Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 2
Title: Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 2
Word Count: 3,875
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
“Fleet Captain Daius’ scientists,” Mabuse said looking insufferably smug.
“Who?” Jos Kirkland said in confusion.
“Fleet Captain (Sciences) Daius in command of the Imperial parasite survey and science ship, Ankhoblan,” Isamu Mabuse replied, “which when translated literally from Ancient Imperial means--”
“Heaven’s embrace,” Harriet said hoarsely in sudden recognition. “Khobl … Kobol!”
“Exactly, Captain,” Mabuse said. “Looking through our archives of Dahak’s files, we found that at the time of the mutiny, one ship had already gone down to the surface of Earth … Ankhoblan. Daius commanded of a team of scientists--anthropologists, biologists, botanists, geologists et cetera, whose job was to catalogue and report on the Earth’s indigenous population and biosphere for the Imperial University of Birhat’s Star-Brethren Project. The purpose of the Project was to track the development of the different human worlds that had been re-seeded after previous Achuultani attacks. Daius’ people had orders to study the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon societies and collect specimens.”
There were a few moments of pregnant silence as they absorbed the incredible information. “When Daius failed to report to him after the mutiny, Dahak assumed that Anu had destroyed the Ankhoblan the same way he had all the loyalist lifeboats,” Mabuse continued. “You see, Daius would have been loyal; he was Captain Druaga’s best friend and moreover, married to Druaga's younger sister, Ehra. Furthermore, Ankhoblan was a science ship--it had some weapons and shielding, but nothing that could stand up to a battleship armed with gravitonic warheads and other goodies.
“What happened next is pure speculation on our part,” Mabuse said with another infectious smile. “But we think that being a shrewd customer and seeing what a despicable, genocidal madman Anu was, Daius and the crew of Ankhoblan immediately went to ground.”
“Then why didn’t they contact Nergal?” Collette asked.
It was Harriet who answered her. “Because right after the mutiny, they wouldn’t have taken the chance,” she replied. “That Grandfather Horus had the battleship Nergal would have immediately identified him as a mutineer. I doubt they even knew that he’d turned against Anu.”
“Harry is undoubtedly correct,” Mabuse said. “We think that they went into stasis, probably emerging--rather like the crew of Nergal did--every couple of thousand years to get the lay of the land and see what Anu was up to. They would have kept their heads down, but we also believe that they continued their original mission, collecting specimens from the indigenous populations of Earth, and sampling from as many major time periods as they could.”
“Come again?” Kirkland said in disbelief.
“Think Jos,” Lena Andruskevich said. “You have a language that’s based on 18th Century B.C. Phoenician, mixed with ancient Greek, Persian, Etruscan and Aramaic--and even healthy doses of ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Hindi, plus elements that suggest bits of very early Norse and Germanic languages!”
“Furthermore,” said Mabuse, “look at those faces.” He filled the holographic display with hundreds of pictures. “I’d say that every major race and cultural sub-group from Earth is represented among these Kobolian Colonists. These faces could be the faces you would see in any reasonably cosmopolitan and multi-cultural city on Earth, or anywhere else in the Empire today for that matter. We think they figured out a way to get off Earth and turned Ankhoblan into a veritable Ark, with the very purpose of saving as much of humanity as they could.”
“Explain,” Harriet demanded. “How could they have left the planet? When? Dahak--”
“Yes, let’s not forget Dahak,” Mabuse said with a smirk. “They would have seen everything Anu put in Earth’s sky shot down ruthlessly and it’s quite possible that any probes they’d sent up had also been shot down because Dahak assumed they came from Anu or his sympathizers. Now, what would that have said to Daius?” he asked rhetorically. “Communications was one of the first things Anu knocked out during the mutiny, so they couldn’t have known what had happened up there and there was no way to know what Fleet Captain Druaga had programmed into the central computer or even if the programming was still functioning. The only things they knew were that Dahak immediately shot down anything sent out into space and that Anu killed anyone with any hint of Imperial technology.
“Well, taking into account what we could glean about the Colonists’ culture and history from those vids,” he continued, “and adding some judicious speculations of our own from the evidence available, we believe that Daius’ group was active in and around the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean on and off for millennia. However, they obviously travelled extensively sampling the Earth’s populations, probably when Anu’s activity was low after he built his stronghold in Antarctica. Then approximately thirty-five hundred years ago something happened to make it possible for them to leave Earth without attracting Dahak’s attention.”
“And what would that be?” Tamman asked. Harriet could feel the anticipation in the room as they waited expectantly for Mabuse’s answer.
“We all agree that it would have to have been a catastrophe of nuclear proportions to blind Dahak’s sensors,” he said. “Checking through Dahak’s files and correlating it with Earth’s historical records a couple of events do stand out. One of them is the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., which destroyed Pompeii, spread ash around the world and completely blinded Dahak’s sensors for almost thirty minutes, but that event happened far too late to correspond with our timeframe. Then there was an event Dahak recorded in 9026 B.C., which scrambled his sensors for about an hour. It appears that Anu used a gravitonic warhead against something in the Atlantic Ocean about one hundred kilometres outside the Strait of Gibraltar. Now we know it wasn’t Nergal, because at that point the ship was hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest and everyone on board had gone into stasis about two hundred years earlier.
