2275.02.12 18:29:00
The shrilling of the klaxon, and Capitaine de frégate Natasha Larenya's voice shouted "Stations de combat! Stations de combat! Skipper to CIC, tout suite, Skipper to CIC, tout suite!" over the 1-MC sent Capitaine de vaisseau Syuzen Andreya Ivanova scrambling from the sofa in Astronef des Nations Féderés Gennadi Ivanovich Koniev's wardroom, and up the ladder leading to the 30,000-ton Churchill-class heavy patrol cruiser's Combat Information Center.
"Commandante," the photinics tech, Quartier-maitre de 1re classe Etienne Hollande, as Syuzen took her station, and sealed up her suit,"Marine d'Etoile base at AD Leonis reporting possible multipleenemy Chernekov radiation signatures, at plus fifteen by fifteen-t'irty, one-'undred AU downrange, and closing at 3,000 kips. Base wants us to intercept and investigate."
"How many is multiple, Quartermaster?" S'yuzen asks.
"Radar and electromagnetic spectrum telemetry indicates approximately 221 distinct contacts, Madame," was Hollande's reply.
"Suka!" Syuzen whispered, as all stations reported in:
"Aux Con secure. Reporting multiplex fire online, point-defense arrays, green boards."
"Engineering standing by to retract radiators. Green boards."
"Navigation calculating intercept; hyperdrive online, standing by to execute Theta jump."
"Helm cancelling decel for AD Leonis Base, flipping ship; all decks, 50G counter-burn in five."
"Guns. Mounts Alfa One and Alfa Two, Bravo One and Bravo Two, Charlie One and Charlie Two, Delta One and Delta Two, green boards."
"Missile deck. Port and starboard missile bays show green boards."
"All spaces report secure," Larenya said to Syuzen, from her station at her commander's left.
Syuzen nodded.
"Quartermaster," she asked Hollande,"what else can you tell me about those contacts?"
"Telemetry from largest contact indicates it is between five and seven million tons; am detecting possible weapons power signatures, though I cannot tell for sure at this range. Vessel has launched ten smaller bogeys, approximately ten to twelves tons apiece."
"Colonial, then," Syuzen concluded, as Capitaine de corvette Simone Montigny announced,"Navigation to all hands, prepare for Theta jump, I say again, prepare for Theta jump."
Then, she stabbed a red key on the nav station's virtual keyboard, the Koniev whined and shrieked, Syuzen's teeth rattled, and the ship jumped.
Day 42.Yahren 38 Post-Holocaust(PH) 12:11:06
"Battle stations!' came entirely too easily from his lips these days.
Colonel Starbuck, executive officer of the Battlestar Galactica in the five yahren since Tigh's death, stood behind a man he used to know, as the klaxon howled, and the bridge lighting turned blood red.
"Stand by all laser batteries," Apollo further ordered."Ready all mega-pulsars; arm all air-to-air missiles!"
"Positive shield," Starbuck ordered, the armored shutters closing out the view of the inbound spacecraft on the main screen."Launch all remaining Vipers."
"She's a warship, all right," the Galactica'sstrike commander, Captain Sheba, reported."Sensors detecting charged laser cannon, missiles, and railguns. She'll be in range of the fleet in approximately five centons."
"Then," decided Apollo summarily, "we have no choice—"
"Commander—"
It's "Commander," these days.
Not "Apollo."
Not for a long time.
"—we don't even know who they are," Starbuck insisted.
"It doesn't matter who they are, Colonel," Apollo wearily replied."We have a fleet that can't wait, until we're all blown out of the sky, before we decide whether or not that ship out there is hostile."
"Unknown vessel maintaining course and speed," the flight officer reported.
"Galactica to Silver Spar Leader," Apollo said.
"Commander!" Starbuck objected.
"Captain Sheba," Apollo said, ignorning his executive officer,"your squadron will engage that ship."
"Apollo?" Sheba asked.
"You heard what I said!" Apollo snapped.
"I heard," his wife whispered in reply.
"Lords Of Kobol, forgive us all," whispered Starbuck.
2275.02.12 18:31:48
"They're coming in on attack vector!" Capitaine de corvette Ansel Holloway reported from Tactical, as the ten fighters on Koniev's master holodisplay burned toward intercept."Estimate twenty seconds to point-defense zone."
"Stand by to—" Syuzen started to say, before a study of the tactical holodisplay at her left hand revealed several anomalies.
Those fighters were each armed with a pair of lasers...similar to those Koniev used for point-defense.
They'd sting like hell, but they certainly lacked the punch of the missiles and 30-millimeter railguns the Colonials' Vipers are armed with.
Supposedto be armed with.
These fighters might look like their Vipers, telemetry showed they weren't packing KEW of any kind.
"Helm," Syuzen ordered,"two seconds at fifty grav, hard right and down! Continue evasives! Tactcal, hold all fire for my mark, but continue calculating firing solutions! Engineering, button us up! Intel, weapons fit on Bogeys One through Eleven?"
"Bogey One," Lieutenant de vaisseau Julia Tavernier reported,"appears to be armed with lasers, of various types, and antimatter-catalyzed thermonuclear ordinance."
"Skipper," she added, not believing her own intelligence assessment,"according to what the sensors are saying—"
The red CIC lighting dimmed briefly, as three of the ten fighters simoultaneously scored minor hits on the Koniev's fifty centimeters of tungsten-cryogenic lithium-depleted uranium armor.
"Combat, Engineering," reported Capatine de corvette Valerie Botsleidner,"no penetrations, no damage."
"—none of those craft are armed with KEW of any kind," the incredulous Tavernier continued with her report."But...but, they should be...."
"Thirty additional fightercraft now inside point-defense zone," Hollande reported.
"Maybe this is an older model," Holloway suggested.
"Can't put meaningful laser firepower on a twelve-ton fighter," Larenya stated."They have to use nukes or KEW; even the Kobolds know that."
"Commandante," Hollande stated still another anomalous bit of data aloud,"none of those other ships is armed. With anyt'ing."
"They do, Number One," Syuzen answered Larenya."Intel, fighter complement of a Jupiter-class battlestar?"
"Normal complement, 160 Vipers, forty Raptor multi-role SWAC ships," was Tavernier's instant and immediate reply.
"And," Syuzen observed,"I see no Raptors, and only forty 'Vipers.'"
"Cherenkov radiation pattern," Hollande reported,"zero by twelve-five, 20,000 klicks downrange. It's 'eracles, Commandante."
"Comms, tell Captain Leavitt to hold fire, but otherwise maintain offensive posture," Syuzen said."Then, bring the translation software on line, and put me on with Bogey One."
"Are you sure?" Larenya asked.
"No," Syuzen replied honestly, as she said over comms:
42.Y38PH 12:13:47
"Attention, unknown battlestar off my bow," a woman's image said on the bridge monitor."I am the warship Gennadi Ivanovich Koniev, of the Nations Féderés du Terre. We have assumed an offensive posture, but we are not prepared to engage at this time. I say again, we have assumed an offensive posture, but we will not fire, unless fired upon by your vessel. Please respond."
"She knows this ship is a battlestar," Apollo observed.
"Yeah," Starbuck was quick to remind his commander,"but she hasn't attacked us. Hell, she hasn't even engaged our Vipers, even after they scored hits on her."
"Those hits had no effect against her armor!" Apollo reminded him. "She knows our Vipers can't hurt her ship."
"Then, she should have tried her luck with the Galactica by now." Starbuck replied."Why hasn't she?"
"Maybe she—" Apollo started to say.
"Maybe," an exasperated Starbuck snapped,"just may be,for once, Commander, we aren't facing someone who wants us or the gallmocking fleet dead!"
"Are you willing to gamble the lives of everyone in this fleet on that hope?!" Apollo snapped, as he bent over the primary bridge console.
Starbuck bit back an insolent remark from an earlier self, and simply, quietly replied:
"Adama would have."
Apollo's flinched, tensed, as he stood up straight, fists clenched at his sides.
"My father's dead, Colonel," he coldly whispered.
"I was there,Commander," Starbuck softly reminded his commander.
A tense silence passed, as long, and as distant as the thirty yahren, since the Others first attacked.
Since they'd murdered Adama aboard their battlestar Galactica.
"Put me on comms," Apollo finally said to the flight officer.
"Standing by, Commander," the flight officer replied.
"This is Commander Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica," Apollo said,"to the warship Koniev. The fleet under my protection holds the last survivors of our civilization."
2275.02.12 18:34:07
"Before I endanger their lives," the holo of a visibly-careworn old man told Syuzen,"I want to know what assurances you can give me that you won't attack the micron we let our guard down?!"
"Am detecting over fifty t'ousand life signs aboard those ships, Commandante," Hollande said.
"That confirms it, Skipper," Tavernier commented."According to Intel, the Colonial battlestar Galactica was last known to have been commanded by William Adama."
"That's not William Adama," she then stated the blatantly obvious.
"Another alternate reality," Larenya remarked."Bozhe moi,was one not bad enough?!"
Syuzen mused for a moment.
Remembering.
Sixty-one years ago.
When damn fools had triggered the alien artifact now known as the Ring of Fire which had once orbited Io.
And, chertov Colonial battlestars had come boiling through the resulting space-time anomaly like a swarm of rats, hellbent upon holocaust.
"Maybe we won't have to fight this one," the commander of the AdNF G.I. Koniev said aloud, as she keyed the comm button.
"Unless we trust each other, Commander," she plainly stated to Apollo,"the answer to that is no assurances at all."
Silence, the older man's dark eyes hard, dead at the same time, a greying blonde man behind him telling him,"she's right, Commander, we—"
The older man put up his hand up to silence his subordinate.
"You identified this ship as a battlestar," he accused."How did you know what we are?! How do I know you aren't in league with the Others?!"
"Others?!" Syuzen asked, wanting clarification, before answering.
"The Other Colonists," Apollo replied, breaking off every word. "Are you of the same tribe as them?!"
"I don't think we are, Commander," Syuzen replied, almost certain she knew who these "Others" are,"and I won't insult you by asking you that same question.
We have, for the last sixty-one years, been at war with a human nation who uses craft similiar to your own as their primary capital warships; they call themselves the Twelve Colonies of Kobol—"
"Dear Lord!" whispered the blonde man."Commander—"
Again, Apollo motioned his subaltern to silence.
"—have to check our intelligence to be sure," Syuzen finished,"but I think we might have a common enemy, if not a common cause."
Another silence, as Apollo was forced to contemplate this possibility.
When he spoke again, it was as if the words were being dragged from him by rack and thumbscrew:
"I think...I think we might have at that, Captain. I'd like to discuss that, aboard the Galactica, if that is acceptible to you."
"Of course," Syuzen replied, as Apollo terminated communications.
"Is that...wise, Skipper?" Larenya asked.
"Probably not, Number One," Syuzen replied,"but I'm going anyway. Helm, cease evasives, and match vectors with Galactica; all hands to remain at combat stations, until further notice. Number One, you have the ship and the conn."
2275.02.12 18:43:00
The ten Fusiliers Marins came to attention, when Syzuen entered the chamber at the foot of the ladder leading to one of Koniev'stwo Komet assault shuttles docked externally to the mast between the tapered cylinder of the ship's main section, and the cylindrical section housing her radiators antimatter-fusion reactors, Bergen hyperspatial jump engine, and antimatter-fusion torch.
"At ease," Koniev's commander told them, after returning their salutes.
She fussed with her dress black and golds a final time, adjusted the saucer cap on her head, and ascended the ladder, the section of Fusiliers Marins following her, with their commander, Lieutenant de vaisseau Alice Graves, being the last to climb up into the Komet's troop deck.
Not much room on a 50-ton assault shuttle's troop deck for anything other than jump seats bolted to the downward-hinged deck on either side, Syzuen buckling herself into one nearest the cockpit, checking the restraints, even as Alice checked them herself.
"All secure, Commandante," the commander of Koniev's Fusiliers Marins company said, before belting herself in across the deck, and telling the Komet's pilot to "undock, and none of your usual insanity this time, si'vous plait. We have the Commandante with us, and I don't think she wants to be smashed like a bowl of eggs, n'est ce pas?"
"You never let me have any fun, capitaine." was the expected reply from Premier-maitre Alisha Roberts, as the young(and technically-insane)pilot undocked her ride from Koniev, and, with the gentlest nudge from the Komet's torch and RCS thrusters, she matched vectors with a waiting squadron of "Vipers," as they escorted the shuttle to the Galactica'sportside flight pod.
Syzuen was patched into the Komet's sensors through her wearable, and it was an effort not to flinch, as she saw the battlestar through the shuttle's forward cam.
It's not one of their battlestars, the thirty-two year veteran Marine d'Etoile commander had to remind herself.
As difficult as it is not to see that, and think of all those closest to her that the Kobold bastards had taken from her.
She sighed, heading off the tears, trying to anyway.
Fourteen years.
Talia's death at Wolf 359 still hurt.
Not as much, now, maybe, with Sondra in her life, but still....
Another sigh.
She could go on like this for hours, and not just Talia, but Marcus, Ganya, Capitaine Sinclair, her parents.
But, now wasn't the time for that.
She wiped her face with her handkerchief, as the Komet entered the Galactica's port landing bay, and Syuzen took a last, deep breath to steady herself, as the shuttle touched down on the deck.
42.Y38PH 12:23:14
Commander Apollo of the Colonial Battlestar Galactica fussed with his blue dress uniform, squared his shoulders, and forced all memory of the acrimonious, just-concluded Council session from his mind, before he stepped off onto the deck of Landing Bay Alpha, a score of warriors at his side, as the alien shuttlecraft and its escorting Vipers settled gently onto their landing skids.
The sergeant commanding the score ordered the warriors to attention, as a hatch swung open on the shuttle's belly, a ladder lowered, and ten of their warriors, wearing black dress uniforms and blue berets, and brandishing rifles of some sort, formed a rank directly opposite the score of Galactica's own warriors, as the woman he'd talked with descended onto the landing deck, turned on her heel, and came to attention in front of her warriors,
"Capitaine de vaisseau Syuzen Ivanova, of the Koniev," she introduced herself.
"Commander Apollo, of the Battlestar Galactica," Apollo said, as Ivanova and he firmly shook hands.
"Pleased to meet you, at last, Commander," Ivanova then said.
"Welcome aboard the Galactica, Capitaine de vaisseau."
"Commandante, if you please, Commander," Ivanova replied."And, thank you."
Apollo nodded, then reluctantly said,"if you'd please come with me, Commandante, the Council of the Twelve—"
Even more useless now, than when the Colonies had fallen in the first place, he silently remarked.
"—are eager to meet with you."
"The Council of—" Ivanova started to ask.
"The leaders," Apollo explained, lying through his teeth the entire time,"of our Colonies. Before our worlds fell to our enemies, the people of each colony would elect a represenative to the Council, and, from among themselves, elect a President."
Ivanova and he stepped onto the lift leading up into the Galactica's main decks, as he elaborated further:
"My father was the only member of the originial Council to survive the Holocaust; the fleet—over 200 ships crammed full of every one we could get, before the Cylons came—elected another eleven Councillors to take the places of the ones who'd been lost."
And, since that day, Apollo bitterly observed,they had done nothing except hinder Father at every step on our journey.
Until the day they sent him to his death.
42.Y38PH 12:25:00
"Well," Starbuck forced himself to joke,"hello, stranger."
"Starbuck," Boomer—Sire Boomer these last thirty yahren—said, the now-Council member joining Galactica's second in command at the bridge command console.
"Starbuck," he said, without further preamble,"you have to try and talk some sense into—"
"The Commander and I," Starbuck, not facing Boomer, replied distantly,"haven't been on speaking terms for a long time, you know that, Boomer."
"Doctor Wilker's team has been translating the communications you received from that ship out there—"
Now six ships out there, all cylinders attached by long spines to somewhat-smaller, spiky cylinders, but....
"—the word 'Terre,' " Boomer continued,"is a word in one of their languages which means 'Earth.' "
"Earth?" Starbuck said, dubious."As in, the lost thirteenth tribe, Earth? That Earth?"
"That's...yeah," Boomer replied.
Starbuck was silent a long time, as he contemplated this bitter irony.
Finally giving voice to it:
"Almost forty frackin' yahren, Boomer, forty gallmocking frackin' yahren, we've been running, fighting, bleeding, and dying our way across the stars, and finally, we meet people who may be from this lost tribe we started out after so long ago.
At the exact point, when many in the fleet stopped believing they even existed."
"For a while," Boomer took his time to reply,"I wasn't so sure myself, old friend."
"Neither was I," Starbuck admitted.
"Apollo..." he started to add, trailing off.
"There isn't much he believes in, anymore," Starbuck started over."He believes in Earth only somewhat less than he does in the Council of Twelve."
"I can't help you, Boomer," he said, the weight of yahren and sadness tinging his words.
"I don't even know if anyone can help him."
42.119 Anno Colonidae(AC) 19:40:31
"I have solid DRADIS contacts," Warrant Officer Gavin "Whizzer" Whitehead reported,"and sensor telemetry."
"I think," Whizzer added,"we found them, sir."
"I think we have, Whizzer," acknowledged Lieutenant Peter "Junkyard Dog" Goodman, as he studied the Raptor's DRADIS and sensor returns.
"Now, we can call in the Galactica, and finish the frakking job," Junkyard Dog added, a not-unjustified sense of triumph coloring his voice,"and give those gods-damned Terrans a bloody nose at the same time."
"Let's head back to the barn," he said, already plotting the FTL jump back to Galactica and the rest of her battlestar group.
2275.2.12 18:51:15
"Burn 'em!" snapped Capaitaine de frégate Natasha Larenya over her wearable's mic, even as one Koniev's four 200-nanometer ultraviolet-wavelength lasers reached out from the Delta Two mount to slash through space, an invisible beam shaft of hot light ripping through the Kobold Raptor an instant later.
But not fast enough.
"They transmitted just before they went up, Commandante," the watchstander at comms reported.
"Chert bozheny," Tasha swore.
"Inform the Skipper," she then said. "The Heracles, as well."
It was to be expected; with the former Centauri outpost in the Epsilon Eridani A system—a Theta jump away from AD Leonis—now a Kobold fleet base, their discovery of these other Colonials would've happened sooner or later.
She'd just rather it had been later.
So it will be sooner, then, she mused, accepting what she couldn't change,how much sooner, only God and the Kobolds themselves know.
With that in mind, and the ship's radiators withdrawn into the hull, she used her station's multi-function display to echo the master engineering board.
Heat's nominal, for now, she pondered.For now. We can hold out for another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes like this, but, that's also fifteen to twenty minutes less that we'll have, if the Kobolds show up now, and it comes down to a fight.
On the other hand, if I order Engineering to extend the radiators, as I know Val's going to ask for in a few moments, and the Kobolds show up, those would be the first things the bastards target, and we'd be in the shit for sure.
Can't even flip a coin, she further mused.Diamagnetics only work to counter the ship's thrust, when the ship is under thrust, so no articifical gravity, and the coin would just float and become a potential hazard.
She nodded her head a bit.
Err on the side of caution, or err on the side of prudence, either way, it's still a mistake.
But, I've made those before, haven't I?
"Engineering, Combat," Tasha said over comms."Extend the radiators and stand by. Hollande, keep a sharp eye on your passive suite. Scream in my ear at the first whiff of Chernekov radiation."
"You will know about any Kobolds, before they do, Commandante."
"I will hold you to that, Quartermaster," Tasha replied.
2275.2.12 18:51:18
"You see, Commandante," their leading scientist, who'd introduced himself as Doctor Wilker, explained,"we believe all Humans came from the same mother civilization, which flourished on the planet Kobold hundreds of thousands of yahren ago.
We know, for sure, our Twelve Colonies were founded by twelve groups of colonists—"
"Tribes," Apollo testily said, as he stood behind the head of the table in Galacitica's Council chambers, Wilker pendantically droning on:
"—or tribes, who escaped the cataclysm which overcame our mother world.
We believe—rather, our sacred text, the Book of the Word—"
"Relying on myths and legends," commented Apollo,"was what put our people in the felgercarb in the first place."
"Language, please, Commander," admonished a handsome, patrician woman in a long, simple dress, as she sat nearer the foot of the table."Our guest—"
"If I could be allowed to continue," Wilker snapped.
"Yes, Doctor," Apollo cynically replied,"by all means, please continue regaling our guest with fairy tales and fantasies."
"The Book of the Word," a distinguished, older black man, also simply dressed, said from the head of the Council table,"tells of a thirteenth tribe which set out from Kobol during the Cataclysm, toward a planet called Earth."
Syzuen, seated along the bulkhead nearer the foot of the Council chambers , and, frankly was about to fall asleep from sheer boredom, sat bolt upright at the man's last word.
"Earth?!" she managed to spit out."As in...Earth?!"
"It's a fable," Apollo bitterly reassured her."Nothing more, even if some in this room are too foolish to realize—"
"Commander," the black man snapped,"may I remind you that the 'fools' to whom you refer are the Council of the Twelve?!"
"And," was Apollo's nasty retort,"as the President well knows, I am painfully aware those fools of whom I speak are our people's elected represenatives."
"You would do well to remain aware of that fact, Commander," the black man cautioned Apollo.
"Oh, I am, Sire President," Apollo coldly stated."Only too well."
It was at that point Syuzen's wearable bleeped for her attention.
"Commandante," the holo of one of Koniev's comm techs said.
"Please excuse me," Syuzen said to Apollo and the assembled Councillors."This should only take a moment."
"Of course," the Council President said, as Syuzen got up from her chair, and stepped outside the Council chambers.
"Ivanova on line, go!" she said, her 2ic's holo taking the place of the watchstander at comms, Larenya delivering bad news with her usual indecent haste:
"We've just burned a Kobold Raptor, Commandante. Tavernier suspects it was just one of their usual recon patrols into our system, but, they know about our visitors who are like them, but not them."
"Shit!" Syuzen softly interjected.
"Which is what we're going to be in for, and soon, I suspect," Larenya told her flat out.
"Yeah," Syuzen replied. "Alert Base Command, and you'd better let Earthdome itself in on the loop."
"Done and done, Commandante," was the kind of answer Syuzen had come to expect from her second.
42.Y38PH 12:45:18
Boomer took no time at all to corner Apollo and demand:
"Apollo, what in Hades has gotten into you?!"
after Ivanova had left the Council chambers.
"I could ask you all the same question, Sire President," was Apollo's taut reply."I'm sure our guest has more important things to do with her time than to be put to sleep by ancient tales and fables about this lost thirteenth tribe."
"Commander," Wilker nasally said," 'Terre,' in the language these Humans call French, translates directly to 'Terra,' and, as you know, 'Terra' is Gemmonese for—"
"We thought the same thing about Terra almost forty yahren ago!" Apollo reminded the others. "And, we were wrong, then, weren't we?"
"Commander—" Wilker started to say.
"WEREN'T WE?!" Apollo demanded.
"We were," Wilker conceded.
"And," Apollo further demanded of this so-called Council,"just how many of our people were killed unnecessarily by the Eastern Alliance, because this Council thought they knew better than my father about how to treat the prisoners Starbuck and I captured on Paradeen?!"
"Those were holdouts from their lunar colonies," Siress Telia said,"who refused to recognize the peace—"
"The peace that only came about, Siress," Apollo reminded the Gemmonese Councillor,"because we intervened in their war."
"As I recall, Commander," Telia has the gall to tell him,"you and Colonel Starbuck had a hand in that, same as your fa—"
"The Ship of Lights manipulated all of us into doing their dirty work," Apollo replied, not wanting to even think about John and his fellow so-called superior beings, whose short-sighted manipulations had resulted in the fleet having to fight their way through Eastern Alliance destroyers and Cylon base ships.
"No one could have predicted," the Tauran Councillor, Sire Geller, spoke up,"that Leitner's faction would refuse to lay down arms, and turn on their own leadership."
"Oh, no," Apollo sarcastically said,"of course not, Sire Geller. Why should I, or anyone else, expect the Council to show a little bit of foresight?"
"Apollo," Boomer then slowly said,"the cold, hard fact of the matter is it's irrelavent whether these humans are the thirteenth tribe or not. We have to find a place—"
"We have to keep going!" Apollo hotly insisted.
"Apollo, we can't!" Boomer said."The fleet is falling apart at the seams; every ship, every ship, Apollo, is worn-out—"
"Not the Galactica!" Apollo protested, even knowing he was being dishonest with himself and these...Councillors.
"Especially the Galactica," Boomer replied."She's been in space and on active service for five hundred yahren, Apollo, and hasn't seen a Fleet yard in almost forty. As the only warship in the fleet, she has had to bear the brunt of every battle we've fought; her systems are failing, and our ability to fabricate replacement parts and make repairs to her, let alone the rest of a fleet of ships not even meant for deep-star travel in the first place, is all but gone now."
"Then, we move on," Apollo said,"to the next star, find an uninhabited world as similar to Caprica as we can, and colonize it."
"Until we have proper star charts of this region of space," Wilker spoke up,"that would be unwise, Commander. These people have been fighting the others for sixty-one of what they call years, however many yahren that translates into."
"He's right, you know." Ivanova said, as she stood by the hatchway.
"In our civilization," Apollo snapped,"it is generally considered bad manners to eavesdrop on a conversation, Commandante."
"Mine as well, Commander," Ivanova replied,"but, rude or not, I happen to be right. This system has no habitable planets, just mining stations and the Base, all of which are orbital facilities, and, of the four nearest stars, two have as many habitable planets as AD Leonis, and the others are already colonized. I can have the nav charts uploaded to your ship's computer network—"
"Not an option," Apollo flatly rejected, remembering too well the damage the Others' innocously-named Command Navigation Program had wreaked on Galactica'scomputron during their first engagement thirty yahren ago .
"Commander!" Wilker objected.
"No, Doctor," Apollo reiterated. "And, we won't establish a colony amongst those who are not of our tribes, Commandante."
"Apollo, my—" Boomer started to say.
