Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Parts 3
Title: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 3
Word Count: 4,570
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: This particular episode takes a detour into Kara's story.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.
Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination. This is the seventh story in my "Aftermath" series. The others are "Goodbye, Captain Apollo", "Icarus' Choice", "To Chain Thanatos", "Mnemosyne's Children", "The Songs of Polyhymnia" and "Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle".
The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1
The Daughter of Clotho - Part 2
Author's Note: Sorry to have abandoned this story for so long, but I recently got inspired to continue it. However, with everything I've also committed to writing, it may take awhile to get to its conclusion, so please bear with me - anyone who is still reading it that is. Thanks LJ
Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 3
“That’s my brave Sheba,” Raymond Stewart murmured softly, rising from his seat and stepping towards the display as Suzuki comforted his granddaughter. “My brave, beautiful Sheba.”
“You do realize, sir, she isn’t Sheba.”
Raymond’s head snapped around to regard the young doctor; he forced himself to take a breath as she held his gaze steadily. She wasn’t really that young-her personnel jacket said fifty-eight-but in a society where people regularly lived past two hundred, she seemed nearly as young to him as his granddaughter did.
“She isn’t your Sheba, Admiral Stewart,” Hannah Graydon reiterated firmly. “She hasn’t been your Sheba since she was three years old, and those memories have been buried under powerful psycho-hypnotic blocks and a lifetime of socialisation as a citizen of an alien culture we know nothing about. That young woman is Captain Kara Thrace,” she said, “a soldier in her own right with a life of her own, and you may have to accept the fact that the child you knew as Sheba was irrevocably lost over forty years ago if her memories are unrecoverable. In fact, even if they are recoverable, she will never be your little Sheba again.”
That reality of Graydon’s words was like being doused with ice water. Raymond felt his lip curl in anger and he had to fight against the urge to physically toss her out of the room. He forced himself to calm down and nod in acknowledgement; he couldn’t trust himself to speak just yet.
“All right, sir,” she said opening her link interface. “Then let’s get started on a recovery program for your granddaughter.”
Raymond nodded again, gratefully, and sat down again as Graydon began scanning through his family’s archives.
#
Kara stood at the railing ten levels above the forward docking bay of one of the largest space stations she’d ever been on. Avalon station was nearly as large as the main Picon fleet yard back in the Twelve Colonies and it was considered a minor station out on the ass end of nowhere!
But then the Terrans-as they called themselves-built things large! Kara chuckled to herself. Suzuki’s Excalibur was considered a small, ancient training cruiser, but there were ships here that were twice the size of Pegasus, the Colonies’ modern, top of the line Mercury-class battlestar.
“Are you enjoying the view?” a vaguely familiar voice said suddenly.
She turned and smiled at Excalibur’s XO. “Yes … yes I am, Commander-” She broke off suddenly with a sheepish smile.
“Bryson,” he supplied; his accent was distinctly different from most of Excalibur’s crew. “James Bryson; you can just call me James.”
She grinned. “This place is great … James,” she replied, “if a bit overwhelming. I mean it is frakking massive! If this is a small backwoods station, I’d hate to see what you guys would consider a major station.”
Bryson laughed heartily. “Believe it or not, I know what you mean,” he replied still chuckling. “I grew up on one of these backwoods planets.” His eyes twinkled as he looked around. “So you can imagine the amount of gawking that went on when I left my family’s farm and came onboard a station much like this.” Kara nodded her understanding. “Anyway, I hate to take you away from your sightseeing, but Admiral Stewart has arrived and the Captain requests that you join them.”
“Not a problem,” she said cheerfully. “So he’s the big fish, huh.”
“The biggest in this sector,” he replied chuckling.
“Good,” she said as she turned to follow him. The security guards Suzuki had assigned to her followed at a discrete distance.
#
She swaggered into the room. That was the only way Raymond Stewart could describe it. She swaggered … head held high … eyes bright and alert.
She stopped directly in front of him, snapped to attention and gave him a razor sharp salute that he was sure was form-perfect according to her Colonial Fleet Handbook.
“Captain Kara Thrace, late of Galactica-last battlestar in the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol-reporting as ordered, Sir!”
Hannah Graydon was right; this wasn’t his little Sheba, but by God she was a granddaughter to be proud of! His granddaughter.
For a moment, his throat tightened, and he couldn’t utter a word. Seeing Theodora Suzuki’s concern, he cleared his throat and got a grip on his emotions.
“At ease, Captain Thrace,” he replied quietly.
She settled into something akin to a parade rest, hands clasped loosely behind her.
Raymond wanted nothing more than to stand there gazing at her, but time was of the essence and he had to bring her up to speed as quickly as possible. The bureaucrats, politicians and-not to mention-scientists were all sharpening their knives to in anticipation of getting a piece of her. Her description of her refugee fleet jumping across large areas of space without using the hypertunnels had the best Confederation scientists literally salivating at the thought of getting access to her.
“Please, take a seat, Captain Thrace,” he said gesturing to the chair on his left. As she stood formally behind the indicated chair, Theodora slid into place on his right, while Commander James Bryson took the seat next to his CO. Rear Admiral Giovanni Subramanian, Commander of Avalon Station, and his exec Captain Samantha McTavish sat down across from them, and Hannah Graydon took the seat at the foot of the table.
Only after he’d sat down, and the other officers had settled into their seats, did the young woman slide into her chair.
“All right, Captain Thrace, let’s get right down to it,” he said quietly. “Now, we’re going to ask you some questions that may seem strange-and rather personal-but I’d like you to answer them as quickly and truthfully as possible.” She nodded, but made no move to speak. “As the briefing goes on, the reasons for these questions will become apparent.”
“As long as at the end of it, sir, you’re still willing to help my people and you don’t hold my brand of crazy against them, ask whatever you like,” she replied, eyes twinkling impishly.
