would be embarrassing to actually present it to our new allies. Worse, on the broader points it essentially replicates all the mistakes the Cylons made on New Caprica. It's like they want this alliance to fail. Or like Zarek wants me to fail.” His clenched jaw and quirked eyebrows spoke volumes about how far his former hero had fallen in his estimation.
“Hey.” Kara poked at her toe into her husband's hip, then drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. “You're a threat to him. Of course he wants you to fail.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Skepticism looked so good on him.
The missing three will give you the five...
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yes.” She scooted closer to him, sliding between his legs and wrapping her own around his waist. “You've bested him at least twice, now. You'll do it again.” Draping her arms over his shoulders, she kissed his nose. “Promise.”
“You're sure of that, are you?” The light in his eyes danced for her, hypnotizing and freeing. “Then you'll be gratified to hear that Romo is positive he's about to get the confession he needs to nail Zarek for orchestrating Natalie's murder.” His fingers rested lightly on her waist, making her shiver.
The smile that broke out felt like it was going to split her face in two. “See? Told ya.” They both laughed as he pulled her in for a kiss.
… the five who come from the path to the home of the thirteenth.
A frustrated grunt from Pea broke their concentration. They both looked over at their daughter, and Lee chuckled. “You want in on this, huh?” He reached over and picked her up, setting her down between their bodies.
The little girl was warm and soft between them, a comfortable weight, despite her wriggling. She was life and hope, and she made Kara's breath catch in her throat once more.
You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace.
Her body stiffened, and Lee shot her a questioning look which she ignored.
You will lead them all to their end.
But what end? Images of Caprica, after the fall, flashed through her mind. Memories of the miserable life they'd eked out on New Caprica, even before the Cylons had arrived, made her shiver with remembered cold. And the rock below them...
She needed to know there was something better for them, but even in the stream, her vision seemed to be restricted to the relatively recent past. Whatever confidence she might act out for Lee's sake, the future was closed to her. She existed in, and for, the present only.
End of line.
﴿﴾nbsp; The days passed in a haze of frustration for Galen. Work kept him from Nicky, and Nicky kept him from Boomer, and between the three of them, they formed the pillars that held him up and made it worthwhile to keep getting up in the morning.
Bill finally gave his permission to use the Cylon's organic compound, as well as Cylon labor, to repair the Galactica, but three new tears opened for every one they repaired. Even with double shifts working around the clock, they were loosing ground.
Three days later, he watched as Laura Roslin signed Boomer's extradition papers, putting her life in the hands of Cylons who wanted to blame her for the civil war that had ended with the near-annihilation of the Rebel Cylons. She didn't have a chance.
He couldn't let her die.
﴿﴾nbsp; Hera looked up when the door opened. People were always coming and going in the nursery, but this person was here for her. The juice was going to make her sleepy. The soldier told the nice lady who was watching her that the President wanted to see Hera.
She was sad for this soldier. He was going to die soon, and he didn't know he was sending her to a scary place. She hoped Aurora would be nice to him and help him across. He was just confused. nbsp; She didn't argue when he offered her juice, just drank it down and let him carry her away toward the box. She was too sleepy to fight him when he handed her to the crazy man who didn't look crazy, the one Apollo would get rid of. She was too sleepy to fight when the crazy man put her inside. She heard the shot that killed the confused man. She cried for him in her sleep, while the other man carried her away.
﴿﴾nbsp; The concussion of a gunshot was unmistakable even through the thick glass of Boomer's cell. Her guard opened the door, then stepped back, ordering her to follow.
Another shot rang out as she cleared the doorway. Her guard slumped against the wall of the cell, leaving a wide red streak as he slipped gently to the floor. Blood started pooling around him immediately. A masked soldier stood several feet away. She motioned for Boomer to step closer and hold out her hands. There was no more hope of resurrection. Boomer complied. Handcuffs clicked firmly into place around her wrists.