“However, if you correlate this event with Plato’s account of the sinking of the island of Atlantis just outside the Pillars of Hercules--” There was a collective gasp of comprehension as another wide smile split Mabuse’s features. “I think we now know the source of that enduring legend of a golden city sinking beneath the waves because of the wrath of some vengeful god,” he laughed. “Curiously, this also fits with some speculations that the Greek Pantheon of Gods may have been appropriated from an older culture--maybe the Atlanteans, who perhaps called their most powerful patrons by their original Imperial names; Daius, Ehra, Posedawone, Damate, Haesta, Haidous, Asrhedike, Ataeona, Apellon, Artema, Ehremi, Ehrion, Daiwonesos and Ehvaistos.”
He filled the holographic display again, this time with drawings and bronze statues with a very familiar look to them. “I do know that Horus was very interested in the genesis of the Greek Gods when the inhabitants of Nergal woke about twenty-five hundred years ago, but if we’re correct, by that time Daius and Ankhoblan had already left Earth and they’d simply missed each other. Anyway, like the Ancient Greeks, these Kobolian Colonials worship their Lords of Kobol and call them by the familiar names of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Ares, Dionysus and Hephaestus. Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, had been one of the original twelve Olympian Gods, but she was later replaced by Dionysus, the God of Wine.”
Again there was dead silence for a few minutes before Tamman said, “But the Atlantis incident was too early to have been the one used to escape Earth.”
“But the volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini approximately thirty-five hundred years ago fits perfectly,” Harriet said smiling.
“Yes it certainly does, Captain,” Mabuse chuckled. “Remember, they had Posedawone, Dahak’s premiere expert on geology and planetary science, with them. He would have known the significance of such an eruption where a ship’s sensors were concerned. In fact, I would hazard a guess that it was probably witnessing an earlier eruption that gave them the idea. If they timed it right, it is possible that they could have ridden the ash plume straight up into the atmosphere and if they were on the side of the planet facing directly away from the moon--or rather Dahak disguised as the moon--then it is possible that they could have executed a slingshot away from Earth and in that short window, while his sensors were blinded from the blast, get away.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how they got all the way out here in a ship without an interstellar drive, or why,” Harriet said more soberly. “Why wouldn’t they have headed for the heart of the old Imperium?”
“We don’t know,” he replied, the first hint of frustration reaching his eyes. “Perhaps they were able to rig something up after leaving the Sol system. After all, Alpha Centauri is only four light years from Earth and would only have taken about eight to ten years at the half light speed maximum for sublight drives like Ankhoblan’s. Daius had some of the Imperium’s finest scientific minds in people like Ehvaistos, Ataeona and Posedawone and not to mention their junior officers. As for returning to the Imperium--”
He gave an eloquent shrug. “Perhaps having heard not a peep out of the Imperium for forty-five thousand years to that point, they concluded--quite rightly--that it had collapsed and wasn’t worth their time going all the way to Birhat to find out,” he said quietly. “Maybe they decided that it was best to get the hell out of Dodge while the getting was good. Furthermore, this area is so far out towards the Galactic Rim, off the traditional vectors of attack for the Achuultani, maybe they figured that it would be enough to protect their people from such attack.”
“And perhaps it was,” Lena Andruskevich said ruefully, “but it was not enough to protect their people from themselves. Captain,” she said looking directly at Harriet, “from what we’ve gathered, it seems that these Kobolians went the way of the Achuultani and created sentient computers, artificial intelligences they call Cylons to do all their dirty work … including fighting their wars for them.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Major Diana "Kali" Ingram--commander of Herdan's fighter wings--swore under her breath.
“Are you sure, Dr. Andruskevich?” Brashan, Tamman’s Narhani executive officer asked. After the war, Brashan's father, Brashieel, was the first Achuultani to accept the hand of friendship that humanity had extended to their ancient enemy.
“Quite sure,” she replied grimly to the powerful centaur-like alien. “However, instead of protecting the Kobolians to death by turning them into slaves and manipulating them into killing every other sentient in the galaxy as the Achuultani Master Computers had done, fifty years ago these Cylons simply rebelled, turned on their human masters and tried to wipe them out. The humans fought back and the wars ended in a draw about forty years ago. The Cylons withdrew and were not heard from again. Then about two years ago, they returned and nuked all twelve of the Kobolian Colonies to radioactive wastelands in one massive surprise attack.”
You could almost hear the proverbial pin drop as Harriet, Tamman and their senior staffs tried to comprehend the horror.
"These people are refugees, captains," Mabuse said, “literally the last of their people--less than fifty thousand out of over forty billion. Apparently the Cylons came up with a bunch of new cyborg models that could imitate humans--infiltrate their society and sabotage them from within before the Kobolians even knew what hit them."
