BSG Fic: The Body is a Myth (2/3)
Jan. 11th, 2009 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaPART 2
Title: The Body is a Myth
Word Count: 28,182 (complete: all three parts.)
Spoilers: AU from 4x09 The Hub, but major spoilers for 4x10 Revelations.
Rating: Um, PG-13ish, I guess?
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money.
Summary: Laura dies and wakes up on a basestar, Natalie is alive, and D'Anna breaks Kara Thrace by telling her the name of the final cylon. Then, of course, they get to Earth. JUMP!
with many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asta77 for the beta.
And then Earth was totally wrecked anyway, and they all wandered about getting radioactive dirt stuck in the cracks of their boots and not really saying anything.
Kara pretty much felt like it was her fault. Again. She was getting tired of heading off on crazy missions that basically turned up nothing.
She wanted to declare the entire planet a fraud, pack up and move on. She couldn't even hear the signal. And even though Kara could barely remember the clear need she'd had when when she was locked in a cell after flying back to the ship, two months too late, she was damn sure it wasn't supposed to lead to a frakked-up tone-deaf wasteland like this.
“This is Earth,” Leoben told her. Not the real Leoben, who was standing, as miserable as everyone else on this rock, staring at his own shoelaces. The Leoben in her head. “You can't hear the music because it's not the time; it's not the promised land.”
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes. “I get it. It's a trick. Wordplay. Oh you wanted the promised land? Well that's a whole 'nother planet!”
“No,” he told her, stepping in front of her, raising her chin with his fingers. “No, Kara, my love -”
“Don't call me that.”
“My bitter, violent love.”
Kara punched him. He split his lips and smiled at her, blood between his white teeth.
“Kara,” he said. “Don't lose faith. Earth is the promised land. You're here. It's just not the time.”
“When will it be the time?” she asked.
“I don't know. Maybe when everyone else can see me too.”
“If I had a knife,” Kara said, coldly. “I would murder you; and I wouldn't care who saw me, or what they saw. Whatever you are, you're not funny.”
Leoben pointed to Laura Roslin, to Gaius Baltar, to the knocked-up copy of a Six, to the Admiral, to half a dozen others. “Do you have any idea how many of them think they're the only ones?”
“The only ones what?”
“Don't be slow, Kara. If the laws of the physical universe were as inviolable as you want them, you couldn't be here; you'd be dead in the atmosphere of a gas planet, crushed down to the size of a soda can. But I guess I don't blame you for thinking it's an isolated incident. No one really wants to consider that reality is fragile enough to jump a battlestar through, or that the universe you jump into might not be the same as the universe you left.”
“FTL isn't magic. It's just travelling at a super-fast speed along a single vector. The ship can only maintain that level of stress of a few seconds, which is why it feels like a jump. It's science, it's safe, and it's sure as hell not going to change the nature of the universe.”
“Hera!” someone screamed.
“Looks like it's time,” Leoben grinned.
Starbuck turned and saw the former President, the Six named Caprica and Athena tearing away from the ruins, one shrieking, “Where is she?” another yelling, “I saw her go this way.”
The entire landing party spread out looking for her, but in the end, no one found her, and Sharon, Caprica and Laura Roslin had somehow managed to lose themselves too.
“Where are they?” Kara asked Leoben.
“I don't know,” he answered. “Maybe something jumped.”
* * *
Tigh considered himself fortunate, because he really didn't give a frak about Earth. When Caprica brushed his sleeve, he supposed she was looking for some kind of happily-ever-after because these godsdamned skinjobs didn't understand it wasn't love-marriage-baby-carriage, and just because Athena had found herself the biggest sap in the Fleet didn't mean that you could pick up the last item on that list and work backwards.
He didn't look at her.
She took his hand. He didn't look at her, but he didn't pull away either. He wasn't sure why. Apathy, maybe.
Then someone was screaming about Athena's kid, and he wandered around the ruins with everyone else trying to find her. He didn't. No one did. Tigh was the first to call it quits, sit down on a broken pillar and light a cigarette.
“Do you remember anything?” Tyrol asked.
“No,” Saul grunted. “That kid took off, and if you ask me serves her parents right for bringing her down here.”
“No,” Tyrol shook his head. “I mean...from before.”
“Oh.”
There was a man. An old man. He was lying down; wet; mechanical.
“No,” he lied. “I don't remember anything.”
“I do,” Tory whispered. “I remember a man. I think he's a hybrid. I remember...”
“I had a gun,” Sam said, lifting his right hand, thumb up, two fingers straight; two-curled, like a kid playing soldiers. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted... Oh gods, his eyes. He was staring at me.”
It was here, Tigh knew. On Earth. On this planet. He remembered a gun too; grim determination, piercing blue eyes above milky white liquid.
He'd fired. He felt it in his trigger finger. He looked around at the dead earth and knew, somehow, it had all gone very, very wrong.
* * *
Laura ran across the wasteland of dirt and dead beach, tripping over debris, nearly twisting her ankle at least twice. Eventually she pulled off her shoes and ran barefoot. She was losing ground, but every time she was sure she'd lost Hera, she saw another snatch of her white-capped head rounding a ruined wall or dancing across the top of a hillock and disappearing on the other side. Athena and Caprica Six must be somewhere near, but she couldn't see them and was afraid if she stopped to look, she'd lose Hera. The child wasn't safe running loose on this planet.
She knew it was the culmination of her dreams even before her real sight blurred and the ruins began to look like the Opera House.
Laura made a conscious effort to see her surroundings as they really were; she was tripping down a flight of stone stairs, mossed-over and cracked; worn hollow at the centre. She was heading into a cavern. She had the unsettling sense that she was headed into the heart of the planet, and the heart of a planet like this must be very dark indeed.
She saw Hera again, heard her laughing as she ran through the first stone arch and slipped into the darkness.
Laura took a breath and followed.
* * *
“Why don't you shoot yourself in the head?” Leoben asked.
“Oh I don't know, because I don't want to die?”
“You wouldn't die, Kara. You're an angel of God; one of the Lords of Kobol. You exist outside of time. The hybrid won't let you die – she can't. She was created to protect you.”
“Now you're just frakking crazy. Shoot yourself in the head; give me some peace.”
“All right,” Leoben shrugged, reaching for the gun holstered on her thigh. “But remember, you think I'm only in your head. Which means, we're the same person, which means -”
Kara realised she'd hit the ground, hard. There was someone on top of her, yelling. She blinked and realised the only thing she could see was Lee's desperate face. She could hear him screaming her name.
She heard pounding bootsteps and another familiar voice calling for her. Sam. Well, that made sense; if Lee was worried, Sam would be worried. Maybe it had something to do with how difficult it was to move her arm. There was something she needed to do, but godsdamnit, it was like fighting a trained wrestler.
Ah, she realised. That was Lee.
It wasn't until she felt the cool circle of a gun barrel against her temple that she realised what was going on. It bothered her some. But then she pulled the trigger, and things were better.
* * *
“We should leave,” D'Anna muttered.
“No,” Natalie said. “No, we have to stay.”
“They'll blame us for this,” she hissed, pointing at the ruins; the broken promise of the planet. “It'll be war again. We can't let them strike first.”
Natalie shook her head. “We're staying,” she said. “We promised. We're in this together.”
“You'll see I'm right. And then we'll see who they'll follow.”
Natalie watched the Twos, the Eights, the other Sixes wandering despondently through the rubble. She remembered when the Threes had been a comfort; older siblings who told her not to worry because they would fix everything. A Three always had your best interests at heart. That's why they handled all the problems. Before New Caprica, anyway.
Maybe not even then.
“We'll see,” she said.
There was a gunshot.
Natalie turned to see Lee Adama mounted on Kara Thrace's torso, screaming. There was blood spreading with a quickness that weakened Natalie's knees, and she was very glad she couldn't see the other side of Kara's head. Her fingers were curled loosely around her sidearm, and the entry wound in her temple was unambiguous.
Kara Thrace was very, very dead.
Sam Anders fell down next to her and started trying to give her CPR until Lee pushed him away, still screaming something too raw for words.
Natalie wasn't sure who threw the first punch, but she heard D'Anna say, “And it starts,” as the two men crashed into half a stone wall, all bloodied knuckles and split lips and gut punches, and, Natalie thought, at least one knee to the crotch.
* * *
Bill Adama kept walking, gun in his hand and a face like the nuclear sky. The others had quit a long time ago, but Adama kept crossing muddy fields and silt stretches, not even pretending he could see footprints anymore.
He didn't consider his direction. He had no idea where she'd gone. More chance of finding her if he was at least looking somewhere.
Eventually, he found Daniel Thrace sitting on a boulder, cracking his knuckles and squinting up at the washed-out sun. His hair was washed-out blond. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and sky-blue short-sleeved shirt. He looked like a tourist.
He stood up and said, “I'm Daniel Thrace.”
Bill didn't take his outstretched hand. He looked like Kara. Bill gripped his sidearm more tightly.
“I tried to follow them,” Daniel Thrace said. “But I couldn't.”
“You mean the President.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “And Sharon and Hera Agathon and the Number Six the others named Caprica.”
“Where did they go?”
“The last resting place of the last hybrid.”
“I don't understand what you mean,” Adama growled. “And I suggest you start making sense.”
“It means the hybrid won this round, Admiral. And we lost.”
“The hybrid.”
“The last hybrid. The one you think of as the first hybrid. The one Kendra Shaw blew to pieces with one of your last nukes. The one you almost caught, that day, when they declared an armistice forty-three years ago,” he paused. “The one that never would have been there if I – if we – had done the job right.”
He was still wearing the same cargo pants and resort-style shirt. But somehow, he'd stopped looking like a tourist. He looked like a refugee. Someone who'd headed out on vacation and never taken a ship back home, because there was no home to go to now.
“Are you going to explain what the frak you're talking about or should I shoot you to save myself from your double-talk?”
“No,” Thrace sighed. “I'll tell you everything. That's why I'm here. It's not a happy story, Admiral. But perhaps it's one you'll understand. It's about being too stubborn, and waking up one day and knowing it's too late to save the world.”
Adama said nothing.
Daniel Thrace said, “Once upon a time...”
* * *
Tyrol didn't decide to pull Sam out of the ruck with Lee until Sam stopped fighting back. Somewhere in there he just went limp. Lee threw a punch that must have loosened teeth, and Anders just lay there. Tyrol thought maybe he was unconscious. The way Lee paused, maybe he did too. But then Sam blinked, and Tyrol watched Lee fighting with himself.
He didn't want to punch him. He had to punch him.
He punched him.
And Tyrol barrelled in, pushed Lee away, bundled up Sam, and dragged him off to sit against a different chunk of rock.
“Twice, now,” was the first thing Sam mumbled, through the blood.
Galen put his arm around Sam's shoulder. Sam was crying, quietly. He was staring straight ahead, at nothing.
That was good, Tyrol decided. Better than staring at him. Last time he'd seen Anders crying, Anders had tried to kiss him after choking out something about being all he had left. Tyrol had said he was sorry; had tried to explain – Sharon, Cally, he liked girls.
It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth either. Who he'd been before, what he thought he'd liked, had all been lies. Sam was a good man. Sam was kind. Sam loved his son; he never said it, but Galen could tell. In the morning, when it was his turn to sleep, he'd hear them talking, making breakfast, Anders passing on scraps of Pyramid wisdom he'd probably been saving for his son. But now, there was only Nicky. Sam and Nick and Galen in their frakked-up little house on their frakked-up Basestar. He imagined trying to explain to his son, one day, that he'd replaced his mother with a robot.