He chuckled softly, unable to help himself. “Okay, let us begin; who were your parents, Captain Thrace?”
“Socrata and Drelide Thrace, sir,” she replied smartly. “And call me Starbuck or Kara if you must. Every time one of you says ‘Captain Thrace’, I keep expecting you to throw me in the brig or bust me down to knuckle-dragger in charge of sewage pipe maintenance. Although, I am rather well acquainted with both scenarios-after all, I do have my own personalised cell in Galactica’s brig-if you could keep me out of your brig until we get back to the Fleet, I’d be much obliged.”
She grinned at them as they stared at her in shock for a beat. She certainly is surprising, Raymond thought humorously. She seems almost proud of the fact that she’s a disciplinary problem.
“I take it you’re somewhat of a disciplinary problem?” Hannah Graydon said blandly.
“According to Colonel Tigh, Galactica’s XO, disciplinary problem is my middle name, sir,” she replied with a snort of amusement.
“It surprises me you were allowed to remain in your armed forces if you were such a problem,” Graydon continued seriously.
Kara Thrace skewered her with a look. “Yeah, well I’m damned good at what I do,” she said in a hard voice. “Strap me in a Viper or put a couple of guns in my hands and tell me what to shoot and I’ll kill them all every time.”
As quickly as it came, the tension flowed out of her and she smiled affably again.
“Granted, until the latest unpleasantness, I was pretty much headed for the crapper, but the Cylons rendered the question of my being “allowed to remain” in Colonial Fleet rather moot. After the holocaust, we needed every fighter pilot we had. But Galactica was as low as a fighter jock could go and still remain Fleet-nearly fifty years old and on her way to being turned into a floating museum ... the Old Man was being put out to pasture, along with his drunken XO-let’s just say she’d collected her share of disciplinary problems HQ wanted to quietly sweep out an airlock and out of the Fleet without anyone putting up a fuss.”
“Your executive officer is an alcoholic?” Graydon said in shock.
“Well, he was never drunk on duty-well at least not very much-the Old Man wouldn’t stand for it you see,” she replied smiling. “And if there’s one person Tigh always obeys-the one person he’s loyal to-it’s Adama. He might be a mean, drunken, old bastard, but after the holocaust, I’d say he’d proved himself better than a lot of those perfect candy-asses-in their pristine, spit-shined boots-who had gotten themselves blown to Hades. Tigh led the resistance that got us off New Caprica, and that’s after a sadistic Toaster gouged one of his damned eyes out.”
Raymond got her message loud and clear; he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard-and until proven otherwise, his granddaughter would defend him to all comers.
“What about the Old Man, Kara?” he asked curiously. “Admiral William Adama, I believe you said his name was?”
Her gaze narrowed defensively. “What about the Old Man?” she growled.
“Well, what is he like?”
“The best,” she said simply. “He was a Viper jock-a hero of the First Cylon War. He’s tough, but fair-gave me, Tigh ... a whole lot of people second chances ... in my case fifth, sixth, seventh ... When you’re on his crew, you really want to be there-even the hotshots who were just passing through on their way to bigger and better things.”
“Then how did he end up with a bottom of the line ship?” Suzuki asked curiously.
“Hey, Galactica may be an old lady, but she’s a tough old bitch,” she said indignantly. “She’s the last of the old battlestars from the first war. Anyhow,” she continued with a shrug. “Way I hear it, the Old Man got burned from command of Valkyrie-a top of the line Mercury-Class battlestar-because of politics. He got sent on a classified, top secret mission, and then had the temerity to bring his ship and most of his crew back alive when it all went down the crapper. I guess no one explained to him that he was supposed to be expendable. The admiralty and the politicians needed to get him out of sight, so-” She shrugged eloquently again and then grinned. “Galactica. Ironically, it’s because Adama got sent to Galactica that anyone survived in the first place. Well, him and Roslin-”
“That would be Laura Roslin, your president?” Graydon said after a glance at her PDA.
“Yeah, the only person in the fleet with bigger balls than the Old Man,” she said with a laugh and they stared at her in shock at her frankly insulting attitude towards the leaders of her fleet.
But studying her more closely, Raymond realised that far from being insulting, his granddaughter was actually expressing her admiration for the other woman the only way she knew how. She worshiped Adama, so her words meant that she held Roslin in equally high-or even higher-esteem.
“Captain Thrace!” Samantha McTavish barked disapprovingly.
“What?” she said with a definite insubordinate undertone. “Look lady, you don’t know Laura Roslin-woman can be one scary bitch when she needs to be. And believe me, she needed to be. She was the Secretary of Education, forty-seventh in the line of succession and dying of terminal breast cancer.”
Again, they all stared at her in shock as she continued her rant-breast cancer? No one died of breast cancer anymore.
“At the end of the worlds, with crazed Toasters throwing nukes around left and right, she waded into a war zone onboard an unarmed government transport and gathered as many of the stranded civilian ships as possible, formed a convoy and then led them safely out of the system. You think that’s easy? You think the frakking Cylons made it easy? Raiders found her in the middle of trying to evacuate people off the sub-light ships without jump engines. With no way to defend them, she was faced with a choice; abandon over ten thousand people or save fifty thousand. She jumped the ships to the Ragnar Anchorage where Adama was re-supplying. She couldn’t even allow the sub-lights to know where she was going, because if they were captured, the Cylons would know where the survivors went. Then she went toe to toe against Adama and made him bow down to her-forced him to protect the fleet.”
She chuckled indulgently. “He called her a frakking school teacher; she told him to get his head out of his frakking ass! It was love at first sight-well, second sight anyway.”
“Your Admiral and President are lovers?” Graydon asked, unable to keep the disapproval from her voice.
