Fic: The Black Ships, Part XI
Title: The Black Ships
Author: Major Fischer
Universe: Battlestar Galactica/The West Wing Crossover
Pairings: Roslin/Adama, with some Roslin/Zarek
Notes: Many thanks to melyanna for inspiring me with her excellent (and highly recommended) west_gate series. This is a Facebook for those of you unfamiliar with one side of the crossover. Also thanks to alesia027 for her help making this more coherent and missfoxie for her thoughts on Laura Roslin as a political animal.
Chronology: This takes place in BSG's second season after Epiphanies but before Sacrefices, and in the West Wing's mid sixth season. Spoilers beyond that point are unlikely.
Summary: A few weeks before Christmas, late in the Bartlet Presidency, a fleet of interstellar refugees arrive at Earth and changed the world. But is it the end of the saga, or the beginning of a much more complicated one?
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X
The first round of negotiations for Colonial settlement and relief aid had served only to highlight the complexity of the situation. CJ had not been a big part of the Middle East peace talks earlier in the year at Camp David, but she imagined those could not have been half as bad as these were going to be.
As a pure refugee problem, the Colonials were relatively small in scale. There were tens of millions of displaced persons around the world. That said, refugee problems-even small ones-were rarely simple. The Palestinians, as an example, had fled their homes in 1948 after the founding of Israel. Almost sixty years later, the Palestinians still found themselves living in poverty-ridden camps, or living as second-class citizens in neighboring countries.
CJ stepped out into the cold, but fresh, winter air next to Charlie Young. “Do you think I can bum a cigarette from the President?”
“Mrs. Bartlet confiscated his latest pack this morning. I think he’s trying to bum one from his Secret Service detail.”
“He’s trying to get a cigarette from a bunch of people who run alongside cars for a living?”
“I didn’t say he was succeeding, just that he was trying. I didn’t know you smoked.” Charlie raised an eyebrow.
“Not since college I don’t, but I could really use one today.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. The Colonials want to settle as a group and I don’t blame them. They could probably fit inside a small city and be an independent or semi-independent nation state like Hong Kong or Singapore.”
“That sounds like a solution.”
“The problem is most countries aren’t too keen on the idea of dropping a sovereign nation on their doorstep, or giving up any territory.”
“I would have thought it would be easy to find a place for them in exchange for their technology.”
CJ shook her head. “There have been a few countries that have offered land in exchange for exclusive access to their technology, but no one else wants any one country to have exclusive access. Not to mention that the countries that have stepped up with generous land offers aren’t exactly places I’d like to send my worst enemy to live.”
“Like where?”
“Well, for an isolationist xenophobic country, North Korea has been acting very friendly.”
Charlie winced.
CJ nodded. “There are other concerns as well. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection…”
“NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection?”
“It’s nowhere near as cool as it sounds. Most of the time they make sure spacecraft are really really clean so they don't contaminate other worlds.”
“So they protect other planets and not this one.”
“Well, they protect this one too, but others more so.”
“Fun,” Charlie commented.
“Anyway, the Office of Planetary Protection has ganged up with the CDC and USAMRIID…”
“USAMRIID?” Charlie was normally good with government acronyms but lately there had been a lot that were new to him.
“The US Army Medical Research Institute into Infectious Diseases.”
“Now they sound like the bad guys in a bad science fiction movie.”
“I’ll make sure I tell them you said that, maybe they can give you Ebola,” CJ quipped.
“A bunch of microbiologists and virologists? Sounds like a gang I don’t want to tangle with.” Being from one of the worst sections of south DC, Charlie knew a great deal about street gangs.
“The army has tanks.”
“Point.”
“Anyway, OPP, CDC, and USAMRIID are all pretty pissed that we let the Colonial delegation land without putting them in quarantine. It seems that they're concerned that the ships in orbit are breeding grounds for disease, especially if they were never intended to hold as many people as they have been.”
“So they want us to just leave them up there?”
“Essentially. The requests by the Colonials haven’t exactly made people feel much better. Along with food and medicine, they’ve asked for a couple hundred nuclear warheads.”
Charlie whistled low. “The essentials of life.”
“Smiley - the North Korean ambassador - wants to give the warheads to them…in exchange for some space ships.”