Galen laughed a little, at that.
Galen laughed again, because laughing was his problem. Not that he wanted to fix it.
“What's so funny?” Sam whispered. His words were slurred. His lips were already swollen.
“I am.”
There had been a switch in his head (Galen didn't laugh, but did smile when he realised it could be literal). Some kind of safety valve that blew. Nothing bothered him anymore. It was peaceful.
He thought about Sharon and Cally and impossible music in his head; about looking at his son and being afraid because if there was something wrong, he wouldn't be able to ask for help; about every time he looked at Helo's wife; about his own wife facing firing squads and trapped in airlocks.
The people we love end up dead or turn out to be cylons.
Nothing bothered Galen now, except the thought of letting someone else step into that space. If Sam turned into a nightmare like Boomer. If Sam ended up dead like Cally.
Better not to think that way. Better to keep things the way they are.
Sam curled his knees up to his chest, and hugged them. Tyrol squeezed his shoulder.
* * *
Roslin stood outside the closed doors to the Opera House's inner auditorium while Athena tried the handle, then tried pushing, then tried hurling herself bodily against the woodwork.
They'd both long-since lost the ability to tell where they really were. All Roslin could see was the Caprican Opera House. It couldn't be real, but it didn't look like a hologram either.
“Athena,” she said.
Athena ignored her, stepped back, pulled out her gun, and shot the door. The bullet didn't even leave a mark.
“Athena,” Laura said.
“What?” the younger woman snapped, blinking back tears.
“You need to calm down. We'll find a way in.”
“How?”
“I'm not sure yet. But you're going to hurt yourself and that won't help your daughter.”
They stood, silently for about seven seconds before the doors opened.
Caprica was standing there, with Hera balanced on one hip. Athena pulled her away almost instantly, but Caprica didn't resist.
“You both need to come in here and see this,” she said.
* * *
Kara woke up covered in white goo and lying on top of a naked woman, with something that felt like a hell of a hangover.
“Rise and shine,” the naked woman said.
Kara blinked and realised it was the hybrid. She would have bet her flight status that it wasn't the Rebel's hybrid. This was the one Natalie brought back with the President.
“What the hell am I doing here?” she asked.
“Stabilising. Reboot at ninety-eight per cent completion.”
“Of course,” Kara sighed, fumbling for the bottom of the tank and trying to push herself upright.
At that point, she realised she wasn't wearing any clothes.
At that point, the marines stormed the room, and then Dee walked in. She'd been left on the Basestar as the senior officer when they launched the recon to Earth. Kara did her best to sink under the goo.
Dee looked at her skeptically. Kara was reasonably sure Dee was working out just how much aspirin she should take for the headache she was about to get.
“What the hell are you doing on my basestar?” she asked. Then added, “Sir.”
“Could you get me some clothes?”
“Not until you explain why the ship just spontaneously jumped about two clicks Earthward with no warning, and suddenly you're...to be quite honest, Captain, I'm not sure what you were doing, but I doubt either of our husbands would approve.”
Kara squinted at Dee. She had an uncanny ability to stay perfectly still, and insult you by mentioning things that really ought to have insulted herself.
“Lords, Dee. Lay off. I have a motherfrakker of a headache and if I knew how I got here I'd tell you. Actually,” she struggled to focus. It was disturbing. “Actually I think I might have shot myself in the head.”
Dee actually rolled her eyes.
“For frak's sake,” Kara growled. “Some things you have to do for yourself.”
She got out of the hybrid's tank, marched over to the nearest marine and said, “You. Give me your jacket. Now.”
The marine looked nervous. He glanced at Dee. Dee sighed and nodded.
Kara buttoned up the jacket and paced around the tank. The hybrid had gone back to babbling. Something about vent functions and fuel lines.
“What's the matter?” she asked. “Am I not special enough to get my own tank?”
“The most important systems receive preferential treatment,” the hybrid said.
“I told you, Kara,” Leoben said, walking up to Dee and studying her face. Dee, of course, stayed still, but in this case, Kara couldn't credit her composure. It wasn't as if Leoben was real. “She won't let you die.”
“I thought I'd at least get rid of you,” Kara hissed. Leoben turned to look at her and gave her a wide, and beautiful grin. Kara took a very deep breath and concentrated on not punching him in the mouth (again) to destroy his perfect teeth. Also thinking about that was easier than thinking about what she must have done down on that planet. She shivered. Nothing was right anymore.
Kara kept pacing because she wasn't sure what else to do. Dee and the marines stayed where they were, guns trained on her, maddeningly patient.
“I'll unplug you,” Kara screamed. “Didn't like that last time did you?”
“The body is a myth,” the hybrid answered. “Only the mind is real.”
It was Dee who spoke. A short, sharp, “What?”
“The body is a myth,” the hybrid repeated. “Only the mind is real.”
“That's...that's Saggitaron scripture,” Dee said. “How does she know Saggitaron scripture?”
“She's a computer. She's knows everything.”
“A cylon computer. Shouldn't it be quoting its own damn scripture?”
“I thought you weren't religious.”
“Conclusion,” the hybrid said. “If the body is a myth, faith is a prerequisite of existence. Extrapolation, everyone is religious.”
Kara and Dee glared at each other, stubbornly. Kara broke first.
“She speaks in riddles,” she said. “What does this 'body is a myth' stuff mean, anyway?”
Dee shook her head, as if a five year old had asked her to explain where rain came from. “I don't know. What it says. Reality, everything, is just an illusion. Our consciousness makes us who we are.”
“So you don't accept medicine because you think you can just...think your way out of it.”
“They don't accept medicine,” Dee said.
“Well maybe we should all try real hard to think our way out of this mess then,” Kara sniped. “Maybe if we just organise a thinking party, we can make flowers grow in our new front garden. No work at all.”
“Work equals force multiplied by distance,” the hybrid said. “It's not far now.”
Kara shook her head. “Look, just take me to the brig or whatever it is you're going to do with me, okay?”
“Fine by me.”
But before she could explain exactly what that was, the hybrid yelled, “JUMP!”
And they did.
* * *
Saul Tigh finished his last cigarette and dropped the butt onto the cold, muddy mess of a beach. He was leaning against some rock. In the distance a bridge stretched a couple of dozen feet out over the river before it stopped.
The last frakking thing he wanted in the universe strolled up and said, “So, uh, Colonel. Um, is that what I ought to call you? Right. Of course. Awkward topic. Well anyway, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you. Thank you for all your help. Earlier, with the Centurions.”
“Leave me the frak alone or I'll make them come back, you weaselly little frakker,” Tigh growled.
Baltar paused, managing to stay where he was and look like he was moving away at the same time. After a couple of seconds, he started, like someone had pushed him, and yelped. Actually yelped. Like a dog. Squirelly motherfrakker.
“All right!” he said. “I mean. All right. I'll leave you alone. Of course. But, ah, I just wanted to say, if you ever need anything...”
“What could I possibly want from you?”
“Spiritual guidance,” he heard her voice, sharp as it always was. Harder though, than it had been in the brig. More certain.
“What the-” Tigh said, as Baltar started - “Well, perhaps spiritual guidance, I mean...I'm sorry what?”
“Who said that?”
“Who said what?”
“Nothing,” Tigh muttered. “Just go.”
Again, that irritating, ambivalent wobbling. “I meant what I said. About coming down to one of our services. I know it's not how you...how you see yourself, but you might be surprised what you find.”
Tigh laughed. “So you can turn me into one of your personal centurion guard? No, you frakked up Tory. I'll be damned before I let you do that to me.”
“He'll see the light, Gaius. God loves all his children. Even this one.”
Saul was so sure he could hear her. But he'd been so sure it had been Ellen. Even before he knew what he was, he'd seen her, heard her. Faulty wiring. Too much to drink. The tears building up in his only eye; they never quite fell, but sometimes he felt like the pressure made him see the world all wrong.
That he'd lost Ellen even here, that he could start seeing her, hearing her instead, made him want to strangle something.
Maybe Baltar could tell, because he finally started moving away. Thank the gods, he took her with him. He caught a glimpse of long legs and a red dress slipping behind a toppled column.
The Old Man would find Laura Roslin. The Old Man didn't fail. And when he came back, he'd be bringing Sharon and Hera Agathon too. He'd bring her back. Maybe she'd leave with Baltar, now that she was free.
Somehow, he knew she wouldn't.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We tried to kill the hybrid because we wanted to kill the cycle of time. It's trapped us since we first left Kobol. Athena wept for us, but we were too proud to listen. You think it was two thousand years ago, but that's not the truth. I don't even know if there are words for how long ago it happened. Maybe there wasn't even time, then. We left Kobol. Twelve tribes went to the Colonies, one went to Earth. Eventually, the Colonials fled back to Earth after their mechanical children all but annihilated them. There was peace for a time, but eventually, the Colonies called and most left Earth to reclaim them. The few who stayed on Earth eventually destroyed themselves in a nuclear civil war just in time for the Colonials to flee the Cylon again and end up on Earth again. To have peace for a time again. To decide to reclaim the Colonies again.
“It's endless. We ferry ourselves from Earth to the Colonies to Earth and no matter where we are, we destroy ourselves. We abandoned our gods and their protection so long ago we don't even understand how to count back to it. Our home is closed to us. A price in blood. Nothing grows on Kobol, now. Not for us.”
* * *
Dualla pulled out a wireless transmitter from a hip-holster. “Report.”
The speaker hissed around a male voice, “Current position is oh-oh-three karem five-seven-zero... We're back where we started, Sir.”
“What the frak is this?” Dualla muttered.
Kara shrugged. “She's nuts. Maybe there's no reason.”
“Not very helpful. What if next time she jumps us into another ship, or into deep space, or who the frak knows where.” She lifted her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “All right,” she said into the wireless. “Speak to our cylon techs. Maybe they can temporarily disable her connection to the jump drives.”
“Last time we tried something like that she went crazy, and the centurions lost it.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Captain? Trust it?”
Kara put her hands on her hips. Her belt was too loose, she felt like her frakking pants were about to fall down. It took her brain a whole half-second to process that, and exactly what was wrong with it.
“Oh my gods,” she said. “Dualla. It's when she jumps.”
“What the frak are you talking about?”
“I'm wearing clothes.”
“Of course you're wearing clothes.”
“But I wasn't! When you came in; what happened when you came down here after we jumped the first time?”
“I was...I...” Dualla shook her head. “I don't remember. You were in the tank with the hybrid.”
“And I sure as hell wasn't wearing this or it'd be covered in goo.”
Dualla stared at Kara. The same stare she'd given her when she flew her impossible viper onto the hangar deck three months ago. Tempered, wary and awestruck.
“It happens when she jumps,” Kara said. “The body is a myth, only the mind is real. Lords of Kobol, Dee, she's changing godsdamned reality.”
“Well then,” Dee said. “I definitely think we should consider uncoupling her from the jump drive.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We really thought we could change it this time. Stop people from deciding to reclaim the Colonies, make it so we all stayed here, as one people, on Earth. But everything we tried failed. They left anyway. We kept trying; we thought maybe at least on Earth we didn't have to destroy ourselves. Maybe we didn't need to head for a disaster.