“It’s complicated,” Kara replied simply. “I don’t think they’re lovers in the physical sense-Adama’s too damned honourable and Roslin’s just too … well, Roslin-but everyone knows they love each other. And no one in Colonial Fleet would mind if Old Man Husker hooked up with Madam President, but the civilian fleet, and especially all those frakking self-important politicians in the Quorum of Twelve always spouting feldercarb, would have objected if our political leader were to literally get into bed with our military leader.”
“I see,” Raymond said quietly. “Tell me, why did Roslin tell Adama to get his head out of his ass?”
She snickered-uninhibited schoolgirl-like giggles that made him smile. “Well, I’m sure she put it much more politely-being all school-teachery and lady-like-but at that point he was re-supplying with the intention of jumping back to the Colonies and fighting the Cylons. Apparently, she told him the war was over and we’d lost, and that the only sane thing to do was to run, use Galactica to defend the civilian ships while we escaped from the sector, and find someplace safe to settle down and start having babies. Otherwise, once the Cylons found the Fleet, the human race as we knew it would go extinct.”
“That is quite an extraordinary story,” Raymond said after a few moments of silence. “Tell me, do you remember your early childhood, Starbuck?”
It was like someone switched off a light inside her. “What has that got to do with anything?” she said coldly.
“Please, Kara; it’s important.”
She shrugged. “Not particularly-I was a kid ... did stupid crap kids do. I don’t see what’s important about it.”
“And your parents?”
“What about them?” she snarled; she was no longer cold.
Raymond could feel the volcanic emotions roiling beneath the surface ready to explode. Looking away from him, she took a couple of deep breaths and brought herself under control again.
“Look, my father was a musician-played piano and that’s all I remember about him. He walked out on me and my crazy-assed mother when I was about five or six years old-everything about him is pretty fuzzy, except for maybe a couple of songs he taught me to play. My mother had me late in life-was close to forty-five when she got pregnant. She’d been a colonial soldier-a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the marines, never made officer. About the only thing I ever did to make her proud was that I made it into the Flight Academy somehow, graduated and got my officer’s sash-apparently the first one in our entire family to make officer. She came from a long line of soldiers; it was all she knew and all she knew how to teach me, and on top of that-soon after she had me-some crazy priest or oracle told her some feldercarb about how I was a gift from the Gods and had a great frakking destiny ahead of me that she needed to prepare me for. She took it to mean that she had to beat the crap out of me on a daily basis-”
Raymond’s heart constricted and then shattered to a million pieces. All he could think was, oh dear God, please don’t let it be my son and daughter-in-law who did this to her.
“How did you break every finger on both hands?” he asked hoarsely, dreading her answer.
She studied him for a long, still moment. “I was playing my father’s piano not long after he left-I guess it pissed her off,” she said in a low, harsh voice. “I was always pissing her off; she banged the cover for the keys down on my hands. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital with a massive headache, bruises all over my body, including my head, bandages on my hands and some gods-be-damned nurse cooing over my accident. I spent my childhood waking up in hospitals a lot, as well as a lot of strange places where I didn’t know how I got there-even woke up once in the middle of the salt flats out in the back-beyond Hades on the other side of Delphi ... didn’t think she was going to come back for me that time. So needless to say, I got out of my mother’s house as soon as I could when I turned seventeen-did the only thing I could do and joined the military, but instead of the Marines like dear old Mom and the rest of her lunatic family, I chose Fleet.”
Again there was an oppressive silence as Raymond tried to assimilate the incredible abuse his granddaughter had suffered-and he hadn’t even asked about her more recent injuries. However, he recognised that the longer the silence dragged on, the more apprehensive Kara got.
“Look,” she said anxiously before he could say anything. “You can’t judge my people by my frakked up life-if that’s where all this is going-”
He realised that she was afraid he would decide not to help her people based on the abuse she’d suffered.
“There are a lot of good people out there in the Fleet,” she pleaded. “Some bad ones as well-I won’t lie to you about that-but every society has its psychos. However, for the most part they’re just people, not really good or bad. You can’t possibly judge them because my mother was a crazy frak or because I’m a career screw-up ... from what I remember hearing from Mom’s drinking buddies when they’d stop by, they saw a lot of frakked-up things during the first war. It was bound to screw them all up-and you know that old saying ‘crap flows downhill’? Well, I just happened to be downhill from my mother. But look at Adama-he saw at least as much horror in the first Cylon War and suffered even worse during this war, but he didn’t go crazy like my mother did or become a raging alcoholic like Tigh, he’s just ... he’s just a really good man. You’ve got to help us-please!”
“Don’t worry, Starbuck,” he hastened to assure her, one hand reaching automatically to take one of hers; it was thin and work-roughened, but had a wiry strength in it. “We’re not here to judge you or your people. Nothing you say here can possibly keep us from helping your people-I promise.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?” she asked, clearly frustrated. “Why are we wasting time rehashing my frakked-up childhood?”
Raymond took a deep breath to steel his nerves; Kara’s gaze never left his face, and she was clearly puzzled at his reaction.
“Kara, I need you to look at some photos and let me know if you recognize any of the people,” he said handing her his large computer tablet.
“I don’t understand,” she said in confusion. “What’s the point? I’m not going to know any of your people.”
He took another deep breath and squeezed her hand gently. “Please Starbuck, just take a look,” he said, aware that he had to be careful not to overwhelm her personal as well as her religious world view all at once. “Over forty years ago, one of our research ships disappeared and was never heard from again. They’d found clues left behind by an apparently lost civilization of humans-clues that were thousands of years old-”
Kara’s free hand flew to her mouth as a wordless croak escaped her. She stared at him, wide grey-blue eyes brimming with tears as he continued his careful narrative.