"I'm sorry, Commandante," Apollo added,ignoring another false friend,"but the cold, hard fact of the matter, as our esteemed Council President would say, is you are not us.
You can't be trusted.
And, I won't endanger my people's survival by trusting you.
Even if that means going against those here in this room."
42.119AC 20:05:08
Admiral William Troy Adama, third of his family to bear that name in recent memory, stood over the alien thing lying there bruised, sobbing, and ashamed of the abomination she was in his sight and the sight of the Gods.
He sneered, as he looked down on the Centauri whore who'd forced him to purchase her, whispering,"you still want more, don't you?!"
"N-no," the bitch dared lie and blubber to him, Adama rewarding that dishonesty the way his grandfather had taught him to reward all those who lied , whined and puled instead of accepting their inferiority and accountability before their masters and the Gods of their masters.
She continued whining, sobbing, begging and pleading, as he administed loving but firm judgement with his belt to the spoiled, entitled, little Centauri bitch, until she finally got the hint and shut her filthy mouth.
"Admiral," came his XO's voice over the comm.
Adama walked to his desk and depressed the com button.
"What is it, Hoshi?" he asked.
"We've just received a comm from Raptor 949, " Lieutenant Commander John Philip Hoshi answered,"assigned to recon in the—"
"I am aware of their assignment, XO," Adama chastised his exec."Please get to the point."
"The fleet of the Dark Ones," Hoshi replied."Raptor 949 reported they were in the AD Leonis system, shepherded by several Terran warships."
"Frak," whispered the second Adama to hold command of the battlestar Galactica.
"That is good news, Mister Hoshi," he remarked.
Finally, Adama thought,finally, we can finish what we started thirty years ago, what my weakling of a father lacked the stomach to do, put paid to the Ones who were not Us, and hurt the Terran scum in the process.
"Has Command been informed?" he asked.
"Not yet," Hoshi replied,"and we lost contact with Raptor 949 immediately after we received their comm."
"The Terries probably caught them, and burned them out the sky," was Adama's casual reply."What of it?"
"Indeed, sir," was Hoshi's reply.
"Did their comm provide enough data to successfully plot an FTL jump?" Adama asked.
"Negative, sir," Hoshi replied.
"Then, they deserved what they got for their incompetence,and will be punished accordingly," Adama concluded."Have the the raidstar Defiant spin up its FTL drives, and jump to AD Leonis as soon as her navigator can plot the course; I'll be in CIC shortly. Adama out."
He terminated communications, smiling, as he whispered:
"Soon."
Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
Moderator: LadyTevar
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U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
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U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
2275.02.12 19:07:02
Haut Amiral du Terre Edward MacDugan sighed, as he sat in the Secretary-General's office, and went over Koniev's report, and Ivanova's update to that report, again.
"I agree with you, Mackie," remarked Albert Bester, head of the Direction Sécurité Exteriéur.
"Can you stop doing that?!" MacDugan irritably asked.
"I still haven't learned to read minds, Mackie," was Bester's flippant reply."Reading body language, on the other hand, is just routine intelligence work."
"At least," the annoying little man just had to add,"I think so."
"Besides," he concluded,"we're all thinking the same thing; this is a less than ideal first-contact situation."
"Yes," Londo Mollari, special advisor to the Secretary-General on xenobiology, remarked,"yes, it is, Mister Bester."
"But," the ex-Centauri noble remarked, his voice catching as he spoke,"was your first contact with the...survivors...of my people and the Narns any more ideal?"
"They're refugees," MacDugan acknowledged,"same as your people—and the Narns—were, when you arrived at Orion VII with the Kobolds on your ass over forty years ago."
The veteran Marine d'Etoile flag officer closed his eyes a moment, trying to will away the memories.
"And, your people took us in, yes?" Mollari prodded. "Even in spite of the cost to them. To you, MacDugan."
Damn you, MacDugan silently cursed.
His brightest and best student, a man—a good man—who'd been a son to him, had died leading Enterprise's squadron of Starfury gunships against the Kobolds and their Drazi and Dilgar pets, never realizing his full potential.
"We knew who your enemies were, Londo," Bester again gave voice to McDugan's thoughts."All of your enemies, and all of their capabilities, two things which remain unknown quantities with these other Colonials. Ivanova's report mentioned extensive combat damage to their battlestar, and fighting with an 'Eastern Alliance,' of whom we are ignorant, as well as the Kobolds.
Which beggars another question: Why would the Kobolds concern themselves with a relative handful of ships and those aboard them?"
"The same reason my people enslaved the Narn, before we were thrown together out of necessity, Mister Bester," Londo replied,"simply because they exist."
"The basic reason for any war, Al," McDugan found himself in reluctant agreement."Our own history tells that same sad tale over and over, when you look past the politics, and the ideology, and all other excuses we have found to kill each other, and to damn near take Earth with us."
"Yes," whispered Londo.
"Unfortunately, I have to agree with Mister Bester as well," the uniformed commander of Earth's military then said."We don't know who all their enemies are, or their capabilities. What he didn't mention was that we don't know what made them refugees in the first place."
"Or who," Bester remarked.
"Or," McDugan said, forced to agree with Bester as well,"who."
"We got ourselves into this war," he reminded the Centauri,"brought them down on your people, and the Narns—"
Cost John, and Lord only knows how many other young men and women over the last six decades, their lives.
"—because we found a shiny thing, and started fucking with it, in spite of all good sense, sixty-one years ago, and we still know damned little about that."
"We do know," Suzannah Gennadiya Luchenko, Secretary-General of the Nations Fédérés, her back to her three closest advisors, her eyes not necessarily on the view of San Roque afforded by the window of her office in the Earthdome reservation, slowly spoke,"they've nowhere to go, much less any gurantee of leaving the AD Leonis system under their own power."
"Yes," Londo replied."Ivanova's report made it clear the ships of these other Colonials are all but worn out, including their battlestar."
"That report, Madame Secretary," McDugan reminded her,"also mentioned their commander not only didn't trust us, but refused to even try and trust us."
"I see," the Secretary-General, still looking out into the darkness, added,"each of you failed to mention their people's beliefs concerning Earth."
"Fables," Londo said,"nothing more."
"Fables," Luchenko reminded Londo,"many fables, anyway, have a basis in fact, even amongst your people and the Narn, Londo."
"Fables or no," Bester said,"that is still another concern, culturally and socially, as well as militarily. They know about Earth, and they believe we are descendants of this lost thirteenth tribe of theirs. Of course, as to the latter, we have had well over three hundred years' of empirical data and scientific research which says differently, but, that will not stop those holding extreme viewpoints on that subject from giving voice to their opinions."
"Or acting on them," Londo said."And, they bear some superficial resemblance to our enemies."
The Secretary-General of the Nations Fédérés breathed deeply.
"We've needed no more reason to hate and kill other human beings," she said,"than 'because they exist.' That has been part of what being human meant, for as long as we have been human beings, yes?"
"For my people as well," Londo remarked.
"And, yet," Luchenko added,"we took your people in, and the Narns, because you had nowhere else to go, even in spite of the problems we knew it would cause. "
"And, no matter the cost," MacDugan whispered, still thinking of the man John Sheridan could have become.
And, the man he had been.
"That," Luchenko whispered,"is also part of being human."
She turned and looked McDugan straight in the eye.
"Right, Mackie?" she asked, as Edward McDugan rose to his feet, found his voice, and told his Commander in Chief:
"The Vesta will leave for AD Leonis within the hour."
2275.02.12 19:09:11
Commander Apollo having found himself "too busy," following the Council session, Syuzen had been handed off to the older blonde man she'd seen in the initial communication with Galactica.
This Colonel Starbuck naturally had not understood her quip about Moby Dick, but otherwise seemed open and friendly enough, a marked contrast to his Skipper.
"This is the starboard energizer room," Starbuck explained, as they stood on a catwalk overlooking machinery and control panels."Galactica has two such rooms, both of which provide the battlestar with power and propulsion for both sub-light and light-speed travel."
"The last," he added,"is kinda misleading; the name originates from a long-standing assumption amongst our scientists that one had to accelerate to the speed of light in order to exceed it. The assumption was eventually disproven, but the name stuck."
"I understand," Syuzen replied, unable to avoid noticing the patchwork, rough welds, and obvious jury-rigs and nonfunctional machinery and controls in the space below.
"The energizers use a thermonuclear reaction," Starbuck explained further,"involving the fissioning of atoms of an exceptionally energy-rich variant of an element we call tylium, inside a liquid form of another element we call solium, solium being a basic element of stars and space itself."
"Hydrogen," Syuzen remarked."We call it hydrogen."
"Ah," Starbuck replied, nodding his head.
"This tylium, though," she added,"I never heard of."
"You may have," Starbuck offered,"but your languages may have a different name for it."
"If it helps," he added,"the variant of tylium we use releases gamma rays when fissioned."
"I know what gamma rays are," Syuzen replied, smiling."So, this tylium, then, is the power source for your lasers?"
"Yes," Starbuck said."Our lasers, especially the big mega-pulsars in the Galactica's spine, use solid tylium rods for their power cores."
Hafnium,or one of its isomers, to be more precise, Syuzen concluded,what the earliest fusion reactors used, before the development of practical antimatter generation and storage methods in the 2100s.
"You...." Starbuck then said, changing the subject to one obviously unpleasant for him."You'll have to forgive Commander Apollo. The last thirty yahren, especially the last five, since he took command of the Galactica and the fleet, have been...difficult for him."
He sighed.
"It hasn't been easy," he added,"since we left our Colonies; we've struggled nearly every step of the way, lost a lot of good people."
Syuzen nodded.
"Why are you running?" she asked."The Others?"
"No," Starbuck replied, forcing himself to continue:
"For a thousand yahren, we were at war with a race called the Cylons, or rather, with their android servants, who'd turned against their creators, and decided that all organic life was offensive to them.
We'd fought nonstop, with no end and no clear victory in sight, just...relentless death and destruction, until finally, the Council of the Twelve, over Adama's objections, sued for peace, with one of their own, a warrior as renowned as Adama—Apollo's father—a man named Baltar, from the colony we called Gemmenon, serving as our envoy to the Cylons' Imperious Leader."
Starbuck paused a moment, sighed, continued:
"Negoiations started after we'd lost—thought we'd lost—the Pegasus and the rest of our Fifth Fleet at Molecay, and lasted two yahren, at which point we were down to twelve battlestars, one each commanded by a member of the Council; you see, in our culture, we didn't believe in leaders who sent others into battle, but took no part in the fighting themselves.
But, even warriors tire of war, Commandante. If President Adar, Lords rest his soul, had had one failing, it was that, and who can judge him for being tired of a war without end?
For that matter, even the most devoted warrior, if he does nothing but fight for survival, will do whatever's necessary, including betrayal and murder, to ensure his own survival."
Syuzen jumped ahead of Starbuck's narrative, and asked:
"Do you think that's what happened to Baltar?"
"Only Baltar can answer that," Starbuck replied sadly,"and, he died thirty yahren ago. But, I've watched a man I once considered a brother grow old and weary with the passage of time and, these last five yahren, with the weight of our people on his shoulders, and I often find myself wondering what made Baltar do what he did."
"Not," he added,"that it excuses his actions, Commandante, don't get me wrong, nothing excuses being a party to the annhilation of your own people, and the reduction of the survivors to a hunted, rag-tag refugee band doomed to never see home again."
"But," he whispered,"I often wonder."
42.Y38PH 13:12:18
"Haven't you had enough, Captain?" Lieutenant Bojay asked.
"Frack off," Captain Sheba, strike commander of the Galactica, replied, as she ordered another mug of ambrosia, just so she could drink that down like water as well.
So, she ordered another, as she often did in these centars between missions.
It wasn't as if anyone she knew was waiting for her in the quarters she shared with Apollo.
Sheba breathed deeply, looking into her mug, remembering.
Apollo and she had been mutually antagonistic at first, possibly because they had been so much alike, so passionately loyal to their fathers, to their battlestars, and to their squadronmates; love, mutual affection, that had only come with the passage of time and battles together.
In particular, after the fight with that last Cylon basestar thirty-seven yahren ago, after Apollo and Starbuck's danagerous mission to infiltrate that ship and disable its sensors to allow Galactica and her Vipers to destroy it.
Apollo had been hesitant, at first, to seal himself to another woman, and who could blame him, Serena's death over Kobol had still been a raw wound then, and he'd been hesitant to feel that kind of loss a second time.
Of all people, it had been Starbuck who'd convinced him to commit, after Cassi and he had sealed following that mission, to everyone's surprise, including Starbuck's.
At least according to him.
Another deep breath.
It had begun with Adama's murder by the Others thirty yahren ago, his sister's death in the ensuing fight, Baltar's sacrifice in saving the fleet, and, finally, Boxy's being killed in action five yahren ago, in the battle which had seen her husband take Tigh's place as commander of the Galactica.
The man she'd been sealed to so long ago...wasn't there anymore.
Nor was their marriage.
It hurt like frack, but what could she do about it?
"Sheba," Boomer said, as he appeared at her table,"we need to talk."
"About?" she asked, as she started to rise from her chair.
Boomer sat down instead, telling Bojay,"if you'd excuse us, Lieutenant?"
"Of course, Sire President," Bojay replied, getting up from the table and leaving the officer's club.
"What do you want to talk about?" she repeated her question.
"Apollo," he replied.
"We don't talk much these days, Boomer," she whispered.
"I've been hearing that a lot lately," her former squadronmate observed.
"Nevertheless, Sheba, you have to try and get through to him," Boomer then insisted."You know this fleet can't continue the way it's going."
"I know,"she said, putting her drink on the table in front of her."Apollo refuses to see that."
"He has one thing on his mind," Boomer said,"and, one thing alone, and that's survival, what he thinks is survival, and he's determined to survive, even if he has to do away with the Council of Twelve."
Sheba sat up in her chair, eyes wide, almost instantly sober.
"You'd think...no, Boomer, no, Apollo would never—"
"If it was your father, or Adama," Boomer slowly replied,"I'd agree. Even when Adama opposed the Council, he never openly sought to undermine them; same with Cain, Sheba. Their differences aside, his last act before taking on Baltar's three base ships on his own was to ask Adama's blessing."
And, Sheba remembered,when Adama had relieved him of his command, my father accepted that, without complaint, even if he hadn't agreed with it.
"They both knew," he added,"what your husband's forgotten, that, without the rule of law, we cease being a civilized people."
"I know that," Sheba whispered, the tears coming in spite of her, as she was almost certain what Boomer would ask of her next.
It wasn't as if she hadn't dreaded this very conversation for the last five yahren.
"I've known Apollo," Boomer slowly said, tears running down his cheeks," fought alongside him and under his command for far longer than I've served the Twelve. But, I can't ignore the law, even for his sake. When the Council votes to relieve him of command, I have to vote with them, regardless of my personal feelings toward him."
"'When?'" Sheba asked.
"Not 'if,'" Boomer conceded."He essentially threatened us with mutiny in front of our guest, demonstrating his outright refusal of any other course of action other than continuing onward, even knowing the state of our fleet.
And, the people of the fleet, as well as the Convenant of the Twelve, are to whom we on the Council are beholden. Lords know, we've made our share of mistakes, Sheba, especially with the Eastern Alliance, but we try."
"I know you do, Boomer," Sheba whispered.
"You want me to try and reason with Apollo, before you have to intervene for the good of our people. Break him for the good of our people," she added.
"It has come to that," Boomer sadly admitted."And, as much as I don't want it to, that is what will come to pass, if we don't do something to head that off.
Sheba, the fate of fifty thousand people outweighs the pride of a single man, but I'm not prepared to sacrifice that man just yet."
Sheba nodded her head.
"I can't promise I can persuade him," she said quietly."All I can promise is that I will try."
"All I can ask," Boomer said, as Sheba excused herself, rose from the table, and walked out of the officer's club.
42.Y38PH 13:12:18
"I've nothing to say to you, Lieutenant," Apollo said to the man who'd gotten his son killed fighting the Others, after he had the nerve to greet his commanding officer."You're dismissed."
"Commander," Lieutenant Dillon said, as he turned on his heel and walked out of Landing Bay Alpha.
"Lieutenant Jolly," Apollo then said to possibly the only warrior of rank he could trust,"you and I need to talk."
"I'm listening," Jolly replied.
"The Council is going to move against me, take my command, and, more importantly, doom everyone in this fleet to the same fate they doomed our people to almost forty yahren ago," Apollo told him. "You're the only warrior of rank I can trust, and the only one I know will do the right thing."
"What about Starbuck?" Jolly asked. "Or Sheba. Or—"
"Starbuck's with them," the commander of the Galactica spat."Sheba's with them. Bojay flew with my wife back aboard the Pegasus, and they're still close, possibly even closer than I want to believe. And, Dillion...."
"Dillion's—" Jolly started to say.
"—an incompetent who shouldn't be commanding a squadron, wouldn't be in command of Blue Squadron, if he weren't Starbuck's son," Apollo made perfectly clear.
"We need to move against the Council," he added, a moment later,"before they move against me, and, for that, I need warriors who'll take orders from me, who haven't forgotten their loyalty rests with the fleet, not with a Council who has consistently betrayed them for the last thirty-eight yahren, who sold our people into extinction at the hands of the Cylons, and turned the handful of us who survived into a hunted band of refugees led onward by the lie of a thirteenth colony."
"You don't believe these other humans," he indicated the knot of black-uniformed warriors gathered around their shuttle,"are our lost bretheren?"
"I believe the Book of the Word was...inaccurate where Earth was concerned," said Apollo,"and that my father...my father wanted to use that inaccuracy to give those few we managed to save some measure of hope to steel them for a journey he knew would have no end."
"I want you," he then told Jolly,"to take a warrior score, disarm those troops over there, and have them transported to the prison barge; I will do the same for Ivanova."
"You don't know if they'll interfere with what you're planning, Commander," Jolly said somewhat hesitantly.
"And, you don't know if they won't," Apollo told him."We'll release them and their shuttlecraft once we're safely out of this star system, but they will be insurance that their friends will allow us to leave this star system in the first place."
"After you've detained Ivanaova and the others aboard the prison barge," he added,"we will arrest the Council, and any warrior suspected of loyalty to the Council, and, after a court martial, put them aboard the prison barge, where they can do no further harm."
"And, if they refuse to be arrested?" Jolly asked.
"The survival of this fleet is more important than any single life," Apollo replied,"especially the life of a traitor.
If they resist, do what's necessary. Understand?"
"I understand," Jolly replied.
"I knew you would, Lieutenant," Apollo said.
2275.02.12 19:13:47
"So," Starbuck asked a question likely uppermost in his mind for a while now, as he preceded Syuzen into the Galactica officer's club,"what's Earth like?"
Syuzen sighed.
"We're still repairing the damage from the early years of our war with the Kobolds," she finally answered,"as well as the last of our World Wars."
Starbuck said nothing, as the two of them threaded their way through the noise and the crowds to an empty table in the corner, the older man momentarily lost in thought.
To the waiter who came to their table, he said,"Kaff. Black."
"Anything for you, Commandante?" he then asked.
"No," Syuzen replied,"thank you."
Starbuck waited until their server had moved on, before asking:
"How many of these 'world wars' have your tribe waged against one another?"
"Three," Syuzen replied,"with the last one—the worst—being over two hundred years ago."
She paused a moment, closing her eyes to help her recall history lessons she'd mostly slept through.
"A small group of political, religious, and business leaders calling themselves the Fellowship," she explained,"along with their followers and hired security forces overthrew the government of one of Earth's most powerful nations at the time, the United States of America, following the last of that country's Presidential elections almost 260 years ago. They dismantled the government, the courts, the police, the military, the schools, the medical and scientific professions, rule of law in general, and replaced it with...I don't know, a theocracy, a cult of personality, rule by corporations, rule of mobs and vigilantes given license to openly express their hatred of...anyone they didn't like, for...any reason...through open, honest, state-sanctioned rape, torture, and murder under the thin pretext of conducting legal jury trials."
"My Lord," Starbuck whispered, as Syuzen continued:
"Then, in 2047, they turned on America's oldest allies, the British Commonwealth, invading the Falklands at the same time they nuked London and most of Great Britain, following what was almost immediately exposed as the false-flag thermonuclear bombardement of San Diego and its naval base by a United States Navy ballistic-missile submarine, which the American Theocratic Government attempted to blame on the British Royal Navy.
The rest of NATO, the Euros, the Russians, the Chinese, even the Africans and the Caliphate, all joined the Brits in standing against the United States, and...four years of war, and a world ravaged by thermonuclear holocaust, before the now-Nations Fédérés drove the Theocracy back to American home soil...only for them to run away into deep space with everything and everyone they could grab, and destroy everything and everyone left behind with pre-positioned nukes out of spite."
"They disappeared near Io," she added, after the server returned with a steaming mug of what smelled like coffee,"that's one of the moons of an outer planet in our Solar System we call Jupiter—"
"One of the Lords of Kobol," Starbuck whispered almost reverently, holding the mug in his hands, before adding,"that's one of our names for him anyway.
Please, continue."
"We never found them," Syuzen said."We believe they may have gone through the artifact we found orbiting Io, what we now call the Ring Of Fire, which we still know little about, in spite—"
A pained, rushed "Father!" from a younger, blonder version of Starbuck put an abrupt end to Syuzen's narrative, as Starbuck rose abruptly from his chair, turned to face the younger man, and asked,"Dillon, what's—"
"I think Commander Apollo—" Dillion started to say, before Syuzen's wearable and Starbuck's communicator both bleeped for attention.
"Jolly?" Starbuck asked."Jolly, what's going on?"
"Ivanova on line," Syuzen said to Alice's holo,"go!"
"Starbuck, Apollo wanted us—"
"—to arrest us and confine us to someplace called—"
"—to the prison barge. He's on his way up to—"
"—arrest you, Commandante."
" Oh, holy frack!" Starbuck whispered.
"Suka," Syuzen swore.
Haut Amiral du Terre Edward MacDugan sighed, as he sat in the Secretary-General's office, and went over Koniev's report, and Ivanova's update to that report, again.
"I agree with you, Mackie," remarked Albert Bester, head of the Direction Sécurité Exteriéur.
"Can you stop doing that?!" MacDugan irritably asked.
"I still haven't learned to read minds, Mackie," was Bester's flippant reply."Reading body language, on the other hand, is just routine intelligence work."
"At least," the annoying little man just had to add,"I think so."
"Besides," he concluded,"we're all thinking the same thing; this is a less than ideal first-contact situation."
"Yes," Londo Mollari, special advisor to the Secretary-General on xenobiology, remarked,"yes, it is, Mister Bester."
"But," the ex-Centauri noble remarked, his voice catching as he spoke,"was your first contact with the...survivors...of my people and the Narns any more ideal?"
"They're refugees," MacDugan acknowledged,"same as your people—and the Narns—were, when you arrived at Orion VII with the Kobolds on your ass over forty years ago."
The veteran Marine d'Etoile flag officer closed his eyes a moment, trying to will away the memories.
"And, your people took us in, yes?" Mollari prodded. "Even in spite of the cost to them. To you, MacDugan."
Damn you, MacDugan silently cursed.
His brightest and best student, a man—a good man—who'd been a son to him, had died leading Enterprise's squadron of Starfury gunships against the Kobolds and their Drazi and Dilgar pets, never realizing his full potential.
"We knew who your enemies were, Londo," Bester again gave voice to McDugan's thoughts."All of your enemies, and all of their capabilities, two things which remain unknown quantities with these other Colonials. Ivanova's report mentioned extensive combat damage to their battlestar, and fighting with an 'Eastern Alliance,' of whom we are ignorant, as well as the Kobolds.
Which beggars another question: Why would the Kobolds concern themselves with a relative handful of ships and those aboard them?"
"The same reason my people enslaved the Narn, before we were thrown together out of necessity, Mister Bester," Londo replied,"simply because they exist."
"The basic reason for any war, Al," McDugan found himself in reluctant agreement."Our own history tells that same sad tale over and over, when you look past the politics, and the ideology, and all other excuses we have found to kill each other, and to damn near take Earth with us."
"Yes," whispered Londo.
"Unfortunately, I have to agree with Mister Bester as well," the uniformed commander of Earth's military then said."We don't know who all their enemies are, or their capabilities. What he didn't mention was that we don't know what made them refugees in the first place."
"Or who," Bester remarked.
"Or," McDugan said, forced to agree with Bester as well,"who."
"We got ourselves into this war," he reminded the Centauri,"brought them down on your people, and the Narns—"
Cost John, and Lord only knows how many other young men and women over the last six decades, their lives.
"—because we found a shiny thing, and started fucking with it, in spite of all good sense, sixty-one years ago, and we still know damned little about that."
"We do know," Suzannah Gennadiya Luchenko, Secretary-General of the Nations Fédérés, her back to her three closest advisors, her eyes not necessarily on the view of San Roque afforded by the window of her office in the Earthdome reservation, slowly spoke,"they've nowhere to go, much less any gurantee of leaving the AD Leonis system under their own power."
"Yes," Londo replied."Ivanova's report made it clear the ships of these other Colonials are all but worn out, including their battlestar."
"That report, Madame Secretary," McDugan reminded her,"also mentioned their commander not only didn't trust us, but refused to even try and trust us."
"I see," the Secretary-General, still looking out into the darkness, added,"each of you failed to mention their people's beliefs concerning Earth."
"Fables," Londo said,"nothing more."
"Fables," Luchenko reminded Londo,"many fables, anyway, have a basis in fact, even amongst your people and the Narn, Londo."
"Fables or no," Bester said,"that is still another concern, culturally and socially, as well as militarily. They know about Earth, and they believe we are descendants of this lost thirteenth tribe of theirs. Of course, as to the latter, we have had well over three hundred years' of empirical data and scientific research which says differently, but, that will not stop those holding extreme viewpoints on that subject from giving voice to their opinions."
"Or acting on them," Londo said."And, they bear some superficial resemblance to our enemies."
The Secretary-General of the Nations Fédérés breathed deeply.