Another set of images filled the display. “As far as we can tell, these are their leaders,” he said. Highlighting a craggy-faced, older man in a uniform that wasn’t all that dissimilar from Harriet’s own, Mabuse continued. “This is Admiral William Adama, commander of the fleet and the Battlestar Galactica. Apparently Galactica is about fifty years old, a veteran of the previous Cylon wars, and had been slated for decommissioning when the attacks occurred. And Adama himself was a bit of a throw-back due for retirement. The reason that his was the one ship that the Cylons couldn’t attack cybernetically is because he wouldn’t allow any integrated networks on board the vessel.”
A handsome, golden-haired young man was highlighted next. “This is Commander Lee Adama, commander of the Battlestar Pegasus and Adama’s son. Pegasus is a newer ship than Galactica and is a recent addition to the refugee fleet. It had been commanded originally by an Admiral Helena Cain, but she was assassinated by a Cylon prisoner shortly after they joined the fleet. Incidentally, Admiral Adama had almost suffered the same fate a couple of months before Cain showed up, when a Cylon infiltrator posing as one of his pilots tried to kill him. Anyway, Lee Adama started out as commander of Galactica’s fighter squadrons--and ladies, apparently his call-sign is Apollo for a good reason.” There was a roar of laughter at his quip.
The smarmy man from the earlier video banished Harriet’s good mood for some reason she couldn’t put into words. “This is their current President, Dr. Gaius Baltar,” Mabuse said. “As far as we can tell, he was the Vice President and is their resident Cylon expert, as his area of study seems to be computer technology and cybernetics. He won the recent election over the previous President, Dr. Laura Roslin,” he said highlighting Baltar’s opponent. The older woman’s intelligent green eyes were incredibly tired, yet they compelled Harriet’s attention.
“And what’s her area of expertise,” Collette quipped.
“Early childhood education,” Andruskevich deadpanned, eyes twinkling merrily. “She was a schoolteacher.”
“A schoolteacher?” Jos Kirkland repeated in disbelief.
“Kindergarten apparently, from what we could learn,” Lena Andruskevich chuckled.
“Let me get this straight,” Kirkland said. “Their President was a bloody kindergarten teacher?”
“Hey, you try dealing with a classroom full of fractious five-year-olds on a daily basis,” she replied still grinning as Harriet burst out laughing again. “I'd say it was an excellent training ground for a politician, and according to the few older media reports, she was a pretty good president. She did a lot to keep the fleet together and going over the first year--and she did it all while fighting terminal breast cancer.” There was again a moment of silence as they regarded the woman’s image. “You see, Roslin was the Secretary of Education before the Colonies were nuked. Only she survived because at the time she’d been representing the government at Galactica’s decommissioning ceremony--apparently the ship was slated to become a floating museum under the purview of the Department of Education. She was forty-third in line to the presidency, but when the dust settled, the whole enchilada was dumped on her lap.”
“But apparently, even half-dead on cancer meds,” Mabuse continued, eyes alight with amusement and admiration, “Roslin was still hell on wheels. In fact, just before he was shot by the Cylon spy, Adama threw her in Galactica’s brig over a debacle involving one Lieutenant Kara Thrace, call-sign Starbuck.”
“The leader of their military threw their civilian leader in the brig?” Harriet said in disbelief.
An impish, insouciant young blonde with laughing eyes floated to the front of the holotank. “It seems that on the eve of an important offensive against the Cylons, Roslin went over Adama’s head and sent Starbuck on a suicide mission back to Caprica, the nuked-out, Cylon-infested lead colony, all on the strength of a vision she had when under the influence of cancer meds. Starbuck was to retrieve an ancient artefact called the Arrow of Apollo, which according to Roslin would open the Tomb of Athena on the newly rediscovered planet of Kobol. Remember how Baltar sneered at her for claiming to be the foretold Pythian leader?” Mabuse asked.
Harriet nodded as he continued. “Well, apparently this was all foretold in one of their sacred texts. Now on Earth, at the Oracle of Delphi, the women who tended the Oracle and spoke its prophecies were given the title of “Pythia”. In the Kobolian Scrolls of Pythia, it predicts that at the end of the world, a leader dying from a wasting disease would lead the survivors back to Kobol and find the directions that would lead them to the Thirteenth Colony, Earth.
“Well, you can imagine how that probably sat with an old soldier like Adama,” Mabuse chuckled. “Furthermore, Starbuck was his best fighter pilot and practically his daughter--she’d been engaged to his younger son, but apparently the boy had died in an accident a few years earlier.”
Tamman shook his head. “I can’t decide if this is a bloody tragedy or a freaking comedy,” he said in disbelief.
Mabuse laughed. “It gets better,” he said. “In the middle of all this, Lee Adama mutinied against his father when the troops were sent to arrest Roslin and both were summarily tossed in the brig. However, the mission against the Cylons went off without a hitch and they blew up one of enemy’s mother ships. Then in the middle of the celebrations, the young woman who delivered the nuke turned around and put two rounds into Adama’s gut right there on his bridge.” He continued after a moment of silence. “Anyway, while in the brig, it all came out about Roslin being the foretold leader--wait, have we told you about the Quorum yet?”
“The what?” Tamman asked.