“A civilization that worshipped the ancient Greek gods and goddesses of Olympus; Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Apollo and so on-a pantheon that was sometimes called by names the Roman civilization gave them ... Jupiter, Juno, Pluto, Neptune, Minerva, Diana.”
“Do you still worship the Lords of Kobol?” she asked hoarsely.
“No,” he replied honestly. “Very few people in the Confederation worship these pantheons anymore-or any other gods for that matter. But people still celebrate them as part of our heritage and the cultures influenced by the people who held these beliefs.”
She nodded solemnly and he continued, fighting to keep his voice steady. “The scientific explorer ship Morning Star disappeared with all hands, including my daughter-in-law, Captain Kathleen Davidson, my son, Dimitri and my three-year-old granddaughter, Sheba.”
“Oh Gods I’m sorry, sir,” she said and he felt the sincerity of it in his heart. “And you think they might have made it to the Twelve Colonies?”
“Yes,” he said, voice breaking on that single word.
“Well, I can safely say I’ve never heard remotely anything like this,” she replied. “And although I rarely paid much attention to politics or the news, I think that a ship full of humans claiming to be from the Thirteenth Colony would have made some impression with those talking heads among the Colonial press.”
Theodora spoke up. “They were by and large historians, Kara,” she said quietly. “They may not have wanted to initiate contact until they could know more about your society and report back to the Confederation. We have teams of specialists whose job it is to initiate contact with other societies.”
“You mean spy on us,” she said suspiciously.
“Initially, yes,” Raymond replied. “But only so far as to determine your society’s structure, capture language samples in order to determine a translation matrix if needed or if changes in language had occurred if what was discovered an unknown human society-”
“There are other human societies out there?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yes,” James Bryson replied and Kara turned her gaze to the young commander. “I come from one of them, Starbuck. That backwoods home planet I told you about? It was once an Earth colony, but then Earth got embroiled in a war with an alien species for over one thousand years, and my colony was cut off when the part of the hypertunnel network that connected New Perth to the rest of the Confederation was destroyed.”
“Hypertunnel? A thousand year war?”
“Hypertunnels are our form of FTL travel, Kara,” Raymond said as she stared in shock. “We don’t jump through space they way your people do-and believe me, our people are anxious to find out how your science accomplished this. But to make a long story short, space itself has a substructure and part of that structure includes what we call hypertunnels, which bring different parts of space closer together and have the ability to accelerate a ship from one point in space to another. In addition to the natural tunnels, we can build artificial ones that can take us specifically where we want to go-we believe you fell through one to get here. As for the war, well we ran into a non-human reptilian species called the R’sachi-a species that believed humans had no right to exist ... that they were the only divine creation, so we must be demons created by their version of the Devil. They tried to wipe us out, but in the end, we had no choice but to wipe them out.”
She nodded. “Good,” she said decisively to Raymond’s surprise. “Sometimes that’s all some frakkers understand.”
After a moment of complete silence, she continued, “All right, I’ll take a look at your pictures, but you have to realise, sir, there were a lot of people in the Colonies, spread over twelve major worlds in the system and a bunch of smaller settlements. The odds of me bumping into one of your people, or even just seeing them are pretty astronomical. Even the civilian fleet has nearly forty thousand people.”
“All twelve worlds were in one solar system?” Suzuki asked in shock.
Kara nodded. “It was a double binary star system, sir,” she replied. “The major worlds were Caprica, Aquaria, Picon, Arelon, Tauron, Gemenon, Canceron, Leonis, Virgon, Libron, Scorpia and Sagittaron.”
“Your worlds were named for the signs of the Zodiac?” Samantha MacTavish said incredulously.
“The what?”
Seeing her confusion, Raymond quickly brought the Zodiac up on the tablet’s screen as well as the conference table’s holographic display. “The Zodiac is a series of ancient constellations as seen from Earth. Each was associated with a specific astrological sign and depending on when a person was born, people used to associate the Zodiac with different personality traits. The constellations were named Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Ares, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius.”
Looking at the hologram, Kara said in a tremulous voice, “The ancient flags of each Colony carried stylized designs based on those constellations, because according to the Scriptures, it is said that only Earth could see all twelve of her brothers in her night sky. We saw those constellations in the Tomb of Athena on Kobol, where we retrieved the first part of the map to Earth.”
“I see,” Raymond said hoarsely. Suddenly the young woman chuckled softly, tears streaming down her face. “Starbuck? Kara, is there something wrong?”
Drying her eyes with trembling fingers, she said hoarsely, “So my mother and Leoben were right after all-Kara Thrace did have a great, frakking destiny after all! Give me your pictures, Admiral; let’s see if the Gods will throw me a hand of full colours in this triad game.”
Tapping a couple of buttons, he returned the tablet to the first batch of pictures. “Just tap each picture if you want to see it enlarged and it will be put up on the table’s holographic display, or tap the next button to advance through them,” he instructed. If it hadn’t been for Suzuki’s advice, he never would have thought to use something so old-tech as a computer tablet, but given Kara’s abhorrence for the Cylons and general distrust of computers, he didn’t want to upset her with his people’s implants before he had to. Therefore, they all carried one of the devices as camouflage.
As she advanced to the second page, Raymond didn’t know whether to be relieved or to cry; she’d bypassed her parents’ pictures without a shred of recognition. As she flipped past the second page, she stiffened and then hurriedly toggled back. Her hand trembled as she reached out to tap one picture and Paul Davidson’s face filled the display.
Kara stared at it in disbelief. “Son of a bitch!” she swore loudly. “What the frak is going on here?”
“You recognise him, Kara?” Raymond demanded.
“Of course I recognise him,” she retorted, blue eyes flashing angrily. “He’s younger in the picture, but it’s him-it’s Tigh!”