"We've needed no more reason to hate and kill other human beings," she said,"than 'because they exist.' That has been part of what being human meant, for as long as we have been human beings, yes?"
"For my people as well," Londo remarked.
"And, yet," Luchenko added,"we took your people in, and the Narns, because you had nowhere else to go, even in spite of the problems we knew it would cause. "
"And, no matter the cost," MacDugan whispered, still thinking of the man John Sheridan could have become.
And, the man he had been.
"That," Luchenko whispered,"is also part of being human."
She turned and looked McDugan straight in the eye.
"Right, Mackie?" she asked, as Edward McDugan rose to his feet, found his voice, and told his Commander in Chief:
"The Vesta will leave for AD Leonis within the hour."
2275.02.12 19:09:11
Commander Apollo having found himself "too busy," following the Council session, Syuzen had been handed off to the older blonde man she'd seen in the initial communication with Galactica.
This Colonel Starbuck naturally had not understood her quip about Moby Dick, but otherwise seemed open and friendly enough, a marked contrast to his Skipper.
"This is the starboard energizer room," Starbuck explained, as they stood on a catwalk overlooking machinery and control panels."Galactica has two such rooms, both of which provide the battlestar with power and propulsion for both sub-light and light-speed travel."
"The last," he added,"is kinda misleading; the name originates from a long-standing assumption amongst our scientists that one had to accelerate to the speed of light in order to exceed it. The assumption was eventually disproven, but the name stuck."
"I understand," Syuzen replied, unable to avoid noticing the patchwork, rough welds, and obvious jury-rigs and nonfunctional machinery and controls in the space below.
"The energizers use a thermonuclear reaction," Starbuck explained further,"involving the fissioning of atoms of an exceptionally energy-rich variant of an element we call tylium, inside a liquid form of another element we call solium, solium being a basic element of stars and space itself."
"Hydrogen," Syuzen remarked."We call it hydrogen."
"Ah," Starbuck replied, nodding his head.
"This tylium, though," she added,"I never heard of."
"You may have," Starbuck offered,"but your languages may have a different name for it."
"If it helps," he added,"the variant of tylium we use releases gamma rays when fissioned."
"I know what gamma rays are," Syuzen replied, smiling."So, this tylium, then, is the power source for your lasers?"
"Yes," Starbuck said."Our lasers, especially the big mega-pulsars in the Galactica's spine, use solid tylium rods for their power cores."
Hafnium,or one of its isomers, to be more precise, Syuzen concluded,what the earliest fusion reactors used, before the development of practical antimatter generation and storage methods in the 2100s.
"You...." Starbuck then said, changing the subject to one obviously unpleasant for him."You'll have to forgive Commander Apollo. The last thirty yahren, especially the last five, since he took command of the Galactica and the fleet, have been...difficult for him."
He sighed.
"It hasn't been easy," he added,"since we left our Colonies; we've struggled nearly every step of the way, lost a lot of good people."
Syuzen nodded.
"Why are you running?" she asked."The Others?"
"No," Starbuck replied, forcing himself to continue:
"For a thousand yahren, we were at war with a race called the Cylons, or rather, with their android servants, who'd turned against their creators, and decided that all organic life was offensive to them.
We'd fought nonstop, with no end and no clear victory in sight, just...relentless death and destruction, until finally, the Council of the Twelve, over Adama's objections, sued for peace, with one of their own, a warrior as renowned as Adama—Apollo's father—a man named Baltar, from the colony we called Gemmenon, serving as our envoy to the Cylons' Imperious Leader."
Starbuck paused a moment, sighed, continued:
"Negoiations started after we'd lost—thought we'd lost—the Pegasus and the rest of our Fifth Fleet at Molecay, and lasted two yahren, at which point we were down to twelve battlestars, one each commanded by a member of the Council; you see, in our culture, we didn't believe in leaders who sent others into battle, but took no part in the fighting themselves.
But, even warriors tire of war, Commandante. If President Adar, Lords rest his soul, had had one failing, it was that, and who can judge him for being tired of a war without end?
For that matter, even the most devoted warrior, if he does nothing but fight for survival, will do whatever's necessary, including betrayal and murder, to ensure his own survival."
Syuzen jumped ahead of Starbuck's narrative, and asked:
"Do you think that's what happened to Baltar?"
"Only Baltar can answer that," Starbuck replied sadly,"and, he died thirty yahren ago. But, I've watched a man I once considered a brother grow old and weary with the passage of time and, these last five yahren, with the weight of our people on his shoulders, and I often find myself wondering what made Baltar do what he did."
"Not," he added,"that it excuses his actions, Commandante, don't get me wrong, nothing excuses being a party to the annhilation of your own people, and the reduction of the survivors to a hunted, rag-tag refugee band doomed to never see home again."
"But," he whispered,"I often wonder."
42.Y38PH 13:12:18
"Haven't you had enough, Captain?" Lieutenant Bojay asked.
"Frack off," Captain Sheba, strike commander of the Galactica, replied, as she ordered another mug of ambrosia, just so she could drink that down like water as well.
So, she ordered another, as she often did in these centars between missions.
It wasn't as if anyone she knew was waiting for her in the quarters she shared with Apollo.
Sheba breathed deeply, looking into her mug, remembering.
Apollo and she had been mutually antagonistic at first, possibly because they had been so much alike, so passionately loyal to their fathers, to their battlestars, and to their squadronmates; love, mutual affection, that had only come with the passage of time and battles together.
In particular, after the fight with that last Cylon basestar thirty-seven yahren ago, after Apollo and Starbuck's danagerous mission to infiltrate that ship and disable its sensors to allow Galactica and her Vipers to destroy it.
Apollo had been hesitant, at first, to seal himself to another woman, and who could blame him, Serena's death over Kobol had still been a raw wound then, and he'd been hesitant to feel that kind of loss a second time.
Of all people, it had been Starbuck who'd convinced him to commit, after Cassi and he had sealed following that mission, to everyone's surprise, including Starbuck's.
At least according to him.
Another deep breath.
It had begun with Adama's murder by the Others thirty yahren ago, his sister's death in the ensuing fight, Baltar's sacrifice in saving the fleet, and, finally, Boxy's being killed in action five yahren ago, in the battle which had seen her husband take Tigh's place as commander of the Galactica.
The man she'd been sealed to so long ago...wasn't there anymore.
Nor was their marriage.
It hurt like frack, but what could she do about it?
"Sheba," Boomer said, as he appeared at her table,"we need to talk."
"About?" she asked, as she started to rise from her chair.
Boomer sat down instead, telling Bojay,"if you'd excuse us, Lieutenant?"
"Of course, Sire President," Bojay replied, getting up from the table and leaving the officer's club.
"What do you want to talk about?" she repeated her question.
"Apollo," he replied.
"We don't talk much these days, Boomer," she whispered.
"I've been hearing that a lot lately," her former squadronmate observed.
"Nevertheless, Sheba, you have to try and get through to him," Boomer then insisted."You know this fleet can't continue the way it's going."
"I know,"she said, putting her drink on the table in front of her."Apollo refuses to see that."
"He has one thing on his mind," Boomer said,"and, one thing alone, and that's survival, what he thinks is survival, and he's determined to survive, even if he has to do away with the Council of Twelve."
Sheba sat up in her chair, eyes wide, almost instantly sober.
"You'd think...no, Boomer, no, Apollo would never—"
"If it was your father, or Adama," Boomer slowly replied,"I'd agree. Even when Adama opposed the Council, he never openly sought to undermine them; same with Cain, Sheba. Their differences aside, his last act before taking on Baltar's three base ships on his own was to ask Adama's blessing."
And, Sheba remembered,when Adama had relieved him of his command, my father accepted that, without complaint, even if he hadn't agreed with it.
"They both knew," he added,"what your husband's forgotten, that, without the rule of law, we cease being a civilized people."
"I know that," Sheba whispered, the tears coming in spite of her, as she was almost certain what Boomer would ask of her next.
It wasn't as if she hadn't dreaded this very conversation for the last five yahren.
"I've known Apollo," Boomer slowly said, tears running down his cheeks," fought alongside him and under his command for far longer than I've served the Twelve. But, I can't ignore the law, even for his sake. When the Council votes to relieve him of command, I have to vote with them, regardless of my personal feelings toward him."
"'When?'" Sheba asked.
"Not 'if,'" Boomer conceded."He essentially threatened us with mutiny in front of our guest, demonstrating his outright refusal of any other course of action other than continuing onward, even knowing the state of our fleet.
And, the people of the fleet, as well as the Convenant of the Twelve, are to whom we on the Council are beholden. Lords know, we've made our share of mistakes, Sheba, especially with the Eastern Alliance, but we try."
"I know you do, Boomer," Sheba whispered.
"You want me to try and reason with Apollo, before you have to intervene for the good of our people. Break him for the good of our people," she added.
"It has come to that," Boomer sadly admitted."And, as much as I don't want it to, that is what will come to pass, if we don't do something to head that off.
Sheba, the fate of fifty thousand people outweighs the pride of a single man, but I'm not prepared to sacrifice that man just yet."
Sheba nodded her head.
"I can't promise I can persuade him," she said quietly."All I can promise is that I will try."
"All I can ask," Boomer said, as Sheba excused herself, rose from the table, and walked out of the officer's club.
42.Y38PH 13:12:18
"I've nothing to say to you, Lieutenant," Apollo said to the man who'd gotten his son killed fighting the Others, after he had the nerve to greet his commanding officer."You're dismissed."
"Commander," Lieutenant Dillon said, as he turned on his heel and walked out of Landing Bay Alpha.
"Lieutenant Jolly," Apollo then said to possibly the only warrior of rank he could trust,"you and I need to talk."
"I'm listening," Jolly replied.
"The Council is going to move against me, take my command, and, more importantly, doom everyone in this fleet to the same fate they doomed our people to almost forty yahren ago," Apollo told him. "You're the only warrior of rank I can trust, and the only one I know will do the right thing."
"What about Starbuck?" Jolly asked. "Or Sheba. Or—"
"Starbuck's with them," the commander of the Galactica spat."Sheba's with them. Bojay flew with my wife back aboard the Pegasus, and they're still close, possibly even closer than I want to believe. And, Dillion...."
"Dillion's—" Jolly started to say.
"—an incompetent who shouldn't be commanding a squadron, wouldn't be in command of Blue Squadron, if he weren't Starbuck's son," Apollo made perfectly clear.
"We need to move against the Council," he added, a moment later,"before they move against me, and, for that, I need warriors who'll take orders from me, who haven't forgotten their loyalty rests with the fleet, not with a Council who has consistently betrayed them for the last thirty-eight yahren, who sold our people into extinction at the hands of the Cylons, and turned the handful of us who survived into a hunted band of refugees led onward by the lie of a thirteenth colony."
"You don't believe these other humans," he indicated the knot of black-uniformed warriors gathered around their shuttle,"are our lost bretheren?"
"I believe the Book of the Word was...inaccurate where Earth was concerned," said Apollo,"and that my father...my father wanted to use that inaccuracy to give those few we managed to save some measure of hope to steel them for a journey he knew would have no end."
"I want you," he then told Jolly,"to take a warrior score, disarm those troops over there, and have them transported to the prison barge; I will do the same for Ivanova."
"You don't know if they'll interfere with what you're planning, Commander," Jolly said somewhat hesitantly.
"And, you don't know if they won't," Apollo told him."We'll release them and their shuttlecraft once we're safely out of this star system, but they will be insurance that their friends will allow us to leave this star system in the first place."
"After you've detained Ivanaova and the others aboard the prison barge," he added,"we will arrest the Council, and any warrior suspected of loyalty to the Council, and, after a court martial, put them aboard the prison barge, where they can do no further harm."
"And, if they refuse to be arrested?" Jolly asked.
"The survival of this fleet is more important than any single life," Apollo replied,"especially the life of a traitor.
If they resist, do what's necessary. Understand?"
"I understand," Jolly replied.
"I knew you would, Lieutenant," Apollo said.
2275.02.12 19:13:47
"So," Starbuck asked a question likely uppermost in his mind for a while now, as he preceded Syuzen into the Galactica officer's club,"what's Earth like?"
Syuzen sighed.
"We're still repairing the damage from the early years of our war with the Kobolds," she finally answered,"as well as the last of our World Wars."
Starbuck said nothing, as the two of them threaded their way through the noise and the crowds to an empty table in the corner, the older man momentarily lost in thought.
To the waiter who came to their table, he said,"Kaff. Black."
"Anything for you, Commandante?" he then asked.
"No," Syuzen replied,"thank you."
Starbuck waited until their server had moved on, before asking:
"How many of these 'world wars' have your tribe waged against one another?"
"Three," Syuzen replied,"with the last one—the worst—being over two hundred years ago."
She paused a moment, closing her eyes to help her recall history lessons she'd mostly slept through.
"A small group of political, religious, and business leaders calling themselves the Fellowship," she explained,"along with their followers and hired security forces overthrew the government of one of Earth's most powerful nations at the time, the United States of America, following the last of that country's Presidential elections almost 260 years ago. They dismantled the government, the courts, the police, the military, the schools, the medical and scientific professions, rule of law in general, and replaced it with...I don't know, a theocracy, a cult of personality, rule by corporations, rule of mobs and vigilantes given license to openly express their hatred of...anyone they didn't like, for...any reason...through open, honest, state-sanctioned rape, torture, and murder under the thin pretext of conducting legal jury trials."
"My Lord," Starbuck whispered, as Syuzen continued:
"Then, in 2047, they turned on America's oldest allies, the British Commonwealth, invading the Falklands at the same time they nuked London and most of Great Britain, following what was almost immediately exposed as the false-flag thermonuclear bombardement of San Diego and its naval base by a United States Navy ballistic-missile submarine, which the American Theocratic Government attempted to blame on the British Royal Navy.
The rest of NATO, the Euros, the Russians, the Chinese, even the Africans and the Caliphate, all joined the Brits in standing against the United States, and...four years of war, and a world ravaged by thermonuclear holocaust, before the now-Nations Fédérés drove the Theocracy back to American home soil...only for them to run away into deep space with everything and everyone they could grab, and destroy everything and everyone left behind with pre-positioned nukes out of spite."
"They disappeared near Io," she added, after the server returned with a steaming mug of what smelled like coffee,"that's one of the moons of an outer planet in our Solar System we call Jupiter—"
"One of the Lords of Kobol," Starbuck whispered almost reverently, holding the mug in his hands, before adding,"that's one of our names for him anyway.
Please, continue."
"We never found them," Syuzen said."We believe they may have gone through the artifact we found orbiting Io, what we now call the Ring Of Fire, which we still know little about, in spite—"
A pained, rushed "Father!" from a younger, blonder version of Starbuck put an abrupt end to Syuzen's narrative, as Starbuck rose abruptly from his chair, turned to face the younger man, and asked,"Dillon, what's—"
"I think Commander Apollo—" Dillion started to say, before Syuzen's wearable and Starbuck's communicator both bleeped for attention.
"Jolly?" Starbuck asked."Jolly, what's going on?"
"Ivanova on line," Syuzen said to Alice's holo,"go!"
"Starbuck, Apollo wanted us—"
"—to arrest us and confine us to someplace called—"
"—to the prison barge. He's on his way up to—"
"—arrest you, Commandante."
" Oh, holy frack!" Starbuck whispered.
"Suka," Syuzen swore.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.119AC 20:14:22
"Ready for FTL on your mark," the navigator reported, as Commander Benjamin LaFayette Sisko stood at the center of the Colonial Starship Defiant's Combat Information Center.
"PHASR generators, green lignts," the watchstander at Tactical then reported,"Phased particle accelerators, green lights; all gun batteries, green lights. Torpedo bays report all tubes loaded with quantum torpedos."
"Helm, green lights," the 355,000-ton Starstalker-class raiding starship's helmsman reported.
"CAG," Captain Tom Parris' voice said over comms,"Viper squadrons and Raptor flight standing by."
"Impressive machine," Sisko whispered, turning his smooth, perfectly-black head to his XO, nodding slightly to indicate his will.
"Start the clock!" Colonel Micheal Eddingtion barked out, the Defiant's navigator then counting down the moments before the Colonial raidstar spun up its FTL drives, and jumped into the AD Leonis system to carry out its part in the final extermination of the Dark Ones, and the continued loving judgement and final punishment of the Terran apes who had dared, 224 years ago,to deny Sisko and his fellow aristorcrats their Biological Imperative of mastery over all the worlds and lesser beings of His Creation.
"Action stations!" the master of the Colonial raidstar Defiant had time enough to bark out, before the ship finishing spinning up its drives, and jumped.
2275.2.12 19:14:30
Hollande had been as good as his word.
Unfortunately.
"Launch Starkillers!" Larenya screamed, the missile tubes on either side of Koniev's cylindrical main hull hurling six 267-kilogram missiles into space along the enemy machine's anticipated vector, the missiles executing a Theta jump to close with the raider, before returning to normal space 150 kiloklicks from the Kobold's Cherenkov radiation pattern, burning out, and releasing their warshot at one-half lightspeed.
Each Starkiller carried ten 20-kilogram tungsten penetrators, each with an effective yield of 67 megatons of TNT, some those penetrators contacting the hostile machine's Chernekov radiation field to knock the raidstar back down into norm, as more tungsten rounds slammed into the forward wedge and elongated oval of the Kobold warship's main hull, the fuel and remass tanks inside its squarish mast, and the cylindrical housing of its torch, FTL drive generators, and radiators.
"Got the bastard," Holloway exulted.
"Raidstar launching Vipers and Raptors," Hollande then reported.
"Helm," Larenya ordered,"fifty grav, three seconds! Nav, plot evasives for the helm, stand by for Theta jump!"
"Three seconds, fifty G, aye!" Lieutenant de vaisseau Jillian Kalsi reported.
"Evasives plotted for the helm; standing by on Theta jump," was Montigny's reply.
"AuxCon, Combat," Koniev's second in command then said,"stand by point-defense fire."
"Combat, AuxCon," Lieutenant de vaisseau Kelsey Blantyre's holo replied,"point defenses standing by."
"Vampire, vampire, vampire!" Hollande warned, right on schedule. "T-band radar detecting one-'undred, one-zero-zero, multiple-war'ead meson torpedos on an intercept for Koniev, now entering Theta jump!"
42.Y38PH 13:15:03
Apollo stepped onto the Galactica's main deck, walking through the crowd of people rushing to their battle stations to make his way to the bridge.
"Launch all VIpers!Positive shield, now! Stand by all laser batteries and mega-pulsars! Arm all air-to-air missiles!" he heard Starbuck order, as the commander of the Colonial battlestar Galactica entered the bridge only to find...that woman standing next to his second in command at the command console.
"Colonel, what's the meaning of this?!" Apollo demanded, his right hand going to the laser pistol holstered at his side.
Facing him, Starbuck calmly replied:
"Commander, one of the Others' raiding ships has been forced out of lightspeed one light-yahren out by Commandante Ivanova's—"
"That's not what I asked, Colonel," Apollo coldly replied, as he drew down on Ivanova.
"Surrender your weapon, and come with me, Commandante," he added, extending his free hand to take her weapon."You and your people are under arrest for sedition and other crimes against the Colonial Fl—"
"I'll give you my weapon, all right," was Ivanova's reply, as she drew down on him, aiming her pistol directly between Apollo's eyes.
"One bullet at a time," she added, her voice chill.
"Starbuck?" Apollo then said.
"As you were!" Starbuck ordered the bridge crew, as Jolly and a score of warriors stepped onto the bridge, laser rifles at the ready. "We have a battle to fight!"
Behind Jolly were Ivanova's ten warriors, all of them now clad in some kind of powered battle armor.
"Lieutenant, what in Hades is going on here?!" Apollo demanded.
The red bridge lighting flickered, dimmed, went dark, then slowly came back up, one of the bridge operators shouting "Starboard energizers have failed; starboard thrusters and laser batteries nonoperational!"
"Frack!" Starbuck swore, as he turned toward the shuttered main screen. "How long to repair?!"
"They don't think it can be, Colonel," the operator replied." Major Orville says the energizers are completely burned out, and we have no replacement components."
"Jolly?!" Apollo demanded again.
"By order of the Council of the Twelve," Boomer said, as he made his way through the warriors to face Apollo,"you are hereby relieved of your command, and confined to the brig pending tribunal for sedition."
"Wha—" Apollo started to demand, when the command console operator shouted,"All power is out on the Rising Star! She's dead in space, and drifiting out of fleet formation!"
42.119AC 20:14:22
"FTL?!" Sisko demanded, barely containing his exultation at the data he'd received from his DRADIS operator.
According to the telemetry from the DRADIS' FTL band, one of the Dark Ones' ships had allowed itself to fall behind the others.
Alone.
Perfect.
"FTL drives on line, Commander," the navigator replied.
"I want that ship," Sisko almost whispered."Start the clock."
"Ben," Eddington whined,"we have our orders—"
"Orders are an excuse for statist oppression, XO," Sisko reminded him."Have you turned statist?! Have you allowed yourself to become like those apes on that penal colony that dares pretend to be our homeworld?!"
"Nav, start the clock," was Eddington's reply.
"FTL in five," Defiant's navigator reported," four, three, two, one...."
42.Y38PH 13:18:00
"No," Sheba whispered in denial, as the liner Rising Star drifted helplessly through space, away from the rest of the fleet."No, no, no, no."
"Lords help the poor bastards," Bojay whispered.
"Captain?" Dillion asked.
"All Vipers," Sheba decided, as she cut in her turbos, and changed course to intercept the powerless liner,"protect the Rising Star at all costs. Galactica—"
"We see it, Sheba," came Starbuck's pained whisper over comms."We're launching shuttles as fast as we can, and I've ordered the Celestra, and the Gemmonese frieghter to close with the Rising Star, and do whatever they can to help—change course, Delta one-five!"
"Captain Sheba," Red Squadron's second in command, Flight Sergeant Kimber, said over comms,"the Galactica's having trouble turning; looks like half her engines are out."
"Half our laser turrets too," Starbuck explained,"and we don't have all of our maneuvering thrusters on line either; we lost the starboard energizers, and it looks like most of our electrical systems as well. We'll get there, but we won't get there anytime soon; right now, the Vipers are all we have to protect the—oh, holy frack! "
"Captain Sheba, that raidstar's just jumped!" Dillon reported, as Sheba's own sensors screamed warning.
2275.2.12 19:19:02
"Nav, Theta jump, now!" Larenya ordered."Put us between that Kobold bastard and that ship! Tac, program all weapons to open fire the instant we return to norm!"
"Executing," Montigny and Holloway both said, as Koniev jumped.
And, shuddered on her return to normal space, alarms screaming in Larenya's wearable, as the CIC went dark, then slowly returned to normal.
"Ion cannon," Tavernier reported, as Koniev's ship-wide AI network returned fire with her 200 nanometer UV lasers and 90mm railguns firing torch-assisted tungsten penetrators at half the speed of light,"two direct hits."
"Primary electrics are fried," Botsleidner's image was quick to report from Engineering."No other damage; ship is buttoned up, internal temp 37 degrees and rising."
"Helm, Nav, stay with him," Larenya ordered, her eyes on the CIC master holodisplay, showing the Starkiller-class raidstar gored, glowing with white heat continuing to boil his outer armor plating into space, but still very much in the fight, ion cannon, six-inch railguns, and 600-nanometer phased-array lasers hammering and slashing at the Marine d'Etoile heavy patrol cruiser, as he jinked and burned both to avoid Koniev's fire, and to get in the kill shot on the stricken starship.
As Galactica's Vipers harassed the Kobold from as many vectors as possible, constraining his maneuvering options, while Heracles, Warspite, Vanguard, Cockchafer,, and Jeanne d'Arc exited jump to assist Koniev and Galactica's fighters in fending off the hostile warship.
"Additional Cherenkov radiation patterns detected," Hollande reported."Commandante, it is the rest of our escardon, led by Contre-Amiral Uhura aboard the Agamemnon."
"Galactica," he added,"now entering battlespace; 'er shuttles are closing with the Rising Star now."
2275.2.12 19:19:02
"I need those laser turrets on line, now, gallmockit!" Starbuck swore at the image of the Galactica's chief engineering officer in one of the command console screens.
"Not an option, Colonel," was Major Orville's quick reply."Most of the electrical grid and the computron connections are completely burned out, and we don't have enough replacement parts on board to fix it. I doubt even the Celestra can manufacture all the parts we need; she's that low on raw materiel."
"Frack!" the battlestar's second in command interjected, as all Syuzen could do was stand there and watch, while Larenya took her ship in to help Galactica's Vipers defend the derelict Rising Star.
She studied the radar repeater on the command console.
The rest of the squadron were there now, maneuvering to deny the Kobold raidstar its intended prize, while Galactica's shuttles closed with the crippled starliner.
"Alpha six-zero," Starbuck ordered."Bring the missile launchers and the mega pulsars to bear."
"Alpha six-zero," the command console operator replied, entering the commands on the physical keyboard in front of him." Mega pulsars and missile launcher coming to—Colonel, that raidstar's changed course, now closing rapidly with Galactica!"
The bridge went dark, and the battlestar trembled, damage reports coming in from all over the ship, as they jammed the comm system.
"Explosion in Beta Landing Bay!" the command console controller reported." Landing bay gutted, no survivors. Explosion in secondary bridge, no survivors! Multiple explosions throughout the ship, severe internal damage!"
Slowly, the red battle lighting and some of the bridge stations came back up.
"Hull hasn't been breached," Starbuck whispered, studying the damage reports and the schematics of his ship now displayed on one of the command console's screens,"but we have massive damage deep inside the ship."
"Multiple-warhead meson torps," Syuzen explained, as the bridge went dark again, and the battlestar trembled."Warheads detonate just short of the target, releasing meson particles; if the detonation range is close enough, the mesons can bypass armor and decay inside the target, causing massive internal damage."
"Explosion in starboard missile room," the command console operator reported, as the lights and consoles came back."No survivors."