“Ah … it seems to be sort of a Senate,” Mabuse explained. “The Quorum of Twelve is a body in which there is a representative from each of the twelve colonies. It's supposed to function as a counter weight against the elected government--the President and her Cabinet. Well, they got wind of Roslin being the Prophet and started demanding that Adama's second in command, a Colonel Saul Tigh, release her. In the meantime, they had left Kobol and Tigh had declared martial law. Then everything went apeshit--if you'll pardon the expression ma'am--when the Cylons attacked."
Harriet chuckled as he continued. "The next thing we know, Roslin and Lee Adama had broken out of the brig and went on the run with one of the Quorum members, one Mr. Thomas Zarek--" He was a handsome man, Harriet decided, but his dark eyes were hard and dangerous. "Zarek is a former prisoner, a terrorist bomber who had been on a prison barge taking prisoners to their parole hearings when the Cylons nuked the colonies."
"They let a former prisoner--a terrorist bomber--be a senator?" Diana Ingram said in obvious disgust.
"He'd served his time and according to their laws, could be a citizen again," Andruskevich replied. "As such, he became the duly elected representative of the Sagittaron Colonial faction of the refugee fleet when they voted him in--but right now he serves as Baltar’s Vice President."
"Oh, how very progressive of them," Ingram said sarcastically. "Wait a minute … Sagittaron … Caprica?
Andruskevich laughed quietly. "We were wondering how long it would take someone to make the connection," she said. "As if there wasn't enough evidence to show that they originally came from Earth, the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were named after the twelve constellations that make up the Zodiac; Caprica, Aquaria, Picon, Arilon, Tauron, Geminon, Canceron, Leonis, Virgon, Libron, Scorpia and Sagittaron. Why? We haven't a clue."
"But their names are so … so, well--Terran-sounding," Kirkland said in confusion. "Really, William Adama, Laura Roslin, Lee, Kara, Saul?"
"Not really," Andruskevich said with a wide smile. "Remember, these people were taken from different regions of Earth. "William is from an old Germanic root, Wolhelm, probably passed down from ancient Cyrillic--and the Kobolians pronounce it rather like Wehlehem; it's our translation program that renders it to the English equivalent, William. And Laura is an early alternate form of the rather ancient name Laurel, for the bay laurel tree, probably passed down from ancient Etruscan and they tend to pronounce it Laawrah, rather similar to the way modern Italians would--with the emphasis on the first syllable. Saul and Adama are old Hebrew names; Kara and Thomas are names of Greek origin, while Lee could have come from that smattering of Chinese or any number of other roots, as it's a fairly simple phoneme."
"Anyway," Mabuse said. "Roslin and Lee Adama escaped back to Kobol, taking about a third of their fleet with them. When Starbuck returned with the Arrow of Apollo, they went down to the planet, which by this time was also infested with Cylons also looking for the map to Earth. Meanwhile, Adama recovered and decided to go back for them--heal the breach, so to speak. The long and the short of it, he and Roslin apparently found the Tomb of Athena and opened it, retrieving the directions to Earth. They all returned to the fleet and lived happily ever after with food shortages, black market thugs and terrorist madness, until Baltar became President, convinced the populace that they'd finally outrun the Cylons and settled them all on that planet."
"And the dumb-asses actually fell for that?" Ingram's expression of disgust said exactly what she thought of civilian short-sightedness and lack of tactical forethought. Diana Ingram was a born soldier; one of the many children left orphaned by Achuultani war when Earth's planetary shield failed during the bombardment, she had had a hard life before she’d found family again in the bosom of the Imperial Military. "Why didn't Adama stop them?"
"I doubt he had enough people or firepower to stop fifty thousand people, Diana," Harriet said.
"Well he threw Roslin in the brig," Ingram retorted. "And she sounds a lot saner in comparison--even hopped up on drugs. Why didn't he simply throw this Baltar's ass in the brig when he started spewing that nonsense?"
"I think his treatment of Roslin was exactly why his hands were tied with Baltar," Mabuse said soberly. "Throwing Roslin in the brig … though from what we can tell, she went willingly so that there wouldn't be bloodshed … That act was in effect a military coup. It was something he'd done in anger--he had provocation, mind you--but I don't think it was something he could allow to happen again."
"He's an honourable man," Andruskevich said quietly. "In fact, in one of the last transmissions we snagged, when it was obvious that the elections were going south for Roslin, it appears that her team tried to steal the election with some "ballot irregularities" as Zarek called them to the media. We don't know that Roslin knew about it--though being a shrewd customer, she probably did--but what is fairly certain is that Adama was the one who put a stop to it."
"And what are the odds that these Cylons won't find them?" Ingram said angrily.
"Not good," Mabuse replied. "There are still Cylon spies hidden within their population. You can be sure that they're working to alert their ships of the Colonials' location, regardless of any protection the molecular cloud might provide."
"And remember what attracted our attention to this sector in the first place, Diana," Harriet said.
"A nuclear explosion."
Harriet held her gaze steadily. "A nuclear explosion that could have been detected by the Cylons," she said.