#
To Part 4
Word Count: 4,570
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: This particular episode takes a detour into Kara's story.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.
Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination. This is the seventh story in my "Aftermath" series. The others are "Goodbye, Captain Apollo", "Icarus' Choice", "To Chain Thanatos", "Mnemosyne's Children", "The Songs of Polyhymnia" and "Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle".
The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1
The Daughter of Clotho - Part 2
Author's Note: Sorry to have abandoned this story for so long, but I recently got inspired to continue it. However, with everything I've also committed to writing, it may take awhile to get to its conclusion, so please bear with me - anyone who is still reading it that is. Thanks LJ
Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 3
“That’s my brave Sheba,” Raymond Stewart murmured softly, rising from his seat and stepping towards the display as Suzuki comforted his granddaughter. “My brave, beautiful Sheba.”
“You do realize, sir, she isn’t Sheba.”
Raymond’s head snapped around to regard the young doctor; he forced himself to take a breath as she held his gaze steadily. She wasn’t really that young-her personnel jacket said fifty-eight-but in a society where people regularly lived past two hundred, she seemed nearly as young to him as his granddaughter did.
“She isn’t your Sheba, Admiral Stewart,” Hannah Graydon reiterated firmly. “She hasn’t been your Sheba since she was three years old, and those memories have been buried under powerful psycho-hypnotic blocks and a lifetime of socialisation as a citizen of an alien culture we know nothing about. That young woman is Captain Kara Thrace,” she said, “a soldier in her own right with a life of her own, and you may have to accept the fact that the child you knew as Sheba was irrevocably lost over forty years ago if her memories are unrecoverable. In fact, even if they are recoverable, she will never be your little Sheba again.”
That reality of Graydon’s words was like being doused with ice water. Raymond felt his lip curl in anger and he had to fight against the urge to physically toss her out of the room. He forced himself to calm down and nod in acknowledgement; he couldn’t trust himself to speak just yet.
“All right, sir,” she said opening her link interface. “Then let’s get started on a recovery program for your granddaughter.”
Raymond nodded again, gratefully, and sat down again as Graydon began scanning through his family’s archives.
#
Kara stood at the railing ten levels above the forward docking bay of one of the largest space stations she’d ever been on. Avalon station was nearly as large as the main Picon fleet yard back in the Twelve Colonies and it was considered a minor station out on the ass end of nowhere!
But then the Terrans-as they called themselves-built things large! Kara chuckled to herself. Suzuki’s Excalibur was considered a small, ancient training cruiser, but there were ships here that were twice the size of Pegasus, the Colonies’ modern, top of the line Mercury-class battlestar.
“Are you enjoying the view?” a vaguely familiar voice said suddenly.
She turned and smiled at Excalibur’s XO. “Yes … yes I am, Commander-” She broke off suddenly with a sheepish smile.
“Bryson,” he supplied; his accent was distinctly different from most of Excalibur’s crew. “James Bryson; you can just call me James.”
She grinned. “This place is great … James,” she replied, “if a bit overwhelming. I mean it is frakking massive! If this is a small backwoods station, I’d hate to see what you guys would consider a major station.”
Bryson laughed heartily. “Believe it or not, I know what you mean,” he replied still chuckling. “I grew up on one of these backwoods planets.” His eyes twinkled as he looked around. “So you can imagine the amount of gawking that went on when I left my family’s farm and came onboard a station much like this.” Kara nodded her understanding. “Anyway, I hate to take you away from your sightseeing, but Admiral Stewart has arrived and the Captain requests that you join them.”
“Not a problem,” she said cheerfully. “So he’s the big fish, huh.”
“The biggest in this sector,” he replied chuckling.
“Good,” she said as she turned to follow him. The security guards Suzuki had assigned to her followed at a discrete distance.
#
She swaggered into the room. That was the only way Raymond Stewart could describe it. She swaggered … head held high … eyes bright and alert.
She stopped directly in front of him, snapped to attention and gave him a razor sharp salute that he was sure was form-perfect according to her Colonial Fleet Handbook.
“Captain Kara Thrace, late of Galactica-last battlestar in the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol-reporting as ordered, Sir!”
Hannah Graydon was right; this wasn’t his little Sheba, but by God she was a granddaughter to be proud of! His granddaughter.
For a moment, his throat tightened, and he couldn’t utter a word. Seeing Theodora Suzuki’s concern, he cleared his throat and got a grip on his emotions.
“At ease, Captain Thrace,” he replied quietly.
She settled into something akin to a parade rest, hands clasped loosely behind her.
Raymond wanted nothing more than to stand there gazing at her, but time was of the essence and he had to bring her up to speed as quickly as possible. The bureaucrats, politicians and-not to mention-scientists were all sharpening their knives to in anticipation of getting a piece of her. Her description of her refugee fleet jumping across large areas of space without using the hypertunnels had the best Confederation scientists literally salivating at the thought of getting access to her.
“Please, take a seat, Captain Thrace,” he said gesturing to the chair on his left. As she stood formally behind the indicated chair, Theodora slid into place on his right, while Commander James Bryson took the seat next to his CO. Rear Admiral Giovanni Subramanian, Commander of Avalon Station, and his exec Captain Samantha McTavish sat down across from them, and Hannah Graydon took the seat at the foot of the table.
Only after he’d sat down, and the other officers had settled into their seats, did the young woman slide into her chair.
“All right, Captain Thrace, let’s get right down to it,” he said quietly. “Now, we’re going to ask you some questions that may seem strange-and rather personal-but I’d like you to answer them as quickly and truthfully as possible.” She nodded, but made no move to speak. “As the briefing goes on, the reasons for these questions will become apparent.”
“As long as at the end of it, sir, you’re still willing to help my people and you don’t hold my brand of crazy against them, ask whatever you like,” she replied, eyes twinkling impishly.
