Echoes: Chapter 33 of 38
Title: Echoes
Author: EcstaticDance
Summary: Allof 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 (Thank you, as always!)
Previous Chapters: At My LJ
Return to Chapter 32
Chapter 33
A blast rocked the ship.
Kara rolled out from under her viper, then waited for another hit. Within moments, she was on her feet.
“What the frak was that, and why aren't we being called to action stations?”
Tyrol answered, jogging down the deck toward her. “I don't know, sir.” His face shone pale under a sheen of sweat. He'd been talking for days about how close the ship was to her last leg.
Kara's gut twisted. Something was wrong. Something was... missing. She looked around as she hustled toward the CIC to learn what had happened and get orders. Sam passed her as she left the hanger deck, and their eyes met. As soon as he looked at her, she knew what had happened. A single word, a name, came out as barely more than a breath of air, but she knew immediately that he'd heard it and that he felt the implications of it as deeply as she did.
“Hera.”
﴿﴾
“How badly is the ship damaged?” Laura stood in front of the admiral's desk, arms crossed.
“Tyrol has a crew out there inspecting it now.”
“Bill,” in no mood for hedging, Laura poured every ounce of presidential authority into the name.
Bill sighed and shook his head. “An FTL wake is like a direct hit with a nuclear warhead.”
Laura waited.
“It could have been worse. We're still here. Battlestars are designed to withstand that kind of abuse.”
Laura nodded. “So we don't need to evacuate.” She waited for his agreement, then began to pace across the floor, considering the rest of the situation. Her former aide's name had been scrawled in blood next to a dying pilot. “Has anyone in the fleet reported seeing Tory since the Raptor took off?”
“Every ship has checked in negative. She's not in the fleet anymore, Madame President.” Saul's voice grated her nerves, but at least he was sober.
So was Bill, for a change. “We shouldn't assume she was a prisoner. She'd been around the ship enough to know the soldiers and be trusted. There aren't a lot of people outside the crew who can claim that.”
“And those few of us who generally have pretty strong feelings about Boomer seeing justice. I can't think of anyone who would argue that she shouldn't be tried. Since she's the only one still missing...” Lee was, Laura noticed, pointedly ignoring Romo Lampkin, who had followed him into the room, uninvited and grumbling something about getting the Quorum representative's ear before the end of the afternoon even if it required a presidential decree.
“Chief Tyrol.” Laura spat out the name, furious with herself for not ordering him detained or watched or something. “He was in here yesterday, asking me to deny her extradition.”
Lee considered her words, then nodded.
Bill leaned back into his couch. “We can't send him to the brig yet. We need him patching holes in this bucket. But we'll question him when we're done here.” His utter comfort with the risk they were taking made her want to pull her hair out by it's roots - if only she had any left under her wig.
“Alright,” she conceded the point to him. “So we know that Boomer and Tory are missing.” She needed to go back over the facts, gather their information and see if any sense could be made of it. “The preliminary investigation indicates that someone other than the dying pilot wrote Tory's name. We know that they took the same raptor that Boomer used to get herself and Ellen here from the Colony. Am I forgetting anything?”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the hatch. Bill looked around the room questioningly, then went to answer it.
“Is Hera here?” Captain Agathon's voice carried through the silent room, followed by Bill's low mutter. “No, you need to let me in there. The daycare people said a marine took her out of school to come see the president. You have to let me talk to her!”
Laura suddenly felt every bit of the weakness that tried to consume her every day. Hera. Everyone else in the room seemed to jump to the same conclusion. “Let him in.”
Romo broke his silence at the same time, speaking the one name she least wanted to hear. “Zarek.”
“What are you talking about?” She demanded, glaring at him.
“Tom Zarek.” He refused to say anything more.
Bill didn't bother pushing the man, simply turned to Helo. “Hera hasn't been here, and the president never sent for her. Find Gaeta, and have him order a fleet-wide search for her.”
Karl left the room as quickly as he'd entered, and without saluting.
Grinding her teeth over being ignored, Laura turned to Lampkin and shot back, “Clarify.”
“I've been trying to corner Mr. Adama about this for the last three days. I haven't brought charges yet because the more I dug up on the man, the wider his scheme went. I found the security feed of our dear, departed Natalie's execution. It showed the face of the executioner. I suspect he believed that the location would be far enough off the beaten path protect him. Lucky for us, he was mistaken. Or maybe he was just sloppy and didn't know there was a camera filming him. Doesn't really matter, now.”