They traveled by the least-used hallways possible, ducking into storage closets when they couldn't avoid traffic, crawling through access shafts when they couldn't otherwise avoid people. The path was circuitous, but Boomer knew they were heading toward the mostly-abandoned port side hanger deck.
Halfway there, her masked abductor stopped in the middle of the hallway, in plain sight of two more soldiers. The three nodded to each other, and the first guard turned away. Boomer watched in shocked horror as the young man took careful aim at the masked head of that first guard.
He didn't miss.
﴿﴾nbsp; Galen tucked the unconscious Eight into a maintenance access near the long-term holding cell and continued toward Boomer. He'd needed someone anonymous, a copy of the face of the woman he loved. He'd get the guard to leave them alone for a while, then open the cell, tell Boomer to make a run for it and swap in the Eight he'd knocked out.
The empty cell and surrounding carnage brought him up short. A dead guard and a missing lover. But he could still help her get out. He pulled the unconscious woman back out of the maintenance shaft, and deposited her in the empty cell. Then he raced to the nearest comm link.
“CIC,” Dee's voice crackled over the handheld.
Breathless, Galen answered. “Boomer's unconscious and her guard is dead.”
﴿﴾nbsp; It had taken Tom Zarek a full week to pull together a plan and everything he needed to make it happen. Hera had looked at him through heavily lidded eyes as he'd settled her into her trunk, wearing an expression laden with more threat and knowing than any preschooler had a right to. This girl was an enigma. Something about her wasn't right, and it made his skin crawl.
Humanity was unquestionably better off without the Cylons.
He did lament the need to kill so many of the few soldiers he could count on, but all of this was serving a higher cause. Sometimes sacrifices were necessary. If things went as planned, there would be a fleet-wide uprising when the news of Boomer's escape with Hera was discovered. If not, he would simply continue to eliminate the Cylons one by one. Laura would be dead soon enough anyways, and Lee could be... dealt with.
Tom looked one last time out of the window of Colonial One, then turned back to his desk. All that remained was to wait for the shit to hit the fan.
﴿﴾nbsp; Boomer finally shook off the dazed shock that had haunted her since she'd been broken out of her cell. “What the frak? What's going on?”
“Shut up and walk.” The young man prodded her ribs with the end of his weapon. The faces were only vaguely familiar to her, tugging at the corners of memories that had been pushed aside for far too long, but not making their associated names know. The uniforms, on the other hand, were obvious and disturbing. She and her marine guard had been attacked by another marine and a pilot. Either there was another military coup happening, which Boomer doubted given what Galen had told her about the relationship between the now-Admiral and the President, or a full-scale mutiny was underway. Whichever it was, she'd gotten stuck in the middle.
She needed to get someone's attention. Galen was probably on duty. If she could reach a call box, maybe she could get him a message. But the call box she needed was on the opposite end of the deck from the Raptor which was her obvious destination. Hesitating, she tried to buy herself some time.
“Move it, you frakking, toaster!” It was the young pilot again, the one who reminded her so strongly of someone she couldn't place. She looked at him, wondering where she could have seen him before. He wasn't old enough to have been a pilot when she served aboard the Galactica.
Yet another gunshot sent them both to the ground, him bleeding heavily from his shoulder. A second made the marine stumble and fall backwards. The stunned expression on the pilot's face finally triggered her memory. She scrambled over to him, trying to see where he'd been shot.
“Boxy!” Blood was gushing from his shoulder. Luckily, her hands had been cuffed in front of her. She ripped off a square of the fabric from his uniform and stuffed it into the wound. “Hang on kid; you're going to be okay.”
His voice was sluggish, and his eyes were glassy. “Lied to me. Promised you'd take care of me. Frakking, lying Toaster.”
“I'm sorry, Boxy. I'm so sorry!” She would take it all back if she could, she realized as she watched the boy she'd rescued and then agreed to provide guardianship for bleed through the makeshift bandage. She'd go back and demand more kindness on New Caprica, release the prisoners who were being tortured without waiting for approval. Cavil could rot in his own hell for the lies he'd told her.