2275.2.12 19:20:07
"Jump, now! Capaitaine de vaisseau Sondra Leavitt ordered, at the same time her navigator engaged the hyperdrive, and jumped them to within a kiloklick of the wounded battlestar.
CIC went dark, and AdNF Heracles trembled, but the thirty-kiloton heavy patrol cruiser gave as good as she got, her four 200nm UV lasers and twelve 9cm railguns ripping into the Kobold bastard trying to take her Syuzen and all those others aboard that battlestar.
The lights and consoles came back up, Captaine de corvette Biata van Dorn reporting via wearable,"Primary electrics are burned out; internal heat's forty degrees and climbing. Fortunately, the meson warhead that hit us wasn't close enough to bypass armor, or we would've really been in the shit."
"Stay with him," Sondra ordered her helm and nav officers, her photonics tech, Quartier-maitre de 1re classe Elena Marineskova, reporting "Koniev has joined battle with us; Galactica fighters closing Kobold raider from astern."
42.119AC 20:21:04
"All decks below CIC have been gutted!" the engineering watchstander reported.
"DRADIS off line!" his DRADIS operator shouted.
"FTL off line," came the navigator's report, as Defiant continued shuddering from stem to stern, the CIC going in and out of darkness, as Sisko asked:
"Do we still have comms?"
"FTL comms on line," came the report from comms.
"Transmit navigational data back to the Galactica," Sisko ordered, before white fire tore through Defiant's combat information center to trigger the cerebral implant granting its commander life eternal.
"Ready for FTL on your mark," the navigator reported, as Commander Benjamin LaFayette Sisko stood at the center of the Colonial Starship Defiant's Combat Information Center.
"PHASR generators, green lignts," the watchstander at Tactical then reported,"Phased particle accelerators, green lights; all gun batteries, green lights. Torpedo bays report all tubes loaded with quantum torpedos."
"Helm, green lights," the 355,000-ton Starstalker-class raiding starship's helmsman reported.
"CAG," Captain Tom Parris' voice said over comms,"Viper squadrons and Raptor flight standing by."
"Impressive machine," Sisko whispered, turning his smooth, perfectly-black head to his XO, nodding slightly to indicate his will.
"Start the clock!" Colonel Micheal Eddingtion barked out, the Defiant's navigator then counting down the moments before the Colonial raidstar spun up its FTL drives, and jumped into the AD Leonis system to carry out its part in the final extermination of the Dark Ones, and the continued loving judgement and final punishment of the Terran apes who had dared, 224 years ago,to deny Sisko and his fellow aristorcrats their Biological Imperative of mastery over all the worlds and lesser beings of His Creation.
"Action stations!" the master of the Colonial raidstar Defiant had time enough to bark out, before the ship finishing spinning up its drives, and jumped.
2275.2.12 19:14:30
Hollande had been as good as his word.
Unfortunately.
"Launch Starkillers!" Larenya screamed, the missile tubes on either side of Koniev's cylindrical main hull hurling six 267-kilogram missiles into space along the enemy machine's anticipated vector, the missiles executing a Theta jump to close with the raider, before returning to normal space 150 kiloklicks from the Kobold's Cherenkov radiation pattern, burning out, and releasing their warshot at one-half lightspeed.
Each Starkiller carried ten 20-kilogram tungsten penetrators, each with an effective yield of 67 megatons of TNT, some those penetrators contacting the hostile machine's Chernekov radiation field to knock the raidstar back down into norm, as more tungsten rounds slammed into the forward wedge and elongated oval of the Kobold warship's main hull, the fuel and remass tanks inside its squarish mast, and the cylindrical housing of its torch, FTL drive generators, and radiators.
"Got the bastard," Holloway exulted.
"Raidstar launching Vipers and Raptors," Hollande then reported.
"Helm," Larenya ordered,"fifty grav, three seconds! Nav, plot evasives for the helm, stand by for Theta jump!"
"Three seconds, fifty G, aye!" Lieutenant de vaisseau Jillian Kalsi reported.
"Evasives plotted for the helm; standing by on Theta jump," was Montigny's reply.
"AuxCon, Combat," Koniev's second in command then said,"stand by point-defense fire."
"Combat, AuxCon," Lieutenant de vaisseau Kelsey Blantyre's holo replied,"point defenses standing by."
"Vampire, vampire, vampire!" Hollande warned, right on schedule. "T-band radar detecting one-'undred, one-zero-zero, multiple-war'ead meson torpedos on an intercept for Koniev, now entering Theta jump!"
42.Y38PH 13:15:03
Apollo stepped onto the Galactica's main deck, walking through the crowd of people rushing to their battle stations to make his way to the bridge.
"Launch all VIpers!Positive shield, now! Stand by all laser batteries and mega-pulsars! Arm all air-to-air missiles!" he heard Starbuck order, as the commander of the Colonial battlestar Galactica entered the bridge only to find...that woman standing next to his second in command at the command console.
"Colonel, what's the meaning of this?!" Apollo demanded, his right hand going to the laser pistol holstered at his side.
Facing him, Starbuck calmly replied:
"Commander, one of the Others' raiding ships has been forced out of lightspeed one light-yahren out by Commandante Ivanova's—"
"That's not what I asked, Colonel," Apollo coldly replied, as he drew down on Ivanova.
"Surrender your weapon, and come with me, Commandante," he added, extending his free hand to take her weapon."You and your people are under arrest for sedition and other crimes against the Colonial Fl—"
"I'll give you my weapon, all right," was Ivanova's reply, as she drew down on him, aiming her pistol directly between Apollo's eyes.
"One bullet at a time," she added, her voice chill.
"Starbuck?" Apollo then said.
"As you were!" Starbuck ordered the bridge crew, as Jolly and a score of warriors stepped onto the bridge, laser rifles at the ready. "We have a battle to fight!"
Behind Jolly were Ivanova's ten warriors, all of them now clad in some kind of powered battle armor.
"Lieutenant, what in Hades is going on here?!" Apollo demanded.
The red bridge lighting flickered, dimmed, went dark, then slowly came back up, one of the bridge operators shouting "Starboard energizers have failed; starboard thrusters and laser batteries nonoperational!"
"Frack!" Starbuck swore, as he turned toward the shuttered main screen. "How long to repair?!"
"They don't think it can be, Colonel," the operator replied." Major Orville says the energizers are completely burned out, and we have no replacement components."
"Jolly?!" Apollo demanded again.
"By order of the Council of the Twelve," Boomer said, as he made his way through the warriors to face Apollo,"you are hereby relieved of your command, and confined to the brig pending tribunal for sedition."
"Wha—" Apollo started to demand, when the command console operator shouted,"All power is out on the Rising Star! She's dead in space, and drifiting out of fleet formation!"
42.119AC 20:14:22
"FTL?!" Sisko demanded, barely containing his exultation at the data he'd received from his DRADIS operator.
According to the telemetry from the DRADIS' FTL band, one of the Dark Ones' ships had allowed itself to fall behind the others.
Alone.
Perfect.
"FTL drives on line, Commander," the navigator replied.
"I want that ship," Sisko almost whispered."Start the clock."
"Ben," Eddington whined,"we have our orders—"
"Orders are an excuse for statist oppression, XO," Sisko reminded him."Have you turned statist?! Have you allowed yourself to become like those apes on that penal colony that dares pretend to be our homeworld?!"
"Nav, start the clock," was Eddington's reply.
"FTL in five," Defiant's navigator reported," four, three, two, one...."
42.Y38PH 13:18:00
"No," Sheba whispered in denial, as the liner Rising Star drifted helplessly through space, away from the rest of the fleet."No, no, no, no."
"Lords help the poor bastards," Bojay whispered.
"Captain?" Dillion asked.
"All Vipers," Sheba decided, as she cut in her turbos, and changed course to intercept the powerless liner,"protect the Rising Star at all costs. Galactica—"
"We see it, Sheba," came Starbuck's pained whisper over comms."We're launching shuttles as fast as we can, and I've ordered the Celestra, and the Gemmonese frieghter to close with the Rising Star, and do whatever they can to help—change course, Delta one-five!"
"Captain Sheba," Red Squadron's second in command, Flight Sergeant Kimber, said over comms,"the Galactica's having trouble turning; looks like half her engines are out."
"Half our laser turrets too," Starbuck explained,"and we don't have all of our maneuvering thrusters on line either; we lost the starboard energizers, and it looks like most of our electrical systems as well. We'll get there, but we won't get there anytime soon; right now, the Vipers are all we have to protect the—oh, holy frack! "
"Captain Sheba, that raidstar's just jumped!" Dillon reported, as Sheba's own sensors screamed warning.
2275.2.12 19:19:02
"Nav, Theta jump, now!" Larenya ordered."Put us between that Kobold bastard and that ship! Tac, program all weapons to open fire the instant we return to norm!"
"Executing," Montigny and Holloway both said, as Koniev jumped.
And, shuddered on her return to normal space, alarms screaming in Larenya's wearable, as the CIC went dark, then slowly returned to normal.
"Ion cannon," Tavernier reported, as Koniev's ship-wide AI network returned fire with her 200 nanometer UV lasers and 90mm railguns firing torch-assisted tungsten penetrators at half the speed of light,"two direct hits."
"Primary electrics are fried," Botsleidner's image was quick to report from Engineering."No other damage; ship is buttoned up, internal temp 37 degrees and rising."
"Helm, Nav, stay with him," Larenya ordered, her eyes on the CIC master holodisplay, showing the Starkiller-class raidstar gored, glowing with white heat continuing to boil his outer armor plating into space, but still very much in the fight, ion cannon, six-inch railguns, and 600-nanometer phased-array lasers hammering and slashing at the Marine d'Etoile heavy patrol cruiser, as he jinked and burned both to avoid Koniev's fire, and to get in the kill shot on the stricken starship.
As Galactica's Vipers harassed the Kobold from as many vectors as possible, constraining his maneuvering options, while Heracles, Warspite, Vanguard, Cockchafer,, and Jeanne d'Arc exited jump to assist Koniev and Galactica's fighters in fending off the hostile warship.
"Additional Cherenkov radiation patterns detected," Hollande reported."Commandante, it is the rest of our escardon, led by Contre-Amiral Uhura aboard the Agamemnon."
"Galactica," he added,"now entering battlespace; 'er shuttles are closing with the Rising Star now."
2275.2.12 19:19:02
"I need those laser turrets on line, now, gallmockit!" Starbuck swore at the image of the Galactica's chief engineering officer in one of the command console screens.
"Not an option, Colonel," was Major Orville's quick reply."Most of the electrical grid and the computron connections are completely burned out, and we don't have enough replacement parts on board to fix it. I doubt even the Celestra can manufacture all the parts we need; she's that low on raw materiel."
"Frack!" the battlestar's second in command interjected, as all Syuzen could do was stand there and watch, while Larenya took her ship in to help Galactica's Vipers defend the derelict Rising Star.
She studied the radar repeater on the command console.
The rest of the squadron were there now, maneuvering to deny the Kobold raidstar its intended prize, while Galactica's shuttles closed with the crippled starliner.
"Alpha six-zero," Starbuck ordered."Bring the missile launchers and the mega pulsars to bear."
"Alpha six-zero," the command console operator replied, entering the commands on the physical keyboard in front of him." Mega pulsars and missile launcher coming to—Colonel, that raidstar's changed course, now closing rapidly with Galactica!"
The bridge went dark, and the battlestar trembled, damage reports coming in from all over the ship, as they jammed the comm system.
"Explosion in Beta Landing Bay!" the command console controller reported." Landing bay gutted, no survivors. Explosion in secondary bridge, no survivors! Multiple explosions throughout the ship, severe internal damage!"
Slowly, the red battle lighting and some of the bridge stations came back up.
"Hull hasn't been breached," Starbuck whispered, studying the damage reports and the schematics of his ship now displayed on one of the command console's screens,"but we have massive damage deep inside the ship."
"Multiple-warhead meson torps," Syuzen explained, as the bridge went dark again, and the battlestar trembled."Warheads detonate just short of the target, releasing meson particles; if the detonation range is close enough, the mesons can bypass armor and decay inside the target, causing massive internal damage."
"Explosion in starboard missile room," the command console operator reported, as the lights and consoles came back."No survivors."
2275.2.12 19:20:07
"Jump, now! Capaitaine de vaisseau Sondra Leavitt ordered, at the same time her navigator engaged the hyperdrive, and jumped them to within a kiloklick of the wounded battlestar.
CIC went dark, and AdNF Heracles trembled, but the thirty-kiloton heavy patrol cruiser gave as good as she got, her four 200nm UV lasers and twelve 9cm railguns ripping into the Kobold bastard trying to take her Syuzen and all those others aboard that battlestar.
The lights and consoles came back up, Captaine de corvette Biata van Dorn reporting via wearable,"Primary electrics are burned out; internal heat's forty degrees and climbing. Fortunately, the meson warhead that hit us wasn't close enough to bypass armor, or we would've really been in the shit."
"Stay with him," Sondra ordered her helm and nav officers, her photonics tech, Quartier-maitre de 1re classe Elena Marineskova, reporting "Koniev has joined battle with us; Galactica fighters closing Kobold raider from astern."
42.119AC 20:21:04
"All decks below CIC have been gutted!" the engineering watchstander reported.
"DRADIS off line!" his DRADIS operator shouted.
"FTL off line," came the navigator's report, as Defiant continued shuddering from stem to stern, the CIC going in and out of darkness, as Sisko asked:
"Do we still have comms?"
"FTL comms on line," came the report from comms.
"Transmit navigational data back to the Galactica," Sisko ordered, before white fire tore through Defiant's combat information center to trigger the cerebral implant granting its commander life eternal.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.119AC 20:22:12
Captain Thomas Eugene "Proton" Paris of the Colonial Starfleet was not afraid to die.
For, what was death, except the shedding of one vessel of corruptible flesh for another, in the cycle of Biological Destiny leading to transcendance from Homo magister to Deo sapiens?
Provided, of course, we fufill the Biological Imperative set before by Him and The Twelve Who Had Passed Beyond, the Defiant's CAG reminded himself, as his Viper Mark VII matched vectors with Raptor 224, and attached itself to one of the tow cables the FTL-capable multi-role SWAC trailed behind it.
"Intercept plotted for hostile battlestar, as per orders," said Raptor 224's pilot, Lieutenant Felix "Rockstar" Agathon, via wireless. "Stand by for FTL jump."
Paris smiled; he'd served under Rockstar's old man during the brief campaign against the Centauri, and the so-called League of Nonaligned Worlds over four decades ago, all the way up to the final Battle of Io that had seen the Terran apes destroy the Eye Of Yaweh to isolate the Starfleet forces here from the Homeworld and its Colonies.
His fathers would be proud of him, Paris observed, as Rockstar counted down from five, and Defiant's air group jumped toward their target.
2275.2.12 19:23:15
"Commandante!", Hollande shouted, Larenya wasting no time ordering evasives and point-defense fire.
You'd think they'd realize, when they'd been beaten, and fuck off home, she had time to think, as the Kobold Vipers and Raptors jumped in, and Koniev's point-defense network dispatched their initial volley of antimatter-catalyzed, thermonuclear anti-ship missiles.
The Raptors poured on a second salvo of missiles, while the Vipers they'd been towing through hyperspace detached themselves from their parent craft, broke formation, and came at the Koniev, Heracles, and Galactica with all guns blazing.
The CIC lights dimmed briefly, as Montigny and Kalsi worked furiously to keep Koniev between the crippled battlestar and the enemy small craft hellbent on its destruction , and Blantyre shot down as many inbound nukes as she could with the ship's point-defense laser batteries.
While several of the Kobold Raptors fell away, dead and gutted, from the lasers of Galactica's fighters, and the Kobold Vipers turned and burned to engage them.
42.Y38PH 13:24:00
Sheba pumped laser fire into another Raptor, before breaking hard right to evade railgun fire from a enemy Viper.
She flew into its guns, loosed a quick burst from her lasers, then jinked and burned, cutting in her turbos for just a moment, before lining up another one of the Others' fighters in her sights.
Firing.
Jinking, burning, cutting in turbo thrust.
Lining up another target.
Firing.
Simple.
Thoughtless.
Another Raptor fell away from her guns, before she'd even thought of pulling the trigger, Sheba wrenching her fighter around in a hard turn and burn, opening fire on the Viper which had slipped in behind her, executing another jink and burn, never staying too long in one spot and making herself a target.
Keep moving.
Attacking.
Thinking only about doing the mission and staying alive.
Nothing else.
Especially not why it had been Starbuck, not Apollo, on comms just now.
Still another Raptor in her sights.
Still another burst of laser fire driven into it, before, still again, she turned into the guns of still another Viper.
Still another jink and burn, following still more laser fire vectored into the path of the hostile.
Think about the mission, she kept reminding herself, tears streaming unnoticed down her face, as she drove laser pulses into another Raptor.
Think only about the fracking mission.
And, staying alive.
Not one frackin' thing else.
2275.2.12 19:23:15
"That's the last of them, Colonel," the command console operator reported.
"Thank the Lords of Kobol," Starbuck exhaled in relief.
"Baby?!" Sondra's holo then appeared in front of Syuzen's right eye.
"I'm right here, hun," Syuzen whispered back. "I'm okay."
"Good," Sondra replied, before switching from their private channel to squadron tacnet.
"Conte-amiral Uhura's on line, asking for you, Commandante."
"Ivanova on line, Admiral, go," Syuzen said, Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura's dark, distinguished face taking the place of Sondra's in her wearable's holofield.
"How bad?" Uhura asked.
"Bad," Syuzen replied softly, after a glance at the command console."Multiple direct hits from meson warheads, detonating close enough to bypass the armor and detonate inside; they maintain a shirt-sleeve enviroment, even in combat, same as the Kobolds, meaning—"
"Fires," the older woman concluded." Damn."
"Final casualty report, Colonel," the command console controller told Starbuck.
Galactica's second in command closed his eyes, and nodded his head.
"One hundred fifty dead," the controller reported,"another 275 wounded, many of them critically."
"My God," Starbuck whispered.
"If there's anything we can do," Uhura offered.
"Thank you, uh...." Starbuck replied.
"Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura," Uhura introduced herself,"of the AdNF Agammenon, commanding 17 Escardon Astronef."
"Thank you, Contre-amiral," Starbuck said in reply."I'm Colonel Starbuck, in temporary command of the Galactica. I'd appreciate whatever assistance you can provide."
"Pleased to meet you, Colonel," Uhura said."I just wish it was under better circumstances."
"Likewise, Contre-amiral," Starbuck said. "Likewise."
"The Rising Star?" he then asked the command console operator.
"Evacuation of her crew and passengers to the Gemmonese frieghter and the Celestra is underway, Colonel," the controller replied.
"They're overcrowded, as it is," Starbuck remarked, sighing.
"There's still room aboard the agro ship," he decided."Tell the shuttles, the Gemmonese freighter, and the Celestra to transfer everyone from the Rising Star there."
"I can have a medship dispatched from AD Leonis Base, if need be," Uhura offered. "One of our mobile airdock facilities as well."
Starbuck nodded.
"Thank you, Contre-amiral," he said."Now, if you'd excuse me—"
"Of course," Uhura replied."Commandante Ivanova, you and your party are to return to the Koniev, and let Colonel Starbuck and his crew get on with what they need to do."
"Understood," Syuzen replied."Ivanova out."
Captain Thomas Eugene "Proton" Paris of the Colonial Starfleet was not afraid to die.
For, what was death, except the shedding of one vessel of corruptible flesh for another, in the cycle of Biological Destiny leading to transcendance from Homo magister to Deo sapiens?
Provided, of course, we fufill the Biological Imperative set before by Him and The Twelve Who Had Passed Beyond, the Defiant's CAG reminded himself, as his Viper Mark VII matched vectors with Raptor 224, and attached itself to one of the tow cables the FTL-capable multi-role SWAC trailed behind it.
"Intercept plotted for hostile battlestar, as per orders," said Raptor 224's pilot, Lieutenant Felix "Rockstar" Agathon, via wireless. "Stand by for FTL jump."
Paris smiled; he'd served under Rockstar's old man during the brief campaign against the Centauri, and the so-called League of Nonaligned Worlds over four decades ago, all the way up to the final Battle of Io that had seen the Terran apes destroy the Eye Of Yaweh to isolate the Starfleet forces here from the Homeworld and its Colonies.
His fathers would be proud of him, Paris observed, as Rockstar counted down from five, and Defiant's air group jumped toward their target.
2275.2.12 19:23:15
"Commandante!", Hollande shouted, Larenya wasting no time ordering evasives and point-defense fire.
You'd think they'd realize, when they'd been beaten, and fuck off home, she had time to think, as the Kobold Vipers and Raptors jumped in, and Koniev's point-defense network dispatched their initial volley of antimatter-catalyzed, thermonuclear anti-ship missiles.
The Raptors poured on a second salvo of missiles, while the Vipers they'd been towing through hyperspace detached themselves from their parent craft, broke formation, and came at the Koniev, Heracles, and Galactica with all guns blazing.
The CIC lights dimmed briefly, as Montigny and Kalsi worked furiously to keep Koniev between the crippled battlestar and the enemy small craft hellbent on its destruction , and Blantyre shot down as many inbound nukes as she could with the ship's point-defense laser batteries.
While several of the Kobold Raptors fell away, dead and gutted, from the lasers of Galactica's fighters, and the Kobold Vipers turned and burned to engage them.
42.Y38PH 13:24:00
Sheba pumped laser fire into another Raptor, before breaking hard right to evade railgun fire from a enemy Viper.
She flew into its guns, loosed a quick burst from her lasers, then jinked and burned, cutting in her turbos for just a moment, before lining up another one of the Others' fighters in her sights.
Firing.
Jinking, burning, cutting in turbo thrust.
Lining up another target.
Firing.
Simple.
Thoughtless.
Another Raptor fell away from her guns, before she'd even thought of pulling the trigger, Sheba wrenching her fighter around in a hard turn and burn, opening fire on the Viper which had slipped in behind her, executing another jink and burn, never staying too long in one spot and making herself a target.
Keep moving.
Attacking.
Thinking only about doing the mission and staying alive.
Nothing else.
Especially not why it had been Starbuck, not Apollo, on comms just now.
Still another Raptor in her sights.
Still another burst of laser fire driven into it, before, still again, she turned into the guns of still another Viper.
Still another jink and burn, following still more laser fire vectored into the path of the hostile.
Think about the mission, she kept reminding herself, tears streaming unnoticed down her face, as she drove laser pulses into another Raptor.
Think only about the fracking mission.
And, staying alive.
Not one frackin' thing else.
2275.2.12 19:23:15
"That's the last of them, Colonel," the command console operator reported.
"Thank the Lords of Kobol," Starbuck exhaled in relief.
"Baby?!" Sondra's holo then appeared in front of Syuzen's right eye.
"I'm right here, hun," Syuzen whispered back. "I'm okay."
"Good," Sondra replied, before switching from their private channel to squadron tacnet.
"Conte-amiral Uhura's on line, asking for you, Commandante."
"Ivanova on line, Admiral, go," Syuzen said, Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura's dark, distinguished face taking the place of Sondra's in her wearable's holofield.
"How bad?" Uhura asked.
"Bad," Syuzen replied softly, after a glance at the command console."Multiple direct hits from meson warheads, detonating close enough to bypass the armor and detonate inside; they maintain a shirt-sleeve enviroment, even in combat, same as the Kobolds, meaning—"
"Fires," the older woman concluded." Damn."
"Final casualty report, Colonel," the command console controller told Starbuck.
Galactica's second in command closed his eyes, and nodded his head.
"One hundred fifty dead," the controller reported,"another 275 wounded, many of them critically."
"My God," Starbuck whispered.
"If there's anything we can do," Uhura offered.
"Thank you, uh...." Starbuck replied.
"Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura," Uhura introduced herself,"of the AdNF Agammenon, commanding 17 Escardon Astronef."
"Thank you, Contre-amiral," Starbuck said in reply."I'm Colonel Starbuck, in temporary command of the Galactica. I'd appreciate whatever assistance you can provide."
"Pleased to meet you, Colonel," Uhura said."I just wish it was under better circumstances."
"Likewise, Contre-amiral," Starbuck said. "Likewise."
"The Rising Star?" he then asked the command console operator.
"Evacuation of her crew and passengers to the Gemmonese frieghter and the Celestra is underway, Colonel," the controller replied.
"They're overcrowded, as it is," Starbuck remarked, sighing.
"There's still room aboard the agro ship," he decided."Tell the shuttles, the Gemmonese freighter, and the Celestra to transfer everyone from the Rising Star there."
"I can have a medship dispatched from AD Leonis Base, if need be," Uhura offered. "One of our mobile airdock facilities as well."
Starbuck nodded.
"Thank you, Contre-amiral," he said."Now, if you'd excuse me—"
"Of course," Uhura replied."Commandante Ivanova, you and your party are to return to the Koniev, and let Colonel Starbuck and his crew get on with what they need to do."
"Understood," Syuzen replied."Ivanova out."
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.275M3 20:31:18
"So?!" the other, younger John demanded."All that reflected intelligence has convinced this Council that we should just sit on our asses, and do nothing."
"Per usual," he bitterly added.
"The last time we intervened, brother," the elder John reminded him,"ended in disaster."
"Not for us, brother," scornfully rejoined the younger John."For those of our brothers and sisters we had do our work for us, because we've become too enlightened to get our hands dirty. They were the ones who bled and died, when our plan to use them brought not just the fraggin' Eastern Alliance, but Modred's killing machines down on their heads."
"Which," Ciaphas, one of the Twelve, reminded the younger John,"only proves our present course of action to be the correct one, brother."
"The Council," he added, with the imperious air of his previous life and calling,"have spoken."
"The Council." the younger John reminded Ciaphas,"may have spoken, but they don't have the final say."
"John is correct, Ciaphas," said the elder John."The final decision is up to the Community, once the Council has submitted their decision to a referendum."
"I forgot myself, and my place," Ciaphas conceded."My apologies, brother."