He chuckled softly, unable to help himself. “Okay, let us begin; who were your parents, Captain Thrace?”
“Socrata and Drelide Thrace, sir,” she replied smartly. “And call me Starbuck or Kara if you must. Every time one of you says ‘Captain Thrace’, I keep expecting you to throw me in the brig or bust me down to knuckle-dragger in charge of sewage pipe maintenance. Although, I am rather well acquainted with both scenarios-after all, I do have my own personalised cell in Galactica’s brig-if you could keep me out of your brig until we get back to the Fleet, I’d be much obliged.”
She grinned at them as they stared at her in shock for a beat. She certainly is surprising, Raymond thought humorously. She seems almost proud of the fact that she’s a disciplinary problem.
“I take it you’re somewhat of a disciplinary problem?” Hannah Graydon said blandly.
“According to Colonel Tigh, Galactica’s XO, disciplinary problem is my middle name, sir,” she replied with a snort of amusement.
“It surprises me you were allowed to remain in your armed forces if you were such a problem,” Graydon continued seriously.
Kara Thrace skewered her with a look. “Yeah, well I’m damned good at what I do,” she said in a hard voice. “Strap me in a Viper or put a couple of guns in my hands and tell me what to shoot and I’ll kill them all every time.”
As quickly as it came, the tension flowed out of her and she smiled affably again.
“Granted, until the latest unpleasantness, I was pretty much headed for the crapper, but the Cylons rendered the question of my being “allowed to remain” in Colonial Fleet rather moot. After the holocaust, we needed every fighter pilot we had. But Galactica was as low as a fighter jock could go and still remain Fleet-nearly fifty years old and on her way to being turned into a floating museum ... the Old Man was being put out to pasture, along with his drunken XO-let’s just say she’d collected her share of disciplinary problems HQ wanted to quietly sweep out an airlock and out of the Fleet without anyone putting up a fuss.”
“Your executive officer is an alcoholic?” Graydon said in shock.
“Well, he was never drunk on duty-well at least not very much-the Old Man wouldn’t stand for it you see,” she replied smiling. “And if there’s one person Tigh always obeys-the one person he’s loyal to-it’s Adama. He might be a mean, drunken, old bastard, but after the holocaust, I’d say he’d proved himself better than a lot of those perfect candy-asses-in their pristine, spit-shined boots-who had gotten themselves blown to Hades. Tigh led the resistance that got us off New Caprica, and that’s after a sadistic Toaster gouged one of his damned eyes out.”
Raymond got her message loud and clear; he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard-and until proven otherwise, his granddaughter would defend him to all comers.
“What about the Old Man, Kara?” he asked curiously. “Admiral William Adama, I believe you said his name was?”
Her gaze narrowed defensively. “What about the Old Man?” she growled.
“Well, what is he like?”
“The best,” she said simply. “He was a Viper jock-a hero of the First Cylon War. He’s tough, but fair-gave me, Tigh ... a whole lot of people second chances ... in my case fifth, sixth, seventh ... When you’re on his crew, you really want to be there-even the hotshots who were just passing through on their way to bigger and better things.”
“Then how did he end up with a bottom of the line ship?” Suzuki asked curiously.
“Hey, Galactica may be an old lady, but she’s a tough old bitch,” she said indignantly. “She’s the last of the old battlestars from the first war. Anyhow,” she continued with a shrug. “Way I hear it, the Old Man got burned from command of Valkyrie-a top of the line Mercury-Class battlestar-because of politics. He got sent on a classified, top secret mission, and then had the temerity to bring his ship and most of his crew back alive when it all went down the crapper. I guess no one explained to him that he was supposed to be expendable. The admiralty and the politicians needed to get him out of sight, so-” She shrugged eloquently again and then grinned. “Galactica. Ironically, it’s because Adama got sent to Galactica that anyone survived in the first place. Well, him and Roslin-”
“That would be Laura Roslin, your president?” Graydon said after a glance at her PDA.
“Yeah, the only person in the fleet with bigger balls than the Old Man,” she said with a laugh and they stared at her in shock at her frankly insulting attitude towards the leaders of her fleet.
But studying her more closely, Raymond realised that far from being insulting, his granddaughter was actually expressing her admiration for the other woman the only way she knew how. She worshiped Adama, so her words meant that she held Roslin in equally high-or even higher-esteem.
“Captain Thrace!” Samantha McTavish barked disapprovingly.
“What?” she said with a definite insubordinate undertone. “Look lady, you don’t know Laura Roslin-woman can be one scary bitch when she needs to be. And believe me, she needed to be. She was the Secretary of Education, forty-seventh in the line of succession and dying of terminal breast cancer.”
Again, they all stared at her in shock as she continued her rant-breast cancer? No one died of breast cancer anymore.
“At the end of the worlds, with crazed Toasters throwing nukes around left and right, she waded into a war zone onboard an unarmed government transport and gathered as many of the stranded civilian ships as possible, formed a convoy and then led them safely out of the system. You think that’s easy? You think the frakking Cylons made it easy? Raiders found her in the middle of trying to evacuate people off the sub-light ships without jump engines. With no way to defend them, she was faced with a choice; abandon over ten thousand people or save fifty thousand. She jumped the ships to the Ragnar Anchorage where Adama was re-supplying. She couldn’t even allow the sub-lights to know where she was going, because if they were captured, the Cylons would know where the survivors went. Then she went toe to toe against Adama and made him bow down to her-forced him to protect the fleet.”
She chuckled indulgently. “He called her a frakking school teacher; she told him to get his head out of his frakking ass! It was love at first sight-well, second sight anyway.”
“Your Admiral and President are lovers?” Graydon asked, unable to keep the disapproval from her voice.