Lies. It all came down to lies, all the way around. She sobbed helplessly, keeping the pressure on Andrew's shoulder. Human, Cylon, it made no difference. They lied to themselves and they lied to each other until none of them remembered what was fact and what was fiction.
“Get up.” The voice was as cold as the metal under her knees. She looked up and her jaw dropped. “Now!”
She surreptitiously moved her hands through the blood pooling at her knees before standing up and moving toward the Raptor. More lies. Nodding, she climbed into the very bird she'd used to make her most recent trip to the Galactica with Ellen and waited for the hatch to close. The airlock sealed behind her.
The smaller woman motioned for her handcuffs, then unfastened them. “They were necessary to get you here without raising an alarm. The Cylons on the baseship want to execute you for crimes of treason. We have to get you out of here. I'm sure the nearest guards heard those gunshots, so we need to get going now. You're piloting, and we're going back to the Colony.”
Boomer stared at Tory, stricken dumb by the whole situation. She was supposed to go back to Cavil? Now that she'd defied everything he'd ever ordered her to do? She finally stuttered the only logical question that came to mind. “But, I thought the Final Five believed that humanity should be allowed to survive?”
“Well, maybe we were wrong. Now, fly this thing!”
The barrel of the gun was suddenly at her temple. She swallowed hard, and made her way quickly to the pilot's seat. Her pre-flight check was cursory and incomplete, but she'd be dead if they weren't off the deck and out of the ship before the posted guards showed up. She'd been wrong, and she'd been wronged, but she wasn't going to do anyone any good dead. She always paid back her debts. If she got out of this alive, she'd find a way to honor her debts to humanity.
﴿﴾nbsp; The guards entered the hangar deck as the Raptor disappeared behind the airlock doors and gunned toward the slowly opening portal in the side of the ship. One checked the vitals of the two wounded soldiers, and the other sprinted for the comm box Boomer had been hoping to reach when she'd first arrived.
The command in the CIC got the call, and tried to override the open operation, but the Raptor was too close, and the pilot too dedicated to escaping the ship before jumping. Instead, the door merely scraped the Raptor's tail as it flew through and curved around along the side of the weary Battlestar. The CAP was already bearing down on them. Faced with the twin choices of death and jumping against the side of the battlestar, the Raptor jumped away.
﴿﴾nbsp; Tory was on her feet as soon as the disorientation of an FTL jump passed. She fumbled briefly with the claps on the large box at the back of the Raptor. Boomer choked, trying not to vomit when she saw what the other woman had pulled out of the trunk.
“Good morning, Hera. We're going to visit Uncle Cavil.”
Continue to Chapter 33
Author: EcstaticDance
Summary: All
of this has happened before, now we're going to see it happen again.
But the Lords of Kobol want to see if they can possibly change it, so
key characters have retained the echoes of memories which cause them to
make different decisions, or experience things at different times, than
in previous cycles.
Spoilers: Through Season 4
Warnings: Heavy mysticism. This is not scientifically sound, folks. It's myth-driven.
Pairings/Characters: Kara/Lee, and canon couples
Rating: M
Disclaimers: None of it is mine.
Cross-posted: Not yet.
Beta: ez_as_pi (Most sincere thanks to you, darling!)
Previous Chapters: At My LJ
Return to Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Roslin had kept him out of the meeting, but he could do the math.
Hera.
Tom remembered working with her on New Caprica, remembered seeing the little girl around the school. The half-cylon baby had returned with the Cylon baseship after the destruction of the Resurrection Hub, not from the dead but from a lie created to maintain Laura Roslin's power. And now the Cylons had chased her here. Hera was important to them, somehow.
Madame President had ruled the fleet with an iron fist for far too long, and Lee had continued them all down that same dangerous path with his impromptu treaty with the Cylons. Someone had to put a stop to it, and since no one else was stepping up, it looked like he would have to.