Part 3
Word Count: 3,875
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
“Fleet Captain Daius’ scientists,” Mabuse said looking insufferably smug.
“Who?” Jos Kirkland said in confusion.
“Fleet Captain (Sciences) Daius in command of the Imperial parasite survey and science ship, Ankhoblan,” Isamu Mabuse replied, “which when translated literally from Ancient Imperial means--”
“Heaven’s embrace,” Harriet said hoarsely in sudden recognition. “Khobl … Kobol!”
“Exactly, Captain,” Mabuse said. “Looking through our archives of Dahak’s files, we found that at the time of the mutiny, one ship had already gone down to the surface of Earth … Ankhoblan. Daius commanded of a team of scientists--anthropologists, biologists, botanists, geologists et cetera, whose job was to catalogue and report on the Earth’s indigenous population and biosphere for the Imperial University of Birhat’s Star-Brethren Project. The purpose of the Project was to track the development of the different human worlds that had been re-seeded after previous Achuultani attacks. Daius’ people had orders to study the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon societies and collect specimens.”
There were a few moments of pregnant silence as they absorbed the incredible information. “When Daius failed to report to him after the mutiny, Dahak assumed that Anu had destroyed the Ankhoblan the same way he had all the loyalist lifeboats,” Mabuse continued. “You see, Daius would have been loyal; he was Captain Druaga’s best friend and moreover, married to Druaga's younger sister, Ehra. Furthermore, Ankhoblan was a science ship--it had some weapons and shielding, but nothing that could stand up to a battleship armed with gravitonic warheads and other goodies.
“What happened next is pure speculation on our part,” Mabuse said with another infectious smile. “But we think that being a shrewd customer and seeing what a despicable, genocidal madman Anu was, Daius and the crew of Ankhoblan immediately went to ground.”
“Then why didn’t they contact Nergal?” Collette asked.
It was Harriet who answered her. “Because right after the mutiny, they wouldn’t have taken the chance,” she replied. “That Grandfather Horus had the battleship Nergal would have immediately identified him as a mutineer. I doubt they even knew that he’d turned against Anu.”
“Harry is undoubtedly correct,” Mabuse said. “We think that they went into stasis, probably emerging--rather like the crew of Nergal did--every couple of thousand years to get the lay of the land and see what Anu was up to. They would have kept their heads down, but we also believe that they continued their original mission, collecting specimens from the indigenous populations of Earth, and sampling from as many major time periods as they could.”
“Come again?” Kirkland said in disbelief.
“Think Jos,” Lena Andruskevich said. “You have a language that’s based on 18th Century B.C. Phoenician, mixed with ancient Greek, Persian, Etruscan and Aramaic--and even healthy doses of ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Hindi, plus elements that suggest bits of very early Norse and Germanic languages!”
“Furthermore,” said Mabuse, “look at those faces.” He filled the holographic display with hundreds of pictures. “I’d say that every major race and cultural sub-group from Earth is represented among these Kobolian Colonists. These faces could be the faces you would see in any reasonably cosmopolitan and multi-cultural city on Earth, or anywhere else in the Empire today for that matter. We think they figured out a way to get off Earth and turned Ankhoblan into a veritable Ark, with the very purpose of saving as much of humanity as they could.”
“Explain,” Harriet demanded. “How could they have left the planet? When? Dahak--”
“Yes, let’s not forget Dahak,” Mabuse said with a smirk. “They would have seen everything Anu put in Earth’s sky shot down ruthlessly and it’s quite possible that any probes they’d sent up had also been shot down because Dahak assumed they came from Anu or his sympathizers. Now, what would that have said to Daius?” he asked rhetorically. “Communications was one of the first things Anu knocked out during the mutiny, so they couldn’t have known what had happened up there and there was no way to know what Fleet Captain Druaga had programmed into the central computer or even if the programming was still functioning. The only things they knew were that Dahak immediately shot down anything sent out into space and that Anu killed anyone with any hint of Imperial technology.
“Well, taking into account what we could glean about the Colonists’ culture and history from those vids,” he continued, “and adding some judicious speculations of our own from the evidence available, we believe that Daius’ group was active in and around the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean on and off for millennia. However, they obviously travelled extensively sampling the Earth’s populations, probably when Anu’s activity was low after he built his stronghold in Antarctica. Then approximately thirty-five hundred years ago something happened to make it possible for them to leave Earth without attracting Dahak’s attention.”
“And what would that be?” Tamman asked. Harriet could feel the anticipation in the room as they waited expectantly for Mabuse’s answer.
“We all agree that it would have to have been a catastrophe of nuclear proportions to blind Dahak’s sensors,” he said. “Checking through Dahak’s files and correlating it with Earth’s historical records a couple of events do stand out. One of them is the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., which destroyed Pompeii, spread ash around the world and completely blinded Dahak’s sensors for almost thirty minutes, but that event happened far too late to correspond with our timeframe. Then there was an event Dahak recorded in 9026 B.C., which scrambled his sensors for about an hour. It appears that Anu used a gravitonic warhead against something in the Atlantic Ocean about one hundred kilometres outside the Strait of Gibraltar. Now we know it wasn’t Nergal, because at that point the ship was hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest and everyone on board had gone into stasis about two hundred years earlier.