“But the more we tried, the less it worked. And then we started dying. Accidents. Anything but accidents. Eventually there were only five of us left; of the original models. We'd been so rare we were near-mythic for a long time. Mistakenly thought of as gods. Maybe that's why we tried so hard to be that for our people. To change the fabric of scripture. To kill time. But still. Five of us. Only five.
“It was the hybrid. He was trying to keep time on track. His only purpose in life had been to jump ships through time, and then, to wait until the end of time so he could start it again. Nothing conscious should be in control of a faster-than-light jump, Admiral. You move outside the cycle of time. You see...everything.”
* * *
Laura followed Sharon and Caprica into the auditorium. White drapes fell from the ceiling to the stage. Behind her, rows and rows of red-upholstered seating was empty. No one was watching from the boxes or the guilded balcony.
Caprica climbed the steps onto the stage. Sharon went next, with Hera slung against her hip. Laura trailed, not afraid, but wary. Her dreams had been filled with purpose. There was no purpose here. This place was abandoned; just like the rest of the frakking planet.
“And,” Six said, pointing. “There's also this.”
In the middle of the stage was a sunken hollow. A resurrection tank. No, she corrected herself. It was a little different. This was a hybrid's tank. There was no hybrid. No liquid. Just a dull metal surface, and a message that looked like it had been scratched out with a dull knife.
THE CENTURIONS HAVE THE SCHEMATICS.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We tried to kill him. He jumped as we shot him. I honestly thought he wouldn't have enough energy left to execute that kind of jump. I was wrong. He left; ran for your Colonies. Incited your Cylon to revolution. I'm so...sorry that we didn't stop him.
“We let him run, because he wasn't controlling us any longer; we could make the changes we needed. We thought we needed. We stopped the nuclear war. And then, once your Colonies declared an armistice with the Cylon – the day you met him – that was the day he left the Colonies and came back here. To start our nuclear war himself. It's amazing what a few well-placed nuclear missiles will do if you can fake the entry trajectories. Everyone thought someone else was firing.”
* * *
Lee Adama had a bloody lip and red-rimmed eyes. He marched through the ruins, straight at Natalie and D'Anna, a scrap of paper in one hand. He pushed it in Natalie's direction.
“Your baseship is jumping all over godsdamned space and our people can't work out why. Apparently neither can yours.”
Natalie read the report. Clip-edged computer paper, in Colonial font. A list of co-ordinates and jump times. Natalie plotted the jumps in her mind, the spaces, the rhythms. Random.
She shook her head. “I can't explain this.”
“Well that's too bad,” Lee said. “Because our next move is to shut off your hybrid. Permanently, until you can find a solution.”
“What? No, you can't!”
“Yes, we can. It's our ship now.”
He turned, and left.
“Wait,” she called, stepping after him. “Take me to the raptor, take me back the ship. Let me talk to the hybrid.”
Lee looked at her. He stared at her, right in the eyes. Whatever he saw, it didn't elicit sympathy. But then, Natalie supposed, she'd destroyed everything he loved. Kara's body was cooling on the wet mud, covered by her own coat, and she was just the latest.
“I'll give you twenty-four hours, or until it jumps again,” Lee said. “I'll have Lieutenant Gaeta escort you to the raptor and accompany you.”
“Thank you, Mr President.”
D'Anna said, “I think I'll join you.”
* * *
Laura Roslin and Athena were trying to decide what schematics the centurions had. Caprica didn't understand why no one was talking about the jump drives.
So she said, “Maybe it means the jump drives.”
“Why would it refer to jump drives? We already know how to build those,” Athena snapped.
Six stared at her incredulously. “Look around you,” she said. “Stop projecting - this cavern's full of them.”
“Excuse me?” said Roslin.
“The jump drives. You...you can see them, can't you?”
“I don't project anymore,” Sharon said, quietly. “So if that's what this is, I don't know how to switch it off.”
“Madam President?” Caprica asked.
“I've been assured so many times that I'm not a cylon, I would think the issue of my projection would be moot,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the far wall, trying to see something. Anything.
Caprica had seen the president when she was angry, when she was cool, even when she was completely unsettled (although, Caprica had been unsettled then too; Athena had been so unsettled her steady hands had spent the entire conversation trying to escape). Caprica thought that quietly frightened was the emotion she found most terrifying on Laura Roslin.
“I can see the Opera House,” she said. “But underneath that, we're in a cave. It's very large. Hundreds of meters; I can't see all the way to the end of the far side,” she pointed. “It's completely full of jump drives. There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. They're wired to the hybrid's tank.”
“Which means, of course,” Gaius said, stepping out from behind Roslin, and tapping a cigarillo against his metal cigarette case. “That whatever hybrid isn't here was jumping something awfully large.”
Caprica ignored him. Because they both already knew that was impossible.
Roslin said, “Then logically speaking, this hybrid was designed to jump something enormous.”
Athena shook her head. “No. If she's telling the truth, that couldn't account for that number of drives. Colonial military tech sometimes made use of networked jump drives to move larger ships, yes. But the limiting factor wasn't the number of networked drives, it was the computational capacity of your computers. At a certain point, the mass of the target and the complexity needed to simultaneously program the necessary number of drives exceeds your best computer's processing power. Cylon technology is better, but even a hybrid has limits.”
Laura glanced at Caprica and she nodded. “It's true.”
Laura shook her head. “Given the number of times our rational expectations have been confounded in the past few days, I'm going to choose to assume there's a logical reason for this,” she started pacing. “Let's assume that this isn't surrealist art and that something is capable of using these machines. It's going to be jumping something very large. Could we be on a ship of some kind? Hidden under the planet's surface?”
“We could be,” Caprica replied carefully. “But if so, why make the hangar deck look like a cave system?”
“Oh please,” Baltar rolled his eyes. “No one ever wants to accept the obvious.”
“How many drives can you actually see?” Athena asked.
“Six hundred seventeen,” Baltar answered.
“Six hundred seventeen,” Caprica repeated. “But as I said, there are more – I don't know how far the cave extends.”
“All right,” Roslin said. “How big are we talking about if we need over six hundred engines to move it?”
Athena shook her head. “That we be...” her eyes widened. “That would be something as large as this planet.”
The three women stared at each other.
Hera laughed. She pointed at the hybrid's tank. Sharon caught her hand and held it.
“Bingo,” Baltar sighed. “Honestly, I might not have loved you for your mind, but I did appreciate it. Well, until you used it to destroy my entire civilisation, of course. It astonishes me that you're so slow sometimes.”
“But it's impossible,” Six whispered. “Where would it go?”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We survived because we were in the Opera House – the hybrid's home, where your former president is now. We were using the remains of the equipment to calculate how far we'd diverged from the cycle.
“I know you know how it feels. I ran for open air. I had no plan. The Opera House closed behind me, and wouldn't let me back in. I don't even know where it is now.
“The others were with me. We had nowhere to go except back to the Colonies. We found the next generation of Cylon as they retreated from your space. The hybrid had been educating them. They had schematics for the humanoid models, for the resurrection technology. They began to build it blindly, like children making nuclear missiles.
“So we helped them. We helped construct the humanoid models, the way we'd been constructed the last time around. We wanted to stay with them, teach them, show them the mysteries of God and the universe, so we only built seven, so that we could be part of the twelve models. We kept our old numbers. I was number Seven. The oldest model left; our Ones through Sixes and our Eights were all gone. We don't age, but we destroyed our Hub in our cycle of time too. And after thousands of years... There were accidents. Illnesses. And eventually the hybrid himself trying to keep us out of the way because we didn't want to quietly wait for our deaths in Earth's inevitable nuclear civil war.
“I was number Seven. I was the oldest. Maybe that's why I felt like it was my job to make it all right again. We wanted to help our new siblings avoid the mistakes we made. We hadn't saved Earth, but maybe we could stop the second Cylon war in the Colonies.
“You already know how well that went. Every opportunity to change things... we failed.”
* * *
The raptor had a pair of pilots D'Anna didn't recognise. Natalie smoothed her skirt across her knees as she sat down opposite Felix Gaeta. He swallowed a pill and slid the container back into his pocket. There was a crude mechanical leg attached to his right stump. D'Anna wondered what had happened, but not, she decided, enough to ask. She caught his eye. He turned away.
“Nice to see you again, Felix,” she said.
She felt Natalie throw an angry glance at her. Well, let her. D'Anna wasn't sure which model she disliked more; the Eights who genuinely had no idea who they were, or the Sixes who knew exactly and then lied about it. At least D'Anna never lied to herself about what she was or what she wanted. And she'd never driven the Ones to start a civil war.
“Not really,” Felix replied, coldly.
“Oh come on. Cylon and human working together? It's just like old times.”
“I'd hardly call an occupation working together.”
“Well I suppose there's a matter of perspective. I mean, technically, aren't you occupying our basestar?”
“No,” Natalie interrupted. “It's my basestar and I ceded control as part of a treaty.”
“Right,” Three said, nodding. “Right, details. So important.”
“The details aren't important,” Gaeta said. “You just want to make me angry. It really is like old times.”
He turned toward the pilots and asked about an estimated flight time. The raptor shuddered as they began launch prep.
D'Anna murmured, “Yup.”
“What is your obsession?” Natalie whispered angrily. “Can't you let anything lie?”
“Oh I don't know,” D'Anna replied. “I think reminiscing with Felix here is mild as compared to, say, removing the telencephalic inhibitors of every centurion on your baseship, and then telling Cavil. If we're going to talk degrees of provocation.”
“I was doing that for all of us. It was a moral stand.”
“Of course it was,” D'Anna said.
No one spoke until they reached the basestar. D'Anna spent her time wondering when exactly Natalie would give up this pretence at unity and tell her to fall in line or get out. A while yet, she imagined. Boxing a Three because she wasn't being easy – even Natalie would see the irony there.
Of course there were bigger questions. What did she want? What was it she had been looking for in Felix Gaeta; what was she looking for in Natalie, in Kara Thrace, even in Laura Roslin and Lee Adama and the Admiral. In every centurion she passed. In every Colonial officer. Even in Cavil's face when he brought her back, one last time.
All she saw was the precarious, untenable situation they were in. In every face, she saw the bloodbath that was coming. She hoped, of course, to avoid becoming a casualty. Beyond that, she wasn't sure how much she cared. It wasn't callousness.
Perhaps it was disappointment.
Her inability to reconcile that with God's plan and His infinite wisdom was a definite problem.
* * *
A centurion lifted its arm and pointed a gun directly into Lee Adama's face.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We can't change it. None of us can change the cycle of time because we are the cycle of time.”
* * *
Kara squatted next to the hybrid as she yelled, “Error! Repetition is not artistry. Memory purge incomplete!”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “So I made someone who could.”
* * *
Dualla's wireless hissed. “Sir, I'm getting strange information from the Rebel Basestar. The cylons are requesting assistance. They say...they say their centurions are revolting; they're trying to storm their hybrid's chamber. They want to disable her.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “I went to the prototype hybrid. Your hybrid. The one all the others are copied from.
“I drove her insane.”
* * *
Laura was on the cusp of an unwelcome realisation. Hera Agathon was sitting in the dry hybrid tank because she had shrieked until her mother let her. She was pulling at the edges of a wiring compartment. Laura crouched and peeled away the covering.
