Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 3
Title: Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 3
Word Count: 1,889
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.
Laura looked out over her sorely decimated schoolroom. Less than a quarter of her elementary students had shown up for school and nearly half were orphans with nowhere else to go during the day. Only one of her students older than twelve years old had shown up; the rest were all either working at home with their families, or for those that had no family left, working on Baltar's chain-gangs just to stay alive. Only the thin urchin, Alexander, who looked younger than most ten-year-olds, but was more intelligent than most adults, had shown up. He grinned impishly at her and for some reason it cheered her heart beyond all measure.
Still, she had almost thirty children to keep calm and safe, and somewhere in there, try to teach. Her assistant, Maya, was looking after the under-sevens, while Laura tried to keep the older children's minds on their mathematics work. She was glad for the distraction teaching offered.
Suddenly, Laura felt it vibrating through her bones … the pounding. The first time she'd felt it was when Cylon Centurions had boarded Galactica. A primal terror gripped her, but she forced herself to remain calm as it came inexorably closer to her makeshift school. Maya's head popped up; she'd heard it at last. Instinctively, as the young woman lifted baby Isis onto her lap, the younger children drew closer to her. The other children--even her indomitable Alexander--now looked to Laura in fear, their eyes begging her for comfort. She had none to give.
The flap of the school tent parted; the two Centurions faced each other holding it open. Gaius Baltar entered together with a copy of the tall, blonde Shelley Godfrey Cylon model--the one Laura had seen him with that last day on Caprica … the day the Cylons had destroyed the Colonies. Behind them, a copy of the Leobon model entered with a Valerii copy and ... Felix Gaeta. She understood now that her re-election campaign had been doomed from the start; she doubted that even now anyone would believe that he was a Cylon without meeting another copy of him. After meeting Gaeta's curiously guilty gaze, the entrance of D'Anna Biers--supposed journalist--didn't really surprise her at all. With the entrance of a Doral copy and a black male Laura supposed had to be Kara’s ‘Simon’ model, her school tent now felt unbearably crowded.
Laura shoved her fear down into a very small box and shut the lid tight. Keeping as many of her people alive was the only thing that mattered now.
Oh Gods, please … Bill … please hurry! The despairing prayer escaped her as she experienced a sudden unaccountable sense of dread; she hoped it reached across the void … that Adama could somehow pull a miracle out of his hat.
"Mr. President," she said calmly, "this is a surprise. I would have thought you'd have more important things to do with your new friends here … or perhaps I should say old friends," she said looking significantly at the blonde Cylon.
The worm had enough of his humanity intact to squirm at her words, but his discomfort didn't last long. "Ms Roslin," he said. "The Cylons want peace, but make no mistake--they will not tolerate any subversion or resistance. As a sign of their good will, they will be providing supplies to us--they assure me that they have humanity's best interests in mind, but any challenge to our authority will be swiftly dealt with. Don't think that we haven't noticed the disappearance of the military personnel. Where are they?"
"Our authority, Baltar?" she said. She was unable to stop herself from needling him, as worried parents rushed into the schoolroom through the back entrance. Their children raced to the safety of their arms, but Laura knew that it was an illusion; no one was safe anywhere. "Tell me, Mr. President, when did you realise that you were a Cylon--before or after you and your friend there nuked the Colonies?"
"I am not a frakking Cylon," Baltar retorted heatedly. Suddenly he seemed to realise who he was standing with and looked at the Cylons so fearfully that Laura almost wanted to feel sorry for him. Instead, she laughed bitterly.
"No, you were just frakking one," she said; she didn't look at the colonists who gave a collective gasp of horror. "You gave her access to our defence net."
"Ms Roslin, what are you talking about?"
Laura recognized the hoarse, fearful voice as belonging to Paul Troyolus, one of Sarah Porter's deputies in the Geminese faction. Porter--another person whom she'd allowed to manipulate her into serve their own ends. In the end, Laura's compromising her convictions on abortion and a woman's autonomy over her own body had been all for nothing. Porter had failed to deliver the promised votes and had in fact--as Laura learned later--told her people to "vote their conscience", which was code to vote for Baltar's insane fantasy of New Caprica.
"Mr. Troyolus," she said harshly, sparing the old man a glance. His latest--very young and very pregnant--wife cradled his youngest daughter in her arms, while his three older children huddled in a corner. The oldest girl was only about three or four years younger than the wife.
