Fic - "Going Forward" - BSG/STNG AU - Part 22
So yeah, I kinda stalled out on this and then spent a reasonable amount of time working on some non fanfiction projects. I felt bad that this has been sitting out here for so long so hopefully I can get this finished.
Tigh looked at the medical report and considered his next step. Galen Tyrol was infested with nanites. He was as infested as a typical Cylon. Under the definition of what constituted a Cylon, physically Chief Galen Tyrol was one. There was no alternate explanation. Federation technology did use nanites but the design was different and Tigh had made sure to pull all the records to be certain. Not that there were many. Tyrol was a healthy man and he’d avoided medical care since the colony was established. He had never been scanned by a Federation medical scanner until his recent breakdown on the basestar. It wasn’t unusual for a colonial to not be scanned. It was, he realized as he looked through the paperwork, almost a comedy of errors, exactly the sort of chain of events that he suspected had led to the destruction of the colonies to begin with.
When the colony on New Atlantis first started, almost all of the medical staff were Federation relief officers. They had been glad to get the help, that was the truth, and the Federation volunteers being there had allowed Cottle and the rest of the medical staff to attend medical classes that brought their skills up to date. The problem of course was that the Federation had never considers Cylons to be a serious threat. That mindset meant that they didn’t look for nanites and if they found them, they wouldn’t be concerned about it. And Cottle and his staff were infected with the Federation liberalism towards Cylons, that was no surprise to him at all. Medical people, even military medical people, tended to be soft.
At one point, during the first year of the colony’s establishment, the opposition party that revolved around Tom Zarek had demanded that the entire population be scanned. Not for Cylon nanites, but for Palamas indicators. Roslin had put the kibosh on that. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time but her concern was that if people knew who did and didn’t have Palamas indicators, that with a generation or two, they’d create a lower caste. She raised the point that the Federation wasn’t likely to approve of such a plan and with so many other things a concern, the idea of scanning the entire population had quieted down. It would come back, people had already been grumbling about wanting to know. On the other people, there were plenty of people who appreciated Roslin’s point. It had gotten around that people who had Palamas indicators generally enjoyed transporting, but it wasn’t fool proof. It meant that some people already knew they were in the have not group.
It made his head ache worse because if he called for mass testing of the population, a significant portion of the population was paranoid on the topic. Roslin would demand to know why, and he would have to tell her. And despite her recent liberalism concerning the children of the Cylons, he knew exactly what Laura Roslin would do with the knowledge that there were secret Cylons among the colonists. She would have everyone tested and then arrested, and locked up until Bill Adama came back.
The problem with that was that he was certain that he was a hidden Cylon. And he wanted a drink so badly, it was tempting to simply call Laura Roslin and tell her, and let the situation explode exactly the way he knew it would. He set down the padd he was reading and stood up. The real problem was that he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t commit the act that would remove himself from the mess. Bill Adama had made him the commander with the knowledge that there was no one else that could keep the peace. He’d be damned if he broke Bill’s trust. At the same time he had to do something. Whatever Galen had seen, he had a bad feeling that if he ignored it, he would be making things much worse.
It was time to go with his gut. That was why he strode into the command center of the base star and pointed at his first officer. “Colonel Three, I’d like a word. In private.”
She nodded and gave one of the Twos a look. Part of him hated knowing that she’d handed the deck off to the next ranking officer. Her eyes sparkled as he led her into the corridor. “How private does this need to be?”
“Very.”
“Then let’s use my quarters.” She led him through the corridors to a door. Her quarters weren’t as cold as he expected. The base star was austere but Three had pictures on the wall and a desk that held a pile of paperwork. “Please, take a seat, sir.”
He did, at the desk, and she pulled up the spare chair to be close to him. He looked nervously at the pictures she had framed. Most were of her and an Eight, and a child that was apparently a boy. One photo had a cheerful caption - Mama, Motoko and Me at Our House. It was the same sort of house that had been common on Caprica although he was certain it was from their colony. “I didn’t know you had a wife and child, Three.”
“Jesse and I were a good team before the change, as we call it, and Ethan makes us whole.” A surprisingly fond look crossed her face. “They’re on New Atlantis. Ethan seems to like it there, at least.” Her expression became a mask. “What do you want to discuss, Commander?”
“What does it mean to you, look at the places that aren’t there?” He couldn’t shake the suspicion it was some sort of Cylon reference.
She looked at him intently. Finally she said, “To me, that means to look at the places inside myself, at the things I should remember but don’t. I saw the Temple, and that memory was taken from me, from all of my sisters. But… I don’t think that’s what Chief Tyrol meant.”