“Let me go find you that cigarette…”
**~**~**
Starbuck walked past the row of US Air Force Security police, saluted the Colonial Marines standing guard and into the area of Andrews Air Force Base that they had taken to calling ‘Little Caprica.’ It wasn’t much, a hanger and a flight line that had four raptors parked out front. The one inside was still under repair after Racetrack’s not so gentle coming to earth. Chief Tyrol had been trying to repair the crashed bird for days, basically with bubble gum and shoelaces. The Air Force had given them access to their tools, but as the Chief had so blatantly pointed out, language and biology might be universal… but screwdrivers were not.
Kara watched him and Cally work from a distance for a bit before walking closer. “Still cursing out the Raptor?”
“I’m not cursing the Raptor, Captain. I’m cursing the someone who decided he should take apart a ship he didn’t know how to put back together.” Tyrol threw down a shop rag in disgust. “It’s going to take me at least a week to get her back up and flying.”
“I think you have all the time in the world for this, Chief. Things are going slow.”
He looked over at the pilot with a raised eyebrow. Presidential negotiations were way over his pay grade. “Something wrong, sir?”
Kara looked over her shoulder, making sure there wasn’t anyone else in earshot. “Did… did Sharon ever talk to you about Cylon religion?” It was an odd question, she knew.
The Chief shifted uncomfortably at the mention of Sharon, his one-time lover turned Cylon sleeper agent. “We never really talked about that sort of thing.” He smiled a little, picked up a tool, and went to work on the engine again. “We didn’t do a lot of talking to be honest.”
Galen Tyrol was confused and trying to stay focused. He had had trouble accepting the fact that he had fallen in love with a Cylon, and even Starbuck would normally have been sensitive enough not to bring her up. “It’s important, Chief.”
He cleaned the seven-prong screwdriver with his rag, lost in thought. “Sometimes, I guess. Why?”
Starbuck undid the top button of her blues and leaned against the crashed Raptor. “The President had me go to this religious service with her, with the Earth leader she's been dealing with. They're monotheists.”
Tyrol, the son of a priest, nodded. Monotheism wasn’t widespread in their society, but it wasn’t unheard of. There were places in the Colonies where one of the gods of Kobol was worshipped solely above all others. “And?”
“And they sounded a lot like the Cylon I interrogated six months ago. God is love, He has a plan for us all, and humanity is created in His image…”
“No frakking?”
She nodded and folded her arms. She was uncharacteristically silent. “Do you think we’d know if we had landed on the Cylon homeworld?”
**~**~**
Tom Zarek watched Laura Roslin from across the ornately decorated mural room. The President was staring at the detail in one of the paintings, leaving him only the back of her head and shoulders to read for body language. They had both sat through the marathon-long meeting with a growing feeling that the governments on Earth were perfectly willing to use them as a game piece in their own politics.
“This could go on forever, while the conditions in the Fleet just get worse.” After all, Tom was an expert on civil unrest, and he knew better than most what could lead to violence.
“I think we need to invite a group of them up to the Fleet so they can see conditions for themselves,” Roslin said without ever turning around, “give them a tour of some of the ships, a demonstration of the Galactica’s capabilities…”
“That may scare them. I’m no military man, but from what Lee Adama has told me they don’t appear to have any significant space weapons capability.” Roslin didn’t say anything in response to that, and Zarek moved closer to her, understanding dawning. “That’s your intention.”
Laura turned around and on one of those rare occasions, he could see her eyes behind the glasses, and they sent a shiver down his back. “A demonstration of our desperation might push the settlement talks along a bit, yes. And if it doesn’t, well, then we have hostages.”
He stared at her for a long time, before breaking out into a smile. “You never cease to amaze me.” Admiration was one way to describe what he felt for this woman, both for her intelligence, and for just how absolutely ruthless she could be. “This could backfire on us.”
“Are you asking to go back up to the Fleet, Mr. Zarek?” Her question almost a dare.
“I think I’d rather stay with you, Laura. I have a feeling you’d find a path through the underworld if you had to.”
**~**~**
“I’m not sure we can say no to the offer,” the Assistant Secretary of State said from across long dark wood the table. “As long as there are those at the negotiation table arguing a medical reason to deny the Colonials landing rights, and as long as the Colonials are arguing dire need, international law obligates us to send a medical evaluation team.”
Jed Bartlet had always hated the Situation Room. It was a cold tomb of a room in the basement of the White House, and he never was called here for good news. He had also never quite gotten over the feeling that as soon as he left the room the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to laugh at him. “International law covers space aliens?”
