The Space Between Us- Chapter 1
Title: The Space Between Us
Author: lls_mutant
Word Count: 115K
Rating: R for violence, language, and rape- not much sex at all
Pairings: Gaeta/Hoshi, Pilot!Eight/Engineer!Two, Kara/Sam, the Tighs, the Agathons, Adama/Roslin, Boomer/Tyrol, Baltar/Caprica Six, Thornton/Sian, Sweet!Eight/OC!Four, Zarek/Racetrack
Warnings: Contains rape. The actual rape happens off-screen and is not the main plot, but the impact of it echoes through the rest of the fic. In addition to the rape, there is other talk of sexual assault, including referencing The Farm. If you would like more details in terms of who the assailants are, who the victim is, and what's going on, highlight: The rapists are the Sunshine Boys and the two Marines that were helping hold Athena down in Pegasus, and the victim is Hoshi. The rape takes place for reasons that are purely violent and meant as revenge, and this is not a hurt/comfort fic. (Not saying that Hoshi doesn't heal at all- just it's not the H/C genre.) As mentioned, the rape takes place off-screen, but Hoshi deals extensively with the fall-out through the rest of the story, and it very much influences his actions.. Other warnings include torture, miscarriage (neither one is graphic), and character death.
Summary: Raptor 718 wasn't lost randomly; an Eight on board was ready to switch sides in the Cylon civil war. With the passengers of Raptor 718 being held prisoner on the Colony, the events on Galactica unfurl differently. (Season 4.5 AU fic, and Kara-poof-free.)
Notes: Thanks a million times over to my beta, kappamaki33, as well as to my f-list for listening to me rant and complain. Huge thanks also to safenthecity, who made the off-handed comment that inspired the story. Although it's not an official prologue, my story Honor and Duty sort of serves the purpose, especially in regards to Sweet!Eight.
Artist: mrsdrjackson
Link to Art: here
Chapter 1: A Question of Value
Chapter 2: Public Gestures
Chapter 3: Everybody Knows that the Good Guys Lost
Chapter 4: Signal to Noise, and Chapter 5: Another Hero, Another Mindless Crime
Chapter 5, part 2
Chapter 6: After the Storm
Chapter 7: Through the Darkest of Your Days
Chapter 8: Of All My Demon Spirits
Chapter 9: I'm Guided by a Signal in the Heavens
Chapter 10: A Matter of Trust
Chapter 11: Back to Good
Chapter 12: Fall for a Pretty Stranger
Chapter 13: This Is Not Our Fate
Chapter 14: Message In a Bottle
Chapter 15: Here We Stand or Here We Fall
Chapter 16: There Must Be Some Way Out of Here
Chapter 17: Near Wild Heaven
Epilogue: A Lonely Miracle
CHAPTER 1: A Question of Value
The CIC was the hardest.
It was never left unmanned, and although there was this supposed alliance, Adama never let Cylons into the heart of the Galatica. It took her three days to figure out how to slip the virus in without entering the CIC. She actually had to upload from a disk.
Her Four would laugh his ass off at her, if he was here.
But she managed to do it, and managed to find a petty officer who believed she was Athena to load the new security patch into the system. And when she triggered it, there would be a supposed Cylon attack. Then she'd finally be able to leave, to get out of this place and go home.
***
The alarm went off, and Felix groaned. Beside him, Louis stretched, then reached up and smacked the offending clock hard. It didn't help, and he had to fumble for the right button. Felix watched him blearily, and then edged back as Louis nearly elbowed him in the nose.
"Good morning," Louis said, scrubbing at his face with his hands. "Sleep okay?"
"Yeah," Felix half-lied, and Louis propped his head up on his hand, draped his free arm across his waist, and eyed him skeptically. "The morpha helped," Felix admitted.
Louis sighed. "You know you shouldn't be taking that stuff," he said, but without any passion. Felix nodded absently, and Louis slid his hand over to entwine with Felix's fingers. "Maybe when you get back it will be better."
"Back?" Felix asked, quirking his eyebrows up. "Where am I going?"
"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I saw Tigh's schedule for the next week, and you're not on it. I'm guessing they're sending you over to another ship for some R&R."
"Right," Felix scoffed. "Because Adama would do that right now."
Louis gave him a slightly admonishing look. "Tigh's noticed you need it. So has Helo."
Felix shook his head. "Are you on the duty roster?" Louis nodded. "Double shifts, right?"
Louis shrugged. "Well, what else am I going to do with you gone?" he asked, squeezing Felix's hand.
"You have friends."
Something indefinable passed over Louis's face and Felix regretted his words, reminding himself firmly that he wasn't the only one who was still reeling from Dee's death. But Louis just squeezed Felix's hand again. "I'll be fine working."
Felix forced a smile. "Just so long as you're not chatting up Stroud down on the hangar deck." He winced it as soon as he said it. Before he'd lost his leg, it would have come off as sarcastic and confident. Now it just sounded whiny. He started to draw away, but Louis released his hand and splayed his fingers over Felix's lower abdomen, and leaned down to kiss him softly.
"You know I wouldn't," he whispered as he pulled back, his lips still close to Felix's.
"I know," Felix answered, closing his eyes and tipping his chin so their lips met again. Their kiss was hesitant- a little too gentle and a little too unsure- but as they lingered it settled into something tender and comforting. Felix couldn't say that he felt stirred to anything else, but there was a flash of wanting to want to do something, and that was more than he'd felt since he'd been shot. "I wish we didn't have duty so soon."
"Mmm." But Louis gave him that skeptical look again, the one that meant he was seeing the exhaustion and the pain Felix didn't want him to see. Felix thrust his chin out, daring him to say anything. Finally, Louis just gave a small smile. "Yeah," he conceded. "I wish we didn't have duty so soon, myself. But we do, and I'll see you next week."
"I don't want to go," Felix muttered.
"You need it," Louis said. "If nothing else, just for the sleep."
"I'll come back to you," Felix promised.
"I'll be waiting," Louis answered.
***
"I don't know what you expect me to do without a condenser," a man was complaining.
"Well, make one," Laird- if the Eight remembered right from their brief introduction- argued, shrugging as if it was a small matter. "How difficult is a condenser, anyway?"
"One with enough cooling capacity to fit in the space of the scrubbers? Hard."
"Take the tubing benders."
"Great. Tubing benders. The solution to everything," The mechanic rolled his eyes. He glanced in her direction, and the Eight looked down, resisting the urge to tie her shoe. She didn't step away from the Raptor, that would be too obvious. Instead, she emphasized the fact she was studying it, like she was curious. She watched him from under her lowered eyelids; he'd already looked away.