The lawyer stood to deliver the rest of his evidence. Laura rolled her eyes, wishing he'd just get on with it.
“The guilty party is known to be well-established within the ring that runs the black market on the Prometheus. Now, we've all assumed for a while that Mr. Zarek had his fingers in that pie, somehow, but evidence was lacking. I have the evidence. Further, I have evidence that he has been diverting and restricting access to certain essential supplies.”
Lee's head came up at this. It had been his decision to allow the black market to continue to operate, and his condition had been that they not prevent necessary goods from flowing freely through the fleet.
“I need one more tiny bit of proof, and I can charge him with conspiracy to overthrow the government and the military. In summary, Madame President, you could hang the man for treason.” Romo nodded to her, smug with self-satisfaction.
“Zarek couldn't have known how important Hera was to either us or the cylons. He couldn't have. We kept him out of those meetings!” Laura was torn between hope and despair. This could give her exactly what she needed to be rid of Tom Zarek for good. On the other hand, if Lampkin's jump was correct, if the cylons had Hera, what might they do to the child?
The lawyer shook his head. “You hid her, Madame President. That means she's important to you, and if she's important to you, then she's important to either humanity or the cylons. Boomer and Ellen showed up a week after she did. That means she's important to them. Tom Zarek is many things, but he's not stupid. I have no doubt he figured that out.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She'd thought she'd been so careful, so discrete.
Lampkin continued. “He's already established that he's willing to sacrifice his minions for what he considers to be greater causes. These kidnappings, executions and disappearances have Zarek's signature all over them.”
It was true. Zarek had a habit of eliminating anyone who might be able to trace the line of events back to him whenever he ever realized he was in danger. Only serendipity and very tight security around Galactica's sickbay were keeping the woman she assumed was Lampkin's last witness alive. “We've already started the search. Lee, you help Mr. Lampkin in any way he asks you to. Zarek needs to be neutralized as quickly as possible. Now go, all of you.” She shooed everyone out of the room, including Bill. He had to go question Chief Tyrol, anyways.
She managed to stay upright until the hatch swung shut behind the last of them, then collapsed into her chair. Hera was missing. Hera, who was the very center of the vision she kept having… the key to the survival of humanity. And as likely as not, Zarek was behind her disappearance.
She'd been fighting for everyone but herself for so long. Love someone. Elosha's admonition came back to her, again, out of nowhere. How often had she given up what she wanted for the sake of several thousand strangers who refused to be content and make the best of their situation? Her own needs had taken a back seat countless times as she'd pushed beyond her breaking point to do the best thing for them all, and for what? Hera was gone, and gratitude was, as ever, nonexistant. She was dying! She had cancer, and it wasn't going away, and she was dying and she was tired, so tired of fighting.
Laura's body shook with sobs that she couldn't hold back any longer. She rose and dug through her things, pulling out her pills. Flinging caps off bottles, she emptied them into the toilet. If humanity thought they could fare so well without her, then let them.
If the Gods wanted her to live long enough to lead humanity to Earth, they would have to make it happen without her help.
Empty prescription containers lay on the floor around her like the dried out husks of so many dreams. Steadying herself with a deep breath, she dried her eyes. She'd sleep now. She would lie down and go to sleep, and stay there until she woke up.
﴿﴾
Three days.
Three missing people.
One President off her medication again and deteriorating so quickly that she'd already landed in sickbay, maintaining just enough strength to continue signing and rejecting proposals put forth by the Quorum, just enough to thwart Tom Zarek's attempts to take over the leadership on a technicality.
“Just another day or two, Madame President.” Romo Lampkin was sitting in a lab on the Galactica, sifting through countless hours on over a dozen security feeds and muttering to himself and whatever other higher powers might be out there, hoping someone would listen and give him either the time or the lead he needed. He'd still not had a chance to corner Kara Thrace, to figure out what had happened on the day he had not died, but dwelling on any of that for too long crippled him, and kept him from doing his job. The information he'd gotten during that episode had led him to the source he needed to start building a case to finish Zarek, and now he needed to focus all of his attention on gathering the final details.
“Anything new?” Lee Adama walked in unceremoniously, tossing his suit coat on the first handy table.
Romo sat back and rubbed his eyes. “I'm going cross-eyed.”
“Yeah, but that's not new. Nothing in this latest batch of feeds, then.” It wasn't a question. Since the Galactica was a military ship, there was little by the way of internal security cameras. The feeds he'd been examining were from the various flight decks and loading bays - access points around the outside of the ship. Lee had been the one to warn him about that. “I hate to open up the search to the rest of the Fleet, but...”