“However, if you correlate this event with Plato’s account of the sinking of the island of Atlantis just outside the Pillars of Hercules--” There was a collective gasp of comprehension as another wide smile split Mabuse’s features. “I think we now know the source of that enduring legend of a golden city sinking beneath the waves because of the wrath of some vengeful god,” he laughed. “Curiously, this also fits with some speculations that the Greek Pantheon of Gods may have been appropriated from an older culture--maybe the Atlanteans, who perhaps called their most powerful patrons by their original Imperial names; Daius, Ehra, Posedawone, Damate, Haesta, Haidous, Asrhedike, Ataeona, Apellon, Artema, Ehremi, Ehrion, Daiwonesos and Ehvaistos.”
He filled the holographic display again, this time with drawings and bronze statues with a very familiar look to them. “I do know that Horus was very interested in the genesis of the Greek Gods when the inhabitants of Nergal woke about twenty-five hundred years ago, but if we’re correct, by that time Daius and Ankhoblan had already left Earth and they’d simply missed each other. Anyway, like the Ancient Greeks, these Kobolian Colonials worship their Lords of Kobol and call them by the familiar names of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Ares, Dionysus and Hephaestus. Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, had been one of the original twelve Olympian Gods, but she was later replaced by Dionysus, the God of Wine.”
Again there was dead silence for a few minutes before Tamman said, “But the Atlantis incident was too early to have been the one used to escape Earth.”
“But the volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini approximately thirty-five hundred years ago fits perfectly,” Harriet said smiling.
“Yes it certainly does, Captain,” Mabuse chuckled. “Remember, they had Posedawone, Dahak’s premiere expert on geology and planetary science, with them. He would have known the significance of such an eruption where a ship’s sensors were concerned. In fact, I would hazard a guess that it was probably witnessing an earlier eruption that gave them the idea. If they timed it right, it is possible that they could have ridden the ash plume straight up into the atmosphere and if they were on the side of the planet facing directly away from the moon--or rather Dahak disguised as the moon--then it is possible that they could have executed a slingshot away from Earth and in that short window, while his sensors were blinded from the blast, get away.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how they got all the way out here in a ship without an interstellar drive, or why,” Harriet said more soberly. “Why wouldn’t they have headed for the heart of the old Imperium?”
“We don’t know,” he replied, the first hint of frustration reaching his eyes. “Perhaps they were able to rig something up after leaving the Sol system. After all, Alpha Centauri is only four light years from Earth and would only have taken about eight to ten years at the half light speed maximum for sublight drives like Ankhoblan’s. Daius had some of the Imperium’s finest scientific minds in people like Ehvaistos, Ataeona and Posedawone and not to mention their junior officers. As for returning to the Imperium--”
He gave an eloquent shrug. “Perhaps having heard not a peep out of the Imperium for forty-five thousand years to that point, they concluded--quite rightly--that it had collapsed and wasn’t worth their time going all the way to Birhat to find out,” he said quietly. “Maybe they decided that it was best to get the hell out of Dodge while the getting was good. Furthermore, this area is so far out towards the Galactic Rim, off the traditional vectors of attack for the Achuultani, maybe they figured that it would be enough to protect their people from such attack.”
“And perhaps it was,” Lena Andruskevich said ruefully, “but it was not enough to protect their people from themselves. Captain,” she said looking directly at Harriet, “from what we’ve gathered, it seems that these Kobolians went the way of the Achuultani and created sentient computers, artificial intelligences they call Cylons to do all their dirty work … including fighting their wars for them.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Major Diana "Kali" Ingram--commander of Herdan's fighter wings--swore under her breath.
“Are you sure, Dr. Andruskevich?” Brashan, Tamman’s Narhani executive officer asked. After the war, Brashan's father, Brashieel, was the first Achuultani to accept the hand of friendship that humanity had extended to their ancient enemy.
“Quite sure,” she replied grimly to the powerful centaur-like alien. “However, instead of protecting the Kobolians to death by turning them into slaves and manipulating them into killing every other sentient in the galaxy as the Achuultani Master Computers had done, fifty years ago these Cylons simply rebelled, turned on their human masters and tried to wipe them out. The humans fought back and the wars ended in a draw about forty years ago. The Cylons withdrew and were not heard from again. Then about two years ago, they returned and nuked all twelve of the Kobolian Colonies to radioactive wastelands in one massive surprise attack.”
You could almost hear the proverbial pin drop as Harriet, Tamman and their senior staffs tried to comprehend the horror.
"These people are refugees, captains," Mabuse said, “literally the last of their people--less than fifty thousand out of over forty billion. Apparently the Cylons came up with a bunch of new cyborg models that could imitate humans--infiltrate their society and sabotage them from within before the Kobolians even knew what hit them."