Good. She flipped the panel shut.
***
"What time is it?" Shark asked Easy.
"We've got fifteen minutes until we have to make the Zephyr run," Easy said, glancing at her watch. "Want me to wake you?"
"Yeah, would you mind?" Shark asked, putting his feet up on the console. "I had CAP last night. First one flying with the Cylons."
"How was it?" Easy asked curiously.
"Fast."
"Fast?"
"As in, those frakkers fly fast." Shark yawned. "Worse than flying with Starbuck." He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
Easy reflexively glanced down at the screen in the Raptor. As she did, the screen went blank. "What the…?"
Shark opened one eye. "Something wrong?"
Easy smacked the screen, and the display flickered back to life. "Frak. No, just… we've got to get Laird to take a look at this thing."
"Not sure he can do much. Anyway, it's back on."
"Well, good."
Shark yawned. "Thirteen minutes is enough time for a nap, right?"
***
She was a sister, a pilot who had served the Cylons well, both when they were united and in this stupid civil war. This war that ripped them down the center, breaking bonds that shouldn't be broken over matters that might well be words and phrases in the end. The Eight wanted to glare at her as she approached, but she would notice.
"Going back to the baseship?" she asked.
"Going to the Zephyr," her sister replied. She didn't say why, and when the Eight tried to connect, tried to reach up into the data stream and into her sister's mind, she found that it was closed. The Zephyr was a peculiar place for a Cylon to go, but it didn't matter.
The two pilots then. The mechanic. An Eight loyal to the others. And Felix Gaeta, the entire reason she'd chosen this Raptor when she'd overheard Tigh and Agathon discussing his leave. The man who'd sworn loyalty - not only to making the Cylon dream work but to her - and then had turned around and sold them all out. The man who was largely responsible for the humans escaping them. The man who'd screwed them all over.
She took a deep breath, put on her sweetest smile, and walked toward the Raptor.
***
The Raptor came out of the emergency jump, lurching to stillness again. The DRADIS screen was blank, the space around them was empty.
"Where's the Fleet?" the Raptor pilot asked.
The Eight turned her face to the wall and smiled.
***
Shark finished his calculations and sighed. "Enough food and water for two weeks if we’re not fussy about waste recycling. So, our limiting factor is air. Twenty hours left." Felix's stomach twisted. "Every breath counts now, folks. We’ve got to limit exertion - sleep as much as we can."
"Twenty hours," Easy repeated. "Oh my gods!"
Felix turned back to the ECO console, trying not to think about it. Twenty hours. Adama had twenty hours to find them or they'd all be… gods, he didn't even want to think about it. The image of Louis smiling at him flitted through his mind and he pushed it away firmly. Now wasn't the time to think about what might have been and mourn, now was the time to plan and get them back. Twenty hours was enough time to do this.
Someone was over his shoulder, and he looked up. One of the Eights smiled down at him, and his throat closed again. It couldn't be… there was no way….
And yet, he knew it was.
"Don't you recognize me, Felix?" she said softly.
He nodded mutely- there was no other answer he could give her. She was from a lifetime ago, from the cold and rain and fear of New Caprica, from desperate times and desperate measures. She had been a lifeline, even though he'd been just as relieved to sever the tie. He'd never expected to see her again, even after Starbuck had brought that damn baseship into the Fleet. He wasn't altogether sure he was happy to see her, either, because New Caprica was meant to be over.
She put a hand on his arm. "Twenty hours isn't much," she said. "If we really did get hit and jump randomly, even the Cylons will have a hard time finding us. But there’s something I can do. I can interface with the Raptor’s computer and determine the corrupted memory address. I can jump us to the coordinates, and then I can send a pulse if I need to. They'll find us"
Felix frowned. "I remember, Athena did that once. Through your arm, right?"
She lit up. "Right. But the only thing is, I need your help. I can explain it to the others, but unless I have you with me, they won't believe me. They'll think I'm sabotaging the ship."
Which was a conclusion Felix could very well understand… for the most part. But he looked at the Eight and remembered all she had done for him, all that she had risked for humanity, and he nodded. "Right," he said. "We'll convince them."
***
It turned out to be remarkably easy.
Felix Gaeta would believe anything if it was presented right, the Eight knew that. The pilots and the mechanic were a little more worrisome, but they'd already reached the correct conclusion the Fleet had no idea where they were anyway. None of them wanted to die, and her supposed plan didn't cost them any of the air that was becoming so precious. The one she was really worried about was her sister Eight. But she said nothing, just nodded her agreement when the Eight explained her plan.
Although the Eight wryly noticed her sister didn't offer to do it herself. Just as well.
The insertion of the cable was painful, but as it slid up her arm she projected that she was surrounded by white marble and golden fixtures, her Four smiling at her from a red velvet chaise lounge. And it became easy.
They jumped, and she sent the pulse.
She was almost home.
***
"An hour already," Brooks said, his voice taut with nerves. "Why don't they come for us?"
"It takes a little time," Easy said defensively. "They'll come. They've got to."
"I guess." Felix rubbed at his forehead. The morpha had him light-headed, floating on a cloud where pain couldn't touch him and he couldn't pin his mind down. He thought he probably shouldn't have taken it, but this part would wear off soon enough, and then he'd be able to focus on the situation without the pain distracting him so badly. Right now, though… he pushed away from the ECO console as best he could and cradled his head in his hands.
Just a few feet away, he could feel the Eight watching him. His Eight.
He looked up and met her eyes, and she smiled at him, although her smile was tinged with concern. It occurred to him that she might not have known about his leg. A human soldier losing a limb would be low-level gossip to the Cylons. And yet, she'd come back with the baseship. She'd been there since the baseship had followed the Demetrius back to the Fleet.
"You never found me before this," he told her, his words shaky and slurred.
For a moment she looked confused, and then she shook her head. "I didn't want to disturb your life."
"It was pretty disturbed by the time you followed us to the Fleet."
"You were on the Demetrius?" she asked, and that answered the question in his mind.
"You never asked anyone about me, did you?" he said. At one time, he'd truly believed she'd cared about him, but now he realized that whatever she'd felt, it hadn't been that. It had been loneliness, desperation, like minds… but not genuine care and concern. And as if to highlight it, there was Louis. It was Louis who had come into the infirmary during stolen moments from the CIC, not her. Louis who, after two months of separation and a series of losses that Felix still could not comprehend, still took his hand, still didn't waver. As he looked at his Eight, he wondered if that was why her indifference didn't hurt, and exactly how he'd categorize what she'd been to him.