“Lee, we've been over this a hundred times. I'm positive what we need is here, on this ship. Call it counsel's instinct, if you won't accept the facts I've laid out.” All he needed was one little thing, one smoking gun. He needed the gun. That was it. “Where did the killer get the gun?”
“There are dozens of them on the black marke--”
“Obviously,” he waved off the other man's defeatist attitude and carried on, “but let's say Zarek was the middle man for this particular transaction. He acquired the gun, and handed it over, personally, to the individual who helped Boomer escape. Where, on this ship, might he be able to do that? What do the soldiers here do for fun, aside from polishing their boots and oiling their weapons?”
“Where would soldiers mix with civilians?” Lee pushed his hands deep into his pockets, his forehead furrowed in concentration. He blinked. “Joe's Bar,” he finally breathed.
“Are there security cameras in the bar?” This was where and why he'd needed the help.
Lee shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah, it's on the flight deck. Those are always filmed, so that we can review take-offs and landings.”
Romo waited a beat before yelling at him. “Well what are you waiting for, boy, get me those tapes!”
Lee jumped as if he'd been caught day-dreaming, then grabbed his coat and ran.
“And pray to whatever you believe in that they have what we need.” He whispered as the hatch closed between them.
﴿﴾
“Well, well, well. Look what the pet Eight dragged in.” Cavil's slippery voice oozed out of the dim vastness of the Colony's main landing bay. Tory had been all but floating through the entire trip, expecting to be greeted with cheers and fanfare or some such bullshit. Boomer, on the other hand, had split her time between trying to figure out how she felt about rejoining Cavil, who had sent her off in the first place, and wondering what was in store for the little girl who looked so much like the daughter she'd dreamed of for so long.
Cavil preferred his women docile. She'd learned the lesson easily, because she'd been in such shock when New Caprica had failed. Sitting and listening had comprised the sum total of the effort she could summon for days, and had afforded her the opportunity to appreciate just exactly how much disdain he held for anyone who presumed to think anything that differed from what he told them.
Adrift in the tattered remains of her sanity, she'd clutched to his “ultimate knowledge” as if it could somehow make her whole. He'd helped her to piece together a front to show the world, given her enough to pretend she was whole again. Tory had missed that part of the orientation.
“Hello, Cavil.” The shorter woman held out her hand, expecting at least the shake of an equal, Boomer assumed.
Cavil eyed the hand briefly, then ignored it. “So you've seen the error of your ways?”
“I have,” Tory agreed. “Humans and Cylons cannot coexist.”
“Good, good!” He rubbed his hands together with a glee that sent shivers down her spine. “Then you're prepared to tell me how to recreate resurrection.”
Tory's expression would have been comical under any other circumstances. Instead, all the Eight could feel was compassion. When the shorter woman finally spoke, she told him exactly what Boomer already knew from both Ellen and her limited interactions with Galen.
“I... I don't remember how to create it. I have almost no memory of anything before my life in the Twelve Colonies.”
“Oh, Tory.” Cavil shook his head sadly as two more Ones came forward to escort the stunned woman away. “Ellen tried to tell me she couldn't remember, either. I know the memory blocks are gone. I'm not happy with the lies, Tory.”
A small hand on the back of Boomer's thigh made her jump. “Boomah... I need to pee.” She tried to silence Hera, but it was too late.
“And what have we here!” He beamed approvingly on the small child, who hid shyly behind Boomer's legs. “Well, it looks like you at least got this part of the mission right. I suppose I can at least wait a little while before boxing you up.”
She could only hope that her own smile was more convincing than the patronizing expression he turned on her.
﴿﴾
Kara tapped her pencil rapidly on the desk in front of her. She stared blindly at star charts, trying to figure out what their next move should be.
Next to her, Kat did the same.
“How about this sector? We've only sent one team there so far.” Kat's approach was methodical and thorough.
Kara rubbed a hand over her eyes and tossed the pencil down in front of her as she sat back. “Yeah, fine.”
“You're not convinced.” Kat's eyes flashed.
“It's not the right place. It doesn't feel right. None of this does.”
“So what, there's some sign that we're supposed to be looking for again? I'm not sold, Starbuck.”
“You wouldn't be.”
“And what's that supposed to mean?
Kara stretched her jaw. “Nothing, Kat. It's not supposed to mean anything.”
“If what we're looking for isn't here, then where is it? What are we looking for?”