Whatever should have been here was meant to jump the planet, but whatever should have been here couldn't possibly manage that alone.
There were four people in this chamber, logically, one of them had the solution to this dilemma. And three of them were only there because they followed the fourth.
Hera Agathon was refusing to get out of the tank. Sharon was crouching, trying to convince her it was much prettier on the stage. Caprica was still staring into the distance, perhaps at her phantom jump engines.
Caprica started talking, to no one. Laura closed her eyes and sighed.
Laura opened her eyes and saw Gaius Baltar. Not the clean-shaven, hypocritically robed fundamentalist who'd minister to centurions if he thought it would elevate him; the bearded, long-haired traitor who'd lead them into the snake pit of New Caprica. There he was, cigarillo in one hand, the other holding a tailored jacket slung over his shoulder.
Just like she'd dreamed him.
He turned, and looked at her. “Ah,” he said. “I was wondering how long it would take.”
Caprica turned to stare at Laura staring at Gaius. She looked terrified. She stopped moving. She stopped breathing. Laura wasn't managing to do much better.
“You understand, of course,” Gaius said to Laura. “That I'm not real. Any more than Elosha was real.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked. She wanted her voice strong and steady. It wasn't.
“The same reason as you,” he said. “The same reason Kara Thrace is alive and Natalie is competing with D'Anna for leadership of the Cylon and my beloved here has a cylon child.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because you've never been here before. At least, not like this.”
* * *
The centurions formed a semi-circle and began to herd people toward the centre of the ruins. An Eight yelled at them to stop this and put away their guns. She stepped forward and drew her own weapon. A centurion shot her before she'd fully raised her arm.
Narcho, in a confused fight/flight reflex responded by charging the nearest centurion. It knocked him aside with a sweep of one arm. He fell in the mud and didn't move.
Lee yelled, “Easy! People, stay calm, and don't turn this into a firefight!”
They edged backwards until they were penned in on all sides by killer robots.
In the end it was Tigh who stepped forward.
“Let these people go,” he said.
The centurion didn't respond.
“Let me past,” he said, and tried to walk around it.
The centurion stopped him, firmly, with a hand on his shoulder. It bent low; put its head to Tigh's head, and Tigh staggered backwards.
Tory caught him as he reeled into the crowd. “What's the matter? What happened?”
“They say,” Tigh gasped. “That they're sorry.”
A tear rolled down his cheek.
“They say they promised.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace opened his mouth to continue his story, and said nothing.
William Adama waited until he'd taken five deep breaths, and then stood up, and started walking away. Too much pride, and too much anger to ask for anything.
He felt the cylon's hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw his sheet white face.
He said, “I drove her mad to break her programming. So she could change things, not keep them on track. But the Old Machine – our hybrid – I think he just outplayed us.”
“He's dead.”
“He also built the centurions. We can't wait any longer. I need to see the hybrid. She's the only one who can stop this now.”
* * *
Kara grabbed the hybrid's head with both her hands and forced the thing to stare at her. “What's going on?” she demanded. “What's happening to the centurions?”
Dee and the marines had barricaded the door, but it wouldn't hold for long.
The hybrid stared back at Kara. Her eyes widened. She seemed almost...sane. Kara's breath caught in her throat. The last time she'd seen that look, the things this woman had said. They'd never leave her.
She said, “Your father and I love you so very much, sweetheart. What we did to you, we're so sorry.”
Ice filled Kara's spine. “What did you do to me?” she whispered.
“Once Kendra killed him, it was safe to bring you here, so we could all live happily ever after. After the occupation, when you were back in the sky, we called to you, darling. Come to us. Resurrect where we are. It was the quickest way to send you back with a message to the others.”
“I flew my bird into the maelstrom,” Kara said, quietly. “I killed myself.”
“You did,” the hybrid answered. “Yes, you did. And we're so sorry. We love you. We love you. We love you.”
She kept saying it. She wouldn't stop.
The centurions broke through the door and still she wouldn't be quiet.
“No!” Kara screamed.
The world broke.
The last thing she heard was, “We love you we love you we JUMP!”
* * *
“If anything happens to any of my people,” Adama growled.
“You'll what?”
“I'll hold you personally responsible.”
“Admiral,” Thrace said. “I think I just spent a long time establishing that I am personally responsible. But you're not first in line to hold me to anything.”
He started off across the broken plain at something more than walking speed but not quite a run. Adama set his jaw, and followed.
* * *
Natalie found herself bundled out of the raptor by a quintet of Twos and all but dragged down a side corridor with the rest of the raptor's crew and passengers.
“What's happening?” she asked.
“The centurions,” a Leoben answered. “They've turned against us.”
D'Anna smiled. She wasn't gloating, Natalie realised, and she was a little surprised at that. She seemed sad.
“What's so funny?” Natalie asked.
“Oh come on. We let our mechanical slaves get too smart and now they're going to kill us.”
D'Anna began to walk away from the group, back out into the exposed hangar bay.
“Where are you going?” Natalie asked.
“To join the winning side, Sweetie.”
“You don't even know what they want!”
D'Anna turned back to look at Natalie and shrugged. “I know what everyone else wants, and you're all just dancing to the same old song. It's not so easy to join in again once you know what it looks like from the outside.”
She turned, and left.
Natalie broke the silence. “We have to go after her,” said Natalie. “She'll destroy the ship.”
Gaeta actually laughed. “I think your robots are doing just fine on that front.”
“There are still some systems that only respond to our commands. If D'Anna's really going to side with them, they could vent our atmosphere or raise the gravity levels,” Natalie shook her head. “A hundred other painful deaths, Felix Gaeta,” she glared at him, resolved. “You're coming with me. All of you.”
Ten minutes later, as Natalie skidded out onto another hangar deck, Gaeta's gun in her hand, the ship jumped.
* * *
It hadn't been ever been easy – reading scripture and believing it was real. Her mind wasn't built that way and for most of her life, Laura had been glad.
When scripture began to read like news headlines it had made it easier.
Laura felt a deep resentment blooming, that now, when miraculous, mystical things were happening daily, the scriptures themselves had once again become so vague as to be useless. Just fortunes and guesswork that would fit any situation if you squinted the right way.
There were too many leaders who had died, and returned. Too many hybrid children. Too many roads to Earth, and perhaps even too many Earths. Like someone was filling the broadcast with white noise, or hiding by sticking up so many signs there was no way to know which one to follow. Perhaps they were never meant to come here.
If this was the end, and Gaius Baltar – any kind of Gaius Baltar – was about to reveal the secrets of the universe to her? No. She couldn't stand it.
Hera was banging the wire compartment's covering against the scratched-out message at the bottom of the tank. Inside the compartment there was a web of wires, and behind that, a small channel of water, no more than an inch wide, a quarter-inch deep.
Roslin pushed her hand through the wiring and pressed her fingers into the stream.
A tidal wave swallowed her.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Sam whispered to Galen.
Galen shrugged. “Hope we're not good enough to die young?”
Sam laughed softly.
“You know,” he said. “The longer we stay here, the less I think we're young at all.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they're waiting for?” Sam asked, looking at the centurions. They stood, dull grey in the washed-up sunlight. Impassive.
“For once, it's not us,” Galen replied.
“I wonder where the fifth is,” Sam murmured. It wasn't really a question. It was more like a prayer; soft words they said to each other, all four of them, when there was nothing else to say.
Sam wasn't expecting an answer. But he found himself staring at a fixed spot on the horizon, between the shoulders of two centurions; to the left of half-an-arch. He glanced at the Chief: he was staring too. On the other side of the group, Tory and Tigh had also turned their heads.
“Maybe he's coming,” Sam said.
* * *
Daniel Thrace moved quickly across the dead ground. When he saw a distant crowd-sized smear among a clump of ruins, he pulled up short. He began to move in an awkward crouch, skipping from one rock to another, keeping out of sight as much as possible. He motioned to the Admiral to follow suit.
Eventually they were near enough to see metal reflected in the sun.
“There,” Daniel said. “We have to find a way to get past them and into one of the ships.”
Adama looked at the scarse cover, unevenly distributed across a wide, flat plain.
“And how do we do that?”
He grimaced. “I'm open to suggestions.”
Adama arched an eyebrow, and didn't deign to respond.
“Then I guess we wait,” Daniel said. “And hope an opportunity presents itself.”
* * *
In the water-wall of data, Laura struggled to think. Images rose and fell around her; hexadecimal queries rendered as beautifully as a Monclair original. She wasn't sure: was this the past, or the future, or a question?
The pictures passed too quickly to process; people, of all ages and races, laughing, crying, screaming, one – she was sure, eating noodles. She saw a flower, a dog, a pile of burning bodies.
With her entire body, she yelled, “Stop!”
Slower, she thought. Slower.
The picture in her mind hung motionless. Laura saw herself. She was in a trench. She was older. Her hair was greyer; she was thinner. She was putting a riot helmet onto a ten year old boy.
The picture began to move. Outside the trench, she could hear people screaming, and the inevitable, mechanical clank of a walking centurion.
“Nicky,” the Laura in the picture was saying. “Nicky, you're going to be fine.”
The Laura in the picture was lying. The Laura in the picture started showing Nicky Tyrol how to load his gun.
The Laura outside the picture was disgusted.
“This is your sales pitch?” she said. “Trying to scare me? Who are you, and where am I?”
The pictures faded. Laura stood in darkness.
“All of this has happened before,” a male voice boomed. “And all of it will happen again.”
“If that was true, you wouldn't be trying to frighten me with visions of it. What is it you need to scare me into doing?”
The voice spoke again. “This program cannot complete its function without the hybrid machine and the hybrid human. The machine was forced to flee. The centurions have the schematics.”
“Who are you?”
“This program cannot complete its function.”
“What is your function.”
“Navigation.”
She saw, in her mind, the entire planet wink out of existence. She saw green fields, clean cities. Children playing around a statue of Hera Agathon.
She felt the weight of a trillion bytes of data, begging her for space.
“Lords of Kobol,” she breathed. “I understand.”
It was more horrifying than teaching ten-year-old Nicky Tyrol how to shoot a gun. Because Hera was younger still.
She ripped her hand from the interface.
* * *
Eventually, after twenty-five minutes of silence, Daniel said, “Let's have this out. Come on. You get one for free. Hit me.”
Adama did. It wasn't about whatever bullshit story Thrace had been telling, which, if it was true, mattered to Bill about as much as cylon mysticism ever did. Which was to say, not at all if it had no effect on where he was standing. But Bill was also pretty sure Thrace knew that; how little Bill cared about his squandered plans and wasted ideas that had, apparently, changed nothing at all.
Bill hit him square in the jaw with his right fist. Before Thrace could straighten himself, Bill hit again, a jab with his left hand that broke his nose.
“One! I said you got one,” Daniel gasped, bracing himself against wall they were using to hide. It had been part of a house. There was still a window, with shattered glass, further along. The blue paint was still visible.
“You deserve a hell of a lot more than two,” Bill bit. “You were her father.”
“So were you!” Daniel screamed, blood streaming from his nose. He charged the other man.
* * *
END PART 2
PART 1
PART 3
Title: The Body is a Myth
Word Count: 28,182 (complete: all three parts.)
Spoilers: AU from 4x09 The Hub, but major spoilers for 4x10 Revelations.
Rating: Um, PG-13ish, I guess?