"You are forgiven, Ciaphas," the elder John replied, reminding the younger one:
"And, you, brother, must remain mindful of lessons learned through hardship and pain, that laws are for the governors, as well for the governed, so that all may benefit."
The younger John was struck silent a moment.
"Damn you," he then whispered.
"Damn me, and damn this Council all you want, brother," was the age-weary reply of one once styled King,Paradigm,Demon Slayer, Star Killer, Allfather, Lord Of Kobol, and Emperor, but now simply the name given him by long-forgotten parents in a long-forgotten quarter of this eternal city at the nexus of the Well Of Souls.
"Damn the law, if you prefer," the elder John whispered to his younger brother."As long as you remember the lessons of our history, and the far worse damnation of eternal recurrence."
Especially the damnation of eternal recurrence, he silently added.
"This Council," he said out loud,"is adjourned."
With that, all but one of the others left the Council chambers.
"My lord," Ciaphas came directly to the point, as he always did,"though I voted in favour of non-intervention, I do feel as John does."
"We all do, old friend," whispered the elder John, as he felt the pain of that ancient, long-vanished scar.
"We all do, " he repeated.
"They are our brothers and sisters, after all," he sadly observed.
"It's...more than that, my lord," Ciaphas reminded him.
"I know, Ciaphas," John acknowledge. "I know."
42.119AC 20:33:08
He watched, as her femslut gave Admiral Cain just punishment for her sins.
At the same time little Gina confirmed the logical, scientifically-proven conclusion of all femperv relationships, without exception.
Grand Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, Sheriff and Pastor of Terra Nova, Chief Executive Officer of the New Colonies of Earth, and Executive Vice-President of Military Operations for the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, smiled slightly, as he sipped his glass of cognac, and finished watching the end of the episode "Resurrection Ship, Part II" of the Canonical Work Star Trek The Lost Fleet.
"Stop your lying this instant!" the slut underneath his boots then forced him to say, as she made him administer correction with his firm, strong hand of loving patrician authority, with her inconvenient, pretended whimperings of discomfort at being used the way all procreators and fornicators wanted, needed, and deserved to be used by the Biologically-Destined Lords and Masters of their worthless lives.
"Stop it!" repeated the Shepherd and Lawgiver of His Colony of Terra Nova, forced by the harlot and the sodomite to administer still another blow of loving discipline on the little radfemperv ape's bare bottom, her Master chuckling in satisfaction, as the whore finally shut up, and allowed Picard to return to savoring his cognac, as he relaxed on the sofa of the Terra Nova Temple's penthouse suite.
At least until the communicator badge on his dress uniform's left breast bleeped for his attention.
With a sigh of resignation, Picard pressed the badge's graven, gold-filigree image of the Colonial seal, and Commander Karl "Helo" Agathon's patrician, god-like physique stood before him.
"My lord," Karl said, coming straight to the point, as a first-born Son of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh should,"we are making preparations for the final assault against the Dark Ones, and the Terrans defending them."
"Good," Picard replied."And, what of Adama?"
"He will be hailed as the architect of our great victory over Them," Karl replied.
"Posthumously," he added, openly smiling at the prospect of the unfortunate, but necessary ascension of Picard's greatest political rival and his followers.
"At the hands of the Terran apes," he then said,"so it will seem. Once our victory is assured, Galactica will suffer a resurgence of the Command Navigation Program dormant inside its shipboard AI network; the virus, will of course, prevent outgoing wireless FTL communications with the Babylon Fleet Yards, and, more importantly, with the AI network of its reproduction and resurrection facilities, preventing the echoing of their immortal souls into the new bodies which will be destroyed the moment the 75th Battlestar Fleet jumps for the AD Leonis system."
"You have it in hand, I see," Picard remarked, even though he knew his Karl would have it all handled for him.
He was, after all, Homo magister, Biologically-Destined for final ascenion to Deo sapiens.
And, it was unfortunate that President Adama's grandson had to be disposed of; he was as brilliant at pacification, exploration, scientific research, and all the other duties required of a Colonial battlestar commander and a Starfleet admiral as his grandfather, the first William Adama(neé Adamu)had been, when he'd led the rebel Starfleet in Great Crusade against the Caprican State and its military almost 120 years ago.
And, as able a statesman, as he was a bold warrior, also like his grandfather.
Which naturally made him a liability to Picard's fufillment of the Manifest, Biological Destiny set before His Natural Aristocracy by Him and His Twelve.
"I do, my lord," his fine, young man replied, bowing his head in deference to his Father.
"Then, I won't detain you any further," His Executive Vice President of Military Operations decided. "Picard out."
2275.2.12 19:36:04
Syuzen savored the taste of real coffee, grown from cuttings she'd planted in Koniev's life-support garden.
Pity, we're not under thrust, though, she mused, sipping more of the strong, dark blend of Santos#2 and Pacifican Kona from her squeeze bottle.Coffee tastes much better drunk from a proper cup.
The commander of the G.I. Koniev returned to the copy of the Colonials' Book of the Word floating above the wardroom coffee table.
The Council Of the Twelve had, with Starbuck's harried and distracted approval, consented to the sharing of the information contained within Galactica's databases, most of which was earmarked for the big brains back home, but Syuzen, lapsed Russian Jew and some time Foundationalist that she was, had always been been interested in the study of the various Human, Centauri, and Narn belief systems, and she'd long exhausted her supply of reading material.
This Book of the Word began like most other religious books, with the standard creation story bearing more than a few similarities to the creation myths of all three Abrahamic religions, themselves derived from Babylonian, Phonecian, Greco-Roman, Hindu, and other religions contemporanious with Judiasm, Christianity and Islam.
Adama and Haveh, instead of Adam and Eve, she observed,which isn't that far away from the Hebrew Adamu and Hawwah.
"Damn," she said aloud, sniffling back the memory that had brought up.
Her first thought had been wonder at what Commandante Sinclair—a more ardent student of religion than she was—would have thought about that.
Except, of course, Jeff Sinclair was almost thirty years dead and gone, lost along with her oldest friend Marcus Cole, her old brother Ganya Andreivich, and the rest of the Cumberland's crew, when they'd destroyed the Ring Of Fire, the bulk of the Kobold's First Battlestar Fleet, and Io itself at the second battle round that moon of Jupiter.
Syuzen breathed deeply, taking another sip of coffee, nibbled at what the MRE's packaging claimed was a chicken sandwich, and resumed her study of the Colonals' sacred Book.
Which now started to resemble the Book of Mormon in its narrative of migration from the planet Kobol(another interesting coincidence, she mused,since the planet Kolob figures prominently in Mormon doctrine)by the "thirteenth tribe of Man" to the "an Eden amongst the stars, revealed to Daniel by Riothamus, the Father God, Jupiter, as a planet called Earth," in the aftermath of a "great and powerful Cataclysm which poisoned the land and the sea, slaughtered all creatures and a third of the men living on its surface, and turned the sun black, and the moon to the color of blood," which was otherwise unexplained by the Book's original authors.
And, while on the subject of unexplained things...she remembered what Wilker and the others had told her of the Book of the Word, that the twelve tribes who had founded their Colonies had left Kobol immediately after the Cataclysm, and at the same time as the thirteenth—the tribe of Daniel, who the Book sometimes called Mosha or Merdrot—who had supposedly colonized Earth.
Except, according to the story given here—at about the same place in the "Sacred Scroll of the Creation and the Scattering" as the story of the Flood and Noah's Ark in Genesis—the tribe of Daniel had been the first to leave Kobol, immediately following the Cataclysm, while the remaining twelve tribes, including "the tribe of Adama, which resided in the House of Kobol," had remained on planet for "nine and ninety yahren," leaving only after "famine, pestilence, all the remnants of the Cataclysm in the air, land and sea, spared only twelve thousand in each of the twelve tribes."
They left after the thirteenth tribe, she mused, scanning back to what she'd previously read, and might have missed.
And, she had almost missed it, buried as it had been in the text surrounding it:
"And the tribe of Mosha, who resided in the House of the Lords Of Kobol, complained at the fortune of the other tribes, and talked of persecution, though all were equal in fortune and favor in the eyes of Riothamus Allfather and his Lords."
Syuzen carefully re-read the text following that line, but found nothing which expanded on it, or even mentioned it.
Lost in translation, she thought, as she took another sip of coffee, another bite of sandwich, and continued reading,or redacted by whatever these Colonals had for a Council of Nicea.
Curious, either way.
"So?!" the other, younger John demanded."All that reflected intelligence has convinced this Council that we should just sit on our asses, and do nothing."
"Per usual," he bitterly added.
"The last time we intervened, brother," the elder John reminded him,"ended in disaster."
"Not for us, brother," scornfully rejoined the younger John."For those of our brothers and sisters we had do our work for us, because we've become too enlightened to get our hands dirty. They were the ones who bled and died, when our plan to use them brought not just the fraggin' Eastern Alliance, but Modred's killing machines down on their heads."
"Which," Ciaphas, one of the Twelve, reminded the younger John,"only proves our present course of action to be the correct one, brother."
"The Council," he added, with the imperious air of his previous life and calling,"have spoken."
"The Council." the younger John reminded Ciaphas,"may have spoken, but they don't have the final say."
"John is correct, Ciaphas," said the elder John."The final decision is up to the Community, once the Council has submitted their decision to a referendum."
"I forgot myself, and my place," Ciaphas conceded."My apologies, brother."
"You are forgiven, Ciaphas," the elder John replied, reminding the younger one:
"And, you, brother, must remain mindful of lessons learned through hardship and pain, that laws are for the governors, as well for the governed, so that all may benefit."
The younger John was struck silent a moment.
"Damn you," he then whispered.
"Damn me, and damn this Council all you want, brother," was the age-weary reply of one once styled King,Paradigm,Demon Slayer, Star Killer, Allfather, Lord Of Kobol, and Emperor, but now simply the name given him by long-forgotten parents in a long-forgotten quarter of this eternal city at the nexus of the Well Of Souls.
"Damn the law, if you prefer," the elder John whispered to his younger brother."As long as you remember the lessons of our history, and the far worse damnation of eternal recurrence."
Especially the damnation of eternal recurrence, he silently added.
"This Council," he said out loud,"is adjourned."
With that, all but one of the others left the Council chambers.
"My lord," Ciaphas came directly to the point, as he always did,"though I voted in favour of non-intervention, I do feel as John does."
"We all do, old friend," whispered the elder John, as he felt the pain of that ancient, long-vanished scar.
"We all do, " he repeated.
"They are our brothers and sisters, after all," he sadly observed.
"It's...more than that, my lord," Ciaphas reminded him.
"I know, Ciaphas," John acknowledge. "I know."
42.119AC 20:33:08
He watched, as her femslut gave Admiral Cain just punishment for her sins.
At the same time little Gina confirmed the logical, scientifically-proven conclusion of all femperv relationships, without exception.
Grand Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, Sheriff and Pastor of Terra Nova, Chief Executive Officer of the New Colonies of Earth, and Executive Vice-President of Military Operations for the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, smiled slightly, as he sipped his glass of cognac, and finished watching the end of the episode "Resurrection Ship, Part II" of the Canonical Work Star Trek The Lost Fleet.
"Stop your lying this instant!" the slut underneath his boots then forced him to say, as she made him administer correction with his firm, strong hand of loving patrician authority, with her inconvenient, pretended whimperings of discomfort at being used the way all procreators and fornicators wanted, needed, and deserved to be used by the Biologically-Destined Lords and Masters of their worthless lives.
"Stop it!" repeated the Shepherd and Lawgiver of His Colony of Terra Nova, forced by the harlot and the sodomite to administer still another blow of loving discipline on the little radfemperv ape's bare bottom, her Master chuckling in satisfaction, as the whore finally shut up, and allowed Picard to return to savoring his cognac, as he relaxed on the sofa of the Terra Nova Temple's penthouse suite.
At least until the communicator badge on his dress uniform's left breast bleeped for his attention.
With a sigh of resignation, Picard pressed the badge's graven, gold-filigree image of the Colonial seal, and Commander Karl "Helo" Agathon's patrician, god-like physique stood before him.
"My lord," Karl said, coming straight to the point, as a first-born Son of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh should,"we are making preparations for the final assault against the Dark Ones, and the Terrans defending them."
"Good," Picard replied."And, what of Adama?"
"He will be hailed as the architect of our great victory over Them," Karl replied.
"Posthumously," he added, openly smiling at the prospect of the unfortunate, but necessary ascension of Picard's greatest political rival and his followers.
"At the hands of the Terran apes," he then said,"so it will seem. Once our victory is assured, Galactica will suffer a resurgence of the Command Navigation Program dormant inside its shipboard AI network; the virus, will of course, prevent outgoing wireless FTL communications with the Babylon Fleet Yards, and, more importantly, with the AI network of its reproduction and resurrection facilities, preventing the echoing of their immortal souls into the new bodies which will be destroyed the moment the 75th Battlestar Fleet jumps for the AD Leonis system."
"You have it in hand, I see," Picard remarked, even though he knew his Karl would have it all handled for him.
He was, after all, Homo magister, Biologically-Destined for final ascenion to Deo sapiens.
And, it was unfortunate that President Adama's grandson had to be disposed of; he was as brilliant at pacification, exploration, scientific research, and all the other duties required of a Colonial battlestar commander and a Starfleet admiral as his grandfather, the first William Adama(neé Adamu)had been, when he'd led the rebel Starfleet in Great Crusade against the Caprican State and its military almost 120 years ago.
And, as able a statesman, as he was a bold warrior, also like his grandfather.
Which naturally made him a liability to Picard's fufillment of the Manifest, Biological Destiny set before His Natural Aristocracy by Him and His Twelve.
"I do, my lord," his fine, young man replied, bowing his head in deference to his Father.
"Then, I won't detain you any further," His Executive Vice President of Military Operations decided. "Picard out."
2275.2.12 19:36:04
Syuzen savored the taste of real coffee, grown from cuttings she'd planted in Koniev's life-support garden.
Pity, we're not under thrust, though, she mused, sipping more of the strong, dark blend of Santos#2 and Pacifican Kona from her squeeze bottle.Coffee tastes much better drunk from a proper cup.
The commander of the G.I. Koniev returned to the copy of the Colonials' Book of the Word floating above the wardroom coffee table.
The Council Of the Twelve had, with Starbuck's harried and distracted approval, consented to the sharing of the information contained within Galactica's databases, most of which was earmarked for the big brains back home, but Syuzen, lapsed Russian Jew and some time Foundationalist that she was, had always been been interested in the study of the various Human, Centauri, and Narn belief systems, and she'd long exhausted her supply of reading material.
This Book of the Word began like most other religious books, with the standard creation story bearing more than a few similarities to the creation myths of all three Abrahamic religions, themselves derived from Babylonian, Phonecian, Greco-Roman, Hindu, and other religions contemporanious with Judiasm, Christianity and Islam.
Adama and Haveh, instead of Adam and Eve, she observed,which isn't that far away from the Hebrew Adamu and Hawwah.
"Damn," she said aloud, sniffling back the memory that had brought up.
Her first thought had been wonder at what Commandante Sinclair—a more ardent student of religion than she was—would have thought about that.
Except, of course, Jeff Sinclair was almost thirty years dead and gone, lost along with her oldest friend Marcus Cole, her old brother Ganya Andreivich, and the rest of the Cumberland's crew, when they'd destroyed the Ring Of Fire, the bulk of the Kobold's First Battlestar Fleet, and Io itself at the second battle round that moon of Jupiter.
Syuzen breathed deeply, taking another sip of coffee, nibbled at what the MRE's packaging claimed was a chicken sandwich, and resumed her study of the Colonals' sacred Book.
Which now started to resemble the Book of Mormon in its narrative of migration from the planet Kobol(another interesting coincidence, she mused,since the planet Kolob figures prominently in Mormon doctrine)by the "thirteenth tribe of Man" to the "an Eden amongst the stars, revealed to Daniel by Riothamus, the Father God, Jupiter, as a planet called Earth," in the aftermath of a "great and powerful Cataclysm which poisoned the land and the sea, slaughtered all creatures and a third of the men living on its surface, and turned the sun black, and the moon to the color of blood," which was otherwise unexplained by the Book's original authors.
And, while on the subject of unexplained things...she remembered what Wilker and the others had told her of the Book of the Word, that the twelve tribes who had founded their Colonies had left Kobol immediately after the Cataclysm, and at the same time as the thirteenth—the tribe of Daniel, who the Book sometimes called Mosha or Merdrot—who had supposedly colonized Earth.
Except, according to the story given here—at about the same place in the "Sacred Scroll of the Creation and the Scattering" as the story of the Flood and Noah's Ark in Genesis—the tribe of Daniel had been the first to leave Kobol, immediately following the Cataclysm, while the remaining twelve tribes, including "the tribe of Adama, which resided in the House of Kobol," had remained on planet for "nine and ninety yahren," leaving only after "famine, pestilence, all the remnants of the Cataclysm in the air, land and sea, spared only twelve thousand in each of the twelve tribes."
They left after the thirteenth tribe, she mused, scanning back to what she'd previously read, and might have missed.
And, she had almost missed it, buried as it had been in the text surrounding it:
"And the tribe of Mosha, who resided in the House of the Lords Of Kobol, complained at the fortune of the other tribes, and talked of persecution, though all were equal in fortune and favor in the eyes of Riothamus Allfather and his Lords."
Syuzen carefully re-read the text following that line, but found nothing which expanded on it, or even mentioned it.
Lost in translation, she thought, as she took another sip of coffee, another bite of sandwich, and continued reading,or redacted by whatever these Colonals had for a Council of Nicea.
Curious, either way.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
2275.2.12 19:48:11
If he stopped, even for a moment, he could see John's Fury, holed and powerless, spinning through space.
He could even see what the Kobold meson warhead had left of a man he'd considered a brother.
So, Capitaine de corvette James Kirk, AdNF Yorktown's chief engineering officer, did not stop, burying himself instead in the insides of the liner Rising Star.
According to her chief engineer, the starliner had only ever been intended to carry passengers to and from their Twelve Colonies, which Kirk had gathered resided within the same multiple-star system, along with the colonies of those Colonies, such as the hellhole desert planet the liner's chief engineer, calling himself a Borellian Noman, had hailed from.
It had never been intended for interstellar travel, especially not for almost forty of their yahren, whatever that translated into in Earth years.
It had been a miracle of ingenuity and sheer Human stubborness that she'd lasted this long in deep space.
"Jesus H. Christ," Kirk interjected for only the tenth or ten thousandth time, since volunteering to lead a team of 17 EA's engineers aboard the spaceliner to assess her situation ahead of the mobile airdock being sent from Base.
"Jesus Christ," he repeated, the Noman defensively insisting "we did what we could with the limited resources at hand. Since we lost the mining and refinery ship five yahren ago, raw materials for the industry ships have been hard to come by, and—"
"'Needs must, when the devil drives,' Nabul," Kirk replied placatingly, trying not to shake his head at all the rotten wiring bypassed with jumpers, the missing conduits, the blown transformers, decayed resistors, and what looked like four decades' worth of jury rigs in this part of the ship alone just to keep her running.
"Next to the Galactica," Nabul explained,"we had the most demand put upon us, as we provided rest and rejuvenation to the warriors and other people of the Fleet; this area, in fact, used to be one of our Triad courts, before necessity forced us to convert it to a garden to support our crew and passengers. We only have the single agro ship now, you see, the other two having been destroyed by those accursed Cylons not soon after we'd left the Colonies."
Yorktown's chief engineer nodded, seeing where piping for irrigation and nutrients had been retrofitted indiscriminately amongst the wiring.
And, where those pipes had leaked, shorting out some of the electrics.
Shoddy, and hasty work, but Kirk supposed these people had had little choice in the matter.
Still, he mused,if I'd maintained the Yorkie even half as bad this ship's been maintained, Scotty'd skin me alive.
As it was....
"I don't think there's anything we can do, except gut this ship, and rebuild her from the keel up," he decided.
"I concur," the Noman said."Even for your people, I would imagine such a thing would not be practical."
"We'd be better off building a new ship for similar cost, yes," Kirk replied, nodding his head.
"I'm sorry," he added.
"The Rising Star is over two hundred yahren old, Commandante," the Noman replied, sighing,"and she has been my home for the fifty yahren since I was declared dead to my own people by the Elders.
But, I knew the day would come when I'd have to leave her behind, and find a new home. I just prayed that it would be later, rather than sooner."
"I'm sorry," Kirk repeated, knowing how he'd feel if this had been his Yorktown.
"It is the way of things," the Noman sadly replied. "All that can be done now is to determine what can be salvaged from her to keep the rest of the Fleet alive."
"Yeah," Kirk said, not wanting to think about what it'd feel like to strip the corpse of his own ship, when the time came.
42.Y38PH 13:55:03
One burned-out compartment after another.
An entire landing bay reduced to a blackened skeleton, its charred bones exposed to space, what little skin remained shrivelled, melted, and hanging loosely from the wasted frame.
The starboard energizer room still smelling of burnt ozone and insulation from the aging power converter which had finally given out under load.
The blackened, disfigured bodies of too many dead.
Colonel Starbuck, in temporary command of what remained of the Battlestar Galactica, walked dazed and numb through the overflowing ward of the Life Center, in the midst of the cries, pleas, curses, and moaning of all the horribly wounded, the old warrior talking with them, listening to them, getting them water, or a med tech, giving them solace, especially those who were dying.
Doing what he could.
Going through the motions.
Feeling nothing.
Of, if he did, he held it back, til he was in his quarters, away from being a Colonial warrior and all the responsibilities it entailled.
He stopped at the bed of a someone almost too badly burned to be recognizable, the poor man painfully murmurring, writhing within the limits of the tubes and wires connecting him to the machines which fought to keep him alive.
And losing.
He'd been sealed to Galactica's doctor long enough to learn how to read life sign indicators.
The man was dying.
How long, only God and the Lords of Kobol knew.
Starbuck sat beside him, talking, just talking, as the man's murmurring grew more faint, and he writhed about less and less, until the inevitable came.
"May the Lords of Kobol have mercy on your soul," was all Galactica's acting commander could do for him now.
Slowly, reluctantly, he rose from the chair.
Before sabotaging that last Cylon base ship, he'd told Cassi that he didn't think about what would happen, and, that had been true, to an extent.
To an extent.
He just thought more about it than not these days.
What would I have done, if I had been Adar, he asked himself,and had to live with this all my life?
Baltar, Lords rest his soul, for that matter?
He resumed his slow progress through the Life Center.
And, there she was, older now, but, no less the sun in his sky than she had been all those yahren ago.
He ran to her, she to him.
Both crying, as they just held one another tight, and refused to let go.
42.Y38PH 14:06:21
She'd remembered being here with him, in one of the Galactica's old navigation domes, after they'd destroyed that last Cylon base ship at the beginning of seven yahren of relative peace and safety.
She came here often now, to remember, to think.
To be alone with her thoughts and memories.
Apollo...the last time they'd been here together, with Boxy, had been just before they'd picked up the comms chatter from that other battlestar on the old Gamma frequency.
"Apollo, there are things about these other Colonists which are entirely too coincidential," Adama had said to him, when he'd raised objections to the Council sending him and Doctor Salik over to the other Galactica, the other Adama,"too many questions which need answers, and the only way I can get those answers is by asking these other Colonists. Doctor Salik and I mustgo, on that, the Council and I are in full accord."
Of course, he'd never found those answers, the other Adama having shot both of them down like feral daggits on his bridge, as those here on the Galactica had watched in stupefied horror, as Baltar had warned them all, tried to warn them all, but no one would listen to a traitor who'd sold his people into virtual annhilation.
Instead, he'd given his life for the remnants of his race, leading Galactica's Vipers in the defense of the Fleet against its counterpart.
And, the other Pegasus.
She found herself missing her father every time she thought about how much she missed the man she'd been sealed to all those yahren ago.
Her fault, she knew it was, if she'd been stronger, more of a fighter, then, maybe she wouldn't have lost Apollo to his own darkness.
If she'd only found the time to try and talk to him, as Boomer had asked, he wouldn't be in the brig, right now, facing a tribunal and complete disgrace.
Some warrior she was.
She wasn't even strong enough to go see him.
Maybe that was why she drank.
She sighed, her exhalation wet and heavy with grief and impotence, as she looked out into the night.
Alone with her thought and memories.
42.119AC 21:10:06
"We're done here," Adama concluded, standing over the femperv animals the ones formerly known as Whitehead and Goodman had allowed themselves to become.
Nodding to his two Drazi bodyguards, the commander of the 75th Battlestar Fleet said,"take them to the base officer's club to serve their sentence of eternal damnation."
"Yes, sir," one of the repugnant reptilian thugs replied, as the Drazi hauled the degenerate,naked ape things to their feet, and shoved them out of the Galactica's wardroom.
"That," he reminded the assembled fleet commanders and command staffs,"is the price He demands for failing Our genetalia, Our race, and Our Biological Imperative. to redeem His Worlds, and administer loving judgement, and final punishment to the Great Harlot Lolitu and her race of apes seeking Our Destruction and His."
"So say us all," the others intoned, as Adama walked toward the commander of the battlestar Pegasus.
What was about to come to pass was a shame; he loved Helo as a friend and a brother, as only an aristocrat and a patrician could ever love another of His Biological Authoritarians.
He had served his fellow patricians, his brothers in the Natural Aristocracy, well, bravely, and true from the time Helo had been his grandfather's CAG during the War of Liberation against the Caprican State.
But His Received Canon warned of the danger of the friend, just as it had praised the love of the friend.
Adama nodded his head to the squad of marines standing guard inside the wardroom.
"There is only one more thing to do," he whispered, as he stood face to face with Helo,"before we fly to final victory over the Enemy Tribes."
And, he drew his PHASR pistol and aimed it between Helo's eyes.
"Commander Karl Agathon," he said, as Pegasus' executive officer, Felix Gaeta, instantly disarmed Helo, and the marines moved to surround him,"you are under arrest for high treason against the Colonies. You have no rights, whatsoever, only the privilege of trial, conviction, and execution. I, a legally-constituted jury under the Second Amendment of His Received Canon, will now conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damnation. Appeal denied. May He have mercy on your soul.