He had business to attend to on Colonial One, but that could wait. He settled himself in an isolated corner of Joe's Bar. He watched the crowd for hours. They were all the same, generic military sort that followed orders and held misplaced loyalty higher than self-determination and true democracy. They made him ill.
At long last, the Final Five filtered, one at a time, into the bar and started up a low conversation. He could tell they were involved in some sort of argument. He moved closer and their voices rose slightly. It was enough for him to hear what they were discussing. Tory argued with the others, trying to convince them to leave the fleet, head out on their own. She'd seen what humanity had done to Cylons, and had no desire to stick around for it.
That was a smart machine, Tom thought. Self-preservation was, indeed, the mark of a sentient being. Unfortunately, survival of the fittest was the rule of the wild. He intended to prove that humans were far more fit than any machine could ever hope to be.
Tory, however, didn't need to know that. He sidled up behind her as the other Cylons left the bar.
“Tory,” he said conspiratorially, “I think I know of a way we can help each other out.”
Her cynically raised eyebrow made him smile. Convincing them was always the most entertaining part of any plan. He leaned in, shared what he knew and what he planned. It was slow work, touch and go at times, but by the end, they'd reached an agreement, and Tom was confident that she'd follow through.
﴿﴾nbsp; Galen left the bar alone. His deck shift was over, and he needed to see Boomer again. He needed to see what she'd tried to show him last time. There was a truth in her projection that he had to see, had to accept. He just hadn't been ready last time. Cally's hospitalization, Nicky's near-death, had been too fresh.
He stopped outside the long term holding cell. Caprica had been moved out - partly a reward for returning Hera, and partly a convenience, to make room for Boomer. She looked so small and lost inside the metal mesh of her cell.
Finally, he picked up the phone and waited.
He watched her head turn toward the comm that had been installed in the room. Waited while she slowly stood and walked over to pick up the phone.
“Hey.” Her soft voice still tugged at him, reminded him of dreams he'd thought long buried.
“Hi.”
“I wasn't sure you'd come back.” Her hesitation, her doubt, broke his heart.
“How long have, uh... have you been visiting that place?” He squinted at her.
Boomer shrugged. “A while. Maybe a year or so.”
“You loved that house...” Galen scuffed his foot against the floor, and allowed his eyes to wander over the walls of the cell.
Her light laugh brought him back. It was the sound of joy in his best memories. “You're the one who spent hours drawing up floor plans.” Their eyes met as she paused. Her voice was more sober when she continued. “I just wanted to share it with you.”
He wondered if she could forgive him. He reached his hand up, placing his palm on the glass in invitation. After staring at it for a full minute, she blinked rapidly and held up her own palm against his.
And they were there.
The house was everything he'd ever dreamed. Bright and sunny, with a fenced yard and a deck. Everything was exactly where he expected it to be. And Boomer... Boomer was stunning. He would have poured wine for them to share before a kiss, but he found marks on one of the walls, a crude growth chart. Her smile grew, and he followed her nod up the stairs to the first door which held a plaque with the name Dionne. The girl on the other side was as beautiful as her mother.
He lost track of time. Uncounted minutes, maybe even hours, passed while he wandered through the realization of a fantasy they'd built on lies when the universe was a simpler place and truth was something you could see and touch and hold in your senses. The projection receded, and he was crying and smiling and overwhelmed by a joy that he'd thought lost. His fingers pressed hard against the glass, seeking hers, never wanting to let her go. He leaned his head against the wire mesh and breathed more freely than he had in ages.
Boomer leaned her head toward his, and whispered, “I've never stopped loving you.”
Galen's head came up quickly to look at her, and he moved his free hand toward her face, tracing the shape of her cheek. “I never will.”