“I don't-” She stopped short. She did know. She'd known as soon as it had gone missing. “Hera. We're supposed to be looking for Hera.”
“Hera? You think the Cylons have brought Hera to Earth? That they know where Earth is already?”
“No, no that's not it. We need to find Hera to find Earth, but she's not there. She's just... She's just the next step.”
“You're crazy, Starbuck. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, whatever.” She looked back at her charts, pulling three out at random and examining them. She tossed one back into the pile and the other two at Kat. “Let's add these two sectors to the list for this run. We've only hit them a couple of times each.”
﴿﴾
“How many more jumps can the ship take, Chief?” The Admiral looked at him from behind his desk. He'd been under the impression, originally, that he was just going to be reporting on what his analysis had turned up. Seeing the remaining Final Five there, as well as a small assortment of military and political figures left Galen second-guessing himself.
“Five or six. Maybe a dozen, sir.” There was no point in dancing around it. They'd waited too long to apply the resin, and now that they had to move, they couldn't afford the time it would take to paint it on anyways.
The Old Man gave no discernible reaction to the news, simply turned to the next point on his agenda. “Starbuck, have any of our search parties turned up anything habitable, yet?” A quick shake of the head, lips pressed into a thin line, was the only answer. “Lee, you said there had been progress on the case against Zarek?”
“We've positively associated Tory and every soldier involved in Boomer's escape and Hera's disappearance with Zarek, right down to footage of Zarek handing Tory a gun. Unfortunately, that doesn't prove that she was involved in Hera's kidnapping, or in the shooting when Boomer escaped. We have Sgt. Harder, the marine who was found next to Boxey, in custody. Lampkin's still interviewing her.”
The Admiral sighed heavily. Even without definitive proof, it was hard not to see that the evidence was pointing toward Tory and Zarek cooking up some scheme to get both Boomer and Hera back to the Colony. Thank the gods, that had cleared Galen of all suspicion. The remaining question, of course, was why Tory and Zarek would put together such a plan, with or without Boomer.
“Tory, I think, was... disillusioned and damaged by what happened between the attacks on the Colonies and her discovery that she was a cylon.” Ellen Tigh answered the question that hung in the air among them. “She said some things to us that I believe point to a very deep pain, something about wanting to preserve the cylon race in it's purest form. She hasn't seen, first-hand, what kind of mind Cavil has. I honestly don't think she realizes that he'll probably end up killing Hera in his attempts to experiment on her, to figure out how to make more humanoid cylons. That was why we gave them resurrection technology, after all, so that they would agree to stop their horrible experiments.”
The XO took it upon himself to mutter the obvious. “Well, we can't just keep sitting here. We've got to make a move, one way or another.”
“We've got to go get Hera.” Sam spoke matter-of-factly. He had that look, again. It was the look he got when he was remembering something that made no sense to the rest of them. Staring beyond the walls, he clarified. “Cavil is absolutely right that she's the hope for the continuation of the cylon race, but not in the way he thinks.”
Starbuck started pacing, again. She spent a lot of time doing that since she came back from the dead, even more than she had before hand, which was saying something. “I think she may be the hope for the human race, too. Helo showed me a picture she drew of me while I was... while I was missing.” Stopping, she turned to face the admiral and Lee, as if pleading with the two of them. “But it's bigger than that. She's... she's a key to something more.”
The Old Man stood up and walked over to face her. “So you're suggesting that it's our 'destiny' to go after her?” He spoke quietly and waited for Kara's response. Her slow nod spoke more loudly than words how strongly she felt about it. “Well I've had it to here with 'destiny',” he spat toward her, making the whole room flinch.
Everyone but Starbuck. Galen admired her guts.
“That's what we've been doing this whole time, isn't it? Following our destiny? And where has it gotten us? The ass-end of nowhere. And now we have people turning up dead and missing because of this alliance. What's it going to be next? A full-fledged mutiny? We can't afford that.”
The admiral had a point. Crew and fleet aside, Galen wasn't sure the ship would hold up to the shoot-out that might ensue if the soldiers turn against the admiral. “Well, whatever move we make, we need to know where we're going. Galactica won't last long enough for us to be wrong.”
“Don't underestimate her, Chief. She's got more life left in her than you think. She just needs a little more attention.”
Tyrol stared unblinking into his commanding officer's intense gaze. Maybe this is how Starbuck does it, he thought, by realizing that he's not any more superhuman than the rest of us, underneath it all. The commander was right, of course, except for one critical point.
They didn't have the time to give the Galactica the attention she needed.