He sighed. Only he would think the word categorize high on morpha.
He saw her mouth move, and the sounds seemed to follow sometime after. "I didn't want to upset what you had built. Your life. Your stability." She looked uncomfortable. "I didn't think you'd mind."
"I didn't," he admitted honestly. "I just wondered."
"I think you need to sleep, Felix," she said softly.
"Yeah," he said, and was about to move away from the ECO station, but that was when the lights flooded the small cabin.
His heart leapt, beating madly in his ribcage, and he began to smile. "I knew it," he whispered. Brooks kissed his medallion and the pilot Eight whispered a prayer to the Cylon God.
Shark had started forward, but as he did, he froze. "Wait a minute," he said. "That's not a Raptor."
"It's not a Viper, either," Easy confirmed.
"Then what the frak is it?" Brooks demanded.
"I'm not sure I like any of the remaining options," Felix said. "But maybe it's one of your heavy raiders." He looked at his Eight. She was squinting at the light.
It was the pilot Eight who confirmed the truth. "That's not one of our heavy raiders," she said. "It's one of Cavil's."
Felix whipped his head around to study the raider, and never saw that his Eight smiled.
***
The Eight held her breath as the heavy raider forced their series of jumps, four all told. Closer than she'd thought, then. The comm unit was eerily silent, despite the fact that there were pilots in the heavy raider. She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
She was expecting the hive of baseships, and the swarms of Raiders. What she was not expecting was the huge, tentacled structure that awaited them.
"What the frak is that?" her sister breathed, leaning forward between the pilots' seats to get a better look.
"You don't know?" Easy asked, looking up at the pilot Eight in confusion. The Eight shook her head.
"No. I've never seen it before. But I don't understand how Cavil could have built something like this in such a short time."
"It's been over a year since New Caprica," Brooks said crossly.
The pilot Eight looked back over her shoulder at him. "And we would have known if something like this was happening," she snapped. "Something's not right here."
"What, the fact we're being captured by Cylons didn't give it away?" Brooks asked mockingly.
"Guys!" Felix broke up the fight with a sharp order. "Enough. Shark, what have we got as far as firepower?"
"On the Raptor or in it, Lieutenant?"
"In it."
"Not much," Shark said. "There's two rifles in the locker up there, and a few rounds of ammo. Easy and I have got our sidearms."
"We can't go in fighting," the pilot Eight said, but she fingered her own sidearm nervously.
"And why not?" Brooks demanded.
"Look, they aren't blowing us up right now," she pointed out. "They want us alive for some reason."
"Yeah, well then, wouldn't it be better not to give it to them? Either shoot ourselves now-"
"Suicide is a sin!"
"-Or take out a few dozen of Cavil's toasters with us? Get as many as we can get before they shoot us all?"
"Or get onto this ship and get a message back to the Galactica."
"She's right," the Eight said, stepping up next to her sister and making a note to tell Cavil. She glanced back at Felix. "If we pretend to cooperate, pretend to give them what they want… we might be able to help more, later."
He nodded, and a moron could figure out what he was thinking about, which meant even this Brooks character probably got it. And Brooks did back down, glancing at the others for orders.
A tentacle peeled away, leaving a yawning orifice behind it, and the heavy raider dragged the Raptor in. Shark gripped his gun, and Felix opened the locker. He gave one of the rifles to Brooks and one to her. "You two take them- I can't stay upright and shoot. Don't use them unless we have to," he said. "But let's see what we can get out of them, first."
She nodded, and Brooks said, "Yes, sir."
Felix sat down and began to put his prosthetic back on. The Eight noticed his movements were still clumsy and awkward, like he wasn't fully used to doing this. She also noticed that the stump was raw and dark with clotted blood. It made her sick, and she turned away.
The inside of the giant ship was not sleek and elegant like their baseships, but organic and clunky, heavy and old-fashioned. It made her itch just to look at it, and out of habit, she began to form a projection. But she reminded herself firmly that she couldn't afford that- not yet. Once she had convinced Cavil of her loyalty, once she was safely ensconced in the ranks here and accepted, then she could choose how she saw her surroundings. But for now, she had to accept the reality that was there.
The Raptor came to a stop, and the lock sealed. She wished she could lean out the front and look to see who would come, but there was no room. She braced herself.
The door hissed opened, and they faced the barrels of guns: an army of Centurions under the command of a One. The One glanced at the Raptor. "Search it," he ordered. The humans looked back at Felix with a mute plea for orders; he sighed and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
The search didn't last long. Felix looked at her, his face grim. She looked away. She didn't have to pretend to care anymore, and he'd know what she'd done soon enough. She supposed she should be worried, but the truth was she wasn't. Not in the least.
The Cylons that were in the heavy raider emerged, and she scanned them eagerly. She should have known he wouldn't be with them- he wasn't a pilot- but she hoped against hope anyway. There were two Fives and a Four, and they all had guns trained on them.
"What is this?" the Four asked.
"What does it look like?" the One snapped. "Four humans, two Eights, and a Raptor. Personally, I think we should just take care of them all right here, but Cavil says to bring them up."
"Well then… let's go."
***
John Cavil didn't look any different from any other One, but Felix knew him the second they saw him. It must have been the expression on his face. There was something… different… about Cavil. This Cavil. Whatever. Something aware, something malevolent. It sent chills down Felix's spine. He sat at a long white table, along with a few other Ones, Fours, and Fives as the prisoners were pushed in.
Next to him, Easy was trembling. She was sheet white but resolute, and he noticed her hand was drifting to where her sidearm would be if the Cylons hadn't disarmed them. He suddenly remembered Kara Thrace's reports on the farms on Caprica, and he stepped a little closer to her. He noticed Shark on her other side. The two men exchanged glances, and he could tell that Shark was thinking the same thing.
The pilot Eight and Brooks had gravitated toward each other. She was looking around fearfully, he was whispering a prayer. Felix sourly noticed that she didn't seem to mind so much now, but maybe she was too lost in her own fear to care.
And on his other side was his Eight.
She was calm. Far too calm. He tried to catch her eye, to let her know he had her back as best he could manage, but she didn't look at him. She was watching the Cylons that sat at the table, measuring each of them for their reactions. To him, they seemed like a wall of faces, set and angry and ready for blood.
A Four stood up from the table, and Felix watched him curiously. Instead of the conservative, professional clothing Felix was used to seeing the Fours in, he was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt. His attention was focused on Felix's Eight, and he looked her up and down, calculating and analyzing, exploring implications.
And then his eyes lit up.
He stepped forward more confidently now. The Eight gave a strangled cry and stumbled forward, and they embraced. His head bent protectively over hers, and Felix could hear her crying.