He could have spent the rest of the night standing there with her, but a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that he had other responsibilities now. Nicky, for one, who needed to be picked up from daycare. He pressed his hand back to the glass, futilely wishing it to disappear, then hung up the phone and turned to leave. His eyes landed on a three foot long rent in the wall of the brig.
“Frak me. We waited too long.”
﴿﴾nbsp; “Sir, I nee--” the ship's deck Chief re-settled his son in his arms, then continued. “I need to re-run the structural integrity analysis on the Galactica. She's tearing apart, even where there aren't seams. I found one in the brig, stopped at a few critical places on my way to pick up Nicky. There are half a dozen tears in the engine room, already.”
Bill blinked and looked up at his senior enlisted officer. One of his oldest Cylon officers. They claimed they believed that humanity deserved to survive, claimed they wanted to keep fighting for that. After the duplicity and the lightning quick changes of direction from the Cylons, he was having a hard time believing these five. These three, he corrected himself. Tory wanted nothing to do with humanity, and Ellen was still an unknown. However, Lee had made the call as acting president, and until they, as individuals, gave the Admiral a solid reason to remove them from service, he was bound to honor the Amnesty terms his son had offered. Hell, he couldn't bring himself to remove Tigh from service even without that.
He sighed deeply, and brought himself back to the matter at hand. “How did this happen?” Galactica had always been the finest ship in the fleet. When did she get old and tired and worn out?
Tyrol's face went blank, as if he didn't understand that the question was rhetorical. The duty face that they all put on when they weren't pleased with something their commander had said, but were going to follow orders anyways, because they were soldiers, and that's what soldiers did. “The ship is 50 years old, sir. She's survived things that would have destroyed a lesser ship. And... we haven't seen a maintenance hanger in at least three and a half years.” A helpless shrug punctuated the end of the little speech.
Bill disregarded Tyrol's comment. He could feel his heart rate rising. He'd been given this assignment as a retirement “gift”, because he'd refused to undergo the lie test that was required for a frakking desk job. He'd recognized it as a bit of a slap in the face from the beginning, to be assigned to a ship that was being decommissioned, but he'd loved her and her crew. That she'd never been meant to see battle again became irrelevant in the face of his fury and his exhaustion after so many years of running and fighting. What if she hadn't held up? But the ones who had put them here were gone now, and it was too late to do anything about it. For all their quirks and challenges, these men and women had been a good crew and a good family. The questions spun through his head, and he was as offended on their behalf as on his own.
“Sir, the organic compound from the Baseship would help.” Galen's voice pulled him out of his thoughts temporarily. “It... It bonds with the metal, makes it grow back stronger.” There was desperation in Galen's voice that had nothing to do with acting or programming. He loved the ship as much as anyone else who served on her.
The entire structure of reality was collapsing around Bill and nothing made sense.
A treaty with the Cylons. Cylon crew members. Cylon officers. Cylon friends. And their hope for survival was supposedly tied up in the life of a half-Cylon child. Now they wanted to turn his ship into a Cylon.
“Get out,” he growled. He ignored the Cylon's departing salute, turned to the wooden model ship he kept building and rebuilding. It was a lie. All of it. Everything he'd believed in and fought for was a lie. His scream, loud and savage, did nothing to ease his frustration or his anger. He found his stash of ambrosia, carefully hoarded once the worlds ended, and drank straight from the bottle. Maybe he could drown himself in liquor, and make it all hurt less.
It had worked before.
﴿﴾nbsp; She'd brought them to a dead rock, and a dead end. The star patterns weren't a match for Earth, but then... why should they be? Humanity now drifted through space, following the path taken by the original Cylons. If the original Cylons hadn't ever managed to find earth, why should Humanity expect to do better?
Kara lay on the floor, watching Elpis reach for a plastic cup that was just out of her reach, ignoring the rosters she should have been putting together.
Thus shall it come to pass.