Continue to Chapter 34
Author: EcstaticDance
Summary: Allof 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 (Thank you, as always!)
Previous Chapters: At My LJ
Return to Chapter 32
Chapter 33
A blast rocked the ship.
Kara rolled out from under her viper, then waited for another hit. Within moments, she was on her feet.
“What the frak was that, and why aren't we being called to action stations?”
Tyrol answered, jogging down the deck toward her. “I don't know, sir.” His face shone pale under a sheen of sweat. He'd been talking for days about how close the ship was to her last leg.
Kara's gut twisted. Something was wrong. Something was... missing. She looked around as she hustled toward the CIC to learn what had happened and get orders. Sam passed her as she left the hanger deck, and their eyes met. As soon as he looked at her, she knew what had happened. A single word, a name, came out as barely more than a breath of air, but she knew immediately that he'd heard it and that he felt the implications of it as deeply as she did.
“Hera.”
﴿﴾
“How badly is the ship damaged?” Laura stood in front of the admiral's desk, arms crossed.
“Tyrol has a crew out there inspecting it now.”
“Bill,” in no mood for hedging, Laura poured every ounce of presidential authority into the name.
Bill sighed and shook his head. “An FTL wake is like a direct hit with a nuclear warhead.”
Laura waited.
“It could have been worse. We're still here. Battlestars are designed to withstand that kind of abuse.”
Laura nodded. “So we don't need to evacuate.” She waited for his agreement, then began to pace across the floor, considering the rest of the situation. Her former aide's name had been scrawled in blood next to a dying pilot. “Has anyone in the fleet reported seeing Tory since the Raptor took off?”
“Every ship has checked in negative. She's not in the fleet anymore, Madame President.” Saul's voice grated her nerves, but at least he was sober.
So was Bill, for a change. “We shouldn't assume she was a prisoner. She'd been around the ship enough to know the soldiers and be trusted. There aren't a lot of people outside the crew who can claim that.”
“And those few of us who generally have pretty strong feelings about Boomer seeing justice. I can't think of anyone who would argue that she shouldn't be tried. Since she's the only one still missing...” Lee was, Laura noticed, pointedly ignoring Romo Lampkin, who had followed him into the room, uninvited and grumbling something about getting the Quorum representative's ear before the end of the afternoon even if it required a presidential decree.
“Chief Tyrol.” Laura spat out the name, furious with herself for not ordering him detained or watched or something. “He was in here yesterday, asking me to deny her extradition.”
Lee considered her words, then nodded.
Bill leaned back into his couch. “We can't send him to the brig yet. We need him patching holes in this bucket. But we'll question him when we're done here.” His utter comfort with the risk they were taking made her want to pull her hair out by it's roots - if only she had any left under her wig.
“Alright,” she conceded the point to him. “So we know that Boomer and Tory are missing.” She needed to go back over the facts, gather their information and see if any sense could be made of it. “The preliminary investigation indicates that someone other than the dying pilot wrote Tory's name. We know that they took the same raptor that Boomer used to get herself and Ellen here from the Colony. Am I forgetting anything?”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the hatch. Bill looked around the room questioningly, then went to answer it.
“Is Hera here?” Captain Agathon's voice carried through the silent room, followed by Bill's low mutter. “No, you need to let me in there. The daycare people said a marine took her out of school to come see the president. You have to let me talk to her!”
Laura suddenly felt every bit of the weakness that tried to consume her every day. Hera. Everyone else in the room seemed to jump to the same conclusion. “Let him in.”
Romo broke his silence at the same time, speaking the one name she least wanted to hear. “Zarek.”
“What are you talking about?” She demanded, glaring at him.
“Tom Zarek.” He refused to say anything more.
Bill didn't bother pushing the man, simply turned to Helo. “Hera hasn't been here, and the president never sent for her. Find Gaeta, and have him order a fleet-wide search for her.”
Karl left the room as quickly as he'd entered, and without saluting.
Grinding her teeth over being ignored, Laura turned to Lampkin and shot back, “Clarify.”
“I've been trying to corner Mr. Adama about this for the last three days. I haven't brought charges yet because the more I dug up on the man, the wider his scheme went. I found the security feed of our dear, departed Natalie's execution. It showed the face of the executioner. I suspect he believed that the location would be far enough off the beaten path protect him. Lucky for us, he was mistaken. Or maybe he was just sloppy and didn't know there was a camera filming him. Doesn't really matter, now.”
The lawyer stood to deliver the rest of his evidence. Laura rolled her eyes, wishing he'd just get on with it.