"I would have thought that as a close, personal friend of our Beloved Leader there, he would have told you of his greatest triumph,” Laura continued contemptuously, “forty billion people dead in the space of an afternoon--"
"Shut up!" Baltar screamed eyes blazing as he advanced on her. Laura could smell the liquor on his breath. Not ambrosia--that had run out months ago--but the rotgut he'd become more and more dependent on as his fantasy world had become mired in the endless mud. "All of you--get your frakking brats out of here! You're all under curfew until further notice, so get the frak out!"
As the colonists turned tail and ushered the children out with almost indecent haste, Baltar turned to Laura.
"As for you, Ms Roslin, get it through your head that you are not in control here anymore!" he shouted. "You forget yourself, you arrogant bitch, and everything I've done for you." Laura felt an icy chill trickle down her back. "You forget that I made you--I gave you this second chance at life and now I'm taking it the frak away," he said with a cruel smile. "You see, as you saw fit to kill their only God-begotten child, the Cylons have decided that you're the next best thing for studying this phase of their evolution--after all, it's her blood running through your veins. They are going to dissect you and I'll get to watch!"
#
The klaxon's alarm cut through Harriet's consciousness and she hooked into Herdan's net, before she'd even awakened. Her husband of twenty-six years, Stomald, had her uniform ready by the time she was updated and conscious enough to get out of bed. He'd been a Pardalian priest when she'd first met him almost thirty years ago, and had been instrumental in bringing his backward planet into the Fifth Imperium's fold. Now he served as spiritual guide to the Pardalians who had chosen to join the Imperial Military.
Harry took a moment after donning her uniform to run her hands through his greying hair; it was a constant reminder that his lifespan would be but a fraction of her own. By the time Pardal had been discovered, because of the Pardalians' general health and original short lifespan, Stomald had been too old for the full range of biotechtic enhancements and implants Harry and most Terran humans of her generation had received in early childhood, which would extend their lives for at least five or six centuries.
Still, she thought, banishing her morbid fears, we'll have at least another century together.
He wrapped his arms about her waist and kissed her with the kind of thoroughness that had led to the conception of each of their eight children. "Go," he said softly as he let go.
She leaned in and kissed him gently again before hurrying out. Seven minutes after that first alarm, Fleet Captain Princess Isis Harriet MacIntyre, stepped out of the transit shaft and onto her bridge.
Jos Kirkland greeted her perfunctorily. "Captain, as the OOD reported earlier, the Cylons have found the colony," he said, bringing up the tactical holographic display of six large ships that each looked like two pyramids held face to face by a short cylinder. Captain Tamman Givens-Tsien's hologram looked on with interest. "All of a sudden, they were just there--they could only have come in from hyperspace, but there was no discernable hyper-wake, captains, just a massive energy spike and there they were, far deeper in this system than I thought any ship could enter from hyper--just inside the fifth planet. But just as impressive, is that the two Colonial Battlestars and the other ships in their fleet hypered out the same way as soon as they detected the Cylon ships and they were even deeper inside this system's gravity well--in orbit of the fourth planet. But that isn't even the most impressive thing, sirs--" Kirkland drew a deep breath and looked at the two captains in obvious shock.
"What is it, Jos?" Harriet asked as he brought himself back under iron control.
"Captain," he said manipulating the holo-controls again. "Two point four seven seconds after our sensors registered massive energy spikes from the Colonial ships entering hyper, they registered similar spikes outside this system here--fifteen point five three light years from this solar system--" Harry and Tamman looked at him in absolute shock. "If our sensors hadn't been at max in the first place scanning for the Cylons, we never would have known where they went. However those ship's engines work, sirs, they use completely different hyperspace theories and we have no defence against them."
"All right, Commander," Harriet said, her mind on automatic as she digested this incredible news; nothing they'd scanned from the Colonial ships suggested this--in fact, much of their technology had seemed laughably primitive--but until they saw their hyper engines in action, there really wasn't any way to know. She understood now why their radio and video signals had been accelerated through hyperspace, and she regretted her overly cautious approach now. Jos was understating the matter if they were about to make new enemies of homicidal machines with this kind of capability. But there was no way they would leave these Colonials on this rock to the tender mercies of those machines.
"The Cylons probably haven't detected us yet." Kirkland nodded, looking infinitely calmer. "Let's keep it that way," she continued. "Fire up the hypercom and contact Vengeance; she and Fleur-de-Lys were scouting close to that area--it should take them less than two days to get there and make contact with the Adamas. Meanwhile, Tamman, we have to get a plan in place to determine the Cylons' ground force advantage and get our Marines down to make contact with the Colonials on the planet. Major Tsien," she began and Collette Tsien's hologram blossomed before her.
The commander of her Marine contingent looked like a predator straining at her leash.