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money.
Summary: Laura dies and wakes up on a basestar, Natalie is alive, and D'Anna breaks Kara Thrace by telling her the name of the final cylon. Then, of course, they get to Earth. JUMP!
with many thanks to
asta77 for the beta. And then Earth was totally wrecked anyway, and they all wandered about getting radioactive dirt stuck in the cracks of their boots and not really saying anything.
Kara pretty much felt like it was her fault. Again. She was getting tired of heading off on crazy missions that basically turned up nothing.
She wanted to declare the entire planet a fraud, pack up and move on. She couldn't even hear the signal. And even though Kara could barely remember the clear need she'd had when when she was locked in a cell after flying back to the ship, two months too late, she was damn sure it wasn't supposed to lead to a frakked-up tone-deaf wasteland like this.
“This is Earth,” Leoben told her. Not the real Leoben, who was standing, as miserable as everyone else on this rock, staring at his own shoelaces. The Leoben in her head. “You can't hear the music because it's not the time; it's not the promised land.”
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes. “I get it. It's a trick. Wordplay. Oh you wanted the promised land? Well that's a whole 'nother planet!”
“No,” he told her, stepping in front of her, raising her chin with his fingers. “No, Kara, my love -”
“Don't call me that.”
“My bitter, violent love.”
Kara punched him. He split his lips and smiled at her, blood between his white teeth.
“Kara,” he said. “Don't lose faith. Earth is the promised land. You're here. It's just not the time.”
“When will it be the time?” she asked.
“I don't know. Maybe when everyone else can see me too.”
“If I had a knife,” Kara said, coldly. “I would murder you; and I wouldn't care who saw me, or what they saw. Whatever you are, you're not funny.”
Leoben pointed to Laura Roslin, to Gaius Baltar, to the knocked-up copy of a Six, to the Admiral, to half a dozen others. “Do you have any idea how many of them think they're the only ones?”
“The only ones what?”
“Don't be slow, Kara. If the laws of the physical universe were as inviolable as you want them, you couldn't be here; you'd be dead in the atmosphere of a gas planet, crushed down to the size of a soda can. But I guess I don't blame you for thinking it's an isolated incident. No one really wants to consider that reality is fragile enough to jump a battlestar through, or that the universe you jump into might not be the same as the universe you left.”
“FTL isn't magic. It's just travelling at a super-fast speed along a single vector. The ship can only maintain that level of stress of a few seconds, which is why it feels like a jump. It's science, it's safe, and it's sure as hell not going to change the nature of the universe.”
“Hera!” someone screamed.
“Looks like it's time,” Leoben grinned.
Starbuck turned and saw the former President, the Six named Caprica and Athena tearing away from the ruins, one shrieking, “Where is she?” another yelling, “I saw her go this way.”
The entire landing party spread out looking for her, but in the end, no one found her, and Sharon, Caprica and Laura Roslin had somehow managed to lose themselves too.
“Where are they?” Kara asked Leoben.
“I don't know,” he answered. “Maybe something jumped.”
* * *
Tigh considered himself fortunate, because he really didn't give a frak about Earth. When Caprica brushed his sleeve, he supposed she was looking for some kind of happily-ever-after because these godsdamned skinjobs didn't understand it wasn't love-marriage-baby-carriage, and just because Athena had found herself the biggest sap in the Fleet didn't mean that you could pick up the last item on that list and work backwards.
He didn't look at her.
She took his hand. He didn't look at her, but he didn't pull away either. He wasn't sure why. Apathy, maybe.
Then someone was screaming about Athena's kid, and he wandered around the ruins with everyone else trying to find her. He didn't. No one did. Tigh was the first to call it quits, sit down on a broken pillar and light a cigarette.
“Do you remember anything?” Tyrol asked.
“No,” Saul grunted. “That kid took off, and if you ask me serves her parents right for bringing her down here.”
“No,” Tyrol shook his head. “I mean...from before.”
“Oh.”
There was a man. An old man. He was lying down; wet; mechanical.
“No,” he lied. “I don't remember anything.”
“I do,” Tory whispered. “I remember a man. I think he's a hybrid. I remember...”
“I had a gun,” Sam said, lifting his right hand, thumb up, two fingers straight; two-curled, like a kid playing soldiers. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted... Oh gods, his eyes. He was staring at me.”
It was here, Tigh knew. On Earth. On this planet. He remembered a gun too; grim determination, piercing blue eyes above milky white liquid.
He'd fired. He felt it in his trigger finger. He looked around at the dead earth and knew, somehow, it had all gone very, very wrong.
* * *
Laura ran across the wasteland of dirt and dead beach, tripping over debris, nearly twisting her ankle at least twice. Eventually she pulled off her shoes and ran barefoot. She was losing ground, but every time she was sure she'd lost Hera, she saw another snatch of her white-capped head rounding a ruined wall or dancing across the top of a hillock and disappearing on the other side. Athena and Caprica Six must be somewhere near, but she couldn't see them and was afraid if she stopped to look, she'd lose Hera. The child wasn't safe running loose on this planet.
She knew it was the culmination of her dreams even before her real sight blurred and the ruins began to look like the Opera House.
Laura made a conscious effort to see her surroundings as they really were; she was tripping down a flight of stone stairs, mossed-over and cracked; worn hollow at the centre. She was heading into a cavern. She had the unsettling sense that she was headed into the heart of the planet, and the heart of a planet like this must be very dark indeed.
She saw Hera again, heard her laughing as she ran through the first stone arch and slipped into the darkness.
Laura took a breath and followed.
* * *
“Why don't you shoot yourself in the head?” Leoben asked.
“Oh I don't know, because I don't want to die?”
“You wouldn't die, Kara. You're an angel of God; one of the Lords of Kobol. You exist outside of time. The hybrid won't let you die – she can't. She was created to protect you.”
“Now you're just frakking crazy. Shoot yourself in the head; give me some peace.”
“All right,” Leoben shrugged, reaching for the gun holstered on her thigh. “But remember, you think I'm only in your head. Which means, we're the same person, which means -”
Kara realised she'd hit the ground, hard. There was someone on top of her, yelling. She blinked and realised the only thing she could see was Lee's desperate face. She could hear him screaming her name.
She heard pounding bootsteps and another familiar voice calling for her. Sam. Well, that made sense; if Lee was worried, Sam would be worried. Maybe it had something to do with how difficult it was to move her arm. There was something she needed to do, but godsdamnit, it was like fighting a trained wrestler.
Ah, she realised. That was Lee.
It wasn't until she felt the cool circle of a gun barrel against her temple that she realised what was going on. It bothered her some. But then she pulled the trigger, and things were better.
* * *
“We should leave,” D'Anna muttered.
“No,” Natalie said. “No, we have to stay.”
“They'll blame us for this,” she hissed, pointing at the ruins; the broken promise of the planet. “It'll be war again. We can't let them strike first.”
Natalie shook her head. “We're staying,” she said. “We promised. We're in this together.”
“You'll see I'm right. And then we'll see who they'll follow.”
Natalie watched the Twos, the Eights, the other Sixes wandering despondently through the rubble. She remembered when the Threes had been a comfort; older siblings who told her not to worry because they would fix everything. A Three always had your best interests at heart. That's why they handled all the problems. Before New Caprica, anyway.
Maybe not even then.
“We'll see,” she said.
There was a gunshot.
Natalie turned to see Lee Adama mounted on Kara Thrace's torso, screaming. There was blood spreading with a quickness that weakened Natalie's knees, and she was very glad she couldn't see the other side of Kara's head. Her fingers were curled loosely around her sidearm, and the entry wound in her temple was unambiguous.
Kara Thrace was very, very dead.
Sam Anders fell down next to her and started trying to give her CPR until Lee pushed him away, still screaming something too raw for words.
Natalie wasn't sure who threw the first punch, but she heard D'Anna say, “And it starts,” as the two men crashed into half a stone wall, all bloodied knuckles and split lips and gut punches, and, Natalie thought, at least one knee to the crotch.
* * *
Bill Adama kept walking, gun in his hand and a face like the nuclear sky. The others had quit a long time ago, but Adama kept crossing muddy fields and silt stretches, not even pretending he could see footprints anymore.
He didn't consider his direction. He had no idea where she'd gone. More chance of finding her if he was at least looking somewhere.
Eventually, he found Daniel Thrace sitting on a boulder, cracking his knuckles and squinting up at the washed-out sun. His hair was washed-out blond. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and sky-blue short-sleeved shirt. He looked like a tourist.
He stood up and said, “I'm Daniel Thrace.”
Bill didn't take his outstretched hand. He looked like Kara. Bill gripped his sidearm more tightly.
“I tried to follow them,” Daniel Thrace said. “But I couldn't.”
“You mean the President.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “And Sharon and Hera Agathon and the Number Six the others named Caprica.”
“Where did they go?”
“The last resting place of the last hybrid.”
“I don't understand what you mean,” Adama growled. “And I suggest you start making sense.”
“It means the hybrid won this round, Admiral. And we lost.”
“The hybrid.”
“The last hybrid. The one you think of as the first hybrid. The one Kendra Shaw blew to pieces with one of your last nukes. The one you almost caught, that day, when they declared an armistice forty-three years ago,” he paused. “The one that never would have been there if I – if we – had done the job right.”
He was still wearing the same cargo pants and resort-style shirt. But somehow, he'd stopped looking like a tourist. He looked like a refugee. Someone who'd headed out on vacation and never taken a ship back home, because there was no home to go to now.
“Are you going to explain what the frak you're talking about or should I shoot you to save myself from your double-talk?”
“No,” Thrace sighed. “I'll tell you everything. That's why I'm here. It's not a happy story, Admiral. But perhaps it's one you'll understand. It's about being too stubborn, and waking up one day and knowing it's too late to save the world.”
Adama said nothing.
Daniel Thrace said, “Once upon a time...”
* * *
Tyrol didn't decide to pull Sam out of the ruck with Lee until Sam stopped fighting back. Somewhere in there he just went limp. Lee threw a punch that must have loosened teeth, and Anders just lay there. Tyrol thought maybe he was unconscious. The way Lee paused, maybe he did too. But then Sam blinked, and Tyrol watched Lee fighting with himself.
He didn't want to punch him. He had to punch him.
He punched him.
And Tyrol barrelled in, pushed Lee away, bundled up Sam, and dragged him off to sit against a different chunk of rock.
“Twice, now,” was the first thing Sam mumbled, through the blood.
Galen put his arm around Sam's shoulder. Sam was crying, quietly. He was staring straight ahead, at nothing.
That was good, Tyrol decided. Better than staring at him. Last time he'd seen Anders crying, Anders had tried to kiss him after choking out something about being all he had left. Tyrol had said he was sorry; had tried to explain – Sharon, Cally, he liked girls.
It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth either. Who he'd been before, what he thought he'd liked, had all been lies. Sam was a good man. Sam was kind. Sam loved his son; he never said it, but Galen could tell. In the morning, when it was his turn to sleep, he'd hear them talking, making breakfast, Anders passing on scraps of Pyramid wisdom he'd probably been saving for his son. But now, there was only Nicky. Sam and Nick and Galen in their frakked-up little house on their frakked-up Basestar. He imagined trying to explain to his son, one day, that he'd replaced his mother with a robot.
Galen laughed a little, at that.