“The guilty party is known to be well-established within the ring that runs the black market on the Prometheus. Now, we've all assumed for a while that Mr. Zarek had his fingers in that pie, somehow, but evidence was lacking. I have the evidence. Further, I have evidence that he has been diverting and restricting access to certain essential supplies.”
Lee's head came up at this. It had been his decision to allow the black market to continue to operate, and his condition had been that they not prevent necessary goods from flowing freely through the fleet.
“I need one more tiny bit of proof, and I can charge him with conspiracy to overthrow the government and the military. In summary, Madame President, you could hang the man for treason.” Romo nodded to her, smug with self-satisfaction.
“Zarek couldn't have known how important Hera was to either us or the cylons. He couldn't have. We kept him out of those meetings!” Laura was torn between hope and despair. This could give her exactly what she needed to be rid of Tom Zarek for good. On the other hand, if Lampkin's jump was correct, if the cylons had Hera, what might they do to the child?
The lawyer shook his head. “You hid her, Madame President. That means she's important to you, and if she's important to you, then she's important to either humanity or the cylons. Boomer and Ellen showed up a week after she did. That means she's important to them. Tom Zarek is many things, but he's not stupid. I have no doubt he figured that out.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She'd thought she'd been so careful, so discrete.
Lampkin continued. “He's already established that he's willing to sacrifice his minions for what he considers to be greater causes. These kidnappings, executions and disappearances have Zarek's signature all over them.”
It was true. Zarek had a habit of eliminating anyone who might be able to trace the line of events back to him whenever he ever realized he was in danger. Only serendipity and very tight security around Galactica's sickbay were keeping the woman she assumed was Lampkin's last witness alive. “We've already started the search. Lee, you help Mr. Lampkin in any way he asks you to. Zarek needs to be neutralized as quickly as possible. Now go, all of you.” She shooed everyone out of the room, including Bill. He had to go question Chief Tyrol, anyways.
She managed to stay upright until the hatch swung shut behind the last of them, then collapsed into her chair. Hera was missing. Hera, who was the very center of the vision she kept having… the key to the survival of humanity. And as likely as not, Zarek was behind her disappearance.
She'd been fighting for everyone but herself for so long. Love someone. Elosha's admonition came back to her, again, out of nowhere. How often had she given up what she wanted for the sake of several thousand strangers who refused to be content and make the best of their situation? Her own needs had taken a back seat countless times as she'd pushed beyond her breaking point to do the best thing for them all, and for what? Hera was gone, and gratitude was, as ever, nonexistant. She was dying! She had cancer, and it wasn't going away, and she was dying and she was tired, so tired of fighting.
Laura's body shook with sobs that she couldn't hold back any longer. She rose and dug through her things, pulling out her pills. Flinging caps off bottles, she emptied them into the toilet. If humanity thought they could fare so well without her, then let them.
If the Gods wanted her to live long enough to lead humanity to Earth, they would have to make it happen without her help.
Empty prescription containers lay on the floor around her like the dried out husks of so many dreams. Steadying herself with a deep breath, she dried her eyes. She'd sleep now. She would lie down and go to sleep, and stay there until she woke up.
﴿﴾
Three days.
Three missing people.
One President off her medication again and deteriorating so quickly that she'd already landed in sickbay, maintaining just enough strength to continue signing and rejecting proposals put forth by the Quorum, just enough to thwart Tom Zarek's attempts to take over the leadership on a technicality.
“Just another day or two, Madame President.” Romo Lampkin was sitting in a lab on the Galactica, sifting through countless hours on over a dozen security feeds and muttering to himself and whatever other higher powers might be out there, hoping someone would listen and give him either the time or the lead he needed. He'd still not had a chance to corner Kara Thrace, to figure out what had happened on the day he had not died, but dwelling on any of that for too long crippled him, and kept him from doing his job. The information he'd gotten during that episode had led him to the source he needed to start building a case to finish Zarek, and now he needed to focus all of his attention on gathering the final details.
“Anything new?” Lee Adama walked in unceremoniously, tossing his suit coat on the first handy table.
Romo sat back and rubbed his eyes. “I'm going cross-eyed.”
“Yeah, but that's not new. Nothing in this latest batch of feeds, then.” It wasn't a question. Since the Galactica was a military ship, there was little by the way of internal security cameras. The feeds he'd been examining were from the various flight decks and loading bays - access points around the outside of the ship. Lee had been the one to warn him about that. “I hate to open up the search to the rest of the Fleet, but...”