She looked up at Lee, sitting at their table with his papers, and smiled sadly to herself. They'd barely exchanged a dozen words since their argument over following the signal Sam had helped her find. Glancing down at the rosters, she admitted to herself that she was largely to blame for that. Her off-shifts for the last week had coincided with his time on Colonial One. She winced, her breath catching in her throat.
Once, she'd been afraid that loving him would make her weak, that it would take away from what she was and leave her less of herself. Now, she found that having him solidly on her six, even from a distance, was the only thing that kept her moving forward.
He must have felt her eyes on him, because he looked up from his paperwork and directly into her eyes. “I'm sorry.” Laying his pen on the table, he slid off his chair to join them on the floor.
“No, it's fine. Really. I get it.” And she did. He was moving them forward while she sat idle. Whenever he managed to influence the direction of their policy, she felt them all move a little closer to Earth.
The dying leader will know the truth of the forest.
“What have they got you breaking your brain over this time?” She rolled over and sat up, reaching out to smooth down his hair, which was standing on end from the attentions of his own restless fingers. “You look like you've been tearing your hair out. Literally.”
He carefully stacked some blocks in front of Pea before answering. “The treaty with the Cylons. The Quorum's put together the first draft, but it's so pedantic it would be embarrassing to actually present it to our new allies. Worse, on the broader points it essentially replicates all the mistakes the Cylons made on New Caprica. It's like they want this alliance to fail. Or like Zarek wants me to fail.” His clenched jaw and quirked eyebrows spoke volumes about how far his former hero had fallen in his estimation.
“Hey.” Kara poked at her toe into her husband's hip, then drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. “You're a threat to him. Of course he wants you to fail.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Skepticism looked so good on him.
The missing three will give you the five...
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yes.” She scooted closer to him, sliding between his legs and wrapping her own around his waist. “You've bested him at least twice, now. You'll do it again.” Draping her arms over his shoulders, she kissed his nose. “Promise.”
“You're sure of that, are you?” The light in his eyes danced for her, hypnotizing and freeing. “Then you'll be gratified to hear that Romo is positive he's about to get the confession he needs to nail Zarek for orchestrating Natalie's murder.” His fingers rested lightly on her waist, making her shiver.
The smile that broke out felt like it was going to split her face in two. “See? Told ya.” They both laughed as he pulled her in for a kiss.
… the five who come from the path to the home of the thirteenth.
A frustrated grunt from Pea broke their concentration. They both looked over at their daughter, and Lee chuckled. “You want in on this, huh?” He reached over and picked her up, setting her down between their bodies.
The little girl was warm and soft between them, a comfortable weight, despite her wriggling. She was life and hope, and she made Kara's breath catch in her throat once more.
You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace.
Her body stiffened, and Lee shot her a questioning look which she ignored.
You will lead them all to their end.
But what end? Images of Caprica, after the fall, flashed through her mind. Memories of the miserable life they'd eked out on New Caprica, even before the Cylons had arrived, made her shiver with remembered cold. And the rock below them...
She needed to know there was something better for them, but even in the stream, her vision seemed to be restricted to the relatively recent past. Whatever confidence she might act out for Lee's sake, the future was closed to her. She existed in, and for, the present only.
End of line.
﴿﴾nbsp; The days passed in a haze of frustration for Galen. Work kept him from Nicky, and Nicky kept him from Boomer, and between the three of them, they formed the pillars that held him up and made it worthwhile to keep getting up in the morning.
Bill finally gave his permission to use the Cylon's organic compound, as well as Cylon labor, to repair the Galactica, but three new tears opened for every one they repaired. Even with double shifts working around the clock, they were loosing ground.
Three days later, he watched as Laura Roslin signed Boomer's extradition papers, putting her life in the hands of Cylons who wanted to blame her for the civil war that had ended with the near-annihilation of the Rebel Cylons. She didn't have a chance.
He couldn't let her die.
﴿﴾nbsp; Hera looked up when the door opened. People were always coming and going in the nursery, but this person was here for her. The juice was going to make her sleepy. The soldier told the nice lady who was watching her that the President wanted to see Hera.