Galen laughed again, because laughing was his problem. Not that he wanted to fix it.
“What's so funny?” Sam whispered. His words were slurred. His lips were already swollen.
“I am.”
There had been a switch in his head (Galen didn't laugh, but did smile when he realised it could be literal). Some kind of safety valve that blew. Nothing bothered him anymore. It was peaceful.
He thought about Sharon and Cally and impossible music in his head; about looking at his son and being afraid because if there was something wrong, he wouldn't be able to ask for help; about every time he looked at Helo's wife; about his own wife facing firing squads and trapped in airlocks.
The people we love end up dead or turn out to be cylons.
Nothing bothered Galen now, except the thought of letting someone else step into that space. If Sam turned into a nightmare like Boomer. If Sam ended up dead like Cally.
Better not to think that way. Better to keep things the way they are.
Sam curled his knees up to his chest, and hugged them. Tyrol squeezed his shoulder.
* * *
Roslin stood outside the closed doors to the Opera House's inner auditorium while Athena tried the handle, then tried pushing, then tried hurling herself bodily against the woodwork.
They'd both long-since lost the ability to tell where they really were. All Roslin could see was the Caprican Opera House. It couldn't be real, but it didn't look like a hologram either.
“Athena,” she said.
Athena ignored her, stepped back, pulled out her gun, and shot the door. The bullet didn't even leave a mark.
“Athena,” Laura said.
“What?” the younger woman snapped, blinking back tears.
“You need to calm down. We'll find a way in.”
“How?”
“I'm not sure yet. But you're going to hurt yourself and that won't help your daughter.”
They stood, silently for about seven seconds before the doors opened.
Caprica was standing there, with Hera balanced on one hip. Athena pulled her away almost instantly, but Caprica didn't resist.
“You both need to come in here and see this,” she said.
* * *
Kara woke up covered in white goo and lying on top of a naked woman, with something that felt like a hell of a hangover.
“Rise and shine,” the naked woman said.
Kara blinked and realised it was the hybrid. She would have bet her flight status that it wasn't the Rebel's hybrid. This was the one Natalie brought back with the President.
“What the hell am I doing here?” she asked.
“Stabilising. Reboot at ninety-eight per cent completion.”
“Of course,” Kara sighed, fumbling for the bottom of the tank and trying to push herself upright.
At that point, she realised she wasn't wearing any clothes.
At that point, the marines stormed the room, and then Dee walked in. She'd been left on the Basestar as the senior officer when they launched the recon to Earth. Kara did her best to sink under the goo.
Dee looked at her skeptically. Kara was reasonably sure Dee was working out just how much aspirin she should take for the headache she was about to get.
“What the hell are you doing on my basestar?” she asked. Then added, “Sir.”
“Could you get me some clothes?”
“Not until you explain why the ship just spontaneously jumped about two clicks Earthward with no warning, and suddenly you're...to be quite honest, Captain, I'm not sure what you were doing, but I doubt either of our husbands would approve.”
Kara squinted at Dee. She had an uncanny ability to stay perfectly still, and insult you by mentioning things that really ought to have insulted herself.
“Lords, Dee. Lay off. I have a motherfrakker of a headache and if I knew how I got here I'd tell you. Actually,” she struggled to focus. It was disturbing. “Actually I think I might have shot myself in the head.”
Dee actually rolled her eyes.
“For frak's sake,” Kara growled. “Some things you have to do for yourself.”
She got out of the hybrid's tank, marched over to the nearest marine and said, “You. Give me your jacket. Now.”
The marine looked nervous. He glanced at Dee. Dee sighed and nodded.
Kara buttoned up the jacket and paced around the tank. The hybrid had gone back to babbling. Something about vent functions and fuel lines.
“What's the matter?” she asked. “Am I not special enough to get my own tank?”
“The most important systems receive preferential treatment,” the hybrid said.
“I told you, Kara,” Leoben said, walking up to Dee and studying her face. Dee, of course, stayed still, but in this case, Kara couldn't credit her composure. It wasn't as if Leoben was real. “She won't let you die.”
“I thought I'd at least get rid of you,” Kara hissed. Leoben turned to look at her and gave her a wide, and beautiful grin. Kara took a very deep breath and concentrated on not punching him in the mouth (again) to destroy his perfect teeth. Also thinking about that was easier than thinking about what she must have done down on that planet. She shivered. Nothing was right anymore.
Kara kept pacing because she wasn't sure what else to do. Dee and the marines stayed where they were, guns trained on her, maddeningly patient.
“I'll unplug you,” Kara screamed. “Didn't like that last time did you?”
“The body is a myth,” the hybrid answered. “Only the mind is real.”
It was Dee who spoke. A short, sharp, “What?”
“The body is a myth,” the hybrid repeated. “Only the mind is real.”
“That's...that's Saggitaron scripture,” Dee said. “How does she know Saggitaron scripture?”
“She's a computer. She's knows everything.”
“A cylon computer. Shouldn't it be quoting its own damn scripture?”
“I thought you weren't religious.”
“Conclusion,” the hybrid said. “If the body is a myth, faith is a prerequisite of existence. Extrapolation, everyone is religious.”
Kara and Dee glared at each other, stubbornly. Kara broke first.
“She speaks in riddles,” she said. “What does this 'body is a myth' stuff mean, anyway?”
Dee shook her head, as if a five year old had asked her to explain where rain came from. “I don't know. What it says. Reality, everything, is just an illusion. Our consciousness makes us who we are.”
“So you don't accept medicine because you think you can just...think your way out of it.”
“They don't accept medicine,” Dee said.
“Well maybe we should all try real hard to think our way out of this mess then,” Kara sniped. “Maybe if we just organise a thinking party, we can make flowers grow in our new front garden. No work at all.”
“Work equals force multiplied by distance,” the hybrid said. “It's not far now.”
Kara shook her head. “Look, just take me to the brig or whatever it is you're going to do with me, okay?”
“Fine by me.”
But before she could explain exactly what that was, the hybrid yelled, “JUMP!”
And they did.
* * *
Saul Tigh finished his last cigarette and dropped the butt onto the cold, muddy mess of a beach. He was leaning against some rock. In the distance a bridge stretched a couple of dozen feet out over the river before it stopped.
The last frakking thing he wanted in the universe strolled up and said, “So, uh, Colonel. Um, is that what I ought to call you? Right. Of course. Awkward topic. Well anyway, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you. Thank you for all your help. Earlier, with the Centurions.”
“Leave me the frak alone or I'll make them come back, you weaselly little frakker,” Tigh growled.
Baltar paused, managing to stay where he was and look like he was moving away at the same time. After a couple of seconds, he started, like someone had pushed him, and yelped. Actually yelped. Like a dog. Squirelly motherfrakker.
“All right!” he said. “I mean. All right. I'll leave you alone. Of course. But, ah, I just wanted to say, if you ever need anything...”
“What could I possibly want from you?”
“Spiritual guidance,” he heard her voice, sharp as it always was. Harder though, than it had been in the brig. More certain.
“What the-” Tigh said, as Baltar started - “Well, perhaps spiritual guidance, I mean...I'm sorry what?”
“Who said that?”
“Who said what?”
“Nothing,” Tigh muttered. “Just go.”
Again, that irritating, ambivalent wobbling. “I meant what I said. About coming down to one of our services. I know it's not how you...how you see yourself, but you might be surprised what you find.”
Tigh laughed. “So you can turn me into one of your personal centurion guard? No, you frakked up Tory. I'll be damned before I let you do that to me.”
“He'll see the light, Gaius. God loves all his children. Even this one.”
Saul was so sure he could hear her. But he'd been so sure it had been Ellen. Even before he knew what he was, he'd seen her, heard her. Faulty wiring. Too much to drink. The tears building up in his only eye; they never quite fell, but sometimes he felt like the pressure made him see the world all wrong.
That he'd lost Ellen even here, that he could start seeing her, hearing her instead, made him want to strangle something.
Maybe Baltar could tell, because he finally started moving away. Thank the gods, he took her with him. He caught a glimpse of long legs and a red dress slipping behind a toppled column.
The Old Man would find Laura Roslin. The Old Man didn't fail. And when he came back, he'd be bringing Sharon and Hera Agathon too. He'd bring her back. Maybe she'd leave with Baltar, now that she was free.
Somehow, he knew she wouldn't.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We tried to kill the hybrid because we wanted to kill the cycle of time. It's trapped us since we first left Kobol. Athena wept for us, but we were too proud to listen. You think it was two thousand years ago, but that's not the truth. I don't even know if there are words for how long ago it happened. Maybe there wasn't even time, then. We left Kobol. Twelve tribes went to the Colonies, one went to Earth. Eventually, the Colonials fled back to Earth after their mechanical children all but annihilated them. There was peace for a time, but eventually, the Colonies called and most left Earth to reclaim them. The few who stayed on Earth eventually destroyed themselves in a nuclear civil war just in time for the Colonials to flee the Cylon again and end up on Earth again. To have peace for a time again. To decide to reclaim the Colonies again.
“It's endless. We ferry ourselves from Earth to the Colonies to Earth and no matter where we are, we destroy ourselves. We abandoned our gods and their protection so long ago we don't even understand how to count back to it. Our home is closed to us. A price in blood. Nothing grows on Kobol, now. Not for us.”
* * *
Dualla pulled out a wireless transmitter from a hip-holster. “Report.”
The speaker hissed around a male voice, “Current position is oh-oh-three karem five-seven-zero... We're back where we started, Sir.”
“What the frak is this?” Dualla muttered.
Kara shrugged. “She's nuts. Maybe there's no reason.”
“Not very helpful. What if next time she jumps us into another ship, or into deep space, or who the frak knows where.” She lifted her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “All right,” she said into the wireless. “Speak to our cylon techs. Maybe they can temporarily disable her connection to the jump drives.”
“Last time we tried something like that she went crazy, and the centurions lost it.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Captain? Trust it?”
Kara put her hands on her hips. Her belt was too loose, she felt like her frakking pants were about to fall down. It took her brain a whole half-second to process that, and exactly what was wrong with it.
“Oh my gods,” she said. “Dualla. It's when she jumps.”
“What the frak are you talking about?”
“I'm wearing clothes.”
“Of course you're wearing clothes.”
“But I wasn't! When you came in; what happened when you came down here after we jumped the first time?”
“I was...I...” Dualla shook her head. “I don't remember. You were in the tank with the hybrid.”
“And I sure as hell wasn't wearing this or it'd be covered in goo.”
Dualla stared at Kara. The same stare she'd given her when she flew her impossible viper onto the hangar deck three months ago. Tempered, wary and awestruck.
“It happens when she jumps,” Kara said. “The body is a myth, only the mind is real. Lords of Kobol, Dee, she's changing godsdamned reality.”
“Well then,” Dee said. “I definitely think we should consider uncoupling her from the jump drive.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We really thought we could change it this time. Stop people from deciding to reclaim the Colonies, make it so we all stayed here, as one people, on Earth. But everything we tried failed. They left anyway. We kept trying; we thought maybe at least on Earth we didn't have to destroy ourselves. Maybe we didn't need to head for a disaster.
“But the more we tried, the less it worked. And then we started dying. Accidents. Anything but accidents. Eventually there were only five of us left; of the original models. We'd been so rare we were near-mythic for a long time. Mistakenly thought of as gods. Maybe that's why we tried so hard to be that for our people. To change the fabric of scripture. To kill time. But still. Five of us. Only five.