Part 4
Word Count: 1,889
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.
Laura looked out over her sorely decimated schoolroom. Less than a quarter of her elementary students had shown up for school and nearly half were orphans with nowhere else to go during the day. Only one of her students older than twelve years old had shown up; the rest were all either working at home with their families, or for those that had no family left, working on Baltar's chain-gangs just to stay alive. Only the thin urchin, Alexander, who looked younger than most ten-year-olds, but was more intelligent than most adults, had shown up. He grinned impishly at her and for some reason it cheered her heart beyond all measure.
Still, she had almost thirty children to keep calm and safe, and somewhere in there, try to teach. Her assistant, Maya, was looking after the under-sevens, while Laura tried to keep the older children's minds on their mathematics work. She was glad for the distraction teaching offered.
Suddenly, Laura felt it vibrating through her bones … the pounding. The first time she'd felt it was when Cylon Centurions had boarded Galactica. A primal terror gripped her, but she forced herself to remain calm as it came inexorably closer to her makeshift school. Maya's head popped up; she'd heard it at last. Instinctively, as the young woman lifted baby Isis onto her lap, the younger children drew closer to her. The other children--even her indomitable Alexander--now looked to Laura in fear, their eyes begging her for comfort. She had none to give.
The flap of the school tent parted; the two Centurions faced each other holding it open. Gaius Baltar entered together with a copy of the tall, blonde Shelley Godfrey Cylon model--the one Laura had seen him with that last day on Caprica … the day the Cylons had destroyed the Colonies. Behind them, a copy of the Leobon model entered with a Valerii copy and ... Felix Gaeta. She understood now that her re-election campaign had been doomed from the start; she doubted that even now anyone would believe that he was a Cylon without meeting another copy of him. After meeting Gaeta's curiously guilty gaze, the entrance of D'Anna Biers--supposed journalist--didn't really surprise her at all. With the entrance of a Doral copy and a black male Laura supposed had to be Kara’s ‘Simon’ model, her school tent now felt unbearably crowded.
Laura shoved her fear down into a very small box and shut the lid tight. Keeping as many of her people alive was the only thing that mattered now.
Oh Gods, please … Bill … please hurry! The despairing prayer escaped her as she experienced a sudden unaccountable sense of dread; she hoped it reached across the void … that Adama could somehow pull a miracle out of his hat.
"Mr. President," she said calmly, "this is a surprise. I would have thought you'd have more important things to do with your new friends here … or perhaps I should say old friends," she said looking significantly at the blonde Cylon.
The worm had enough of his humanity intact to squirm at her words, but his discomfort didn't last long. "Ms Roslin," he said. "The Cylons want peace, but make no mistake--they will not tolerate any subversion or resistance. As a sign of their good will, they will be providing supplies to us--they assure me that they have humanity's best interests in mind, but any challenge to our authority will be swiftly dealt with. Don't think that we haven't noticed the disappearance of the military personnel. Where are they?"
"Our authority, Baltar?" she said. She was unable to stop herself from needling him, as worried parents rushed into the schoolroom through the back entrance. Their children raced to the safety of their arms, but Laura knew that it was an illusion; no one was safe anywhere. "Tell me, Mr. President, when did you realise that you were a Cylon--before or after you and your friend there nuked the Colonies?"
"I am not a frakking Cylon," Baltar retorted heatedly. Suddenly he seemed to realise who he was standing with and looked at the Cylons so fearfully that Laura almost wanted to feel sorry for him. Instead, she laughed bitterly.
"No, you were just frakking one," she said; she didn't look at the colonists who gave a collective gasp of horror. "You gave her access to our defence net."
"Ms Roslin, what are you talking about?"
Laura recognized the hoarse, fearful voice as belonging to Paul Troyolus, one of Sarah Porter's deputies in the Geminese faction. Porter--another person whom she'd allowed to manipulate her into serve their own ends. In the end, Laura's compromising her convictions on abortion and a woman's autonomy over her own body had been all for nothing. Porter had failed to deliver the promised votes and had in fact--as Laura learned later--told her people to "vote their conscience", which was code to vote for Baltar's insane fantasy of New Caprica.
"Mr. Troyolus," she said harshly, sparing the old man a glance. His latest--very young and very pregnant--wife cradled his youngest daughter in her arms, while his three older children huddled in a corner. The oldest girl was only about three or four years younger than the wife.