“Lee, we've been over this a hundred times. I'm positive what we need is here, on this ship. Call it counsel's instinct, if you won't accept the facts I've laid out.” All he needed was one little thing, one smoking gun. He needed the gun. That was it. “Where did the killer get the gun?”
“There are dozens of them on the black marke--”
“Obviously,” he waved off the other man's defeatist attitude and carried on, “but let's say Zarek was the middle man for this particular transaction. He acquired the gun, and handed it over, personally, to the individual who helped Boomer escape. Where, on this ship, might he be able to do that? What do the soldiers here do for fun, aside from polishing their boots and oiling their weapons?”
“Where would soldiers mix with civilians?” Lee pushed his hands deep into his pockets, his forehead furrowed in concentration. He blinked. “Joe's Bar,” he finally breathed.
“Are there security cameras in the bar?” This was where and why he'd needed the help.
Lee shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah, it's on the flight deck. Those are always filmed, so that we can review take-offs and landings.”
Romo waited a beat before yelling at him. “Well what are you waiting for, boy, get me those tapes!”
Lee jumped as if he'd been caught day-dreaming, then grabbed his coat and ran.
“And pray to whatever you believe in that they have what we need.” He whispered as the hatch closed between them.
﴿﴾
“Well, well, well. Look what the pet Eight dragged in.” Cavil's slippery voice oozed out of the dim vastness of the Colony's main landing bay. Tory had been all but floating through the entire trip, expecting to be greeted with cheers and fanfare or some such bullshit. Boomer, on the other hand, had split her time between trying to figure out how she felt about rejoining Cavil, who had sent her off in the first place, and wondering what was in store for the little girl who looked so much like the daughter she'd dreamed of for so long.
Cavil preferred his women docile. She'd learned the lesson easily, because she'd been in such shock when New Caprica had failed. Sitting and listening had comprised the sum total of the effort she could summon for days, and had afforded her the opportunity to appreciate just exactly how much disdain he held for anyone who presumed to think anything that differed from what he told them.
Adrift in the tattered remains of her sanity, she'd clutched to his “ultimate knowledge” as if it could somehow make her whole. He'd helped her to piece together a front to show the world, given her enough to pretend she was whole again. Tory had missed that part of the orientation.
“Hello, Cavil.” The shorter woman held out her hand, expecting at least the shake of an equal, Boomer assumed.
Cavil eyed the hand briefly, then ignored it. “So you've seen the error of your ways?”
“I have,” Tory agreed. “Humans and Cylons cannot coexist.”
“Good, good!” He rubbed his hands together with a glee that sent shivers down her spine. “Then you're prepared to tell me how to recreate resurrection.”
Tory's expression would have been comical under any other circumstances. Instead, all the Eight could feel was compassion. When the shorter woman finally spoke, she told him exactly what Boomer already knew from both Ellen and her limited interactions with Galen.
“I... I don't remember how to create it. I have almost no memory of anything before my life in the Twelve Colonies.”
“Oh, Tory.” Cavil shook his head sadly as two more Ones came forward to escort the stunned woman away. “Ellen tried to tell me she couldn't remember, either. I know the memory blocks are gone. I'm not happy with the lies, Tory.”
A small hand on the back of Boomer's thigh made her jump. “Boomah... I need to pee.” She tried to silence Hera, but it was too late.
“And what have we here!” He beamed approvingly on the small child, who hid shyly behind Boomer's legs. “Well, it looks like you at least got this part of the mission right. I suppose I can at least wait a little while before boxing you up.”
She could only hope that her own smile was more convincing than the patronizing expression he turned on her.
﴿﴾
Kara tapped her pencil rapidly on the desk in front of her. She stared blindly at star charts, trying to figure out what their next move should be.
Next to her, Kat did the same.
“How about this sector? We've only sent one team there so far.” Kat's approach was methodical and thorough.
Kara rubbed a hand over her eyes and tossed the pencil down in front of her as she sat back. “Yeah, fine.”
“You're not convinced.” Kat's eyes flashed.
“It's not the right place. It doesn't feel right. None of this does.”
“So what, there's some sign that we're supposed to be looking for again? I'm not sold, Starbuck.”
“You wouldn't be.”
“And what's that supposed to mean?
Kara stretched her jaw. “Nothing, Kat. It's not supposed to mean anything.”
“If what we're looking for isn't here, then where is it? What are we looking for?”