“It doesn’t foresee aliens exactly, sir. There are however, requirements when it comes to obligations under refugee treaties and genocide conventions,” the man from State confirmed.
Kate Harper broke in from down the table. “We aren’t sure that we want to turn them down, Mr. President. At the moment we have to rely on the Colonials for information about their capabilities. It might do us well to get someone onboard those ships to look around.”
“A spy?” Bartlet asked with a raised eyebrow.
“More like a liaison. There are military liaisons in embassies around the world and part of their jobs is to evaluate and report on the military capabilities of those countries. It’s more a 19th or early 20th Century means of intelligence gathering, but still entirely valid.”
“So along with this medical mission that Roslin has requested, we just stick a military officer in the batch? Don’t you think they’ll notice it?”
CJ spoke for the first time, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they expected it, sir. If we made it a little broader than a medical mission it might stick out less. A group of doctors from the CDC, NIH, and the World Health Organization so that the rest of the world doesn’t get in a tizzy…”
“And Commander Harper,” the President added looking down the table at Kate. “It’s your idea, and you have the kind of experience for the job.
A mixture of surprise and shock crossed her face for a moment before she nodded like a good sailor. “Aye-aye, sir.”
The President looked around the table again. “So we pile these people into a space shuttle, or what?”
CJ shook her head. “No, Sir, NASA informs me that the orbiters don’t have any means of landing on the Colonial vessels, nor the capacity to carry that many people.” She turned her head next to the slightly nervous looking man sitting next to her. “There are apparently safety concerns about the shuttle fleet.”
“New ones?” The President shot an incredulous look across the table at his advisors.
The man from the space agency shook his head. “No, sir, space flight carries an inherent danger and we are simply not prepared to advise a rushed launch at this time.”
Before they got bogged down too much in the safety, or not, of the US space shuttle program, CJ spoke again, “The Colonials are offering to ferry our people up in their Raptors. The general consensus is that we should probably leave the space flight to those who do it on a more regular basis.”
“How would our people return to Earth should there be a problem?”
“They couldn’t.” CJ paused a beat to let the point sink in. “We would have to rely on the good graces of the Colonials.”
... to be continued ...
Next Chapter: Part XII
Author: Major Fischer
Universe: Battlestar Galactica/The West Wing Crossover
Pairings: Roslin/Adama, with some Roslin/Zarek
Notes: Many thanks to melyanna for inspiring me with her excellent (and highly recommended) west_gate series. This is a Facebook for those of you unfamiliar with one side of the crossover. Also thanks to alesia027 for her help making this more coherent and missfoxie for her thoughts on Laura Roslin as a political animal.
Chronology: This takes place in BSG's second season after Epiphanies but before Sacrefices, and in the West Wing's mid sixth season. Spoilers beyond that point are unlikely.
Summary: A few weeks before Christmas, late in the Bartlet Presidency, a fleet of interstellar refugees arrive at Earth and changed the world. But is it the end of the saga, or the beginning of a much more complicated one?
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X
The first round of negotiations for Colonial settlement and relief aid had served only to highlight the complexity of the situation. CJ had not been a big part of the Middle East peace talks earlier in the year at Camp David, but she imagined those could not have been half as bad as these were going to be.
As a pure refugee problem, the Colonials were relatively small in scale. There were tens of millions of displaced persons around the world. That said, refugee problems-even small ones-were rarely simple. The Palestinians, as an example, had fled their homes in 1948 after the founding of Israel. Almost sixty years later, the Palestinians still found themselves living in poverty-ridden camps, or living as second-class citizens in neighboring countries.
CJ stepped out into the cold, but fresh, winter air next to Charlie Young. “Do you think I can bum a cigarette from the President?”
“Mrs. Bartlet confiscated his latest pack this morning. I think he’s trying to bum one from his Secret Service detail.”
“He’s trying to get a cigarette from a bunch of people who run alongside cars for a living?”
“I didn’t say he was succeeding, just that he was trying. I didn’t know you smoked.” Charlie raised an eyebrow.
“Not since college I don’t, but I could really use one today.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. The Colonials want to settle as a group and I don’t blame them. They could probably fit inside a small city and be an independent or semi-independent nation state like Hong Kong or Singapore.”
“That sounds like a solution.”
“The problem is most countries aren’t too keen on the idea of dropping a sovereign nation on their doorstep, or giving up any territory.”