"I would have thought that as a close, personal friend of our Beloved Leader there, he would have told you of his greatest triumph,” Laura continued contemptuously, “forty billion people dead in the space of an afternoon--"
"Shut up!" Baltar screamed eyes blazing as he advanced on her. Laura could smell the liquor on his breath. Not ambrosia--that had run out months ago--but the rotgut he'd become more and more dependent on as his fantasy world had become mired in the endless mud. "All of you--get your frakking brats out of here! You're all under curfew until further notice, so get the frak out!"
As the colonists turned tail and ushered the children out with almost indecent haste, Baltar turned to Laura.
"As for you, Ms Roslin, get it through your head that you are not in control here anymore!" he shouted. "You forget yourself, you arrogant bitch, and everything I've done for you." Laura felt an icy chill trickle down her back. "You forget that I made you--I gave you this second chance at life and now I'm taking it the frak away," he said with a cruel smile. "You see, as you saw fit to kill their only God-begotten child, the Cylons have decided that you're the next best thing for studying this phase of their evolution--after all, it's her blood running through your veins. They are going to dissect you and I'll get to watch!"
#
The klaxon's alarm cut through Harriet's consciousness and she hooked into Herdan's net, before she'd even awakened. Her husband of twenty-six years, Stomald, had her uniform ready by the time she was updated and conscious enough to get out of bed. He'd been a Pardalian priest when she'd first met him almost thirty years ago, and had been instrumental in bringing his backward planet into the Fifth Imperium's fold. Now he served as spiritual guide to the Pardalians who had chosen to join the Imperial Military.
Harry took a moment after donning her uniform to run her hands through his greying hair; it was a constant reminder that his lifespan would be but a fraction of her own. By the time Pardal had been discovered, because of the Pardalians' general health and original short lifespan, Stomald had been too old for the full range of biotechtic enhancements and implants Harry and most Terran humans of her generation had received in early childhood, which would extend their lives for at least five or six centuries.
Still, she thought, banishing her morbid fears, we'll have at least another century together.
He wrapped his arms about her waist and kissed her with the kind of thoroughness that had led to the conception of each of their eight children. "Go," he said softly as he let go.
She leaned in and kissed him gently again before hurrying out. Seven minutes after that first alarm, Fleet Captain Princess Isis Harriet MacIntyre, stepped out of the transit shaft and onto her bridge.
Jos Kirkland greeted her perfunctorily. "Captain, as the OOD reported earlier, the Cylons have found the colony," he said, bringing up the tactical holographic display of six large ships that each looked like two pyramids held face to face by a short cylinder. Captain Tamman Givens-Tsien's hologram looked on with interest. "All of a sudden, they were just there--they could only have come in from hyperspace, but there was no discernable hyper-wake, captains, just a massive energy spike and there they were, far deeper in this system than I thought any ship could enter from hyper--just inside the fifth planet. But just as impressive, is that the two Colonial Battlestars and the other ships in their fleet hypered out the same way as soon as they detected the Cylon ships and they were even deeper inside this system's gravity well--in orbit of the fourth planet. But that isn't even the most impressive thing, sirs--" Kirkland drew a deep breath and looked at the two captains in obvious shock.
"What is it, Jos?" Harriet asked as he brought himself back under iron control.
"Captain," he said manipulating the holo-controls again. "Two point four seven seconds after our sensors registered massive energy spikes from the Colonial ships entering hyper, they registered similar spikes outside this system here--fifteen point five three light years from this solar system--" Harry and Tamman looked at him in absolute shock. "If our sensors hadn't been at max in the first place scanning for the Cylons, we never would have known where they went. However those ship's engines work, sirs, they use completely different hyperspace theories and we have no defence against them."
"All right, Commander," Harriet said, her mind on automatic as she digested this incredible news; nothing they'd scanned from the Colonial ships suggested this--in fact, much of their technology had seemed laughably primitive--but until they saw their hyper engines in action, there really wasn't any way to know. She understood now why their radio and video signals had been accelerated through hyperspace, and she regretted her overly cautious approach now. Jos was understating the matter if they were about to make new enemies of homicidal machines with this kind of capability. But there was no way they would leave these Colonials on this rock to the tender mercies of those machines.
"The Cylons probably haven't detected us yet." Kirkland nodded, looking infinitely calmer. "Let's keep it that way," she continued. "Fire up the hypercom and contact Vengeance; she and Fleur-de-Lys were scouting close to that area--it should take them less than two days to get there and make contact with the Adamas. Meanwhile, Tamman, we have to get a plan in place to determine the Cylons' ground force advantage and get our Marines down to make contact with the Colonials on the planet. Major Tsien," she began and Collette Tsien's hologram blossomed before her.
The commander of her Marine contingent looked like a predator straining at her leash.
Part 4