She was sad for this soldier. He was going to die soon, and he didn't know he was sending her to a scary place. She hoped Aurora would be nice to him and help him across. He was just confused. nbsp; She didn't argue when he offered her juice, just drank it down and let him carry her away toward the box. She was too sleepy to fight him when he handed her to the crazy man who didn't look crazy, the one Apollo would get rid of. She was too sleepy to fight when the crazy man put her inside. She heard the shot that killed the confused man. She cried for him in her sleep, while the other man carried her away.
﴿﴾nbsp; The concussion of a gunshot was unmistakable even through the thick glass of Boomer's cell. Her guard opened the door, then stepped back, ordering her to follow.
Another shot rang out as she cleared the doorway. Her guard slumped against the wall of the cell, leaving a wide red streak as he slipped gently to the floor. Blood started pooling around him immediately. A masked soldier stood several feet away. She motioned for Boomer to step closer and hold out her hands. There was no more hope of resurrection. Boomer complied. Handcuffs clicked firmly into place around her wrists.
They traveled by the least-used hallways possible, ducking into storage closets when they couldn't avoid traffic, crawling through access shafts when they couldn't otherwise avoid people. The path was circuitous, but Boomer knew they were heading toward the mostly-abandoned port side hanger deck.
Halfway there, her masked abductor stopped in the middle of the hallway, in plain sight of two more soldiers. The three nodded to each other, and the first guard turned away. Boomer watched in shocked horror as the young man took careful aim at the masked head of that first guard.
He didn't miss.
﴿﴾nbsp; Galen tucked the unconscious Eight into a maintenance access near the long-term holding cell and continued toward Boomer. He'd needed someone anonymous, a copy of the face of the woman he loved. He'd get the guard to leave them alone for a while, then open the cell, tell Boomer to make a run for it and swap in the Eight he'd knocked out.
The empty cell and surrounding carnage brought him up short. A dead guard and a missing lover. But he could still help her get out. He pulled the unconscious woman back out of the maintenance shaft, and deposited her in the empty cell. Then he raced to the nearest comm link.
“CIC,” Dee's voice crackled over the handheld.
Breathless, Galen answered. “Boomer's unconscious and her guard is dead.”
﴿﴾nbsp; It had taken Tom Zarek a full week to pull together a plan and everything he needed to make it happen. Hera had looked at him through heavily lidded eyes as he'd settled her into her trunk, wearing an expression laden with more threat and knowing than any preschooler had a right to. This girl was an enigma. Something about her wasn't right, and it made his skin crawl.
Humanity was unquestionably better off without the Cylons.
He did lament the need to kill so many of the few soldiers he could count on, but all of this was serving a higher cause. Sometimes sacrifices were necessary. If things went as planned, there would be a fleet-wide uprising when the news of Boomer's escape with Hera was discovered. If not, he would simply continue to eliminate the Cylons one by one. Laura would be dead soon enough anyways, and Lee could be... dealt with.
Tom looked one last time out of the window of Colonial One, then turned back to his desk. All that remained was to wait for the shit to hit the fan.
﴿﴾nbsp; Boomer finally shook off the dazed shock that had haunted her since she'd been broken out of her cell. “What the frak? What's going on?”
“Shut up and walk.” The young man prodded her ribs with the end of his weapon. The faces were only vaguely familiar to her, tugging at the corners of memories that had been pushed aside for far too long, but not making their associated names know. The uniforms, on the other hand, were obvious and disturbing. She and her marine guard had been attacked by another marine and a pilot. Either there was another military coup happening, which Boomer doubted given what Galen had told her about the relationship between the now-Admiral and the President, or a full-scale mutiny was underway. Whichever it was, she'd gotten stuck in the middle.