“This isn’t about Chief Tyrol.” He knew that was the truth, just as he knew he was a Cylon.
Three looked at him, her expression concerned. Finally she said, “The memories from the temple were taken from my line. It was part of the agreement on reawakening us. I can’t answer the question you want to ask. I don’t know if you’re a Cylon.” She smiled slightly, and now she did look amused. “I see your problem. The obvious option has to have occurred to you. You could simply have our doctor scan you and then order him silent if you don’t like the answer you get. Why not do that?”
“It wouldn’t stay secret,” Tigh said after a moment. “It’s not just a matter of not trusting the medical staff to keep their mouths shut,” although he was quite certain that Cylon and human medical staff both had the gossip trait bred in.
Three nodded. “It’s a problem of command. President Roslin is not our friend. She would insist you be replaced and replaced with a human and there’s really no one to pull. No one that would be respected and of course it would be an insult to us, and we have put up with a number of insults already.” She stated it matter of factly. “And you can’t put your hand in the stream.”
“Why not?” He wasn’t planning to. Tyrol had been functioning before, and now he was a mental wreck, and Saul knew he couldn’t risk that sort of reaction. He was curious what Three’s reasoning was.
“It seems to have caused a mental breakdown in Chief Tyrol and you can’t afford that. And you knew that.” Three seemed amused. “What you don’t know is that we all knew when Tyrol put his hand in.”
That got his attention. “And you didn’t tell me? What the frak were you thinking?”
“That he’d be scanned and you’d confirm the scans. And once you confirmed it, you would be honor bound to report it to President Roslin. The Earthers have a term for what happens next. A witch hunt.” She looked over at the pictures of her wife and child. “For the record, in case you didn’t know, your Cylon soldiers appreciate your discretion in this matter. Just remember, until you’re ready to confirm the thoughts you’re thinking, don’t put your hand in the stream.” Three paused, lost in thought. “My original point was that just because Galen Tyrol is a Cylon, that doesn’t mean that what he said is some sort of . Cylon code. He said it to you, he obviously thought it would mean something to you. The places that aren’t there…. What does that mean to you?”
Saul considered it carefully. An idea niggled at him. “On the Galactica, when we were running… Tyrol came to me, one time, with a problem. He was trying to reroute some wiring and every time they ran the lines they kept running into blockages that weren’t on the plans…”
“Why would he come to you with that?” It surprised him that Three was genuinely curious.
“It might be hard to believe,” Saul said, letting a note of wry amusement enter his voice, “but when I was a young man I studied ship design. I’m not going to frakking lie and say it took, but it did make me one of the only people in the fleet who knew how to read the frakking blue prints. And the blue prints said he should’ve been able to run his frakking wires, so I pulled the original blueprints.” And then the idea blossomed. “There was just empty space on the current blue prints but originally… there had been a room. Someone during a refit had just walled it up and sealed it. It was a full machine shop, stuff from the first war…” His own guess had been that it had been blocked off originally due to battle damage, it was easier to close off areas to stop fires, and then as the first war progressed, people just forgot that it was there. “It happens sometimes, on ships. We found a space during the last refit that someone had been using as their personal love nest.” He shrugged. “It’s… a place that wasn’t there, but at the end of the day, it was just an old room filled with outdated equipment.”
After a long moment, Three smiled. “Sometimes you’re not very willing to see what’s in front of you, sir. That is definitely the trait of a Cylon. Did it ever occur to you that this basestar might have similar places… places that aren’t there?”
“You did a massive refit. The same kind of refit we did on the Galactica.” He could see where she was going but… “After the refit, there are no mystery spots on the Galactica anymore.”
“But you don’t understand. Our memories were controlled by the Centurions. If they didn’t want us to know something, they took the memory away. I know you’re not fond of Cylon psychology, but understand… There are those among us who believe that the residual memories of the Five are our humanity expressing itself the only way it could at the time. There are also those of us who believe that the Five weren’t able to be misled and that is why they were erased from our memories.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “You don’t know how hard it is to even have this discussion. We’re restricted from knowing. Things could have happened on this basestar and we never would have noticed. We wouldn’t have been allowed to notice.”
“But the Centurions are gone,” Tigh said after a moment.
“The commands remain. In a way, that’s good for you.” Three picked up a padd off of her desk and tapped out some commands. “Here are the post refit plans for the basestar. You aren’t constrained the way we are. I have a suspicion that if you look hard enough on this ship, you’ll find something. It’s not like we can hide what we’re not allowed to know. This is a big ship. You downplay it, Commander, but you’re a clever man. If there’s something hidden here, you’ll find it.”