"I'm sorry," she was saying. "I'm sorry. You were right and I was wrong… I'm sorry."
"It's all right," the Four said, kissing her hair. "You're home." The others from his model line looked on. Some looked appalled, but some looked touched. All Felix could do was stare, even as his gut told him this was bad… this was very, very bad.
"Well, this is all very romantic and poignant, but if you don't mind me asking, what the frak is going on here?" Cavil demanded.
The Eight and the Four broke apart. They both looked radiant, and the Eight moved with new confidence as she took a step towards Cavil.
"You were right," she said, gesturing to the assembled Ones, Fours, and Fives, "About everything. About the Raiders and the Centurions, about the Final Five, about our place in the universe, about everything. I see that now, see the error in our logic. I see our mistakes. The way our race has been divided over petty philosophical distinctions-"
"Petty?" the pilot Eight demanded, but she shut up as soon as Cavil glanced her direction.
The Eight looked at her sister for a moment, contempt clear on her face. "Petty philosophical distinctions," she repeated, driving each word in like bullets. "It's deplorable. We should have… I should have seen that earlier. We should have predicted the consequence."
"So, you're saying that now that you know we beat you, you want to say you're sorry rather than face extinction? Forgive me if that doesn't inspire a great deal of faith in you," Cavil snapped.
"No," the Eight agreed hastily. "It wouldn't. It shouldn't. That's why I brought you a token of my faith." She gestured to the rest of the Raptor crew. "I couldn't bring any of the Five, but you know that four of them are in the Fleet. Adama," she spat the name, "loves his people. He'd consider trading."
"For what?" Cavil looked over the prisoners. "Two low-level pilots, a mechanic he's probably never spoken to, a twisted, half-…" Cavil's voice trailed off as he came to Felix, and then the light of recognition lit in his eyes. Felix steeled himself, gripping his crutches more tightly and raising his chin defiantly. "You," he said, and he began to laugh. "You." He turned back to the Eight. "You might have done something right after all."
"He's the reason the humans escaped New Caprica," the Eight said, her voice suddenly hard and bitter. Felix snapped his head around to face her. "He swore his loyalty and betrayed us for months, giving the Resistance information and releasing prisoners from detention."
Felix's mouth gaped open. "You… you were helping me!" he protested.
The Eight stared at him for a long moment, and then sighed in exasperation. "Do you really still think that, Felix? Look around you and see where you're standing, and how you got there. Think back to all those names on your lists- how many of them arrived on your Fleet? Think about all that, and ask yourself how you can believe that I ever meant to help you!"
Felix's stomach dropped out of his body, and his mouth went dry as red crept into his vision. They were all looking at him, humans and Cylons alike, but he was barely aware of it. "What are you…" he began, and then got himself under control. "No. You can't mean… you couldn't have…."
"I did," she snapped. "But it doesn't matter."
"No," Cavil agreed. "It doesn't." A gun went off, the sound echoing through the baseship. The Eight cried out, falling back into the Four's arms, her blood splattered on his shirt and face in tiny red pinpricks.
"No!" The Four eased the Eight to the ground while Cavil stood over them with his arms crossed, glaring down at them for wasting his time. She was gasping for air, tortured gargles that made it sound like she was choking on her own blood. The Four cradled her close, whispering to her. Felix could catch snatches in the echoing stunned silence… Forgive me… this never should have… don't leave me, not now… I love you, and I always will.
The strangled gasps stopped.
For two seconds, the silence only intensified, and then the Four began to cry. Felix looked away. It sickened him that the sight of grief from a Cylon could still affect him, but it did.
"Well." Cavil's voice jerked Felix's head back around. "Now that that's taken care of, let's resolve the rest of this mess, shall we?" He looked at the humans, tapping his gun against his palm.
They had no weapons. There was no stand they could take, no defense they could offer. Yet again, the feeling of being completely powerless swept over Felix, and all he could do was glare at Cavil defiantly. He pulled himself as straight as he could, even if the weight on where stump met prosthetic hurt like hell. If he had to die, this is how he would do it- proud and refusing to beg.
Cavil smirked, but didn't raise his gun.
He turned to the pilot Eight. "Are you going to tell us you're in on this, too?" She shook her head mutely, hate radiating from her eyes and her stance.
"Well?" Cavil demanded of a Five who was standing next to the Centurions. "What are you waiting for? Kill them."
"We think that it might not be the best idea to shoot them," the Five said. "The Eight might have been right about the bargaining power."
"We concur," a Four put in. "Especially the women. With the Hub destroyed, finding a way for Cylons to reproduce is the only way that we can ensure that we will survive. And frankly, we need research subjects."
Easy turned white, and she began to shake.
"That's a point," Cavil conceded. A One standing next to him nodded agreement. "Take the women, then," he said to a Four.
"NO!" Easy fumbled at her side, but her gun had been taken. Felix tried to step forward, but two Centurions moved to block him and he was forced to stop. One of the Fives grabbed Easy, and she screamed, kicking desperately.
It happened fast- so fast that no one could stop it. Shark lunged at Cavil, pushing him to the side as he grabbed the gun. He spun, took aim, and shot Easy right between the eyes.
Another blast went off in fast sequence, and Shark slumped to the floor himself. A Five held a gun, barrel smoking.
"That's enough!" Cavil glared around, sighing with exasperation. He wiped flecks of blood from his face irritably, and nudged the corpses with his toe. " Is this a shooting gallery? Can we just finish this up? Take the two humans to cells and the Eight-"
"You don't have to experiment on me," the Eight interrupted, all of the color drained from her face.
"Excuse me?" Cavil demanded, arching his eyebrows. "I hardly think that you're in a position-"
"You don't have to experiment on me," she repeated. "I'm already pregnant."
"Now that's the most ridiculous piece of bullshit I've heard today, and given what we've all just heard in the past five minutes, that's saying something."
Even Felix didn't believe her, but the pilot Eight clung to her story. "It's true," she insisted. "The doctor on Galactica just confirmed it a few hours ago."
"Well, we'll find out if that's true soon enough, won't we?" Cavil asked. He gestured to a Four, and he stepped forward and took the Eight by the arm. "See if she's telling the truth. As for these two…" he turned back to where Felix and Brooks were still standing, Brooks staring in horror at the corpses on the floor, "get them out of my sight."
A Five grabbed Felix by the arm. "Come on, Gaeta," he said, and Felix assumed that this Five had known him specifically on New Caprica. It was impossible to be sure, though.
They passed his Eight's body as they left the room, and her Four was still kneeling beside her, still crying.