Another set of images filled the display. “As far as we can tell, these are their leaders,” he said. Highlighting a craggy-faced, older man in a uniform that wasn’t all that dissimilar from Harriet’s own, Mabuse continued. “This is Admiral William Adama, commander of the fleet and the Battlestar Galactica. Apparently Galactica is about fifty years old, a veteran of the previous Cylon wars, and had been slated for decommissioning when the attacks occurred. And Adama himself was a bit of a throw-back due for retirement. The reason that his was the one ship that the Cylons couldn’t attack cybernetically is because he wouldn’t allow any integrated networks on board the vessel.”
A handsome, golden-haired young man was highlighted next. “This is Commander Lee Adama, commander of the Battlestar Pegasus and Adama’s son. Pegasus is a newer ship than Galactica and is a recent addition to the refugee fleet. It had been commanded originally by an Admiral Helena Cain, but she was assassinated by a Cylon prisoner shortly after they joined the fleet. Incidentally, Admiral Adama had almost suffered the same fate a couple of months before Cain showed up, when a Cylon infiltrator posing as one of his pilots tried to kill him. Anyway, Lee Adama started out as commander of Galactica’s fighter squadrons--and ladies, apparently his call-sign is Apollo for a good reason.” There was a roar of laughter at his quip.
The smarmy man from the earlier video banished Harriet’s good mood for some reason she couldn’t put into words. “This is their current President, Dr. Gaius Baltar,” Mabuse said. “As far as we can tell, he was the Vice President and is their resident Cylon expert, as his area of study seems to be computer technology and cybernetics. He won the recent election over the previous President, Dr. Laura Roslin,” he said highlighting Baltar’s opponent. The older woman’s intelligent green eyes were incredibly tired, yet they compelled Harriet’s attention.
“And what’s her area of expertise,” Collette quipped.
“Early childhood education,” Andruskevich deadpanned, eyes twinkling merrily. “She was a schoolteacher.”
“A schoolteacher?” Jos Kirkland repeated in disbelief.
“Kindergarten apparently, from what we could learn,” Lena Andruskevich chuckled.
“Let me get this straight,” Kirkland said. “Their President was a bloody kindergarten teacher?”
“Hey, you try dealing with a classroom full of fractious five-year-olds on a daily basis,” she replied still grinning as Harriet burst out laughing again. “I'd say it was an excellent training ground for a politician, and according to the few older media reports, she was a pretty good president. She did a lot to keep the fleet together and going over the first year--and she did it all while fighting terminal breast cancer.” There was again a moment of silence as they regarded the woman’s image. “You see, Roslin was the Secretary of Education before the Colonies were nuked. Only she survived because at the time she’d been representing the government at Galactica’s decommissioning ceremony--apparently the ship was slated to become a floating museum under the purview of the Department of Education. She was forty-third in line to the presidency, but when the dust settled, the whole enchilada was dumped on her lap.”
“But apparently, even half-dead on cancer meds,” Mabuse continued, eyes alight with amusement and admiration, “Roslin was still hell on wheels. In fact, just before he was shot by the Cylon spy, Adama threw her in Galactica’s brig over a debacle involving one Lieutenant Kara Thrace, call-sign Starbuck.”
“The leader of their military threw their civilian leader in the brig?” Harriet said in disbelief.
An impish, insouciant young blonde with laughing eyes floated to the front of the holotank. “It seems that on the eve of an important offensive against the Cylons, Roslin went over Adama’s head and sent Starbuck on a suicide mission back to Caprica, the nuked-out, Cylon-infested lead colony, all on the strength of a vision she had when under the influence of cancer meds. Starbuck was to retrieve an ancient artefact called the Arrow of Apollo, which according to Roslin would open the Tomb of Athena on the newly rediscovered planet of Kobol. Remember how Baltar sneered at her for claiming to be the foretold Pythian leader?” Mabuse asked.
Harriet nodded as he continued. “Well, apparently this was all foretold in one of their sacred texts. Now on Earth, at the Oracle of Delphi, the women who tended the Oracle and spoke its prophecies were given the title of “Pythia”. In the Kobolian Scrolls of Pythia, it predicts that at the end of the world, a leader dying from a wasting disease would lead the survivors back to Kobol and find the directions that would lead them to the Thirteenth Colony, Earth.
“Well, you can imagine how that probably sat with an old soldier like Adama,” Mabuse chuckled. “Furthermore, Starbuck was his best fighter pilot and practically his daughter--she’d been engaged to his younger son, but apparently the boy had died in an accident a few years earlier.”
Tamman shook his head. “I can’t decide if this is a bloody tragedy or a freaking comedy,” he said in disbelief.
Mabuse laughed. “It gets better,” he said. “In the middle of all this, Lee Adama mutinied against his father when the troops were sent to arrest Roslin and both were summarily tossed in the brig. However, the mission against the Cylons went off without a hitch and they blew up one of enemy’s mother ships. Then in the middle of the celebrations, the young woman who delivered the nuke turned around and put two rounds into Adama’s gut right there on his bridge.” He continued after a moment of silence. “Anyway, while in the brig, it all came out about Roslin being the foretold leader--wait, have we told you about the Quorum yet?”
“The what?” Tamman asked.