“It was the hybrid. He was trying to keep time on track. His only purpose in life had been to jump ships through time, and then, to wait until the end of time so he could start it again. Nothing conscious should be in control of a faster-than-light jump, Admiral. You move outside the cycle of time. You see...everything.”
* * *
Laura followed Sharon and Caprica into the auditorium. White drapes fell from the ceiling to the stage. Behind her, rows and rows of red-upholstered seating was empty. No one was watching from the boxes or the guilded balcony.
Caprica climbed the steps onto the stage. Sharon went next, with Hera slung against her hip. Laura trailed, not afraid, but wary. Her dreams had been filled with purpose. There was no purpose here. This place was abandoned; just like the rest of the frakking planet.
“And,” Six said, pointing. “There's also this.”
In the middle of the stage was a sunken hollow. A resurrection tank. No, she corrected herself. It was a little different. This was a hybrid's tank. There was no hybrid. No liquid. Just a dull metal surface, and a message that looked like it had been scratched out with a dull knife.
THE CENTURIONS HAVE THE SCHEMATICS.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We tried to kill him. He jumped as we shot him. I honestly thought he wouldn't have enough energy left to execute that kind of jump. I was wrong. He left; ran for your Colonies. Incited your Cylon to revolution. I'm so...sorry that we didn't stop him.
“We let him run, because he wasn't controlling us any longer; we could make the changes we needed. We thought we needed. We stopped the nuclear war. And then, once your Colonies declared an armistice with the Cylon – the day you met him – that was the day he left the Colonies and came back here. To start our nuclear war himself. It's amazing what a few well-placed nuclear missiles will do if you can fake the entry trajectories. Everyone thought someone else was firing.”
* * *
Lee Adama had a bloody lip and red-rimmed eyes. He marched through the ruins, straight at Natalie and D'Anna, a scrap of paper in one hand. He pushed it in Natalie's direction.
“Your baseship is jumping all over godsdamned space and our people can't work out why. Apparently neither can yours.”
Natalie read the report. Clip-edged computer paper, in Colonial font. A list of co-ordinates and jump times. Natalie plotted the jumps in her mind, the spaces, the rhythms. Random.
She shook her head. “I can't explain this.”
“Well that's too bad,” Lee said. “Because our next move is to shut off your hybrid. Permanently, until you can find a solution.”
“What? No, you can't!”
“Yes, we can. It's our ship now.”
He turned, and left.
“Wait,” she called, stepping after him. “Take me to the raptor, take me back the ship. Let me talk to the hybrid.”
Lee looked at her. He stared at her, right in the eyes. Whatever he saw, it didn't elicit sympathy. But then, Natalie supposed, she'd destroyed everything he loved. Kara's body was cooling on the wet mud, covered by her own coat, and she was just the latest.
“I'll give you twenty-four hours, or until it jumps again,” Lee said. “I'll have Lieutenant Gaeta escort you to the raptor and accompany you.”
“Thank you, Mr President.”
D'Anna said, “I think I'll join you.”
* * *
Laura Roslin and Athena were trying to decide what schematics the centurions had. Caprica didn't understand why no one was talking about the jump drives.
So she said, “Maybe it means the jump drives.”
“Why would it refer to jump drives? We already know how to build those,” Athena snapped.
Six stared at her incredulously. “Look around you,” she said. “Stop projecting - this cavern's full of them.”
“Excuse me?” said Roslin.
“The jump drives. You...you can see them, can't you?”
“I don't project anymore,” Sharon said, quietly. “So if that's what this is, I don't know how to switch it off.”
“Madam President?” Caprica asked.
“I've been assured so many times that I'm not a cylon, I would think the issue of my projection would be moot,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the far wall, trying to see something. Anything.
Caprica had seen the president when she was angry, when she was cool, even when she was completely unsettled (although, Caprica had been unsettled then too; Athena had been so unsettled her steady hands had spent the entire conversation trying to escape). Caprica thought that quietly frightened was the emotion she found most terrifying on Laura Roslin.
“I can see the Opera House,” she said. “But underneath that, we're in a cave. It's very large. Hundreds of meters; I can't see all the way to the end of the far side,” she pointed. “It's completely full of jump drives. There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. They're wired to the hybrid's tank.”
“Which means, of course,” Gaius said, stepping out from behind Roslin, and tapping a cigarillo against his metal cigarette case. “That whatever hybrid isn't here was jumping something awfully large.”
Caprica ignored him. Because they both already knew that was impossible.
Roslin said, “Then logically speaking, this hybrid was designed to jump something enormous.”
Athena shook her head. “No. If she's telling the truth, that couldn't account for that number of drives. Colonial military tech sometimes made use of networked jump drives to move larger ships, yes. But the limiting factor wasn't the number of networked drives, it was the computational capacity of your computers. At a certain point, the mass of the target and the complexity needed to simultaneously program the necessary number of drives exceeds your best computer's processing power. Cylon technology is better, but even a hybrid has limits.”
Laura glanced at Caprica and she nodded. “It's true.”
Laura shook her head. “Given the number of times our rational expectations have been confounded in the past few days, I'm going to choose to assume there's a logical reason for this,” she started pacing. “Let's assume that this isn't surrealist art and that something is capable of using these machines. It's going to be jumping something very large. Could we be on a ship of some kind? Hidden under the planet's surface?”
“We could be,” Caprica replied carefully. “But if so, why make the hangar deck look like a cave system?”
“Oh please,” Baltar rolled his eyes. “No one ever wants to accept the obvious.”
“How many drives can you actually see?” Athena asked.
“Six hundred seventeen,” Baltar answered.
“Six hundred seventeen,” Caprica repeated. “But as I said, there are more – I don't know how far the cave extends.”
“All right,” Roslin said. “How big are we talking about if we need over six hundred engines to move it?”
Athena shook her head. “That we be...” her eyes widened. “That would be something as large as this planet.”
The three women stared at each other.
Hera laughed. She pointed at the hybrid's tank. Sharon caught her hand and held it.
“Bingo,” Baltar sighed. “Honestly, I might not have loved you for your mind, but I did appreciate it. Well, until you used it to destroy my entire civilisation, of course. It astonishes me that you're so slow sometimes.”
“But it's impossible,” Six whispered. “Where would it go?”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We survived because we were in the Opera House – the hybrid's home, where your former president is now. We were using the remains of the equipment to calculate how far we'd diverged from the cycle.
“I know you know how it feels. I ran for open air. I had no plan. The Opera House closed behind me, and wouldn't let me back in. I don't even know where it is now.
“The others were with me. We had nowhere to go except back to the Colonies. We found the next generation of Cylon as they retreated from your space. The hybrid had been educating them. They had schematics for the humanoid models, for the resurrection technology. They began to build it blindly, like children making nuclear missiles.
“So we helped them. We helped construct the humanoid models, the way we'd been constructed the last time around. We wanted to stay with them, teach them, show them the mysteries of God and the universe, so we only built seven, so that we could be part of the twelve models. We kept our old numbers. I was number Seven. The oldest model left; our Ones through Sixes and our Eights were all gone. We don't age, but we destroyed our Hub in our cycle of time too. And after thousands of years... There were accidents. Illnesses. And eventually the hybrid himself trying to keep us out of the way because we didn't want to quietly wait for our deaths in Earth's inevitable nuclear civil war.
“I was number Seven. I was the oldest. Maybe that's why I felt like it was my job to make it all right again. We wanted to help our new siblings avoid the mistakes we made. We hadn't saved Earth, but maybe we could stop the second Cylon war in the Colonies.
“You already know how well that went. Every opportunity to change things... we failed.”
* * *
The raptor had a pair of pilots D'Anna didn't recognise. Natalie smoothed her skirt across her knees as she sat down opposite Felix Gaeta. He swallowed a pill and slid the container back into his pocket. There was a crude mechanical leg attached to his right stump. D'Anna wondered what had happened, but not, she decided, enough to ask. She caught his eye. He turned away.
“Nice to see you again, Felix,” she said.
She felt Natalie throw an angry glance at her. Well, let her. D'Anna wasn't sure which model she disliked more; the Eights who genuinely had no idea who they were, or the Sixes who knew exactly and then lied about it. At least D'Anna never lied to herself about what she was or what she wanted. And she'd never driven the Ones to start a civil war.
“Not really,” Felix replied, coldly.
“Oh come on. Cylon and human working together? It's just like old times.”
“I'd hardly call an occupation working together.”
“Well I suppose there's a matter of perspective. I mean, technically, aren't you occupying our basestar?”
“No,” Natalie interrupted. “It's my basestar and I ceded control as part of a treaty.”
“Right,” Three said, nodding. “Right, details. So important.”
“The details aren't important,” Gaeta said. “You just want to make me angry. It really is like old times.”
He turned toward the pilots and asked about an estimated flight time. The raptor shuddered as they began launch prep.
D'Anna murmured, “Yup.”
“What is your obsession?” Natalie whispered angrily. “Can't you let anything lie?”
“Oh I don't know,” D'Anna replied. “I think reminiscing with Felix here is mild as compared to, say, removing the telencephalic inhibitors of every centurion on your baseship, and then telling Cavil. If we're going to talk degrees of provocation.”
“I was doing that for all of us. It was a moral stand.”
“Of course it was,” D'Anna said.
No one spoke until they reached the basestar. D'Anna spent her time wondering when exactly Natalie would give up this pretence at unity and tell her to fall in line or get out. A while yet, she imagined. Boxing a Three because she wasn't being easy – even Natalie would see the irony there.
Of course there were bigger questions. What did she want? What was it she had been looking for in Felix Gaeta; what was she looking for in Natalie, in Kara Thrace, even in Laura Roslin and Lee Adama and the Admiral. In every centurion she passed. In every Colonial officer. Even in Cavil's face when he brought her back, one last time.
All she saw was the precarious, untenable situation they were in. In every face, she saw the bloodbath that was coming. She hoped, of course, to avoid becoming a casualty. Beyond that, she wasn't sure how much she cared. It wasn't callousness.
Perhaps it was disappointment.
Her inability to reconcile that with God's plan and His infinite wisdom was a definite problem.
* * *
A centurion lifted its arm and pointed a gun directly into Lee Adama's face.
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “We can't change it. None of us can change the cycle of time because we are the cycle of time.”
* * *
Kara squatted next to the hybrid as she yelled, “Error! Repetition is not artistry. Memory purge incomplete!”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “So I made someone who could.”
* * *
Dualla's wireless hissed. “Sir, I'm getting strange information from the Rebel Basestar. The cylons are requesting assistance. They say...they say their centurions are revolting; they're trying to storm their hybrid's chamber. They want to disable her.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace said, “I went to the prototype hybrid. Your hybrid. The one all the others are copied from.
“I drove her insane.”
* * *
Laura was on the cusp of an unwelcome realisation. Hera Agathon was sitting in the dry hybrid tank because she had shrieked until her mother let her. She was pulling at the edges of a wiring compartment. Laura crouched and peeled away the covering.
Whatever should have been here was meant to jump the planet, but whatever should have been here couldn't possibly manage that alone.
There were four people in this chamber, logically, one of them had the solution to this dilemma. And three of them were only there because they followed the fourth.