“I would have thought it would be easy to find a place for them in exchange for their technology.”
CJ shook her head. “There have been a few countries that have offered land in exchange for exclusive access to their technology, but no one else wants any one country to have exclusive access. Not to mention that the countries that have stepped up with generous land offers aren’t exactly places I’d like to send my worst enemy to live.”
“Like where?”
“Well, for an isolationist xenophobic country, North Korea has been acting very friendly.”
Charlie winced.
CJ nodded. “There are other concerns as well. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection…”
“NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection?”
“It’s nowhere near as cool as it sounds. Most of the time they make sure spacecraft are really really clean so they don't contaminate other worlds.”
“So they protect other planets and not this one.”
“Well, they protect this one too, but others more so.”
“Fun,” Charlie commented.
“Anyway, the Office of Planetary Protection has ganged up with the CDC and USAMRIID…”
“USAMRIID?” Charlie was normally good with government acronyms but lately there had been a lot that were new to him.
“The US Army Medical Research Institute into Infectious Diseases.”
“Now they sound like the bad guys in a bad science fiction movie.”
“I’ll make sure I tell them you said that, maybe they can give you Ebola,” CJ quipped.
“A bunch of microbiologists and virologists? Sounds like a gang I don’t want to tangle with.” Being from one of the worst sections of south DC, Charlie knew a great deal about street gangs.
“The army has tanks.”
“Point.”
“Anyway, OPP, CDC, and USAMRIID are all pretty pissed that we let the Colonial delegation land without putting them in quarantine. It seems that they're concerned that the ships in orbit are breeding grounds for disease, especially if they were never intended to hold as many people as they have been.”
“So they want us to just leave them up there?”
“Essentially. The requests by the Colonials haven’t exactly made people feel much better. Along with food and medicine, they’ve asked for a couple hundred nuclear warheads.”
Charlie whistled low. “The essentials of life.”
“Smiley - the North Korean ambassador - wants to give the warheads to them…in exchange for some space ships.”
“Let me go find you that cigarette…”
**~**~**
Starbuck walked past the row of US Air Force Security police, saluted the Colonial Marines standing guard and into the area of Andrews Air Force Base that they had taken to calling ‘Little Caprica.’ It wasn’t much, a hanger and a flight line that had four raptors parked out front. The one inside was still under repair after Racetrack’s not so gentle coming to earth. Chief Tyrol had been trying to repair the crashed bird for days, basically with bubble gum and shoelaces. The Air Force had given them access to their tools, but as the Chief had so blatantly pointed out, language and biology might be universal… but screwdrivers were not.
Kara watched him and Cally work from a distance for a bit before walking closer. “Still cursing out the Raptor?”
“I’m not cursing the Raptor, Captain. I’m cursing the someone who decided he should take apart a ship he didn’t know how to put back together.” Tyrol threw down a shop rag in disgust. “It’s going to take me at least a week to get her back up and flying.”
“I think you have all the time in the world for this, Chief. Things are going slow.”
He looked over at the pilot with a raised eyebrow. Presidential negotiations were way over his pay grade. “Something wrong, sir?”
Kara looked over her shoulder, making sure there wasn’t anyone else in earshot. “Did… did Sharon ever talk to you about Cylon religion?” It was an odd question, she knew.
The Chief shifted uncomfortably at the mention of Sharon, his one-time lover turned Cylon sleeper agent. “We never really talked about that sort of thing.” He smiled a little, picked up a tool, and went to work on the engine again. “We didn’t do a lot of talking to be honest.”
Galen Tyrol was confused and trying to stay focused. He had had trouble accepting the fact that he had fallen in love with a Cylon, and even Starbuck would normally have been sensitive enough not to bring her up. “It’s important, Chief.”
He cleaned the seven-prong screwdriver with his rag, lost in thought. “Sometimes, I guess. Why?”
Starbuck undid the top button of her blues and leaned against the crashed Raptor. “The President had me go to this religious service with her, with the Earth leader she's been dealing with. They're monotheists.”
Tyrol, the son of a priest, nodded. Monotheism wasn’t widespread in their society, but it wasn’t unheard of. There were places in the Colonies where one of the gods of Kobol was worshipped solely above all others. “And?”
“And they sounded a lot like the Cylon I interrogated six months ago. God is love, He has a plan for us all, and humanity is created in His image…”
“No frakking?”