“Ah … it seems to be sort of a Senate,” Mabuse explained. “The Quorum of Twelve is a body in which there is a representative from each of the twelve colonies. It's supposed to function as a counter weight against the elected government--the President and her Cabinet. Well, they got wind of Roslin being the Prophet and started demanding that Adama's second in command, a Colonel Saul Tigh, release her. In the meantime, they had left Kobol and Tigh had declared martial law. Then everything went apeshit--if you'll pardon the expression ma'am--when the Cylons attacked."
Harriet chuckled as he continued. "The next thing we know, Roslin and Lee Adama had broken out of the brig and went on the run with one of the Quorum members, one Mr. Thomas Zarek--" He was a handsome man, Harriet decided, but his dark eyes were hard and dangerous. "Zarek is a former prisoner, a terrorist bomber who had been on a prison barge taking prisoners to their parole hearings when the Cylons nuked the colonies."
"They let a former prisoner--a terrorist bomber--be a senator?" Diana Ingram said in obvious disgust.
"He'd served his time and according to their laws, could be a citizen again," Andruskevich replied. "As such, he became the duly elected representative of the Sagittaron Colonial faction of the refugee fleet when they voted him in--but right now he serves as Baltar’s Vice President."
"Oh, how very progressive of them," Ingram said sarcastically. "Wait a minute … Sagittaron … Caprica?
Andruskevich laughed quietly. "We were wondering how long it would take someone to make the connection," she said. "As if there wasn't enough evidence to show that they originally came from Earth, the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were named after the twelve constellations that make up the Zodiac; Caprica, Aquaria, Picon, Arilon, Tauron, Geminon, Canceron, Leonis, Virgon, Libron, Scorpia and Sagittaron. Why? We haven't a clue."
"But their names are so … so, well--Terran-sounding," Kirkland said in confusion. "Really, William Adama, Laura Roslin, Lee, Kara, Saul?"
"Not really," Andruskevich said with a wide smile. "Remember, these people were taken from different regions of Earth. "William is from an old Germanic root, Wolhelm, probably passed down from ancient Cyrillic--and the Kobolians pronounce it rather like Wehlehem; it's our translation program that renders it to the English equivalent, William. And Laura is an early alternate form of the rather ancient name Laurel, for the bay laurel tree, probably passed down from ancient Etruscan and they tend to pronounce it Laawrah, rather similar to the way modern Italians would--with the emphasis on the first syllable. Saul and Adama are old Hebrew names; Kara and Thomas are names of Greek origin, while Lee could have come from that smattering of Chinese or any number of other roots, as it's a fairly simple phoneme."
"Anyway," Mabuse said. "Roslin and Lee Adama escaped back to Kobol, taking about a third of their fleet with them. When Starbuck returned with the Arrow of Apollo, they went down to the planet, which by this time was also infested with Cylons also looking for the map to Earth. Meanwhile, Adama recovered and decided to go back for them--heal the breach, so to speak. The long and the short of it, he and Roslin apparently found the Tomb of Athena and opened it, retrieving the directions to Earth. They all returned to the fleet and lived happily ever after with food shortages, black market thugs and terrorist madness, until Baltar became President, convinced the populace that they'd finally outrun the Cylons and settled them all on that planet."
"And the dumb-asses actually fell for that?" Ingram's expression of disgust said exactly what she thought of civilian short-sightedness and lack of tactical forethought. Diana Ingram was a born soldier; one of the many children left orphaned by Achuultani war when Earth's planetary shield failed during the bombardment, she had had a hard life before she’d found family again in the bosom of the Imperial Military. "Why didn't Adama stop them?"
"I doubt he had enough people or firepower to stop fifty thousand people, Diana," Harriet said.
"Well he threw Roslin in the brig," Ingram retorted. "And she sounds a lot saner in comparison--even hopped up on drugs. Why didn't he simply throw this Baltar's ass in the brig when he started spewing that nonsense?"
"I think his treatment of Roslin was exactly why his hands were tied with Baltar," Mabuse said soberly. "Throwing Roslin in the brig … though from what we can tell, she went willingly so that there wouldn't be bloodshed … That act was in effect a military coup. It was something he'd done in anger--he had provocation, mind you--but I don't think it was something he could allow to happen again."
"He's an honourable man," Andruskevich said quietly. "In fact, in one of the last transmissions we snagged, when it was obvious that the elections were going south for Roslin, it appears that her team tried to steal the election with some "ballot irregularities" as Zarek called them to the media. We don't know that Roslin knew about it--though being a shrewd customer, she probably did--but what is fairly certain is that Adama was the one who put a stop to it."
"And what are the odds that these Cylons won't find them?" Ingram said angrily.
"Not good," Mabuse replied. "There are still Cylon spies hidden within their population. You can be sure that they're working to alert their ships of the Colonials' location, regardless of any protection the molecular cloud might provide."
"And remember what attracted our attention to this sector in the first place, Diana," Harriet said.
"A nuclear explosion."
Harriet held her gaze steadily. "A nuclear explosion that could have been detected by the Cylons," she said.
Part 3