So say us all."
Having observed all the legal forms, Adama then fired an 18.1-kilojoule phased-array laser pulse right between Helo's eyes.
"Sir, I—" was all Gaeta had time to say, before the commander of His 75th Battlestar Fleet administered a legal jury trial and sentence of death and damanation to him as well.
"Commander Sisko," Adama then said to the former Defiant's resurrected commander,"take your crew aboard Pegasus, and administer jury trials to all of Agathon's loyalists. Once the battlestar is secured...it's yours to command."
"Thank you, sir!" his Benjamin barked in reply.
"Thank me by fufilling your Biological Imperative," Adama coldly replied.
" You may begin with Pegasus' remaining command staff here in this room."
"...trial, conviction, execution," that other Adama said, as he levelled a pistol at his father and Doctor Salik.
"I don't understand!" Father insisted. "What have we done—"
"Battle stations!" Tigh screamed." Seal all compartments, arm all weapons, launch all Vipers! Positive shield,now! "
"Both battlestars arming weapons and launching fighters," Athena reported, as, on the unicom scanner, the other Adama continued with his gravelly pronounciation of judgement:
"—will now conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damanation of all your kind. Appeal denied! May He have mercy on your souls, so say us all!"
before firing twice to cut Father and Doctor Salik down like feral daggits, as Apollo watched in horror.
Lunged at the scanner, screamed his father's name.
"Fracking get to your Viper, Captain!" Tigh shouted, as....
42.Y38PH 14:14:57
...Apollo woke up in a cold sweat, his heart racing, his breath ragged.
While Starbuck stood outside his cell in Galactica's brig.
"What do you want?!" he demanded of his second in command.
"To talk," Starbuck replied.
"We've nothing to discuss, Colonel," Apollo told him flatly." You said all you needed to, when you allowed that woman onto the bridge of my battlestar, and then by letting those traitors on the Council of Twelve take my command from me, and put me in the brig like some common criminal!"
"I had a battle to fight,Commander," Starbuck replied.
"And, look how well you did, Commander," Apollo mocked.
"They..." Starbuck started to say."They had some kind of new weapon, a...meson torpedo, I think Ivanova called it. They went right through our armor and shielding, and caused massive damage. Over four hundred of our crew are either dead, dying, or badly wounded."
Apollo closed his eyes, leaned back, said nothing for a long time.
"We've lost Landing Bay Beta," Starbuck then told him,"the starboard missile room, the secondary bridge; starboard energizers, engines and laser batteries are still out...."
"How long to repair?" Apollo found himself asking.
"We can't," Starbuck replied,"not on our own; we don't have the raw materiel. Maybe, when these Earth people bring their mobile airdock—"
"NO!" Apollo roared, as he charged for his cell door, and grabbed hold.
"You can't let them anywhere near the Galactica," he insisted, even knowing what Starbuck would say.
"We need their help," he said, right on cue.
"We can't afford their 'help,' Colonel," Apollo spat."They hate us, and they will destroy us, why can't anyone see that?!"
"They defended us from the Others," Starbuck replied.
"They are not us!" Apollo reminded him."They will never be us, and they will never accept us. How many times must we let other Humans murder us, before any of you understand we must survive! Our people—"
"Will survive as what, Apollo?!" Starbuck demanded. "Is survival worth turning against the Council of Twelve we swore to obey, against the laws and covenants we swore as warriors to uphold and defend?!"
"The Council betrayed us to extinction almost forty yahren ago," Apollo whispered. "You were there, weren't you?!"
"I was there," he reminded a man he'd once foolishly called a brother,"when Zac died, because the Council of old men so frightened by what had to be done, so tired of what needed to be done, they were willing to listen to Baltar's lies. I was there, when the Council doomed us all to being hunted by the Eastern Alliance, instead of letting my father do what needed to be done. I was there, Colonel, I watched my father gunned down like some feral daggit, because—"
"That was Adama's decision," Starbuck had the nerve to bring that up.
"You don't understand," Apollo whispered, turning away from Starbuck, as he paced the confines of his cell." You never did, and you never will, Starbuck. The opposite of war is certain annhilation; either we fight, or we die! It is that simple."
"'We fight, or we die,' " Starbuck slowly repeated. "And, to Hades with everything in between, right, old buddy?!"
Apollo stopped, said nothing, as Starbuck continued, forcing out the words in a strained, cracking voice:
"A friend of mine, a good friend of mine, once said that the quality of a civilization is determined by the values placed between the extremes."
Apollo turned to face the back wall, swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and steeled himself, the words slow in coming out, as he spoke them:
"That man...that man, Colonel...was a fool."
If he stopped, even for a moment, he could see John's Fury, holed and powerless, spinning through space.
He could even see what the Kobold meson warhead had left of a man he'd considered a brother.
So, Capitaine de corvette James Kirk, AdNF Yorktown's chief engineering officer, did not stop, burying himself instead in the insides of the liner Rising Star.
According to her chief engineer, the starliner had only ever been intended to carry passengers to and from their Twelve Colonies, which Kirk had gathered resided within the same multiple-star system, along with the colonies of those Colonies, such as the hellhole desert planet the liner's chief engineer, calling himself a Borellian Noman, had hailed from.
It had never been intended for interstellar travel, especially not for almost forty of their yahren, whatever that translated into in Earth years.
It had been a miracle of ingenuity and sheer Human stubborness that she'd lasted this long in deep space.
"Jesus H. Christ," Kirk interjected for only the tenth or ten thousandth time, since volunteering to lead a team of 17 EA's engineers aboard the spaceliner to assess her situation ahead of the mobile airdock being sent from Base.
"Jesus Christ," he repeated, the Noman defensively insisting "we did what we could with the limited resources at hand. Since we lost the mining and refinery ship five yahren ago, raw materials for the industry ships have been hard to come by, and—"
"'Needs must, when the devil drives,' Nabul," Kirk replied placatingly, trying not to shake his head at all the rotten wiring bypassed with jumpers, the missing conduits, the blown transformers, decayed resistors, and what looked like four decades' worth of jury rigs in this part of the ship alone just to keep her running.
"Next to the Galactica," Nabul explained,"we had the most demand put upon us, as we provided rest and rejuvenation to the warriors and other people of the Fleet; this area, in fact, used to be one of our Triad courts, before necessity forced us to convert it to a garden to support our crew and passengers. We only have the single agro ship now, you see, the other two having been destroyed by those accursed Cylons not soon after we'd left the Colonies."
Yorktown's chief engineer nodded, seeing where piping for irrigation and nutrients had been retrofitted indiscriminately amongst the wiring.
And, where those pipes had leaked, shorting out some of the electrics.
Shoddy, and hasty work, but Kirk supposed these people had had little choice in the matter.
Still, he mused,if I'd maintained the Yorkie even half as bad this ship's been maintained, Scotty'd skin me alive.
As it was....
"I don't think there's anything we can do, except gut this ship, and rebuild her from the keel up," he decided.
"I concur," the Noman said."Even for your people, I would imagine such a thing would not be practical."
"We'd be better off building a new ship for similar cost, yes," Kirk replied, nodding his head.
"I'm sorry," he added.
"The Rising Star is over two hundred yahren old, Commandante," the Noman replied, sighing,"and she has been my home for the fifty yahren since I was declared dead to my own people by the Elders.
But, I knew the day would come when I'd have to leave her behind, and find a new home. I just prayed that it would be later, rather than sooner."
"I'm sorry," Kirk repeated, knowing how he'd feel if this had been his Yorktown.
"It is the way of things," the Noman sadly replied. "All that can be done now is to determine what can be salvaged from her to keep the rest of the Fleet alive."
"Yeah," Kirk said, not wanting to think about what it'd feel like to strip the corpse of his own ship, when the time came.
42.Y38PH 13:55:03
One burned-out compartment after another.
An entire landing bay reduced to a blackened skeleton, its charred bones exposed to space, what little skin remained shrivelled, melted, and hanging loosely from the wasted frame.
The starboard energizer room still smelling of burnt ozone and insulation from the aging power converter which had finally given out under load.
The blackened, disfigured bodies of too many dead.
Colonel Starbuck, in temporary command of what remained of the Battlestar Galactica, walked dazed and numb through the overflowing ward of the Life Center, in the midst of the cries, pleas, curses, and moaning of all the horribly wounded, the old warrior talking with them, listening to them, getting them water, or a med tech, giving them solace, especially those who were dying.
Doing what he could.
Going through the motions.
Feeling nothing.
Of, if he did, he held it back, til he was in his quarters, away from being a Colonial warrior and all the responsibilities it entailled.
He stopped at the bed of a someone almost too badly burned to be recognizable, the poor man painfully murmurring, writhing within the limits of the tubes and wires connecting him to the machines which fought to keep him alive.
And losing.
He'd been sealed to Galactica's doctor long enough to learn how to read life sign indicators.
The man was dying.
How long, only God and the Lords of Kobol knew.
Starbuck sat beside him, talking, just talking, as the man's murmurring grew more faint, and he writhed about less and less, until the inevitable came.
"May the Lords of Kobol have mercy on your soul," was all Galactica's acting commander could do for him now.
Slowly, reluctantly, he rose from the chair.
Before sabotaging that last Cylon base ship, he'd told Cassi that he didn't think about what would happen, and, that had been true, to an extent.
To an extent.
He just thought more about it than not these days.
What would I have done, if I had been Adar, he asked himself,and had to live with this all my life?
Baltar, Lords rest his soul, for that matter?
He resumed his slow progress through the Life Center.
And, there she was, older now, but, no less the sun in his sky than she had been all those yahren ago.
He ran to her, she to him.
Both crying, as they just held one another tight, and refused to let go.
42.Y38PH 14:06:21
She'd remembered being here with him, in one of the Galactica's old navigation domes, after they'd destroyed that last Cylon base ship at the beginning of seven yahren of relative peace and safety.
She came here often now, to remember, to think.
To be alone with her thoughts and memories.
Apollo...the last time they'd been here together, with Boxy, had been just before they'd picked up the comms chatter from that other battlestar on the old Gamma frequency.
"Apollo, there are things about these other Colonists which are entirely too coincidential," Adama had said to him, when he'd raised objections to the Council sending him and Doctor Salik over to the other Galactica, the other Adama,"too many questions which need answers, and the only way I can get those answers is by asking these other Colonists. Doctor Salik and I mustgo, on that, the Council and I are in full accord."
Of course, he'd never found those answers, the other Adama having shot both of them down like feral daggits on his bridge, as those here on the Galactica had watched in stupefied horror, as Baltar had warned them all, tried to warn them all, but no one would listen to a traitor who'd sold his people into virtual annhilation.
Instead, he'd given his life for the remnants of his race, leading Galactica's Vipers in the defense of the Fleet against its counterpart.
And, the other Pegasus.
She found herself missing her father every time she thought about how much she missed the man she'd been sealed to all those yahren ago.
Her fault, she knew it was, if she'd been stronger, more of a fighter, then, maybe she wouldn't have lost Apollo to his own darkness.
If she'd only found the time to try and talk to him, as Boomer had asked, he wouldn't be in the brig, right now, facing a tribunal and complete disgrace.
Some warrior she was.
She wasn't even strong enough to go see him.
Maybe that was why she drank.
She sighed, her exhalation wet and heavy with grief and impotence, as she looked out into the night.
Alone with her thought and memories.
42.119AC 21:10:06
"We're done here," Adama concluded, standing over the femperv animals the ones formerly known as Whitehead and Goodman had allowed themselves to become.
Nodding to his two Drazi bodyguards, the commander of the 75th Battlestar Fleet said,"take them to the base officer's club to serve their sentence of eternal damnation."
"Yes, sir," one of the repugnant reptilian thugs replied, as the Drazi hauled the degenerate,naked ape things to their feet, and shoved them out of the Galactica's wardroom.
"That," he reminded the assembled fleet commanders and command staffs,"is the price He demands for failing Our genetalia, Our race, and Our Biological Imperative. to redeem His Worlds, and administer loving judgement, and final punishment to the Great Harlot Lolitu and her race of apes seeking Our Destruction and His."
"So say us all," the others intoned, as Adama walked toward the commander of the battlestar Pegasus.
What was about to come to pass was a shame; he loved Helo as a friend and a brother, as only an aristocrat and a patrician could ever love another of His Biological Authoritarians.
He had served his fellow patricians, his brothers in the Natural Aristocracy, well, bravely, and true from the time Helo had been his grandfather's CAG during the War of Liberation against the Caprican State.
But His Received Canon warned of the danger of the friend, just as it had praised the love of the friend.
Adama nodded his head to the squad of marines standing guard inside the wardroom.
"There is only one more thing to do," he whispered, as he stood face to face with Helo,"before we fly to final victory over the Enemy Tribes."
And, he drew his PHASR pistol and aimed it between Helo's eyes.
"Commander Karl Agathon," he said, as Pegasus' executive officer, Felix Gaeta, instantly disarmed Helo, and the marines moved to surround him,"you are under arrest for high treason against the Colonies. You have no rights, whatsoever, only the privilege of trial, conviction, and execution. I, a legally-constituted jury under the Second Amendment of His Received Canon, will now conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damnation. Appeal denied. May He have mercy on your soul.
So say us all."
Having observed all the legal forms, Adama then fired an 18.1-kilojoule phased-array laser pulse right between Helo's eyes.
"Sir, I—" was all Gaeta had time to say, before the commander of His 75th Battlestar Fleet administered a legal jury trial and sentence of death and damanation to him as well.
"Commander Sisko," Adama then said to the former Defiant's resurrected commander,"take your crew aboard Pegasus, and administer jury trials to all of Agathon's loyalists. Once the battlestar is secured...it's yours to command."
"Thank you, sir!" his Benjamin barked in reply.
"Thank me by fufilling your Biological Imperative," Adama coldly replied.
" You may begin with Pegasus' remaining command staff here in this room."
"...trial, conviction, execution," that other Adama said, as he levelled a pistol at his father and Doctor Salik.
"I don't understand!" Father insisted. "What have we done—"
"Battle stations!" Tigh screamed." Seal all compartments, arm all weapons, launch all Vipers! Positive shield,now! "
"Both battlestars arming weapons and launching fighters," Athena reported, as, on the unicom scanner, the other Adama continued with his gravelly pronounciation of judgement:
"—will now conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damanation of all your kind. Appeal denied! May He have mercy on your souls, so say us all!"
before firing twice to cut Father and Doctor Salik down like feral daggits, as Apollo watched in horror.
Lunged at the scanner, screamed his father's name.
"Fracking get to your Viper, Captain!" Tigh shouted, as....
42.Y38PH 14:14:57
...Apollo woke up in a cold sweat, his heart racing, his breath ragged.
While Starbuck stood outside his cell in Galactica's brig.
"What do you want?!" he demanded of his second in command.
"To talk," Starbuck replied.
"We've nothing to discuss, Colonel," Apollo told him flatly." You said all you needed to, when you allowed that woman onto the bridge of my battlestar, and then by letting those traitors on the Council of Twelve take my command from me, and put me in the brig like some common criminal!"
"I had a battle to fight,Commander," Starbuck replied.
"And, look how well you did, Commander," Apollo mocked.
"They..." Starbuck started to say."They had some kind of new weapon, a...meson torpedo, I think Ivanova called it. They went right through our armor and shielding, and caused massive damage. Over four hundred of our crew are either dead, dying, or badly wounded."
Apollo closed his eyes, leaned back, said nothing for a long time.
"We've lost Landing Bay Beta," Starbuck then told him,"the starboard missile room, the secondary bridge; starboard energizers, engines and laser batteries are still out...."
"How long to repair?" Apollo found himself asking.
"We can't," Starbuck replied,"not on our own; we don't have the raw materiel. Maybe, when these Earth people bring their mobile airdock—"
"NO!" Apollo roared, as he charged for his cell door, and grabbed hold.
"You can't let them anywhere near the Galactica," he insisted, even knowing what Starbuck would say.
"We need their help," he said, right on cue.
"We can't afford their 'help,' Colonel," Apollo spat."They hate us, and they will destroy us, why can't anyone see that?!"
"They defended us from the Others," Starbuck replied.
"They are not us!" Apollo reminded him."They will never be us, and they will never accept us. How many times must we let other Humans murder us, before any of you understand we must survive! Our people—"
"Will survive as what, Apollo?!" Starbuck demanded. "Is survival worth turning against the Council of Twelve we swore to obey, against the laws and covenants we swore as warriors to uphold and defend?!"
"The Council betrayed us to extinction almost forty yahren ago," Apollo whispered. "You were there, weren't you?!"
"I was there," he reminded a man he'd once foolishly called a brother,"when Zac died, because the Council of old men so frightened by what had to be done, so tired of what needed to be done, they were willing to listen to Baltar's lies. I was there, when the Council doomed us all to being hunted by the Eastern Alliance, instead of letting my father do what needed to be done. I was there, Colonel, I watched my father gunned down like some feral daggit, because—"
"That was Adama's decision," Starbuck had the nerve to bring that up.
"You don't understand," Apollo whispered, turning away from Starbuck, as he paced the confines of his cell." You never did, and you never will, Starbuck. The opposite of war is certain annhilation; either we fight, or we die! It is that simple."
"'We fight, or we die,' " Starbuck slowly repeated. "And, to Hades with everything in between, right, old buddy?!"
Apollo stopped, said nothing, as Starbuck continued, forcing out the words in a strained, cracking voice:
"A friend of mine, a good friend of mine, once said that the quality of a civilization is determined by the values placed between the extremes."
Apollo turned to face the back wall, swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and steeled himself, the words slow in coming out, as he spoke them:
"That man...that man, Colonel...was a fool."
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
2275.2.12 20:16:00
AdNF Vesta led the 30-kiloton heavy patrol cruisers Orion, Tordenskjold, Prinz Eugen, Jean-Bart, Mikasa, Garabaldi, Tingyuan, Knyaz Suvorov, Dokdo, Hydra, and Tyrus C. McQueen out of hyperdrive and into normal space thirty AU out from AD Leonis Base.
And, the first thing to come to Haut Amiral du Terre Edward McDugan's mind, as he studied the fleet of ragged exile ships on the red-lit CIC's master holoprojector was G.H. Christ, they came all this way in those?!
"6 ECP exiting hyperdrive directly astern of us," Vesta's executive officer, Capitaine de frégate Kara Thrace, reported from her station at MacDugan's right, the twelve 38,100-ton Flight II Constitution-class gunship carriers Carlos P. Romulo, Cerebrus, Graf Zepplein, Eagle, Vikramaditya, Ark Royal, Akagi, Hyuga, Charles de Gaulle, Jeffrey D. Sinclair, Admiral Ushakov, and McDugan's old ship, the Enterprise appearing on the tactical holodisplay at MacDugan's right.
All twelve ships released their squadrons of 675-ton polyhedral Starfury gunships to streak ahead of the newly-arrived Marine d'Etoie combat starships at max burn, joining those released by the twenty-million ton majestically-rotating cylinder now exiting hyperdrive at the perimeter of the refugee ships' formation.
A flotilla of tugs shot out of the mobile airdock, limpeting the battered, elderly battlestar—much more angular than most Kobold designs, though similar in hullform to their old Jupiter-class hulls—to them with magnetic tow cables, and leading it into the open ship-handling airlock at the airdock's hub.
Miracle even that has held together as long as it had, the uniformed commander of Earth's military mused, as more Marine d'Etoile cruisers and carriers entered normal space, a 40,000-ton Corps Medical Nations Fédérés Nightengale-class medical relief ship at the center of the escorting globe of warships(four additional heavy cruiser squadrons and one more of carriers) now peeling off to assume protective postures amongst the Human exiles.
How in the hell do they eject the engines in case of trouble, MacDugan mused, as he continued watching the battlestar being led inside the mobile dock,if they're not on masts, like even the Kobolds do now on their newer hulls?!
"Am reading extreme power fluctuations on several of their ships," reported Vesta's lead photonics tech, Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Logan Perry, reported.
"They're falling apart," Capitaine de corvette David Lochley's image observed via MacDugan's wearable.
"That would appear to be the case, Mister Lochley," MacDugan replied. "Comms, advise the commander of the Galahad to have additional tugs standing by."
42.Y38PH 14:18:29
"Merciful Lords!" Flight Sergeant Brittain interjected, as the ponderous, tri-masted, tetrahedral shapes of the Earth fighter craft passed to starboard of Blue Squadron's formation. "Those are fighters?!"
"I believe the Earth people call them gunships," Flight Corporal Kenna remarked.
"I believe," Dillon tersely replied, as the squadron of ten Vipers continued their patrol of the fleet,"the two of you need to cut the comm chatter, and do your jobs."
"Power's failing on the Celestra, Lieutenant!" Flight Cadet Maren shouted over comms, Dillon immediately studying the scan of the electronic repair ship, his stomach knotting itself at the readings he was getting.
"Senior ship is falling out of fleet formation!" Flight Cadet Gian then reported."Engines and maneuvering thrusters appear to be out; scanners indicate complete energizer failure."
"Blue Leader," Dillon said,"to Gold Spar Leader—"
"'Calamity invades not by soldiers, but by legions,' eh, Dillon?" Lieutenant Bojay quoted.
"I see it," he added, his voice taut. "Fleet's just...."
Bojay trailed off, as Dillon sighed.
Either they found a home, or they'd soon have no home at all.
Why was Troy's father so obstinate about....
Another sigh, the young Viper squadron commander trailing off, swallowing hard.
Five yahren.
He'd taken it apart every micron of every day for the last five yahren, trying to see what it was he could have done to save the life of a man closer than a brother to him.
Not finding anything.
He gripped his Viper's control stick tightly, forcing himself to keep his head on a swivel, watching out for hostile ships in all directions, the way Father had taught Troy and him, from the time they were children, and the cockpits of the Galactica's Vipers were just toys to fire their imaginations.
"With the Galactica inside that thing," Flight Corporal Lita asked,"what are we going to do for fuel?!"
"We're supposed to use one of the Earth...carriers, I think they're called," Dillon replied,"as a base of operations, until Galactica's repaired."
If she can be repaired, Blue Squadron's leader thought, but did not dare say out loud. She's older than most of the fleet put togther, and she's suffered the worst out of all of them, with inadequate resources or time to for maintenance, let alone repairs.
He flew past one of the Earth carriers now...a somewhat larger version of one of their cruisers, with what appeared the same type and number of armaments, only her size and the docking hatches for her squadron of fighters marking her as any different from this tribe's other warships.
"Earth ship matching course and speed with our Vipers," Brittain reported from the rear of Blue Squadron's formation. "Maintaining distance at one light-micron from Gold Spar Squadron."
2275.2.12 20:20:10
"Combat, Engineering," Capitaine de corvette Pavel Andreivich Chekov's image reported from directly in front of Contre-amiral Hikaru Sulu's right eye."My people have finished installing the last of the fuelling booms and hafnium-isomer storage tanks.
The temporary one-man airlocks, on the other hand, are proving to be a challenge."
"Oh?" prompted the commander of the AdNF Enterprise and her carrier squadron.
"The Vipers," Pavel replied—his Russian accent making it sound almost like "wipers"—"as you know, operate like both the Kobolds' designs and our own atmospheric and sub-orbital fighters, in that their pilots have to open and close their canopies to get into and out of their craft. And, like the Kobold machines, they are designed to land inside their hangars, and cannot be docked externally. Nor do these Colonial pilots use armored spacesuits, as we do."
"I see," Sulu replied.
"We are having to rig up the large pressure shelters," Pavel continued,"and magnetic grappling cables to the exteriors of the airlocks."
"Pressure shelters?" Captaine de frégate Matthew Gideon asked, from his station at Sulu's right.
"The largest ones we keep on hand for disaster relief," Pavel replied to Enterprise's first lieutenant,"the kind used for mess facilties, field medical centers and the like. They have airlocks just barely large enough to accomodate the Vipers, and the shelters themselves will easily provide them with an atmosphere which will allow their pilots to exit the craft and enter the ship."
"They're also pretty fragile," Gideon reminded Pavel, Enterprise's chief engineer, in turn, reminding him,"needs must, Mister Gideon."
"Indeed, Mister Chekov," Sulu replied."How long to complete that."
"At least thirty minutes, with half of my engineers and all of our robots working on it," Pavel replied.
"And, our performance?" Sulu asked.
"Minimal impact on our delta-v budget, Admiral," Pavel replied."I've run the numbers three times, and we will lose, at most, ten to fifteen kips from our delta-v."
"Still ten to fifteen kips more delta-v, than I'm comfortable with losing, Hikaru," Gideon remarked.
"I don't like it either, Matt," Sulu replied,"but, as Pavel pointed out, 'needs must.' "
GIdeon nodded his head in reply.
"If there's nothing more—" Sulu then prompted Pavel.
"Not until the work is done, or the Kobolds attack us," Pavel replied.
"Carry on, then," Sulu ordered."Combat out."
"Mister Matheson?" Gideon then asked, prompting Enterprise's commander to look toward the intel station, and Lieutenant de vaisseau John Matheson facing the two of them.
"Commandante, Admiral," the ship's intel officer reported,"I've been monitoring comms between the various refugee ships; two more have lost all maneuvering, propulsion, and electrical power, with an additional ten reporting severe power fluctuations in their electrical grids."
"Confirmed, Amiral," Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Julien Theissing reported from photonics. "Am reading power fluctuations on ten...nine, nine additional ships."
"One additional ship has sustained an engineering casualty, and is without power, propulsion, or maneuvering."
"Damn," Gideon quietly interjected.
"Comms," Sulu ordered,"apprise the Sir Galahad of the situation."
"Sir Galahad reports she is deploying additional tugs to the affected vessels, and is shuttling engineering teams to as many of the other refugee ships as they can, Admiral," was the comm tech's immediate reply.
"Very well, then," Sulu tautly whispered, hoping against hope those on board those powerless vessels could be saved.
That being all he and his ship could do for them.