“It’s complicated,” Kara replied simply. “I don’t think they’re lovers in the physical sense-Adama’s too damned honourable and Roslin’s just too … well, Roslin-but everyone knows they love each other. And no one in Colonial Fleet would mind if Old Man Husker hooked up with Madam President, but the civilian fleet, and especially all those frakking self-important politicians in the Quorum of Twelve always spouting feldercarb, would have objected if our political leader were to literally get into bed with our military leader.”
“I see,” Raymond said quietly. “Tell me, why did Roslin tell Adama to get his head out of his ass?”
She snickered-uninhibited schoolgirl-like giggles that made him smile. “Well, I’m sure she put it much more politely-being all school-teachery and lady-like-but at that point he was re-supplying with the intention of jumping back to the Colonies and fighting the Cylons. Apparently, she told him the war was over and we’d lost, and that the only sane thing to do was to run, use Galactica to defend the civilian ships while we escaped from the sector, and find someplace safe to settle down and start having babies. Otherwise, once the Cylons found the Fleet, the human race as we knew it would go extinct.”
“That is quite an extraordinary story,” Raymond said after a few moments of silence. “Tell me, do you remember your early childhood, Starbuck?”
It was like someone switched off a light inside her. “What has that got to do with anything?” she said coldly.
“Please, Kara; it’s important.”
She shrugged. “Not particularly-I was a kid ... did stupid crap kids do. I don’t see what’s important about it.”
“And your parents?”
“What about them?” she snarled; she was no longer cold.
Raymond could feel the volcanic emotions roiling beneath the surface ready to explode. Looking away from him, she took a couple of deep breaths and brought herself under control again.
“Look, my father was a musician-played piano and that’s all I remember about him. He walked out on me and my crazy-assed mother when I was about five or six years old-everything about him is pretty fuzzy, except for maybe a couple of songs he taught me to play. My mother had me late in life-was close to forty-five when she got pregnant. She’d been a colonial soldier-a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the marines, never made officer. About the only thing I ever did to make her proud was that I made it into the Flight Academy somehow, graduated and got my officer’s sash-apparently the first one in our entire family to make officer. She came from a long line of soldiers; it was all she knew and all she knew how to teach me, and on top of that-soon after she had me-some crazy priest or oracle told her some feldercarb about how I was a gift from the Gods and had a great frakking destiny ahead of me that she needed to prepare me for. She took it to mean that she had to beat the crap out of me on a daily basis-”
Raymond’s heart constricted and then shattered to a million pieces. All he could think was, oh dear God, please don’t let it be my son and daughter-in-law who did this to her.
“How did you break every finger on both hands?” he asked hoarsely, dreading her answer.
She studied him for a long, still moment. “I was playing my father’s piano not long after he left-I guess it pissed her off,” she said in a low, harsh voice. “I was always pissing her off; she banged the cover for the keys down on my hands. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital with a massive headache, bruises all over my body, including my head, bandages on my hands and some gods-be-damned nurse cooing over my accident. I spent my childhood waking up in hospitals a lot, as well as a lot of strange places where I didn’t know how I got there-even woke up once in the middle of the salt flats out in the back-beyond Hades on the other side of Delphi ... didn’t think she was going to come back for me that time. So needless to say, I got out of my mother’s house as soon as I could when I turned seventeen-did the only thing I could do and joined the military, but instead of the Marines like dear old Mom and the rest of her lunatic family, I chose Fleet.”
Again there was an oppressive silence as Raymond tried to assimilate the incredible abuse his granddaughter had suffered-and he hadn’t even asked about her more recent injuries. However, he recognised that the longer the silence dragged on, the more apprehensive Kara got.
“Look,” she said anxiously before he could say anything. “You can’t judge my people by my frakked up life-if that’s where all this is going-”
He realised that she was afraid he would decide not to help her people based on the abuse she’d suffered.
“There are a lot of good people out there in the Fleet,” she pleaded. “Some bad ones as well-I won’t lie to you about that-but every society has its psychos. However, for the most part they’re just people, not really good or bad. You can’t possibly judge them because my mother was a crazy frak or because I’m a career screw-up ... from what I remember hearing from Mom’s drinking buddies when they’d stop by, they saw a lot of frakked-up things during the first war. It was bound to screw them all up-and you know that old saying ‘crap flows downhill’? Well, I just happened to be downhill from my mother. But look at Adama-he saw at least as much horror in the first Cylon War and suffered even worse during this war, but he didn’t go crazy like my mother did or become a raging alcoholic like Tigh, he’s just ... he’s just a really good man. You’ve got to help us-please!”
“Don’t worry, Starbuck,” he hastened to assure her, one hand reaching automatically to take one of hers; it was thin and work-roughened, but had a wiry strength in it. “We’re not here to judge you or your people. Nothing you say here can possibly keep us from helping your people-I promise.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?” she asked, clearly frustrated. “Why are we wasting time rehashing my frakked-up childhood?”
Raymond took a deep breath to steel his nerves; Kara’s gaze never left his face, and she was clearly puzzled at his reaction.
“Kara, I need you to look at some photos and let me know if you recognize any of the people,” he said handing her his large computer tablet.
“I don’t understand,” she said in confusion. “What’s the point? I’m not going to know any of your people.”
He took another deep breath and squeezed her hand gently. “Please Starbuck, just take a look,” he said, aware that he had to be careful not to overwhelm her personal as well as her religious world view all at once. “Over forty years ago, one of our research ships disappeared and was never heard from again. They’d found clues left behind by an apparently lost civilization of humans-clues that were thousands of years old-”
Kara’s free hand flew to her mouth as a wordless croak escaped her. She stared at him, wide grey-blue eyes brimming with tears as he continued his careful narrative.