She needed to get someone's attention. Galen was probably on duty. If she could reach a call box, maybe she could get him a message. But the call box she needed was on the opposite end of the deck from the Raptor which was her obvious destination. Hesitating, she tried to buy herself some time.
“Move it, you frakking, toaster!” It was the young pilot again, the one who reminded her so strongly of someone she couldn't place. She looked at him, wondering where she could have seen him before. He wasn't old enough to have been a pilot when she served aboard the Galactica.
Yet another gunshot sent them both to the ground, him bleeding heavily from his shoulder. A second made the marine stumble and fall backwards. The stunned expression on the pilot's face finally triggered her memory. She scrambled over to him, trying to see where he'd been shot.
“Boxy!” Blood was gushing from his shoulder. Luckily, her hands had been cuffed in front of her. She ripped off a square of the fabric from his uniform and stuffed it into the wound. “Hang on kid; you're going to be okay.”
His voice was sluggish, and his eyes were glassy. “Lied to me. Promised you'd take care of me. Frakking, lying Toaster.”
“I'm sorry, Boxy. I'm so sorry!” She would take it all back if she could, she realized as she watched the boy she'd rescued and then agreed to provide guardianship for bleed through the makeshift bandage. She'd go back and demand more kindness on New Caprica, release the prisoners who were being tortured without waiting for approval. Cavil could rot in his own hell for the lies he'd told her.
Lies. It all came down to lies, all the way around. She sobbed helplessly, keeping the pressure on Andrew's shoulder. Human, Cylon, it made no difference. They lied to themselves and they lied to each other until none of them remembered what was fact and what was fiction.
“Get up.” The voice was as cold as the metal under her knees. She looked up and her jaw dropped. “Now!”
She surreptitiously moved her hands through the blood pooling at her knees before standing up and moving toward the Raptor. More lies. Nodding, she climbed into the very bird she'd used to make her most recent trip to the Galactica with Ellen and waited for the hatch to close. The airlock sealed behind her.
The smaller woman motioned for her handcuffs, then unfastened them. “They were necessary to get you here without raising an alarm. The Cylons on the baseship want to execute you for crimes of treason. We have to get you out of here. I'm sure the nearest guards heard those gunshots, so we need to get going now. You're piloting, and we're going back to the Colony.”
Boomer stared at Tory, stricken dumb by the whole situation. She was supposed to go back to Cavil? Now that she'd defied everything he'd ever ordered her to do? She finally stuttered the only logical question that came to mind. “But, I thought the Final Five believed that humanity should be allowed to survive?”
“Well, maybe we were wrong. Now, fly this thing!”
The barrel of the gun was suddenly at her temple. She swallowed hard, and made her way quickly to the pilot's seat. Her pre-flight check was cursory and incomplete, but she'd be dead if they weren't off the deck and out of the ship before the posted guards showed up. She'd been wrong, and she'd been wronged, but she wasn't going to do anyone any good dead. She always paid back her debts. If she got out of this alive, she'd find a way to honor her debts to humanity.
﴿﴾nbsp; The guards entered the hangar deck as the Raptor disappeared behind the airlock doors and gunned toward the slowly opening portal in the side of the ship. One checked the vitals of the two wounded soldiers, and the other sprinted for the comm box Boomer had been hoping to reach when she'd first arrived.
The command in the CIC got the call, and tried to override the open operation, but the Raptor was too close, and the pilot too dedicated to escaping the ship before jumping. Instead, the door merely scraped the Raptor's tail as it flew through and curved around along the side of the weary Battlestar. The CAP was already bearing down on them. Faced with the twin choices of death and jumping against the side of the battlestar, the Raptor jumped away.
﴿﴾nbsp; Tory was on her feet as soon as the disorientation of an FTL jump passed. She fumbled briefly with the claps on the large box at the back of the Raptor. Boomer choked, trying not to vomit when she saw what the other woman had pulled out of the trunk.
“Good morning, Hera. We're going to visit Uncle Cavil.”
Continue to Chapter 33