On to Chapter 2
Author: lls_mutant
Word Count: 115K
Rating: R for violence, language, and rape- not much sex at all
Pairings: Gaeta/Hoshi, Pilot!Eight/Engineer!Two, Kara/Sam, the Tighs, the Agathons, Adama/Roslin, Boomer/Tyrol, Baltar/Caprica Six, Thornton/Sian, Sweet!Eight/OC!Four, Zarek/Racetrack
Warnings: Contains rape. The actual rape happens off-screen and is not the main plot, but the impact of it echoes through the rest of the fic. In addition to the rape, there is other talk of sexual assault, including referencing The Farm. If you would like more details in terms of who the assailants are, who the victim is, and what's going on, highlight: The rapists are the Sunshine Boys and the two Marines that were helping hold Athena down in Pegasus, and the victim is Hoshi. The rape takes place for reasons that are purely violent and meant as revenge, and this is not a hurt/comfort fic. (Not saying that Hoshi doesn't heal at all- just it's not the H/C genre.) As mentioned, the rape takes place off-screen, but Hoshi deals extensively with the fall-out through the rest of the story, and it very much influences his actions.. Other warnings include torture, miscarriage (neither one is graphic), and character death.
Summary: Raptor 718 wasn't lost randomly; an Eight on board was ready to switch sides in the Cylon civil war. With the passengers of Raptor 718 being held prisoner on the Colony, the events on Galactica unfurl differently. (Season 4.5 AU fic, and Kara-poof-free.)
Notes: Thanks a million times over to my beta, kappamaki33, as well as to my f-list for listening to me rant and complain. Huge thanks also to safenthecity, who made the off-handed comment that inspired the story. Although it's not an official prologue, my story Honor and Duty sort of serves the purpose, especially in regards to Sweet!Eight.
Artist: mrsdrjackson
Link to Art: here
Chapter 1: A Question of Value
Chapter 2: Public Gestures
Chapter 3: Everybody Knows that the Good Guys Lost
Chapter 4: Signal to Noise, and Chapter 5: Another Hero, Another Mindless Crime
Chapter 5, part 2
Chapter 6: After the Storm
Chapter 7: Through the Darkest of Your Days
Chapter 8: Of All My Demon Spirits
Chapter 9: I'm Guided by a Signal in the Heavens
Chapter 10: A Matter of Trust
Chapter 11: Back to Good
Chapter 12: Fall for a Pretty Stranger
Chapter 13: This Is Not Our Fate
Chapter 14: Message In a Bottle
Chapter 15: Here We Stand or Here We Fall
Chapter 16: There Must Be Some Way Out of Here
Chapter 17: Near Wild Heaven
Epilogue: A Lonely Miracle
CHAPTER 1: A Question of Value
The CIC was the hardest.
It was never left unmanned, and although there was this supposed alliance, Adama never let Cylons into the heart of the Galatica. It took her three days to figure out how to slip the virus in without entering the CIC. She actually had to upload from a disk.
Her Four would laugh his ass off at her, if he was here.
But she managed to do it, and managed to find a petty officer who believed she was Athena to load the new security patch into the system. And when she triggered it, there would be a supposed Cylon attack. Then she'd finally be able to leave, to get out of this place and go home.
***
The alarm went off, and Felix groaned. Beside him, Louis stretched, then reached up and smacked the offending clock hard. It didn't help, and he had to fumble for the right button. Felix watched him blearily, and then edged back as Louis nearly elbowed him in the nose.
"Good morning," Louis said, scrubbing at his face with his hands. "Sleep okay?"
"Yeah," Felix half-lied, and Louis propped his head up on his hand, draped his free arm across his waist, and eyed him skeptically. "The morpha helped," Felix admitted.
Louis sighed. "You know you shouldn't be taking that stuff," he said, but without any passion. Felix nodded absently, and Louis slid his hand over to entwine with Felix's fingers. "Maybe when you get back it will be better."
"Back?" Felix asked, quirking his eyebrows up. "Where am I going?"
"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I saw Tigh's schedule for the next week, and you're not on it. I'm guessing they're sending you over to another ship for some R&R."
"Right," Felix scoffed. "Because Adama would do that right now."
Louis gave him a slightly admonishing look. "Tigh's noticed you need it. So has Helo."
Felix shook his head. "Are you on the duty roster?" Louis nodded. "Double shifts, right?"
Louis shrugged. "Well, what else am I going to do with you gone?" he asked, squeezing Felix's hand.
"You have friends."
Something indefinable passed over Louis's face and Felix regretted his words, reminding himself firmly that he wasn't the only one who was still reeling from Dee's death. But Louis just squeezed Felix's hand again. "I'll be fine working."
Felix forced a smile. "Just so long as you're not chatting up Stroud down on the hangar deck." He winced it as soon as he said it. Before he'd lost his leg, it would have come off as sarcastic and confident. Now it just sounded whiny. He started to draw away, but Louis released his hand and splayed his fingers over Felix's lower abdomen, and leaned down to kiss him softly.
"You know I wouldn't," he whispered as he pulled back, his lips still close to Felix's.
"I know," Felix answered, closing his eyes and tipping his chin so their lips met again. Their kiss was hesitant- a little too gentle and a little too unsure- but as they lingered it settled into something tender and comforting. Felix couldn't say that he felt stirred to anything else, but there was a flash of wanting to want to do something, and that was more than he'd felt since he'd been shot. "I wish we didn't have duty so soon."
"Mmm." But Louis gave him that skeptical look again, the one that meant he was seeing the exhaustion and the pain Felix didn't want him to see. Felix thrust his chin out, daring him to say anything. Finally, Louis just gave a small smile. "Yeah," he conceded. "I wish we didn't have duty so soon, myself. But we do, and I'll see you next week."
"I don't want to go," Felix muttered.
"You need it," Louis said. "If nothing else, just for the sleep."
"I'll come back to you," Felix promised.
"I'll be waiting," Louis answered.
***
"I don't know what you expect me to do without a condenser," a man was complaining.
"Well, make one," Laird- if the Eight remembered right from their brief introduction- argued, shrugging as if it was a small matter. "How difficult is a condenser, anyway?"
"One with enough cooling capacity to fit in the space of the scrubbers? Hard."
"Take the tubing benders."
"Great. Tubing benders. The solution to everything," The mechanic rolled his eyes. He glanced in her direction, and the Eight looked down, resisting the urge to tie her shoe. She didn't step away from the Raptor, that would be too obvious. Instead, she emphasized the fact she was studying it, like she was curious. She watched him from under her lowered eyelids; he'd already looked away.