“A civilization that worshipped the ancient Greek gods and goddesses of Olympus; Zeus, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Apollo and so on-a pantheon that was sometimes called by names the Roman civilization gave them ... Jupiter, Juno, Pluto, Neptune, Minerva, Diana.”
“Do you still worship the Lords of Kobol?” she asked hoarsely.
“No,” he replied honestly. “Very few people in the Confederation worship these pantheons anymore-or any other gods for that matter. But people still celebrate them as part of our heritage and the cultures influenced by the people who held these beliefs.”
She nodded solemnly and he continued, fighting to keep his voice steady. “The scientific explorer ship Morning Star disappeared with all hands, including my daughter-in-law, Captain Kathleen Davidson, my son, Dimitri and my three-year-old granddaughter, Sheba.”
“Oh Gods I’m sorry, sir,” she said and he felt the sincerity of it in his heart. “And you think they might have made it to the Twelve Colonies?”
“Yes,” he said, voice breaking on that single word.
“Well, I can safely say I’ve never heard remotely anything like this,” she replied. “And although I rarely paid much attention to politics or the news, I think that a ship full of humans claiming to be from the Thirteenth Colony would have made some impression with those talking heads among the Colonial press.”
Theodora spoke up. “They were by and large historians, Kara,” she said quietly. “They may not have wanted to initiate contact until they could know more about your society and report back to the Confederation. We have teams of specialists whose job it is to initiate contact with other societies.”
“You mean spy on us,” she said suspiciously.
“Initially, yes,” Raymond replied. “But only so far as to determine your society’s structure, capture language samples in order to determine a translation matrix if needed or if changes in language had occurred if what was discovered an unknown human society-”
“There are other human societies out there?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yes,” James Bryson replied and Kara turned her gaze to the young commander. “I come from one of them, Starbuck. That backwoods home planet I told you about? It was once an Earth colony, but then Earth got embroiled in a war with an alien species for over one thousand years, and my colony was cut off when the part of the hypertunnel network that connected New Perth to the rest of the Confederation was destroyed.”
“Hypertunnel? A thousand year war?”
“Hypertunnels are our form of FTL travel, Kara,” Raymond said as she stared in shock. “We don’t jump through space they way your people do-and believe me, our people are anxious to find out how your science accomplished this. But to make a long story short, space itself has a substructure and part of that structure includes what we call hypertunnels, which bring different parts of space closer together and have the ability to accelerate a ship from one point in space to another. In addition to the natural tunnels, we can build artificial ones that can take us specifically where we want to go-we believe you fell through one to get here. As for the war, well we ran into a non-human reptilian species called the R’sachi-a species that believed humans had no right to exist ... that they were the only divine creation, so we must be demons created by their version of the Devil. They tried to wipe us out, but in the end, we had no choice but to wipe them out.”
She nodded. “Good,” she said decisively to Raymond’s surprise. “Sometimes that’s all some frakkers understand.”
After a moment of complete silence, she continued, “All right, I’ll take a look at your pictures, but you have to realise, sir, there were a lot of people in the Colonies, spread over twelve major worlds in the system and a bunch of smaller settlements. The odds of me bumping into one of your people, or even just seeing them are pretty astronomical. Even the civilian fleet has nearly forty thousand people.”
“All twelve worlds were in one solar system?” Suzuki asked in shock.
Kara nodded. “It was a double binary star system, sir,” she replied. “The major worlds were Caprica, Aquaria, Picon, Arelon, Tauron, Gemenon, Canceron, Leonis, Virgon, Libron, Scorpia and Sagittaron.”
“Your worlds were named for the signs of the Zodiac?” Samantha MacTavish said incredulously.
“The what?”
Seeing her confusion, Raymond quickly brought the Zodiac up on the tablet’s screen as well as the conference table’s holographic display. “The Zodiac is a series of ancient constellations as seen from Earth. Each was associated with a specific astrological sign and depending on when a person was born, people used to associate the Zodiac with different personality traits. The constellations were named Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Ares, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius.”
Looking at the hologram, Kara said in a tremulous voice, “The ancient flags of each Colony carried stylized designs based on those constellations, because according to the Scriptures, it is said that only Earth could see all twelve of her brothers in her night sky. We saw those constellations in the Tomb of Athena on Kobol, where we retrieved the first part of the map to Earth.”
“I see,” Raymond said hoarsely. Suddenly the young woman chuckled softly, tears streaming down her face. “Starbuck? Kara, is there something wrong?”
Drying her eyes with trembling fingers, she said hoarsely, “So my mother and Leoben were right after all-Kara Thrace did have a great, frakking destiny after all! Give me your pictures, Admiral; let’s see if the Gods will throw me a hand of full colours in this triad game.”
Tapping a couple of buttons, he returned the tablet to the first batch of pictures. “Just tap each picture if you want to see it enlarged and it will be put up on the table’s holographic display, or tap the next button to advance through them,” he instructed. If it hadn’t been for Suzuki’s advice, he never would have thought to use something so old-tech as a computer tablet, but given Kara’s abhorrence for the Cylons and general distrust of computers, he didn’t want to upset her with his people’s implants before he had to. Therefore, they all carried one of the devices as camouflage.
As she advanced to the second page, Raymond didn’t know whether to be relieved or to cry; she’d bypassed her parents’ pictures without a shred of recognition. As she flipped past the second page, she stiffened and then hurriedly toggled back. Her hand trembled as she reached out to tap one picture and Paul Davidson’s face filled the display.
Kara stared at it in disbelief. “Son of a bitch!” she swore loudly. “What the frak is going on here?”
“You recognise him, Kara?” Raymond demanded.
“Of course I recognise him,” she retorted, blue eyes flashing angrily. “He’s younger in the picture, but it’s him-it’s Tigh!”
#
To Part 4