AdNF Vesta led the 30-kiloton heavy patrol cruisers Orion, Tordenskjold, Prinz Eugen, Jean-Bart, Mikasa, Garabaldi, Tingyuan, Knyaz Suvorov, Dokdo, Hydra, and Tyrus C. McQueen out of hyperdrive and into normal space thirty AU out from AD Leonis Base.
And, the first thing to come to Haut Amiral du Terre Edward McDugan's mind, as he studied the fleet of ragged exile ships on the red-lit CIC's master holoprojector was G.H. Christ, they came all this way in those?!
"6 ECP exiting hyperdrive directly astern of us," Vesta's executive officer, Capitaine de frégate Kara Thrace, reported from her station at MacDugan's right, the twelve 38,100-ton Flight II Constitution-class gunship carriers Carlos P. Romulo, Cerebrus, Graf Zepplein, Eagle, Vikramaditya, Ark Royal, Akagi, Hyuga, Charles de Gaulle, Jeffrey D. Sinclair, Admiral Ushakov, and McDugan's old ship, the Enterprise appearing on the tactical holodisplay at MacDugan's right.
All twelve ships released their squadrons of 675-ton polyhedral Starfury gunships to streak ahead of the newly-arrived Marine d'Etoie combat starships at max burn, joining those released by the twenty-million ton majestically-rotating cylinder now exiting hyperdrive at the perimeter of the refugee ships' formation.
A flotilla of tugs shot out of the mobile airdock, limpeting the battered, elderly battlestar—much more angular than most Kobold designs, though similar in hullform to their old Jupiter-class hulls—to them with magnetic tow cables, and leading it into the open ship-handling airlock at the airdock's hub.
Miracle even that has held together as long as it had, the uniformed commander of Earth's military mused, as more Marine d'Etoile cruisers and carriers entered normal space, a 40,000-ton Corps Medical Nations Fédérés Nightengale-class medical relief ship at the center of the escorting globe of warships(four additional heavy cruiser squadrons and one more of carriers) now peeling off to assume protective postures amongst the Human exiles.
How in the hell do they eject the engines in case of trouble, MacDugan mused, as he continued watching the battlestar being led inside the mobile dock,if they're not on masts, like even the Kobolds do now on their newer hulls?!
"Am reading extreme power fluctuations on several of their ships," reported Vesta's lead photonics tech, Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Logan Perry, reported.
"They're falling apart," Capitaine de corvette David Lochley's image observed via MacDugan's wearable.
"That would appear to be the case, Mister Lochley," MacDugan replied. "Comms, advise the commander of the Galahad to have additional tugs standing by."
42.Y38PH 14:18:29
"Merciful Lords!" Flight Sergeant Brittain interjected, as the ponderous, tri-masted, tetrahedral shapes of the Earth fighter craft passed to starboard of Blue Squadron's formation. "Those are fighters?!"
"I believe the Earth people call them gunships," Flight Corporal Kenna remarked.
"I believe," Dillon tersely replied, as the squadron of ten Vipers continued their patrol of the fleet,"the two of you need to cut the comm chatter, and do your jobs."
"Power's failing on the Celestra, Lieutenant!" Flight Cadet Maren shouted over comms, Dillon immediately studying the scan of the electronic repair ship, his stomach knotting itself at the readings he was getting.
"Senior ship is falling out of fleet formation!" Flight Cadet Gian then reported."Engines and maneuvering thrusters appear to be out; scanners indicate complete energizer failure."
"Blue Leader," Dillon said,"to Gold Spar Leader—"
"'Calamity invades not by soldiers, but by legions,' eh, Dillon?" Lieutenant Bojay quoted.
"I see it," he added, his voice taut. "Fleet's just...."
Bojay trailed off, as Dillon sighed.
Either they found a home, or they'd soon have no home at all.
Why was Troy's father so obstinate about....
Another sigh, the young Viper squadron commander trailing off, swallowing hard.
Five yahren.
He'd taken it apart every micron of every day for the last five yahren, trying to see what it was he could have done to save the life of a man closer than a brother to him.
Not finding anything.
He gripped his Viper's control stick tightly, forcing himself to keep his head on a swivel, watching out for hostile ships in all directions, the way Father had taught Troy and him, from the time they were children, and the cockpits of the Galactica's Vipers were just toys to fire their imaginations.
"With the Galactica inside that thing," Flight Corporal Lita asked,"what are we going to do for fuel?!"
"We're supposed to use one of the Earth...carriers, I think they're called," Dillon replied,"as a base of operations, until Galactica's repaired."
If she can be repaired, Blue Squadron's leader thought, but did not dare say out loud. She's older than most of the fleet put togther, and she's suffered the worst out of all of them, with inadequate resources or time to for maintenance, let alone repairs.
He flew past one of the Earth carriers now...a somewhat larger version of one of their cruisers, with what appeared the same type and number of armaments, only her size and the docking hatches for her squadron of fighters marking her as any different from this tribe's other warships.
"Earth ship matching course and speed with our Vipers," Brittain reported from the rear of Blue Squadron's formation. "Maintaining distance at one light-micron from Gold Spar Squadron."
2275.2.12 20:20:10
"Combat, Engineering," Capitaine de corvette Pavel Andreivich Chekov's image reported from directly in front of Contre-amiral Hikaru Sulu's right eye."My people have finished installing the last of the fuelling booms and hafnium-isomer storage tanks.
The temporary one-man airlocks, on the other hand, are proving to be a challenge."
"Oh?" prompted the commander of the AdNF Enterprise and her carrier squadron.
"The Vipers," Pavel replied—his Russian accent making it sound almost like "wipers"—"as you know, operate like both the Kobolds' designs and our own atmospheric and sub-orbital fighters, in that their pilots have to open and close their canopies to get into and out of their craft. And, like the Kobold machines, they are designed to land inside their hangars, and cannot be docked externally. Nor do these Colonial pilots use armored spacesuits, as we do."
"I see," Sulu replied.
"We are having to rig up the large pressure shelters," Pavel continued,"and magnetic grappling cables to the exteriors of the airlocks."
"Pressure shelters?" Captaine de frégate Matthew Gideon asked, from his station at Sulu's right.
"The largest ones we keep on hand for disaster relief," Pavel replied to Enterprise's first lieutenant,"the kind used for mess facilties, field medical centers and the like. They have airlocks just barely large enough to accomodate the Vipers, and the shelters themselves will easily provide them with an atmosphere which will allow their pilots to exit the craft and enter the ship."
"They're also pretty fragile," Gideon reminded Pavel, Enterprise's chief engineer, in turn, reminding him,"needs must, Mister Gideon."
"Indeed, Mister Chekov," Sulu replied."How long to complete that."
"At least thirty minutes, with half of my engineers and all of our robots working on it," Pavel replied.
"And, our performance?" Sulu asked.
"Minimal impact on our delta-v budget, Admiral," Pavel replied."I've run the numbers three times, and we will lose, at most, ten to fifteen kips from our delta-v."
"Still ten to fifteen kips more delta-v, than I'm comfortable with losing, Hikaru," Gideon remarked.
"I don't like it either, Matt," Sulu replied,"but, as Pavel pointed out, 'needs must.' "
GIdeon nodded his head in reply.
"If there's nothing more—" Sulu then prompted Pavel.
"Not until the work is done, or the Kobolds attack us," Pavel replied.
"Carry on, then," Sulu ordered."Combat out."
"Mister Matheson?" Gideon then asked, prompting Enterprise's commander to look toward the intel station, and Lieutenant de vaisseau John Matheson facing the two of them.
"Commandante, Admiral," the ship's intel officer reported,"I've been monitoring comms between the various refugee ships; two more have lost all maneuvering, propulsion, and electrical power, with an additional ten reporting severe power fluctuations in their electrical grids."
"Confirmed, Amiral," Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Julien Theissing reported from photonics. "Am reading power fluctuations on ten...nine, nine additional ships."
"One additional ship has sustained an engineering casualty, and is without power, propulsion, or maneuvering."
"Damn," Gideon quietly interjected.
"Comms," Sulu ordered,"apprise the Sir Galahad of the situation."
"Sir Galahad reports she is deploying additional tugs to the affected vessels, and is shuttling engineering teams to as many of the other refugee ships as they can, Admiral," was the comm tech's immediate reply.
"Very well, then," Sulu tautly whispered, hoping against hope those on board those powerless vessels could be saved.
That being all he and his ship could do for them.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
2275.2.12 20:25:04
"Commandante," Doctor Wilker's holo said, with equal parts surprise and enthusiasm.
"Forgive the intrusion, Doctor," Syuzen said, in between sips of coffee.
"No intrusion at all, Commandante," Wilker assured her."I've been going over the data your people sent us about your tribe, the Other Colonists, and these two tribes you have amongst you, the...um...Centauri, and the...G'Quon—"
"Narn," Syuzen corrected.
"Yes," Wilker said,"Narn. Narn.
G'Quon was one of their gods, a 'Narn born of no other Narn,' according to their equivalent of our Book Of the Word—"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually, Doctor," Syuzen said, coming to the point of her comm."I was wondering if you might be able to answer a question for me."
"I'll try," Wilker replied."I'm a cyberneticist and an anthropologist by training, and I dabble in some of the other sciences; I've had to, in fact, expand my expertise in some of the other disciplines to compensate for shortfalls resulting from the loss of our Colonies, Commandante—"
"I understand," Syuzen said, taking another sip of coffee.
"—but, I'm no religious scholar, and my study of the Kobolian faith is a hodgepodge of what I learned in temple yahren ago, and what I learned from Salik. Commander Adama was the religious scholar amongst our people, all the Council members were before the Holocaust, since they were the political, military, and religious leaders of our Colonies.
However, as you..."
He trailed off, sighing heavily, a tear streaking the old man's face.
"Salik and I didn't always see eye to eye," he whispered,"but, I...."
"...lybluyu tebaya, moya Syuzen'ka," whispered Naten'ka over comms.
And, Black Joke was gone, taking the Kobold flag, and several of his consorts with her, but...she was still...
...gone.
"I'm sorry," Wilker whispered,"I didn't mean to..."
"I'm the one who should apologize, Doctor," Syuzen replied, trying to find her voice, wiping her face with the sleeve of her flight suit.
"What was your question?" Wilker then asked.
"You told me that all thirteen tribes left Kobol at the same time, following the Cataclysm."
"That was what I was taught,and what...Salik always believed, yes," Wilker replied.
"But, the Book of the Word says the thirteenth tribe left first," Syuzen explained,"immediately following the Cataclysm—"
"We think it was an enviromental disaster," Wilker said,"and all indications pointed to that, when the Fleet visited Kobol on its journeyaway from the Colonies.
But, we didn't have time for any further analyses, before being attacked by the Cylons."
"I see," Syuzen said, nodding her head.
"Anyway, according to the Book," she continued,"the thirteenth tribe left first, while the other twelve remained on Kobol for ninety-nine of your yahren following the Cataclysm, before they too left for your Colonies."
"A micron," Wilker said, consulting the computer terminal on his desk, studying it a second or two, before, remarking:
"It does say that," he whispered."And, if I recall, the inscriptions Commander Adama and the others found in the Tomb of the Ninth Lord on Kobol only described the journey the thriteenth tribe took, when they left Kobol. Unfortunately, the Cylon attack destroyed all trace of the inscriptions, though...."
"Yes?" Syuzen prompted.
"Cap—Commander Apollo was with his father in those tombs, along with his first wife, Serina, and the traitor Baltar," Wilker said, after a pause." Apollo's the only one still alive, and...."
"He might not want to talk to me," Syuzen finished.
"Precisely," Wilker said.
Syuzen nodded her head.
"I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you, Commadante," Wilker then ruefully said.
"Perhaps I can help you," Syuzen replied."You had some questions yourself, judging from the tone of your voice. About G'Quon, in particular?"
"Yes," Wilker said."The Narns' Book Of G'Quon said he was a ' Narn born of no other Narn,' who led his people against an invasion of an army of darkness around 1,300 of your years ago, if I managed to translate between Narn and Earth orbital cycles correctly."
"You have," Syuzen replied."Let's see..."
She called up the Book Of G'Quon on her wearable, finding the correct passage.
"...oh, yes, here we are. G'Quon came into the world 'a Narn fully-formed,' and wandered Narn for forty years, forty Narn years, that is, before appearing before the Circles of the Kha'Ri—their governing council, before the Kobolds conquered the Regime almost forty years ago—warning of an invasion of darkness, led by...well, fuck me running..."
" What?" Wilker asked.
"...led by an alien 'called in the Narn tongue, Mozh'Sha,' " Syuzen said, incredulous, as she read the following passage:
" ' "And, this great army," said G'Quon to the Great Circles of the Kha'Ri," is an army of the unliving, metal-clad, each possessing a grating voice, and a great, glaring, fiery, red eye." ' "
"Cylons," Wilker instantly replied."They sound exactly like Cylons. And Mozh'Sha sounds close to Mosha, which is one of the names of one of the Lords of Kobol. Also, there was a tribe of Mosha, who were the priesthood of the Lords Of Kobol."
"'Mozh'Sha,' " Syuzen said,"is also Narn for 'imperious leader.' "
Wilker reacted as if struck.
"The Imperious Leader," he slowly said,"was the ruler of the Cylon Alliance—sometimes calling itself the Cylon Empire—after the android servants of the original Cylons rebelled and murdered their former masters over a thousand yahren ago."
Again, he consulted his computer.
"He was killed," he said, carefully reading the text on his screen, as he spoke,"by Mozh'Sha, 'and Mozh'Sha by him, in what is said by the scholars and scribes of the Ninth Great Circle of the Kha'Ri to have been the fourth battle between them, a fourth death for each of them, son against father, father against son, for ever and ever—' "
" 'G'Quon' is Ancient Narn for 'father,' " Syuzen explained, Wilker continuing:
"—'and, as he, who was the father of all we are, all we were to be, lay dying in the valley of the mountains bearing his name, as the red light of the sun rose over those mountains bearing his name, a ship of white lights did appear above him, brighter than the red sun rising over the mountains which came to bear the name of our father in spirit.' "
"Narn tends to get a little reptitive, when translated from their syllabary into English," Syuzen quipped.
Wilker sobered, as he looked straight at her:
"Commandante, thirty-eight yahren ago, just after the attack on the Cylons' outer capital at Gomoray, we encountered white lights out in space, which we determined to be advanced spacecraft. Those ships had destroyed the ship of a being of immense power calling himself Count Iblis, who Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba were able to defeat, with the help of those other ships.
And, later, after we first encountered the Terrans, Apollo and Starbuck both encountered the Ship Of Lights."
"Coincidence?" Syuzen asked doubtfully.
"Too many data points line up for it to be coincidential," Wilker replied, still stunned by all the implications. "Including this passage, at the beginning: 'But, for the moon, the night was black and void of stars, and continued to be so for forty nights, before G'Quon arrived upon this world, a Narn fully formed, a Narn born of no other Narn. And, after the rising of the red sun, for forty rises of the red sun, before his arrival, a black sun, wreathed in purple lightnings, could been seen in the sky across the world.' "
"After leaving Carrillon," he explained,"in those first days following the Holocaust, the fleet was forced into a magnetic void by the Cylons pursuing us. On the other side of that void was Kobol.
This account sounds strangely similar."
Speaking of coincidences.... Syuzen thought, stopping that thought before it led to the inevitable, unpleasant conclusion.
"Is there anyone I can talk to, who might be more knowledgable on the Narn religion?" Wilker asked, before she could flinch reflexively at that thought of a shifting, inky-black center of a roiling, lightning-wreathed, sickening swirl of livid purple.
"Ivanova to Combat," Syuzen spoke.
"Larenya on line, go," Larenya's image replied.
"Number One, please have comms place a call to the Yorktown; I need to have a chat with her first lieutenant."
2275.2.12 20:29:12
He woke screaming, as he often did every night for almost the last forty years.
Capitaine de frégate, Vir Cotto sat up on the couch of Yorktown's wardroom, breathing raggedly, taking time realize he was still aboard Yorktown. here, now.
And, that Centauri Prime had been wiped clean of everything Centauri, though, unfortunately, not everyone.
The unlucky survivors, who Londo could not evacuate all those years ago.
And, the traitors—the traitor Antono Refa, may the Great Maker burn that bastard for all eternity—who had helped those triple-be-damned Kobolds and their League puppets condemn their people to....
"Vir?! Lad, are your all right?!" he realized Captiaine de vaisseau. Sir Bernard Montgomery Scott had asked this question several times before.
"Sorry, Skipper," Vir said,"I—"
"Think nothin' of it, lad," Scotty softly said. "Nothin' at all."
"Was there something—" Vir started to ask.
"Syuzen Ivanova wants to have a chat with you," Scotty said."Something about Narn religion; seems she was talking with one of their high-IQ boys aboard that bloody battlestar, an' the subject of G'Quan came up."
"Marshal Ta'Lon is far more knowledgable about that than I am," Vir demurred."He was War Leader G'Kar's disciple, before...."
He trailed off, Scotty reminding him:
"Aye, but Ta'Lon's on Davo, fightin' the bloody Kobolds, and you're here, laddie."
"Comms," Vir said, reaching for his wearable on the wardroom table, and adjusting it on his head, "please echo Commandante Ivanova to my wearable."
"VIr," Syuzen Ivanova's image said, as it stood in front of him,"sorry to bother you."
"No bother," Vir replied."It wasn't as if I was getting much sleep anyway, Commandante."
"I see," Commandante Ivanova whispered.
"Sorry," she repeated.
"Nothing you can do to change that. You had some questions? About G'Quan?"
"Doctor Wilker and I were discussing another, somewhat related subject, when we...noticed some similarities between the Book Of G'Quan, their Book Of the Word, and...the experiences his people had while fighting their enemies, and being forced to roam the stars as refugees. Doctor Wilker asked to talk with someone more knowledgeable than me, and I immediately thought of you."
"Would you talk with him, please?" she asked."When your duties permit?"
"I go on watch in about ten minutes," Vir replied, consulting his wearable's onboard clock,"but any time after that would be fine."
"I'll let him know, then," Ivanova replied."Ivanova out."
Her holo winked out, as VIr picked up his helmet from the carpeted deck.
"You've got ten minutes yet," Scotty reminded him, and Vir put the helmet in his lap.
"Ten minutes to think," Vir whispered.
"Aye," Scotty agreed, nodding his head. "That it is, lad, that it is."
"That," he slowly repeated,"it is."
42.Y38PH 14:30:04
"What do you want?!" Apollo asked, glaring at Wilker, as he stood outside his cell door.
"What did your father find in that tomb on Kobol, all those yahren ago?" Wilker asked.
"Baltar," Apollo sullenly replied. "And, some inscriptions on the walls that my father believed was the path the thirteenth tribe took to Earth."
"But," he added, as bitter as gall,"we'll never know, because the gallmocking Cylons destroyed everything on Kobol in an attempt to destroy us, and we made no records of any of it."
"Maybe," he then mused,"Father should've listened to Baltar, after all, even if he had been lying. Maybe, Baltar, for once, had been telling the truth—"
"He told the truth about the Other Colonists," Wilker reminded him. "We should've listened to him then."
Apollo said nothing for a moment.
"Salik must've told you," he concluded."As I told Sheba and Starbuck after what happened."
"He did," Wilker replied, swallowing hard. "He said Baltar only told Adama, Tigh, you, and him, and that Adama, Lords rest his soul, ordered that no one else in the Fleet ever find out; Salik and he even witheld that from the Council; Salik insisted...."
He trailed off.
"My father insisted as well," Apollo said, his voice almost inaudiable." He said there were questions, and that only those Other Colonists could answer them."
"Salik said much the same thing, when we argued about it," Wilker replied tautly.
When I begged and pleaded with him not to go, to no frackin' avail, he thought, the grief again welling up from thirty yahren's worth of scabs.
"They were both fools," Apollo whispered.
Wilker choked down his anger, forcing out his next words through clenched teeth:
"How did Baltar know, Apollo?! Salik wouldn't tell me; all he said was he knew Baltar wasn't lying, that he hadn't lied on Kobol, that the only lie he ever told was the one which led our people to the slaughter."
"That was the only lie he needed to tell," Apollo bitterly reminded him."Any truth there might have been to his words since then...doesn't begin to balance the scales."
"Yet Salik and Adama both believed him," Wilker insisted, wanting to avoid thinking of Apollo's last observation.
Because, he was right, of course.
Apollo said nothing, breathed deeply, then, slowly, got up from his bunk, and crossed the cell to the door.
Through one of the circular slots, he extended a hand holding a keycard.
"The Anethma," Apollo simply said.
Wilker took the card from him, but said nothing.
Apollo said nothing further himself, until Wilker held the card given him in front of his face:
"Entire scrolls which had been in the Book Of the Word, from when we fled Kobol, until a thousand yahren ago, at the same time we'd just built the first deep-star explorers, the first ships capable of travelling at light speed."
A silence, then:
"The Cylons destroyed the first deep-star explorer—the first Galactica—the rest were converted to the first battlestars—which, along with the ones built and lost over the course of the war, became the only ships we had capable of lightspeed—the Cylons invaded our outer worlds, and the Council of the Twelve, in its usual infinite wisdom, declared those passages false and heretical, and ordered them excised from the Book. They thus became the Anethma, whose very existence eventually ended up being known only to the Twelve, as the war dragged on, right up to the traitors and tired old men who signed our lives away at Cimtar.
Baltar and my father were the last two members of the pre-Holocaust Council, and thus the only two who knew of their existence. Until, thirty yahren ago, of course.
It was thought no copies of the Anethma existed, but, naturally, Baltar had the one frackin' copy which did."
"It's still in my father's quarters, probably still lying open on his desk," he said, following another silence."I haven't been there, since Tigh ordered them sealed after his death. Frankly, I'm surprised Boomer and Starbuck didn't have them take that keycard as well."
"They're both better men than you give them credit for, Commander," Wilker softly replied.
"Your opinion. That, added to a cubit, will buy you a cup of kaff in the Officer's Club," Apollo scoffed.
"Now, frack off, violate my father's quarters, for the sake of whatever insight you hope to gain," he said, turning back toward his bunk,"and be damned in Hades."
"Commandante," Doctor Wilker's holo said, with equal parts surprise and enthusiasm.
"Forgive the intrusion, Doctor," Syuzen said, in between sips of coffee.
"No intrusion at all, Commandante," Wilker assured her."I've been going over the data your people sent us about your tribe, the Other Colonists, and these two tribes you have amongst you, the...um...Centauri, and the...G'Quon—"
"Narn," Syuzen corrected.
"Yes," Wilker said,"Narn. Narn.
G'Quon was one of their gods, a 'Narn born of no other Narn,' according to their equivalent of our Book Of the Word—"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually, Doctor," Syuzen said, coming to the point of her comm."I was wondering if you might be able to answer a question for me."
"I'll try," Wilker replied."I'm a cyberneticist and an anthropologist by training, and I dabble in some of the other sciences; I've had to, in fact, expand my expertise in some of the other disciplines to compensate for shortfalls resulting from the loss of our Colonies, Commandante—"
"I understand," Syuzen said, taking another sip of coffee.
"—but, I'm no religious scholar, and my study of the Kobolian faith is a hodgepodge of what I learned in temple yahren ago, and what I learned from Salik. Commander Adama was the religious scholar amongst our people, all the Council members were before the Holocaust, since they were the political, military, and religious leaders of our Colonies.
However, as you..."
He trailed off, sighing heavily, a tear streaking the old man's face.
"Salik and I didn't always see eye to eye," he whispered,"but, I...."
"...lybluyu tebaya, moya Syuzen'ka," whispered Naten'ka over comms.
And, Black Joke was gone, taking the Kobold flag, and several of his consorts with her, but...she was still...
...gone.
"I'm sorry," Wilker whispered,"I didn't mean to..."
"I'm the one who should apologize, Doctor," Syuzen replied, trying to find her voice, wiping her face with the sleeve of her flight suit.
"What was your question?" Wilker then asked.
"You told me that all thirteen tribes left Kobol at the same time, following the Cataclysm."
"That was what I was taught,and what...Salik always believed, yes," Wilker replied.
"But, the Book of the Word says the thirteenth tribe left first," Syuzen explained,"immediately following the Cataclysm—"
"We think it was an enviromental disaster," Wilker said,"and all indications pointed to that, when the Fleet visited Kobol on its journeyaway from the Colonies.
But, we didn't have time for any further analyses, before being attacked by the Cylons."
"I see," Syuzen said, nodding her head.
"Anyway, according to the Book," she continued,"the thirteenth tribe left first, while the other twelve remained on Kobol for ninety-nine of your yahren following the Cataclysm, before they too left for your Colonies."
"A micron," Wilker said, consulting the computer terminal on his desk, studying it a second or two, before, remarking:
"It does say that," he whispered."And, if I recall, the inscriptions Commander Adama and the others found in the Tomb of the Ninth Lord on Kobol only described the journey the thriteenth tribe took, when they left Kobol. Unfortunately, the Cylon attack destroyed all trace of the inscriptions, though...."
"Yes?" Syuzen prompted.
"Cap—Commander Apollo was with his father in those tombs, along with his first wife, Serina, and the traitor Baltar," Wilker said, after a pause." Apollo's the only one still alive, and...."
"He might not want to talk to me," Syuzen finished.
"Precisely," Wilker said.
Syuzen nodded her head.
"I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you, Commadante," Wilker then ruefully said.
"Perhaps I can help you," Syuzen replied."You had some questions yourself, judging from the tone of your voice. About G'Quon, in particular?"
"Yes," Wilker said."The Narns' Book Of G'Quon said he was a ' Narn born of no other Narn,' who led his people against an invasion of an army of darkness around 1,300 of your years ago, if I managed to translate between Narn and Earth orbital cycles correctly."
"You have," Syuzen replied."Let's see..."
She called up the Book Of G'Quon on her wearable, finding the correct passage.