Good. She flipped the panel shut.
***
"What time is it?" Shark asked Easy.
"We've got fifteen minutes until we have to make the Zephyr run," Easy said, glancing at her watch. "Want me to wake you?"
"Yeah, would you mind?" Shark asked, putting his feet up on the console. "I had CAP last night. First one flying with the Cylons."
"How was it?" Easy asked curiously.
"Fast."
"Fast?"
"As in, those frakkers fly fast." Shark yawned. "Worse than flying with Starbuck." He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
Easy reflexively glanced down at the screen in the Raptor. As she did, the screen went blank. "What the…?"
Shark opened one eye. "Something wrong?"
Easy smacked the screen, and the display flickered back to life. "Frak. No, just… we've got to get Laird to take a look at this thing."
"Not sure he can do much. Anyway, it's back on."
"Well, good."
Shark yawned. "Thirteen minutes is enough time for a nap, right?"
***
She was a sister, a pilot who had served the Cylons well, both when they were united and in this stupid civil war. This war that ripped them down the center, breaking bonds that shouldn't be broken over matters that might well be words and phrases in the end. The Eight wanted to glare at her as she approached, but she would notice.
"Going back to the baseship?" she asked.
"Going to the Zephyr," her sister replied. She didn't say why, and when the Eight tried to connect, tried to reach up into the data stream and into her sister's mind, she found that it was closed. The Zephyr was a peculiar place for a Cylon to go, but it didn't matter.
The two pilots then. The mechanic. An Eight loyal to the others. And Felix Gaeta, the entire reason she'd chosen this Raptor when she'd overheard Tigh and Agathon discussing his leave. The man who'd sworn loyalty - not only to making the Cylon dream work but to her - and then had turned around and sold them all out. The man who was largely responsible for the humans escaping them. The man who'd screwed them all over.
She took a deep breath, put on her sweetest smile, and walked toward the Raptor.
***
The Raptor came out of the emergency jump, lurching to stillness again. The DRADIS screen was blank, the space around them was empty.
"Where's the Fleet?" the Raptor pilot asked.
The Eight turned her face to the wall and smiled.
***
Shark finished his calculations and sighed. "Enough food and water for two weeks if we’re not fussy about waste recycling. So, our limiting factor is air. Twenty hours left." Felix's stomach twisted. "Every breath counts now, folks. We’ve got to limit exertion - sleep as much as we can."
"Twenty hours," Easy repeated. "Oh my gods!"
Felix turned back to the ECO console, trying not to think about it. Twenty hours. Adama had twenty hours to find them or they'd all be… gods, he didn't even want to think about it. The image of Louis smiling at him flitted through his mind and he pushed it away firmly. Now wasn't the time to think about what might have been and mourn, now was the time to plan and get them back. Twenty hours was enough time to do this.
Someone was over his shoulder, and he looked up. One of the Eights smiled down at him, and his throat closed again. It couldn't be… there was no way….
And yet, he knew it was.
"Don't you recognize me, Felix?" she said softly.
He nodded mutely- there was no other answer he could give her. She was from a lifetime ago, from the cold and rain and fear of New Caprica, from desperate times and desperate measures. She had been a lifeline, even though he'd been just as relieved to sever the tie. He'd never expected to see her again, even after Starbuck had brought that damn baseship into the Fleet. He wasn't altogether sure he was happy to see her, either, because New Caprica was meant to be over.
She put a hand on his arm. "Twenty hours isn't much," she said. "If we really did get hit and jump randomly, even the Cylons will have a hard time finding us. But there’s something I can do. I can interface with the Raptor’s computer and determine the corrupted memory address. I can jump us to the coordinates, and then I can send a pulse if I need to. They'll find us"
Felix frowned. "I remember, Athena did that once. Through your arm, right?"
She lit up. "Right. But the only thing is, I need your help. I can explain it to the others, but unless I have you with me, they won't believe me. They'll think I'm sabotaging the ship."
Which was a conclusion Felix could very well understand… for the most part. But he looked at the Eight and remembered all she had done for him, all that she had risked for humanity, and he nodded. "Right," he said. "We'll convince them."
***
It turned out to be remarkably easy.
Felix Gaeta would believe anything if it was presented right, the Eight knew that. The pilots and the mechanic were a little more worrisome, but they'd already reached the correct conclusion the Fleet had no idea where they were anyway. None of them wanted to die, and her supposed plan didn't cost them any of the air that was becoming so precious. The one she was really worried about was her sister Eight. But she said nothing, just nodded her agreement when the Eight explained her plan.
Although the Eight wryly noticed her sister didn't offer to do it herself. Just as well.
The insertion of the cable was painful, but as it slid up her arm she projected that she was surrounded by white marble and golden fixtures, her Four smiling at her from a red velvet chaise lounge. And it became easy.
They jumped, and she sent the pulse.
She was almost home.
***
"An hour already," Brooks said, his voice taut with nerves. "Why don't they come for us?"
"It takes a little time," Easy said defensively. "They'll come. They've got to."
"I guess." Felix rubbed at his forehead. The morpha had him light-headed, floating on a cloud where pain couldn't touch him and he couldn't pin his mind down. He thought he probably shouldn't have taken it, but this part would wear off soon enough, and then he'd be able to focus on the situation without the pain distracting him so badly. Right now, though… he pushed away from the ECO console as best he could and cradled his head in his hands.
Just a few feet away, he could feel the Eight watching him. His Eight.
He looked up and met her eyes, and she smiled at him, although her smile was tinged with concern. It occurred to him that she might not have known about his leg. A human soldier losing a limb would be low-level gossip to the Cylons. And yet, she'd come back with the baseship. She'd been there since the baseship had followed the Demetrius back to the Fleet.
"You never found me before this," he told her, his words shaky and slurred.
For a moment she looked confused, and then she shook her head. "I didn't want to disturb your life."
"It was pretty disturbed by the time you followed us to the Fleet."
"You were on the Demetrius?" she asked, and that answered the question in his mind.
"You never asked anyone about me, did you?" he said. At one time, he'd truly believed she'd cared about him, but now he realized that whatever she'd felt, it hadn't been that. It had been loneliness, desperation, like minds… but not genuine care and concern. And as if to highlight it, there was Louis. It was Louis who had come into the infirmary during stolen moments from the CIC, not her. Louis who, after two months of separation and a series of losses that Felix still could not comprehend, still took his hand, still didn't waver. As he looked at his Eight, he wondered if that was why her indifference didn't hurt, and exactly how he'd categorize what she'd been to him.
He sighed. Only he would think the word categorize high on morpha.