He took the padd. There was a secret inside the basestar. He was more certain of that than ever, and it wasn’t just the dawning realization that he himself was a Cylon.
Tigh looked at the medical report and considered his next step. Galen Tyrol was infested with nanites. He was as infested as a typical Cylon. Under the definition of what constituted a Cylon, physically Chief Galen Tyrol was one. There was no alternate explanation. Federation technology did use nanites but the design was different and Tigh had made sure to pull all the records to be certain. Not that there were many. Tyrol was a healthy man and he’d avoided medical care since the colony was established. He had never been scanned by a Federation medical scanner until his recent breakdown on the basestar. It wasn’t unusual for a colonial to not be scanned. It was, he realized as he looked through the paperwork, almost a comedy of errors, exactly the sort of chain of events that he suspected had led to the destruction of the colonies to begin with.
When the colony on New Atlantis first started, almost all of the medical staff were Federation relief officers. They had been glad to get the help, that was the truth, and the Federation volunteers being there had allowed Cottle and the rest of the medical staff to attend medical classes that brought their skills up to date. The problem of course was that the Federation had never considers Cylons to be a serious threat. That mindset meant that they didn’t look for nanites and if they found them, they wouldn’t be concerned about it. And Cottle and his staff were infected with the Federation liberalism towards Cylons, that was no surprise to him at all. Medical people, even military medical people, tended to be soft.
At one point, during the first year of the colony’s establishment, the opposition party that revolved around Tom Zarek had demanded that the entire population be scanned. Not for Cylon nanites, but for Palamas indicators. Roslin had put the kibosh on that. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time but her concern was that if people knew who did and didn’t have Palamas indicators, that with a generation or two, they’d create a lower caste. She raised the point that the Federation wasn’t likely to approve of such a plan and with so many other things a concern, the idea of scanning the entire population had quieted down. It would come back, people had already been grumbling about wanting to know. On the other people, there were plenty of people who appreciated Roslin’s point. It had gotten around that people who had Palamas indicators generally enjoyed transporting, but it wasn’t fool proof. It meant that some people already knew they were in the have not group.
It made his head ache worse because if he called for mass testing of the population, a significant portion of the population was paranoid on the topic. Roslin would demand to know why, and he would have to tell her. And despite her recent liberalism concerning the children of the Cylons, he knew exactly what Laura Roslin would do with the knowledge that there were secret Cylons among the colonists. She would have everyone tested and then arrested, and locked up until Bill Adama came back.
The problem with that was that he was certain that he was a hidden Cylon. And he wanted a drink so badly, it was tempting to simply call Laura Roslin and tell her, and let the situation explode exactly the way he knew it would. He set down the padd he was reading and stood up. The real problem was that he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t commit the act that would remove himself from the mess. Bill Adama had made him the commander with the knowledge that there was no one else that could keep the peace. He’d be damned if he broke Bill’s trust. At the same time he had to do something. Whatever Galen had seen, he had a bad feeling that if he ignored it, he would be making things much worse.
It was time to go with his gut. That was why he strode into the command center of the base star and pointed at his first officer. “Colonel Three, I’d like a word. In private.”
She nodded and gave one of the Twos a look. Part of him hated knowing that she’d handed the deck off to the next ranking officer. Her eyes sparkled as he led her into the corridor. “How private does this need to be?”
“Very.”
“Then let’s use my quarters.” She led him through the corridors to a door. Her quarters weren’t as cold as he expected. The base star was austere but Three had pictures on the wall and a desk that held a pile of paperwork. “Please, take a seat, sir.”
He did, at the desk, and she pulled up the spare chair to be close to him. He looked nervously at the pictures she had framed. Most were of her and an Eight, and a child that was apparently a boy. One photo had a cheerful caption - Mama, Motoko and Me at Our House. It was the same sort of house that had been common on Caprica although he was certain it was from their colony. “I didn’t know you had a wife and child, Three.”
“Jesse and I were a good team before the change, as we call it, and Ethan makes us whole.” A surprisingly fond look crossed her face. “They’re on New Atlantis. Ethan seems to like it there, at least.” Her expression became a mask. “What do you want to discuss, Commander?”
“What does it mean to you, look at the places that aren’t there?” He couldn’t shake the suspicion it was some sort of Cylon reference.
She looked at him intently. Finally she said, “To me, that means to look at the places inside myself, at the things I should remember but don’t. I saw the Temple, and that memory was taken from me, from all of my sisters. But… I don’t think that’s what Chief Tyrol meant.”
“This isn’t about Chief Tyrol.” He knew that was the truth, just as he knew he was a Cylon.