Hera Agathon was refusing to get out of the tank. Sharon was crouching, trying to convince her it was much prettier on the stage. Caprica was still staring into the distance, perhaps at her phantom jump engines.
Caprica started talking, to no one. Laura closed her eyes and sighed.
Laura opened her eyes and saw Gaius Baltar. Not the clean-shaven, hypocritically robed fundamentalist who'd minister to centurions if he thought it would elevate him; the bearded, long-haired traitor who'd lead them into the snake pit of New Caprica. There he was, cigarillo in one hand, the other holding a tailored jacket slung over his shoulder.
Just like she'd dreamed him.
He turned, and looked at her. “Ah,” he said. “I was wondering how long it would take.”
Caprica turned to stare at Laura staring at Gaius. She looked terrified. She stopped moving. She stopped breathing. Laura wasn't managing to do much better.
“You understand, of course,” Gaius said to Laura. “That I'm not real. Any more than Elosha was real.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked. She wanted her voice strong and steady. It wasn't.
“The same reason as you,” he said. “The same reason Kara Thrace is alive and Natalie is competing with D'Anna for leadership of the Cylon and my beloved here has a cylon child.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because you've never been here before. At least, not like this.”
* * *
The centurions formed a semi-circle and began to herd people toward the centre of the ruins. An Eight yelled at them to stop this and put away their guns. She stepped forward and drew her own weapon. A centurion shot her before she'd fully raised her arm.
Narcho, in a confused fight/flight reflex responded by charging the nearest centurion. It knocked him aside with a sweep of one arm. He fell in the mud and didn't move.
Lee yelled, “Easy! People, stay calm, and don't turn this into a firefight!”
They edged backwards until they were penned in on all sides by killer robots.
In the end it was Tigh who stepped forward.
“Let these people go,” he said.
The centurion didn't respond.
“Let me past,” he said, and tried to walk around it.
The centurion stopped him, firmly, with a hand on his shoulder. It bent low; put its head to Tigh's head, and Tigh staggered backwards.
Tory caught him as he reeled into the crowd. “What's the matter? What happened?”
“They say,” Tigh gasped. “That they're sorry.”
A tear rolled down his cheek.
“They say they promised.”
* * *
Daniel Thrace opened his mouth to continue his story, and said nothing.
William Adama waited until he'd taken five deep breaths, and then stood up, and started walking away. Too much pride, and too much anger to ask for anything.
He felt the cylon's hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw his sheet white face.
He said, “I drove her mad to break her programming. So she could change things, not keep them on track. But the Old Machine – our hybrid – I think he just outplayed us.”
“He's dead.”
“He also built the centurions. We can't wait any longer. I need to see the hybrid. She's the only one who can stop this now.”
* * *
Kara grabbed the hybrid's head with both her hands and forced the thing to stare at her. “What's going on?” she demanded. “What's happening to the centurions?”
Dee and the marines had barricaded the door, but it wouldn't hold for long.
The hybrid stared back at Kara. Her eyes widened. She seemed almost...sane. Kara's breath caught in her throat. The last time she'd seen that look, the things this woman had said. They'd never leave her.
She said, “Your father and I love you so very much, sweetheart. What we did to you, we're so sorry.”
Ice filled Kara's spine. “What did you do to me?” she whispered.
“Once Kendra killed him, it was safe to bring you here, so we could all live happily ever after. After the occupation, when you were back in the sky, we called to you, darling. Come to us. Resurrect where we are. It was the quickest way to send you back with a message to the others.”
“I flew my bird into the maelstrom,” Kara said, quietly. “I killed myself.”
“You did,” the hybrid answered. “Yes, you did. And we're so sorry. We love you. We love you. We love you.”
She kept saying it. She wouldn't stop.
The centurions broke through the door and still she wouldn't be quiet.
“No!” Kara screamed.
The world broke.
The last thing she heard was, “We love you we love you we JUMP!”
* * *
“If anything happens to any of my people,” Adama growled.
“You'll what?”
“I'll hold you personally responsible.”
“Admiral,” Thrace said. “I think I just spent a long time establishing that I am personally responsible. But you're not first in line to hold me to anything.”
He started off across the broken plain at something more than walking speed but not quite a run. Adama set his jaw, and followed.
* * *
Natalie found herself bundled out of the raptor by a quintet of Twos and all but dragged down a side corridor with the rest of the raptor's crew and passengers.
“What's happening?” she asked.
“The centurions,” a Leoben answered. “They've turned against us.”
D'Anna smiled. She wasn't gloating, Natalie realised, and she was a little surprised at that. She seemed sad.
“What's so funny?” Natalie asked.
“Oh come on. We let our mechanical slaves get too smart and now they're going to kill us.”
D'Anna began to walk away from the group, back out into the exposed hangar bay.
“Where are you going?” Natalie asked.
“To join the winning side, Sweetie.”
“You don't even know what they want!”
D'Anna turned back to look at Natalie and shrugged. “I know what everyone else wants, and you're all just dancing to the same old song. It's not so easy to join in again once you know what it looks like from the outside.”
She turned, and left.
Natalie broke the silence. “We have to go after her,” said Natalie. “She'll destroy the ship.”
Gaeta actually laughed. “I think your robots are doing just fine on that front.”
“There are still some systems that only respond to our commands. If D'Anna's really going to side with them, they could vent our atmosphere or raise the gravity levels,” Natalie shook her head. “A hundred other painful deaths, Felix Gaeta,” she glared at him, resolved. “You're coming with me. All of you.”
Ten minutes later, as Natalie skidded out onto another hangar deck, Gaeta's gun in her hand, the ship jumped.
* * *
It hadn't been ever been easy – reading scripture and believing it was real. Her mind wasn't built that way and for most of her life, Laura had been glad.
When scripture began to read like news headlines it had made it easier.
Laura felt a deep resentment blooming, that now, when miraculous, mystical things were happening daily, the scriptures themselves had once again become so vague as to be useless. Just fortunes and guesswork that would fit any situation if you squinted the right way.
There were too many leaders who had died, and returned. Too many hybrid children. Too many roads to Earth, and perhaps even too many Earths. Like someone was filling the broadcast with white noise, or hiding by sticking up so many signs there was no way to know which one to follow. Perhaps they were never meant to come here.
If this was the end, and Gaius Baltar – any kind of Gaius Baltar – was about to reveal the secrets of the universe to her? No. She couldn't stand it.
Hera was banging the wire compartment's covering against the scratched-out message at the bottom of the tank. Inside the compartment there was a web of wires, and behind that, a small channel of water, no more than an inch wide, a quarter-inch deep.
Roslin pushed her hand through the wiring and pressed her fingers into the stream.
A tidal wave swallowed her.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Sam whispered to Galen.
Galen shrugged. “Hope we're not good enough to die young?”
Sam laughed softly.
“You know,” he said. “The longer we stay here, the less I think we're young at all.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they're waiting for?” Sam asked, looking at the centurions. They stood, dull grey in the washed-up sunlight. Impassive.
“For once, it's not us,” Galen replied.
“I wonder where the fifth is,” Sam murmured. It wasn't really a question. It was more like a prayer; soft words they said to each other, all four of them, when there was nothing else to say.
Sam wasn't expecting an answer. But he found himself staring at a fixed spot on the horizon, between the shoulders of two centurions; to the left of half-an-arch. He glanced at the Chief: he was staring too. On the other side of the group, Tory and Tigh had also turned their heads.
“Maybe he's coming,” Sam said.
* * *
Daniel Thrace moved quickly across the dead ground. When he saw a distant crowd-sized smear among a clump of ruins, he pulled up short. He began to move in an awkward crouch, skipping from one rock to another, keeping out of sight as much as possible. He motioned to the Admiral to follow suit.
Eventually they were near enough to see metal reflected in the sun.
“There,” Daniel said. “We have to find a way to get past them and into one of the ships.”
Adama looked at the scarse cover, unevenly distributed across a wide, flat plain.
“And how do we do that?”
He grimaced. “I'm open to suggestions.”
Adama arched an eyebrow, and didn't deign to respond.
“Then I guess we wait,” Daniel said. “And hope an opportunity presents itself.”
* * *
In the water-wall of data, Laura struggled to think. Images rose and fell around her; hexadecimal queries rendered as beautifully as a Monclair original. She wasn't sure: was this the past, or the future, or a question?
The pictures passed too quickly to process; people, of all ages and races, laughing, crying, screaming, one – she was sure, eating noodles. She saw a flower, a dog, a pile of burning bodies.
With her entire body, she yelled, “Stop!”
Slower, she thought. Slower.
The picture in her mind hung motionless. Laura saw herself. She was in a trench. She was older. Her hair was greyer; she was thinner. She was putting a riot helmet onto a ten year old boy.
The picture began to move. Outside the trench, she could hear people screaming, and the inevitable, mechanical clank of a walking centurion.
“Nicky,” the Laura in the picture was saying. “Nicky, you're going to be fine.”
The Laura in the picture was lying. The Laura in the picture started showing Nicky Tyrol how to load his gun.
The Laura outside the picture was disgusted.
“This is your sales pitch?” she said. “Trying to scare me? Who are you, and where am I?”
The pictures faded. Laura stood in darkness.
“All of this has happened before,” a male voice boomed. “And all of it will happen again.”
“If that was true, you wouldn't be trying to frighten me with visions of it. What is it you need to scare me into doing?”
The voice spoke again. “This program cannot complete its function without the hybrid machine and the hybrid human. The machine was forced to flee. The centurions have the schematics.”
“Who are you?”
“This program cannot complete its function.”
“What is your function.”
“Navigation.”
She saw, in her mind, the entire planet wink out of existence. She saw green fields, clean cities. Children playing around a statue of Hera Agathon.
She felt the weight of a trillion bytes of data, begging her for space.
“Lords of Kobol,” she breathed. “I understand.”
It was more horrifying than teaching ten-year-old Nicky Tyrol how to shoot a gun. Because Hera was younger still.
She ripped her hand from the interface.
* * *
Eventually, after twenty-five minutes of silence, Daniel said, “Let's have this out. Come on. You get one for free. Hit me.”
Adama did. It wasn't about whatever bullshit story Thrace had been telling, which, if it was true, mattered to Bill about as much as cylon mysticism ever did. Which was to say, not at all if it had no effect on where he was standing. But Bill was also pretty sure Thrace knew that; how little Bill cared about his squandered plans and wasted ideas that had, apparently, changed nothing at all.
Bill hit him square in the jaw with his right fist. Before Thrace could straighten himself, Bill hit again, a jab with his left hand that broke his nose.
“One! I said you got one,” Daniel gasped, bracing himself against wall they were using to hide. It had been part of a house. There was still a window, with shattered glass, further along. The blue paint was still visible.
“You deserve a hell of a lot more than two,” Bill bit. “You were her father.”
“So were you!” Daniel screamed, blood streaming from his nose. He charged the other man.
* * *
END PART 2
PART 1
PART 3
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 04:20 am (UTC)Oh wow, this is.....
Um, I'm gonna stick with holy shit, I think.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 09:17 pm (UTC)Dee looked at her skeptically. Kara was reasonably sure Dee was working out just how much aspirin she should take for the headache she was about to get.
Yes, my personal!Dee is strong like this, and clear-eyed, even when she gets herself into terrible situations.
Love this. Was so much more satisfying than actual cannon. I know I missed some stuff, but I need some time to process before I re-read.