He saw her mouth move, and the sounds seemed to follow sometime after. "I didn't want to upset what you had built. Your life. Your stability." She looked uncomfortable. "I didn't think you'd mind."
"I didn't," he admitted honestly. "I just wondered."
"I think you need to sleep, Felix," she said softly.
"Yeah," he said, and was about to move away from the ECO station, but that was when the lights flooded the small cabin.
His heart leapt, beating madly in his ribcage, and he began to smile. "I knew it," he whispered. Brooks kissed his medallion and the pilot Eight whispered a prayer to the Cylon God.
Shark had started forward, but as he did, he froze. "Wait a minute," he said. "That's not a Raptor."
"It's not a Viper, either," Easy confirmed.
"Then what the frak is it?" Brooks demanded.
"I'm not sure I like any of the remaining options," Felix said. "But maybe it's one of your heavy raiders." He looked at his Eight. She was squinting at the light.
It was the pilot Eight who confirmed the truth. "That's not one of our heavy raiders," she said. "It's one of Cavil's."
Felix whipped his head around to study the raider, and never saw that his Eight smiled.
***
The Eight held her breath as the heavy raider forced their series of jumps, four all told. Closer than she'd thought, then. The comm unit was eerily silent, despite the fact that there were pilots in the heavy raider. She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
She was expecting the hive of baseships, and the swarms of Raiders. What she was not expecting was the huge, tentacled structure that awaited them.
"What the frak is that?" her sister breathed, leaning forward between the pilots' seats to get a better look.
"You don't know?" Easy asked, looking up at the pilot Eight in confusion. The Eight shook her head.
"No. I've never seen it before. But I don't understand how Cavil could have built something like this in such a short time."
"It's been over a year since New Caprica," Brooks said crossly.
The pilot Eight looked back over her shoulder at him. "And we would have known if something like this was happening," she snapped. "Something's not right here."
"What, the fact we're being captured by Cylons didn't give it away?" Brooks asked mockingly.
"Guys!" Felix broke up the fight with a sharp order. "Enough. Shark, what have we got as far as firepower?"
"On the Raptor or in it, Lieutenant?"
"In it."
"Not much," Shark said. "There's two rifles in the locker up there, and a few rounds of ammo. Easy and I have got our sidearms."
"We can't go in fighting," the pilot Eight said, but she fingered her own sidearm nervously.
"And why not?" Brooks demanded.
"Look, they aren't blowing us up right now," she pointed out. "They want us alive for some reason."
"Yeah, well then, wouldn't it be better not to give it to them? Either shoot ourselves now-"
"Suicide is a sin!"
"-Or take out a few dozen of Cavil's toasters with us? Get as many as we can get before they shoot us all?"
"Or get onto this ship and get a message back to the Galactica."
"She's right," the Eight said, stepping up next to her sister and making a note to tell Cavil. She glanced back at Felix. "If we pretend to cooperate, pretend to give them what they want… we might be able to help more, later."
He nodded, and a moron could figure out what he was thinking about, which meant even this Brooks character probably got it. And Brooks did back down, glancing at the others for orders.
A tentacle peeled away, leaving a yawning orifice behind it, and the heavy raider dragged the Raptor in. Shark gripped his gun, and Felix opened the locker. He gave one of the rifles to Brooks and one to her. "You two take them- I can't stay upright and shoot. Don't use them unless we have to," he said. "But let's see what we can get out of them, first."
She nodded, and Brooks said, "Yes, sir."
Felix sat down and began to put his prosthetic back on. The Eight noticed his movements were still clumsy and awkward, like he wasn't fully used to doing this. She also noticed that the stump was raw and dark with clotted blood. It made her sick, and she turned away.
The inside of the giant ship was not sleek and elegant like their baseships, but organic and clunky, heavy and old-fashioned. It made her itch just to look at it, and out of habit, she began to form a projection. But she reminded herself firmly that she couldn't afford that- not yet. Once she had convinced Cavil of her loyalty, once she was safely ensconced in the ranks here and accepted, then she could choose how she saw her surroundings. But for now, she had to accept the reality that was there.
The Raptor came to a stop, and the lock sealed. She wished she could lean out the front and look to see who would come, but there was no room. She braced herself.
The door hissed opened, and they faced the barrels of guns: an army of Centurions under the command of a One. The One glanced at the Raptor. "Search it," he ordered. The humans looked back at Felix with a mute plea for orders; he sighed and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
The search didn't last long. Felix looked at her, his face grim. She looked away. She didn't have to pretend to care anymore, and he'd know what she'd done soon enough. She supposed she should be worried, but the truth was she wasn't. Not in the least.
The Cylons that were in the heavy raider emerged, and she scanned them eagerly. She should have known he wouldn't be with them- he wasn't a pilot- but she hoped against hope anyway. There were two Fives and a Four, and they all had guns trained on them.
"What is this?" the Four asked.
"What does it look like?" the One snapped. "Four humans, two Eights, and a Raptor. Personally, I think we should just take care of them all right here, but Cavil says to bring them up."
"Well then… let's go."
***
John Cavil didn't look any different from any other One, but Felix knew him the second they saw him. It must have been the expression on his face. There was something… different… about Cavil. This Cavil. Whatever. Something aware, something malevolent. It sent chills down Felix's spine. He sat at a long white table, along with a few other Ones, Fours, and Fives as the prisoners were pushed in.
Next to him, Easy was trembling. She was sheet white but resolute, and he noticed her hand was drifting to where her sidearm would be if the Cylons hadn't disarmed them. He suddenly remembered Kara Thrace's reports on the farms on Caprica, and he stepped a little closer to her. He noticed Shark on her other side. The two men exchanged glances, and he could tell that Shark was thinking the same thing.
The pilot Eight and Brooks had gravitated toward each other. She was looking around fearfully, he was whispering a prayer. Felix sourly noticed that she didn't seem to mind so much now, but maybe she was too lost in her own fear to care.
And on his other side was his Eight.
She was calm. Far too calm. He tried to catch her eye, to let her know he had her back as best he could manage, but she didn't look at him. She was watching the Cylons that sat at the table, measuring each of them for their reactions. To him, they seemed like a wall of faces, set and angry and ready for blood.
A Four stood up from the table, and Felix watched him curiously. Instead of the conservative, professional clothing Felix was used to seeing the Fours in, he was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt. His attention was focused on Felix's Eight, and he looked her up and down, calculating and analyzing, exploring implications.
And then his eyes lit up.
He stepped forward more confidently now. The Eight gave a strangled cry and stumbled forward, and they embraced. His head bent protectively over hers, and Felix could hear her crying.