“I don't-” She stopped short. She did know. She'd known as soon as it had gone missing. “Hera. We're supposed to be looking for Hera.”
“Hera? You think the Cylons have brought Hera to Earth? That they know where Earth is already?”
“No, no that's not it. We need to find Hera to find Earth, but she's not there. She's just... She's just the next step.”
“You're crazy, Starbuck. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, whatever.” She looked back at her charts, pulling three out at random and examining them. She tossed one back into the pile and the other two at Kat. “Let's add these two sectors to the list for this run. We've only hit them a couple of times each.”
﴿﴾
“How many more jumps can the ship take, Chief?” The Admiral looked at him from behind his desk. He'd been under the impression, originally, that he was just going to be reporting on what his analysis had turned up. Seeing the remaining Final Five there, as well as a small assortment of military and political figures left Galen second-guessing himself.
“Five or six. Maybe a dozen, sir.” There was no point in dancing around it. They'd waited too long to apply the resin, and now that they had to move, they couldn't afford the time it would take to paint it on anyways.
The Old Man gave no discernible reaction to the news, simply turned to the next point on his agenda. “Starbuck, have any of our search parties turned up anything habitable, yet?” A quick shake of the head, lips pressed into a thin line, was the only answer. “Lee, you said there had been progress on the case against Zarek?”
“We've positively associated Tory and every soldier involved in Boomer's escape and Hera's disappearance with Zarek, right down to footage of Zarek handing Tory a gun. Unfortunately, that doesn't prove that she was involved in Hera's kidnapping, or in the shooting when Boomer escaped. We have Sgt. Harder, the marine who was found next to Boxey, in custody. Lampkin's still interviewing her.”
The Admiral sighed heavily. Even without definitive proof, it was hard not to see that the evidence was pointing toward Tory and Zarek cooking up some scheme to get both Boomer and Hera back to the Colony. Thank the gods, that had cleared Galen of all suspicion. The remaining question, of course, was why Tory and Zarek would put together such a plan, with or without Boomer.
“Tory, I think, was... disillusioned and damaged by what happened between the attacks on the Colonies and her discovery that she was a cylon.” Ellen Tigh answered the question that hung in the air among them. “She said some things to us that I believe point to a very deep pain, something about wanting to preserve the cylon race in it's purest form. She hasn't seen, first-hand, what kind of mind Cavil has. I honestly don't think she realizes that he'll probably end up killing Hera in his attempts to experiment on her, to figure out how to make more humanoid cylons. That was why we gave them resurrection technology, after all, so that they would agree to stop their horrible experiments.”
The XO took it upon himself to mutter the obvious. “Well, we can't just keep sitting here. We've got to make a move, one way or another.”
“We've got to go get Hera.” Sam spoke matter-of-factly. He had that look, again. It was the look he got when he was remembering something that made no sense to the rest of them. Staring beyond the walls, he clarified. “Cavil is absolutely right that she's the hope for the continuation of the cylon race, but not in the way he thinks.”
Starbuck started pacing, again. She spent a lot of time doing that since she came back from the dead, even more than she had before hand, which was saying something. “I think she may be the hope for the human race, too. Helo showed me a picture she drew of me while I was... while I was missing.” Stopping, she turned to face the admiral and Lee, as if pleading with the two of them. “But it's bigger than that. She's... she's a key to something more.”
The Old Man stood up and walked over to face her. “So you're suggesting that it's our 'destiny' to go after her?” He spoke quietly and waited for Kara's response. Her slow nod spoke more loudly than words how strongly she felt about it. “Well I've had it to here with 'destiny',” he spat toward her, making the whole room flinch.
Everyone but Starbuck. Galen admired her guts.
“That's what we've been doing this whole time, isn't it? Following our destiny? And where has it gotten us? The ass-end of nowhere. And now we have people turning up dead and missing because of this alliance. What's it going to be next? A full-fledged mutiny? We can't afford that.”
The admiral had a point. Crew and fleet aside, Galen wasn't sure the ship would hold up to the shoot-out that might ensue if the soldiers turn against the admiral. “Well, whatever move we make, we need to know where we're going. Galactica won't last long enough for us to be wrong.”
“Don't underestimate her, Chief. She's got more life left in her than you think. She just needs a little more attention.”
Tyrol stared unblinking into his commanding officer's intense gaze. Maybe this is how Starbuck does it, he thought, by realizing that he's not any more superhuman than the rest of us, underneath it all. The commander was right, of course, except for one critical point.
They didn't have the time to give the Galactica the attention she needed.
Continue to Chapter 34