She nodded and folded her arms. She was uncharacteristically silent. “Do you think we’d know if we had landed on the Cylon homeworld?”
**~**~**
Tom Zarek watched Laura Roslin from across the ornately decorated mural room. The President was staring at the detail in one of the paintings, leaving him only the back of her head and shoulders to read for body language. They had both sat through the marathon-long meeting with a growing feeling that the governments on Earth were perfectly willing to use them as a game piece in their own politics.
“This could go on forever, while the conditions in the Fleet just get worse.” After all, Tom was an expert on civil unrest, and he knew better than most what could lead to violence.
“I think we need to invite a group of them up to the Fleet so they can see conditions for themselves,” Roslin said without ever turning around, “give them a tour of some of the ships, a demonstration of the Galactica’s capabilities…”
“That may scare them. I’m no military man, but from what Lee Adama has told me they don’t appear to have any significant space weapons capability.” Roslin didn’t say anything in response to that, and Zarek moved closer to her, understanding dawning. “That’s your intention.”
Laura turned around and on one of those rare occasions, he could see her eyes behind the glasses, and they sent a shiver down his back. “A demonstration of our desperation might push the settlement talks along a bit, yes. And if it doesn’t, well, then we have hostages.”
He stared at her for a long time, before breaking out into a smile. “You never cease to amaze me.” Admiration was one way to describe what he felt for this woman, both for her intelligence, and for just how absolutely ruthless she could be. “This could backfire on us.”
“Are you asking to go back up to the Fleet, Mr. Zarek?” Her question almost a dare.
“I think I’d rather stay with you, Laura. I have a feeling you’d find a path through the underworld if you had to.”
**~**~**
“I’m not sure we can say no to the offer,” the Assistant Secretary of State said from across long dark wood the table. “As long as there are those at the negotiation table arguing a medical reason to deny the Colonials landing rights, and as long as the Colonials are arguing dire need, international law obligates us to send a medical evaluation team.”
Jed Bartlet had always hated the Situation Room. It was a cold tomb of a room in the basement of the White House, and he never was called here for good news. He had also never quite gotten over the feeling that as soon as he left the room the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to laugh at him. “International law covers space aliens?”
“It doesn’t foresee aliens exactly, sir. There are however, requirements when it comes to obligations under refugee treaties and genocide conventions,” the man from State confirmed.
Kate Harper broke in from down the table. “We aren’t sure that we want to turn them down, Mr. President. At the moment we have to rely on the Colonials for information about their capabilities. It might do us well to get someone onboard those ships to look around.”
“A spy?” Bartlet asked with a raised eyebrow.
“More like a liaison. There are military liaisons in embassies around the world and part of their jobs is to evaluate and report on the military capabilities of those countries. It’s more a 19th or early 20th Century means of intelligence gathering, but still entirely valid.”
“So along with this medical mission that Roslin has requested, we just stick a military officer in the batch? Don’t you think they’ll notice it?”
CJ spoke for the first time, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they expected it, sir. If we made it a little broader than a medical mission it might stick out less. A group of doctors from the CDC, NIH, and the World Health Organization so that the rest of the world doesn’t get in a tizzy…”
“And Commander Harper,” the President added looking down the table at Kate. “It’s your idea, and you have the kind of experience for the job.
A mixture of surprise and shock crossed her face for a moment before she nodded like a good sailor. “Aye-aye, sir.”
The President looked around the table again. “So we pile these people into a space shuttle, or what?”
CJ shook her head. “No, Sir, NASA informs me that the orbiters don’t have any means of landing on the Colonial vessels, nor the capacity to carry that many people.” She turned her head next to the slightly nervous looking man sitting next to her. “There are apparently safety concerns about the shuttle fleet.”
“New ones?” The President shot an incredulous look across the table at his advisors.
The man from the space agency shook his head. “No, sir, space flight carries an inherent danger and we are simply not prepared to advise a rushed launch at this time.”
Before they got bogged down too much in the safety, or not, of the US space shuttle program, CJ spoke again, “The Colonials are offering to ferry our people up in their Raptors. The general consensus is that we should probably leave the space flight to those who do it on a more regular basis.”
“How would our people return to Earth should there be a problem?”
“They couldn’t.” CJ paused a beat to let the point sink in. “We would have to rely on the good graces of the Colonials.”
... to be continued ...
Next Chapter: Part XII