"I'm sorry," she was saying. "I'm sorry. You were right and I was wrong… I'm sorry."
"It's all right," the Four said, kissing her hair. "You're home." The others from his model line looked on. Some looked appalled, but some looked touched. All Felix could do was stare, even as his gut told him this was bad… this was very, very bad.
"Well, this is all very romantic and poignant, but if you don't mind me asking, what the frak is going on here?" Cavil demanded.
The Eight and the Four broke apart. They both looked radiant, and the Eight moved with new confidence as she took a step towards Cavil.
"You were right," she said, gesturing to the assembled Ones, Fours, and Fives, "About everything. About the Raiders and the Centurions, about the Final Five, about our place in the universe, about everything. I see that now, see the error in our logic. I see our mistakes. The way our race has been divided over petty philosophical distinctions-"
"Petty?" the pilot Eight demanded, but she shut up as soon as Cavil glanced her direction.
The Eight looked at her sister for a moment, contempt clear on her face. "Petty philosophical distinctions," she repeated, driving each word in like bullets. "It's deplorable. We should have… I should have seen that earlier. We should have predicted the consequence."
"So, you're saying that now that you know we beat you, you want to say you're sorry rather than face extinction? Forgive me if that doesn't inspire a great deal of faith in you," Cavil snapped.
"No," the Eight agreed hastily. "It wouldn't. It shouldn't. That's why I brought you a token of my faith." She gestured to the rest of the Raptor crew. "I couldn't bring any of the Five, but you know that four of them are in the Fleet. Adama," she spat the name, "loves his people. He'd consider trading."
"For what?" Cavil looked over the prisoners. "Two low-level pilots, a mechanic he's probably never spoken to, a twisted, half-…" Cavil's voice trailed off as he came to Felix, and then the light of recognition lit in his eyes. Felix steeled himself, gripping his crutches more tightly and raising his chin defiantly. "You," he said, and he began to laugh. "You." He turned back to the Eight. "You might have done something right after all."
"He's the reason the humans escaped New Caprica," the Eight said, her voice suddenly hard and bitter. Felix snapped his head around to face her. "He swore his loyalty and betrayed us for months, giving the Resistance information and releasing prisoners from detention."
Felix's mouth gaped open. "You… you were helping me!" he protested.
The Eight stared at him for a long moment, and then sighed in exasperation. "Do you really still think that, Felix? Look around you and see where you're standing, and how you got there. Think back to all those names on your lists- how many of them arrived on your Fleet? Think about all that, and ask yourself how you can believe that I ever meant to help you!"
Felix's stomach dropped out of his body, and his mouth went dry as red crept into his vision. They were all looking at him, humans and Cylons alike, but he was barely aware of it. "What are you…" he began, and then got himself under control. "No. You can't mean… you couldn't have…."
"I did," she snapped. "But it doesn't matter."
"No," Cavil agreed. "It doesn't." A gun went off, the sound echoing through the baseship. The Eight cried out, falling back into the Four's arms, her blood splattered on his shirt and face in tiny red pinpricks.
"No!" The Four eased the Eight to the ground while Cavil stood over them with his arms crossed, glaring down at them for wasting his time. She was gasping for air, tortured gargles that made it sound like she was choking on her own blood. The Four cradled her close, whispering to her. Felix could catch snatches in the echoing stunned silence… Forgive me… this never should have… don't leave me, not now… I love you, and I always will.
The strangled gasps stopped.
For two seconds, the silence only intensified, and then the Four began to cry. Felix looked away. It sickened him that the sight of grief from a Cylon could still affect him, but it did.
"Well." Cavil's voice jerked Felix's head back around. "Now that that's taken care of, let's resolve the rest of this mess, shall we?" He looked at the humans, tapping his gun against his palm.
They had no weapons. There was no stand they could take, no defense they could offer. Yet again, the feeling of being completely powerless swept over Felix, and all he could do was glare at Cavil defiantly. He pulled himself as straight as he could, even if the weight on where stump met prosthetic hurt like hell. If he had to die, this is how he would do it- proud and refusing to beg.
Cavil smirked, but didn't raise his gun.
He turned to the pilot Eight. "Are you going to tell us you're in on this, too?" She shook her head mutely, hate radiating from her eyes and her stance.
"Well?" Cavil demanded of a Five who was standing next to the Centurions. "What are you waiting for? Kill them."
"We think that it might not be the best idea to shoot them," the Five said. "The Eight might have been right about the bargaining power."
"We concur," a Four put in. "Especially the women. With the Hub destroyed, finding a way for Cylons to reproduce is the only way that we can ensure that we will survive. And frankly, we need research subjects."
Easy turned white, and she began to shake.
"That's a point," Cavil conceded. A One standing next to him nodded agreement. "Take the women, then," he said to a Four.
"NO!" Easy fumbled at her side, but her gun had been taken. Felix tried to step forward, but two Centurions moved to block him and he was forced to stop. One of the Fives grabbed Easy, and she screamed, kicking desperately.
It happened fast- so fast that no one could stop it. Shark lunged at Cavil, pushing him to the side as he grabbed the gun. He spun, took aim, and shot Easy right between the eyes.
Another blast went off in fast sequence, and Shark slumped to the floor himself. A Five held a gun, barrel smoking.
"That's enough!" Cavil glared around, sighing with exasperation. He wiped flecks of blood from his face irritably, and nudged the corpses with his toe. " Is this a shooting gallery? Can we just finish this up? Take the two humans to cells and the Eight-"
"You don't have to experiment on me," the Eight interrupted, all of the color drained from her face.
"Excuse me?" Cavil demanded, arching his eyebrows. "I hardly think that you're in a position-"
"You don't have to experiment on me," she repeated. "I'm already pregnant."
"Now that's the most ridiculous piece of bullshit I've heard today, and given what we've all just heard in the past five minutes, that's saying something."
Even Felix didn't believe her, but the pilot Eight clung to her story. "It's true," she insisted. "The doctor on Galactica just confirmed it a few hours ago."
"Well, we'll find out if that's true soon enough, won't we?" Cavil asked. He gestured to a Four, and he stepped forward and took the Eight by the arm. "See if she's telling the truth. As for these two…" he turned back to where Felix and Brooks were still standing, Brooks staring in horror at the corpses on the floor, "get them out of my sight."
A Five grabbed Felix by the arm. "Come on, Gaeta," he said, and Felix assumed that this Five had known him specifically on New Caprica. It was impossible to be sure, though.
They passed his Eight's body as they left the room, and her Four was still kneeling beside her, still crying.
On to Chapter 2