Three looked at him, her expression concerned. Finally she said, “The memories from the temple were taken from my line. It was part of the agreement on reawakening us. I can’t answer the question you want to ask. I don’t know if you’re a Cylon.” She smiled slightly, and now she did look amused. “I see your problem. The obvious option has to have occurred to you. You could simply have our doctor scan you and then order him silent if you don’t like the answer you get. Why not do that?”
“It wouldn’t stay secret,” Tigh said after a moment. “It’s not just a matter of not trusting the medical staff to keep their mouths shut,” although he was quite certain that Cylon and human medical staff both had the gossip trait bred in.
Three nodded. “It’s a problem of command. President Roslin is not our friend. She would insist you be replaced and replaced with a human and there’s really no one to pull. No one that would be respected and of course it would be an insult to us, and we have put up with a number of insults already.” She stated it matter of factly. “And you can’t put your hand in the stream.”
“Why not?” He wasn’t planning to. Tyrol had been functioning before, and now he was a mental wreck, and Saul knew he couldn’t risk that sort of reaction. He was curious what Three’s reasoning was.
“It seems to have caused a mental breakdown in Chief Tyrol and you can’t afford that. And you knew that.” Three seemed amused. “What you don’t know is that we all knew when Tyrol put his hand in.”
That got his attention. “And you didn’t tell me? What the frak were you thinking?”
“That he’d be scanned and you’d confirm the scans. And once you confirmed it, you would be honor bound to report it to President Roslin. The Earthers have a term for what happens next. A witch hunt.” She looked over at the pictures of her wife and child. “For the record, in case you didn’t know, your Cylon soldiers appreciate your discretion in this matter. Just remember, until you’re ready to confirm the thoughts you’re thinking, don’t put your hand in the stream.” Three paused, lost in thought. “My original point was that just because Galen Tyrol is a Cylon, that doesn’t mean that what he said is some sort of . Cylon code. He said it to you, he obviously thought it would mean something to you. The places that aren’t there…. What does that mean to you?”
Saul considered it carefully. An idea niggled at him. “On the Galactica, when we were running… Tyrol came to me, one time, with a problem. He was trying to reroute some wiring and every time they ran the lines they kept running into blockages that weren’t on the plans…”
“Why would he come to you with that?” It surprised him that Three was genuinely curious.
“It might be hard to believe,” Saul said, letting a note of wry amusement enter his voice, “but when I was a young man I studied ship design. I’m not going to frakking lie and say it took, but it did make me one of the only people in the fleet who knew how to read the frakking blue prints. And the blue prints said he should’ve been able to run his frakking wires, so I pulled the original blueprints.” And then the idea blossomed. “There was just empty space on the current blue prints but originally… there had been a room. Someone during a refit had just walled it up and sealed it. It was a full machine shop, stuff from the first war…” His own guess had been that it had been blocked off originally due to battle damage, it was easier to close off areas to stop fires, and then as the first war progressed, people just forgot that it was there. “It happens sometimes, on ships. We found a space during the last refit that someone had been using as their personal love nest.” He shrugged. “It’s… a place that wasn’t there, but at the end of the day, it was just an old room filled with outdated equipment.”
After a long moment, Three smiled. “Sometimes you’re not very willing to see what’s in front of you, sir. That is definitely the trait of a Cylon. Did it ever occur to you that this basestar might have similar places… places that aren’t there?”
“You did a massive refit. The same kind of refit we did on the Galactica.” He could see where she was going but… “After the refit, there are no mystery spots on the Galactica anymore.”
“But you don’t understand. Our memories were controlled by the Centurions. If they didn’t want us to know something, they took the memory away. I know you’re not fond of Cylon psychology, but understand… There are those among us who believe that the residual memories of the Five are our humanity expressing itself the only way it could at the time. There are also those of us who believe that the Five weren’t able to be misled and that is why they were erased from our memories.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “You don’t know how hard it is to even have this discussion. We’re restricted from knowing. Things could have happened on this basestar and we never would have noticed. We wouldn’t have been allowed to notice.”
“But the Centurions are gone,” Tigh said after a moment.
“The commands remain. In a way, that’s good for you.” Three picked up a padd off of her desk and tapped out some commands. “Here are the post refit plans for the basestar. You aren’t constrained the way we are. I have a suspicion that if you look hard enough on this ship, you’ll find something. It’s not like we can hide what we’re not allowed to know. This is a big ship. You downplay it, Commander, but you’re a clever man. If there’s something hidden here, you’ll find it.”
He took the padd. There was a secret inside the basestar. He was more certain of that than ever, and it wasn’t just the dawning realization that he himself was a Cylon.