"...oh, yes, here we are. G'Quon came into the world 'a Narn fully-formed,' and wandered Narn for forty years, forty Narn years, that is, before appearing before the Circles of the Kha'Ri—their governing council, before the Kobolds conquered the Regime almost forty years ago—warning of an invasion of darkness, led by...well, fuck me running..."
" What?" Wilker asked.
"...led by an alien 'called in the Narn tongue, Mozh'Sha,' " Syuzen said, incredulous, as she read the following passage:
" ' "And, this great army," said G'Quon to the Great Circles of the Kha'Ri," is an army of the unliving, metal-clad, each possessing a grating voice, and a great, glaring, fiery, red eye." ' "
"Cylons," Wilker instantly replied."They sound exactly like Cylons. And Mozh'Sha sounds close to Mosha, which is one of the names of one of the Lords of Kobol. Also, there was a tribe of Mosha, who were the priesthood of the Lords Of Kobol."
"'Mozh'Sha,' " Syuzen said,"is also Narn for 'imperious leader.' "
Wilker reacted as if struck.
"The Imperious Leader," he slowly said,"was the ruler of the Cylon Alliance—sometimes calling itself the Cylon Empire—after the android servants of the original Cylons rebelled and murdered their former masters over a thousand yahren ago."
Again, he consulted his computer.
"He was killed," he said, carefully reading the text on his screen, as he spoke,"by Mozh'Sha, 'and Mozh'Sha by him, in what is said by the scholars and scribes of the Ninth Great Circle of the Kha'Ri to have been the fourth battle between them, a fourth death for each of them, son against father, father against son, for ever and ever—' "
" 'G'Quon' is Ancient Narn for 'father,' " Syuzen explained, Wilker continuing:
"—'and, as he, who was the father of all we are, all we were to be, lay dying in the valley of the mountains bearing his name, as the red light of the sun rose over those mountains bearing his name, a ship of white lights did appear above him, brighter than the red sun rising over the mountains which came to bear the name of our father in spirit.' "
"Narn tends to get a little reptitive, when translated from their syllabary into English," Syuzen quipped.
Wilker sobered, as he looked straight at her:
"Commandante, thirty-eight yahren ago, just after the attack on the Cylons' outer capital at Gomoray, we encountered white lights out in space, which we determined to be advanced spacecraft. Those ships had destroyed the ship of a being of immense power calling himself Count Iblis, who Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba were able to defeat, with the help of those other ships.
And, later, after we first encountered the Terrans, Apollo and Starbuck both encountered the Ship Of Lights."
"Coincidence?" Syuzen asked doubtfully.
"Too many data points line up for it to be coincidential," Wilker replied, still stunned by all the implications. "Including this passage, at the beginning: 'But, for the moon, the night was black and void of stars, and continued to be so for forty nights, before G'Quon arrived upon this world, a Narn fully formed, a Narn born of no other Narn. And, after the rising of the red sun, for forty rises of the red sun, before his arrival, a black sun, wreathed in purple lightnings, could been seen in the sky across the world.' "
"After leaving Carrillon," he explained,"in those first days following the Holocaust, the fleet was forced into a magnetic void by the Cylons pursuing us. On the other side of that void was Kobol.
This account sounds strangely similar."
Speaking of coincidences.... Syuzen thought, stopping that thought before it led to the inevitable, unpleasant conclusion.
"Is there anyone I can talk to, who might be more knowledgable on the Narn religion?" Wilker asked, before she could flinch reflexively at that thought of a shifting, inky-black center of a roiling, lightning-wreathed, sickening swirl of livid purple.
"Ivanova to Combat," Syuzen spoke.
"Larenya on line, go," Larenya's image replied.
"Number One, please have comms place a call to the Yorktown; I need to have a chat with her first lieutenant."
2275.2.12 20:29:12
He woke screaming, as he often did every night for almost the last forty years.
Capitaine de frégate, Vir Cotto sat up on the couch of Yorktown's wardroom, breathing raggedly, taking time realize he was still aboard Yorktown. here, now.
And, that Centauri Prime had been wiped clean of everything Centauri, though, unfortunately, not everyone.
The unlucky survivors, who Londo could not evacuate all those years ago.
And, the traitors—the traitor Antono Refa, may the Great Maker burn that bastard for all eternity—who had helped those triple-be-damned Kobolds and their League puppets condemn their people to....
"Vir?! Lad, are your all right?!" he realized Captiaine de vaisseau. Sir Bernard Montgomery Scott had asked this question several times before.
"Sorry, Skipper," Vir said,"I—"
"Think nothin' of it, lad," Scotty softly said. "Nothin' at all."
"Was there something—" Vir started to ask.
"Syuzen Ivanova wants to have a chat with you," Scotty said."Something about Narn religion; seems she was talking with one of their high-IQ boys aboard that bloody battlestar, an' the subject of G'Quan came up."
"Marshal Ta'Lon is far more knowledgable about that than I am," Vir demurred."He was War Leader G'Kar's disciple, before...."
He trailed off, Scotty reminding him:
"Aye, but Ta'Lon's on Davo, fightin' the bloody Kobolds, and you're here, laddie."
"Comms," Vir said, reaching for his wearable on the wardroom table, and adjusting it on his head, "please echo Commandante Ivanova to my wearable."
"VIr," Syuzen Ivanova's image said, as it stood in front of him,"sorry to bother you."
"No bother," Vir replied."It wasn't as if I was getting much sleep anyway, Commandante."
"I see," Commandante Ivanova whispered.
"Sorry," she repeated.
"Nothing you can do to change that. You had some questions? About G'Quan?"
"Doctor Wilker and I were discussing another, somewhat related subject, when we...noticed some similarities between the Book Of G'Quan, their Book Of the Word, and...the experiences his people had while fighting their enemies, and being forced to roam the stars as refugees. Doctor Wilker asked to talk with someone more knowledgeable than me, and I immediately thought of you."
"Would you talk with him, please?" she asked."When your duties permit?"
"I go on watch in about ten minutes," Vir replied, consulting his wearable's onboard clock,"but any time after that would be fine."
"I'll let him know, then," Ivanova replied."Ivanova out."
Her holo winked out, as VIr picked up his helmet from the carpeted deck.
"You've got ten minutes yet," Scotty reminded him, and Vir put the helmet in his lap.
"Ten minutes to think," Vir whispered.
"Aye," Scotty agreed, nodding his head. "That it is, lad, that it is."
"That," he slowly repeated,"it is."
42.Y38PH 14:30:04
"What do you want?!" Apollo asked, glaring at Wilker, as he stood outside his cell door.
"What did your father find in that tomb on Kobol, all those yahren ago?" Wilker asked.
"Baltar," Apollo sullenly replied. "And, some inscriptions on the walls that my father believed was the path the thirteenth tribe took to Earth."
"But," he added, as bitter as gall,"we'll never know, because the gallmocking Cylons destroyed everything on Kobol in an attempt to destroy us, and we made no records of any of it."
"Maybe," he then mused,"Father should've listened to Baltar, after all, even if he had been lying. Maybe, Baltar, for once, had been telling the truth—"
"He told the truth about the Other Colonists," Wilker reminded him. "We should've listened to him then."
Apollo said nothing for a moment.
"Salik must've told you," he concluded."As I told Sheba and Starbuck after what happened."
"He did," Wilker replied, swallowing hard. "He said Baltar only told Adama, Tigh, you, and him, and that Adama, Lords rest his soul, ordered that no one else in the Fleet ever find out; Salik and he even witheld that from the Council; Salik insisted...."
He trailed off.
"My father insisted as well," Apollo said, his voice almost inaudiable." He said there were questions, and that only those Other Colonists could answer them."
"Salik said much the same thing, when we argued about it," Wilker replied tautly.
When I begged and pleaded with him not to go, to no frackin' avail, he thought, the grief again welling up from thirty yahren's worth of scabs.
"They were both fools," Apollo whispered.
Wilker choked down his anger, forcing out his next words through clenched teeth:
"How did Baltar know, Apollo?! Salik wouldn't tell me; all he said was he knew Baltar wasn't lying, that he hadn't lied on Kobol, that the only lie he ever told was the one which led our people to the slaughter."
"That was the only lie he needed to tell," Apollo bitterly reminded him."Any truth there might have been to his words since then...doesn't begin to balance the scales."
"Yet Salik and Adama both believed him," Wilker insisted, wanting to avoid thinking of Apollo's last observation.
Because, he was right, of course.
Apollo said nothing, breathed deeply, then, slowly, got up from his bunk, and crossed the cell to the door.
Through one of the circular slots, he extended a hand holding a keycard.
"The Anethma," Apollo simply said.
Wilker took the card from him, but said nothing.
Apollo said nothing further himself, until Wilker held the card given him in front of his face:
"Entire scrolls which had been in the Book Of the Word, from when we fled Kobol, until a thousand yahren ago, at the same time we'd just built the first deep-star explorers, the first ships capable of travelling at light speed."
A silence, then:
"The Cylons destroyed the first deep-star explorer—the first Galactica—the rest were converted to the first battlestars—which, along with the ones built and lost over the course of the war, became the only ships we had capable of lightspeed—the Cylons invaded our outer worlds, and the Council of the Twelve, in its usual infinite wisdom, declared those passages false and heretical, and ordered them excised from the Book. They thus became the Anethma, whose very existence eventually ended up being known only to the Twelve, as the war dragged on, right up to the traitors and tired old men who signed our lives away at Cimtar.
Baltar and my father were the last two members of the pre-Holocaust Council, and thus the only two who knew of their existence. Until, thirty yahren ago, of course.
It was thought no copies of the Anethma existed, but, naturally, Baltar had the one frackin' copy which did."
"It's still in my father's quarters, probably still lying open on his desk," he said, following another silence."I haven't been there, since Tigh ordered them sealed after his death. Frankly, I'm surprised Boomer and Starbuck didn't have them take that keycard as well."
"They're both better men than you give them credit for, Commander," Wilker softly replied.
"Your opinion. That, added to a cubit, will buy you a cup of kaff in the Officer's Club," Apollo scoffed.
"Now, frack off, violate my father's quarters, for the sake of whatever insight you hope to gain," he said, turning back toward his bunk,"and be damned in Hades."
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.119AC 21:33:28
The ugly, primitive, throwback hull of the last remaining Jupiter-class battlestar floating in the main screen of the battlestar Pegasus' CIC filled Sisko with revulsion.
Galactica was old, originally built by the military of the Caprican State to serve as a war machine.
Starfleet had, out of necessity, used the Caprican State Navy's Jupiters, Mercuries,Orions, and Valkyries, but there were limits to the usefulness of warships in a peacekeeping, exploratory, scientific, and humanitarian armada.
Sisko relaxed in his chair, studied all the subsidiary stations in cocentric circles around and below him.
The 4.5-million ton Galaxy-class multi-role fleet battlestars, such as Pegasus, built to the specifications and hullform predicted by His Received Canon over three hundred years ago, were decidedly not warships, for warships served democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, communities, States.
Pegasus, her sisters, and the five times larger, and more massive Odyssey-class command battlestars—such as Jean-Luc's flagship, Enterprise—were the perfect vessels of peace, exploration, and scientific advancement, as could only ever be brought about by responsibly-individualistic, biologically-authortarian, natural patricians and aristocrats, thus, far superior to any warship.
He smiled, steepling his fingers, as he continued gazing at both the modern starships, and the archaic hull comprising His 75th Battlestar Fleet.
Agathon had also outlived his usefulness to the true begotten Sons of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh, the literal and spiritual descendants of Daniel Morden and William Adamu(also Adama), and Jean-Luc, even though he'd loved him, as only a man could love another, had no choice in the matter, for His Biological Imperative came first, and it would be fufilled, even if it meant necessities which wrenched the high-minded, compassionate souls of artists, dreamers, builders, thinkers and achievers such as Jean-Luc, his Benjamin, and the rest of His Race of Man.
"Ah," Sisko said, turning as Eddington and a squad of Drazi and Dilgar Marines led Pegasus' former CAG, Major Chakotay, into his presence.
"Good," remarked the new commander of the battlestar Pegasus."Your reputation precedes you, Major Chakotay, and I have to say I'm more than a little bit eager to see if the man himself is equal to that reputation."
"Before or after you have me sentenced to death and eternal damnation for being Helo Agathon's CAG?" Chakotay said, up front, and to the point, as a patrician should be.
"And, what makes you think I had you brought here for a jury trial, Major?" Sisko asked.
"You already have a CAG, Commander," Chakotay replied, once again, to the point.
"What I don't have, however," Sisko sweetly said,"is an XO, Colonel Chakotay."
Eddington started to speak, but Sisko didn't have to say a word.
Drazi and Dilgar both were races of sadists and brutes, only good enough to be used by their superiors for what was necessary.
Which made them brutally, sadistically efficent at unquestioning obedience of their biologically-destined masters' orders.
As Eddington found out, when he was brutally, sadistically, efficently disarmed, restrained, and forced onto his knees at Sisko's feet.
"Micheal Paul Eddington," Sisko annouced,"you are under arrest for treason, sedition, insubordination, and statism. You have no rights whatsoever, only the privilege of trial, conviction, and execution. I, a legally constituted jury, under the Second Amendment of His Received Canon, will conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damnation. Appeal denied. May He have mercy on your soul. So say us all."
"Why?" was all Eddington had time to say, before, at a glance from the Lord of his life, the Dilgar Marine sergeant brutally, sadistically, efficently slit his throat with a vibroblade utility knife.
"You outlived your usefulness," Sisko replied to Eddington's cooling corpse, before he ordered it removed from the CIC.
"And," he whispered, staring at the Galactica floating on the main screen,"so have you, dear, sweet William."
42.119AC 21:37:00
"You see," Adama whispered, as he stood over the Centauri whore lying there bruised, sobbing, ashamed, as all her kind should be,"you do it to yourselves. You foul your own nests, form communities, and fight amongst yourselves...."
He sighed, as the commander of the battlestar Galactica finished dressing.
"I suppose it isn't really your fault," he added."You have no genetic heritage of Aristrocracy, so you can't be expected to better yourselves, without the guidance of the Lords and Masters of your lives."
That said, he turned his back on the bald-headed little frak wallowing in her shame, walked out of his day cabin, and onto Galactica's CIC.
"Colonel?" he said to Hoshi.
"We've purged all trace of the CNP from our computers, Admiral," his XO reported.
"Network all navigation computers with the flag," Adama ordered."Have all navigators begin preparations for jump."
" Network established," the duty navigator replied. "Beginning preparations for jump."
"All combat stations report ready," Hoshi then told him.
"Action stations!" Adama barked, even though there was still some time before the fleet would be ready for jump.
He much preferred the red strobing lights and the buzzing, howling klaxons of the old girl to the whoopwhoopwhoop!ing alarms of the newer Starfleet vessels, but he supposed continous progress was the price to be paid for biological destiny, and he didn't mind the cost all that much.
He looked up at the positions of his fleet's ships, as shown on the DRADIS display.
Four Akira-class torpedostars, each massing three megatons, along with two dozen Defiant-class raidstars, formed the vanguard of the Fleet, both classes newer designs built here in the Babylon Fleet Yards and in the spacedocks of Terra Nova in the last five years alongside the Odysseys and Galaxies, as the battlestars which had originally invaded the Terran Penal Colony and the worlds beyond through the Eye Of Yaweh gradually wore out, and were scrapped for the material necessary for the new construction which would sustain the peacekeeping effort, and ultimately end in its successful resolution through the loving, violent judgement and final punishment of the Terrans, the Dark Ones, and all others who His begotten Sons were meant to burn in hellfire, before said fire cleansed them from His Creation for all time, freeing the Sons of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh to join Him and His Twelve as Deo sapiens.
Adama smiled, when he thought of that, as he continued studying his fleet, his fleet.
Clustered protectively around Galactica and Pegasus were twenty 700,000-ton Intrepid-class aegistars, also recent construction; they would be the wall behind which the two fleet battlestars would safely deploy their Raptors and Vipers, and unlimber all their awesome, modern PHASR, pulse PHASR, and quantum torpedo weaponry against the puny, pathetic, primitive warships of his enemies, with the archaic guns, missiles, and lasers preferred by bullies, militarists, and statists.
And, that, Adama silently reaffirmed, is why they will lose.
42.119AC 21:39:15
Major Thomas Eugene "Proton" Paris smiled, when he saw his fifty-ton Viper Mark IX starfighter sitting in its launch cradle.
As large as a Raptor Mk.V, it was capable of FTL jumps, carried six 30mm railguns, and a dozen quantum torpedos on four hardpoints, yet it still retained the classic Viper lines, with the exception of the scoop, replaced by a solid, slender nose holding the most advanced avionics suite of any ship in Starfleet.
With the possible exception of the suite aboard the 100-ton Raptor Mark VIs arrayed on the upper landing deck between the 200 Viper squadrons(2,400 Mark IX Vipers)fully-armed and ready to launch.
Or the 150 1,500-ton Aquarius-class scout-escort ships in Pegasus' lower landing deck, each equipped with a pair of powerful pulse PHASRs and almost 200 full-sized quantum torpedos.
Pegasus was a fleet unto itself, and Paris had been granted the privilege of leading that fleet into the coming armed disciplinary operation against the Enemy Tribes and the inmates of Earth.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were in love," quipped Lieutenant Harry "Buster" Kim, as he joined his man in admiring the graceful lines of modern, 23rd Century peacekeeping technology.
"Only the love of the friend, Harry, as only one of us is capable of expressing," Proton joyfully replied. "Though, I must admit, those masculine affections are certainly...shall I say, aroused, by the sight of all these impressive machines."
"I can't say I blame you," Buster replied, in a whisper equally as raptorous as Proton's own.
"Good," Paris then said,"because there's no one I'd rather have commanding the scout-escort flotilla than you, especially with Rockstar damned for eternity because of his traitorous father."
"Captain," he added.
"Thank you, Tom," Buster replied.
"Who will command the Raptors?" he then asked.
"What do you think of Rozhenko?" Proton asked.
"Thank frak you suggested him," a relieved Buster remarked.
"Who did you think I was going to suggest?" Proton replied."Wesley Crusher?"
"You're shitting me?!" he then said, when there was no answer from Buster.
"You're not shitting me," Proton added.
"He has the seniority over—" Buster started to remark.
"Statists, and militarists are obsessed with seniority," Proton reminded his man."Starfleet is not a military organization, but a professional, peackeeping force, primarily focussed on science and exploration."
"Professionals," he added,"go by merit and achievement, and Alex Rozhenko's got more of both in his little finger, than that little frak Weaseley Crusher has in his entire useless body. You remember the flyby during graduation, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah," Buster remarked.
"One simple little manuever any frakkin' rook could've done drunk, blindfolded, and with one hand tied behind his back," Proton reminded Buster, shaking his head at only one of the many memories he had of Crusher's utter and complete frakking incompetence,"and he just has to be the one to not only screw the pooch, but take all of us down with him, and I had to take the heat for Zack Adama getting killed over his screwup, just because Weasely was Jean-Luc Baldhead's little bastard."
"So, no," he concluded. "Little Weasel will just have to be satisfied with being considered competent enough to pilot a Raptor."
"Just," Buster commented.
"Just," Proton agreed, with a chuckle.
The ugly, primitive, throwback hull of the last remaining Jupiter-class battlestar floating in the main screen of the battlestar Pegasus' CIC filled Sisko with revulsion.
Galactica was old, originally built by the military of the Caprican State to serve as a war machine.
Starfleet had, out of necessity, used the Caprican State Navy's Jupiters, Mercuries,Orions, and Valkyries, but there were limits to the usefulness of warships in a peacekeeping, exploratory, scientific, and humanitarian armada.
Sisko relaxed in his chair, studied all the subsidiary stations in cocentric circles around and below him.
The 4.5-million ton Galaxy-class multi-role fleet battlestars, such as Pegasus, built to the specifications and hullform predicted by His Received Canon over three hundred years ago, were decidedly not warships, for warships served democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, communities, States.
Pegasus, her sisters, and the five times larger, and more massive Odyssey-class command battlestars—such as Jean-Luc's flagship, Enterprise—were the perfect vessels of peace, exploration, and scientific advancement, as could only ever be brought about by responsibly-individualistic, biologically-authortarian, natural patricians and aristocrats, thus, far superior to any warship.
He smiled, steepling his fingers, as he continued gazing at both the modern starships, and the archaic hull comprising His 75th Battlestar Fleet.
Agathon had also outlived his usefulness to the true begotten Sons of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh, the literal and spiritual descendants of Daniel Morden and William Adamu(also Adama), and Jean-Luc, even though he'd loved him, as only a man could love another, had no choice in the matter, for His Biological Imperative came first, and it would be fufilled, even if it meant necessities which wrenched the high-minded, compassionate souls of artists, dreamers, builders, thinkers and achievers such as Jean-Luc, his Benjamin, and the rest of His Race of Man.
"Ah," Sisko said, turning as Eddington and a squad of Drazi and Dilgar Marines led Pegasus' former CAG, Major Chakotay, into his presence.
"Good," remarked the new commander of the battlestar Pegasus."Your reputation precedes you, Major Chakotay, and I have to say I'm more than a little bit eager to see if the man himself is equal to that reputation."
"Before or after you have me sentenced to death and eternal damnation for being Helo Agathon's CAG?" Chakotay said, up front, and to the point, as a patrician should be.
"And, what makes you think I had you brought here for a jury trial, Major?" Sisko asked.
"You already have a CAG, Commander," Chakotay replied, once again, to the point.
"What I don't have, however," Sisko sweetly said,"is an XO, Colonel Chakotay."
Eddington started to speak, but Sisko didn't have to say a word.
Drazi and Dilgar both were races of sadists and brutes, only good enough to be used by their superiors for what was necessary.
Which made them brutally, sadistically efficent at unquestioning obedience of their biologically-destined masters' orders.
As Eddington found out, when he was brutally, sadistically, efficently disarmed, restrained, and forced onto his knees at Sisko's feet.
"Micheal Paul Eddington," Sisko annouced,"you are under arrest for treason, sedition, insubordination, and statism. You have no rights whatsoever, only the privilege of trial, conviction, and execution. I, a legally constituted jury, under the Second Amendment of His Received Canon, will conduct your trial. Trial begins. Guilty as charged. Sentence: Death and eternal damnation. Appeal denied. May He have mercy on your soul. So say us all."
"Why?" was all Eddington had time to say, before, at a glance from the Lord of his life, the Dilgar Marine sergeant brutally, sadistically, efficently slit his throat with a vibroblade utility knife.
"You outlived your usefulness," Sisko replied to Eddington's cooling corpse, before he ordered it removed from the CIC.
"And," he whispered, staring at the Galactica floating on the main screen,"so have you, dear, sweet William."
42.119AC 21:37:00
"You see," Adama whispered, as he stood over the Centauri whore lying there bruised, sobbing, ashamed, as all her kind should be,"you do it to yourselves. You foul your own nests, form communities, and fight amongst yourselves...."
He sighed, as the commander of the battlestar Galactica finished dressing.
"I suppose it isn't really your fault," he added."You have no genetic heritage of Aristrocracy, so you can't be expected to better yourselves, without the guidance of the Lords and Masters of your lives."
That said, he turned his back on the bald-headed little frak wallowing in her shame, walked out of his day cabin, and onto Galactica's CIC.
"Colonel?" he said to Hoshi.
"We've purged all trace of the CNP from our computers, Admiral," his XO reported.
"Network all navigation computers with the flag," Adama ordered."Have all navigators begin preparations for jump."
" Network established," the duty navigator replied. "Beginning preparations for jump."
"All combat stations report ready," Hoshi then told him.
"Action stations!" Adama barked, even though there was still some time before the fleet would be ready for jump.
He much preferred the red strobing lights and the buzzing, howling klaxons of the old girl to the whoopwhoopwhoop!ing alarms of the newer Starfleet vessels, but he supposed continous progress was the price to be paid for biological destiny, and he didn't mind the cost all that much.
He looked up at the positions of his fleet's ships, as shown on the DRADIS display.
Four Akira-class torpedostars, each massing three megatons, along with two dozen Defiant-class raidstars, formed the vanguard of the Fleet, both classes newer designs built here in the Babylon Fleet Yards and in the spacedocks of Terra Nova in the last five years alongside the Odysseys and Galaxies, as the battlestars which had originally invaded the Terran Penal Colony and the worlds beyond through the Eye Of Yaweh gradually wore out, and were scrapped for the material necessary for the new construction which would sustain the peacekeeping effort, and ultimately end in its successful resolution through the loving, violent judgement and final punishment of the Terrans, the Dark Ones, and all others who His begotten Sons were meant to burn in hellfire, before said fire cleansed them from His Creation for all time, freeing the Sons of Adam Yeshua ben Yaweh to join Him and His Twelve as Deo sapiens.
Adama smiled, when he thought of that, as he continued studying his fleet, his fleet.
Clustered protectively around Galactica and Pegasus were twenty 700,000-ton Intrepid-class aegistars, also recent construction; they would be the wall behind which the two fleet battlestars would safely deploy their Raptors and Vipers, and unlimber all their awesome, modern PHASR, pulse PHASR, and quantum torpedo weaponry against the puny, pathetic, primitive warships of his enemies, with the archaic guns, missiles, and lasers preferred by bullies, militarists, and statists.
And, that, Adama silently reaffirmed, is why they will lose.
42.119AC 21:39:15
Major Thomas Eugene "Proton" Paris smiled, when he saw his fifty-ton Viper Mark IX starfighter sitting in its launch cradle.
As large as a Raptor Mk.V, it was capable of FTL jumps, carried six 30mm railguns, and a dozen quantum torpedos on four hardpoints, yet it still retained the classic Viper lines, with the exception of the scoop, replaced by a solid, slender nose holding the most advanced avionics suite of any ship in Starfleet.
With the possible exception of the suite aboard the 100-ton Raptor Mark VIs arrayed on the upper landing deck between the 200 Viper squadrons(2,400 Mark IX Vipers)fully-armed and ready to launch.
Or the 150 1,500-ton Aquarius-class scout-escort ships in Pegasus' lower landing deck, each equipped with a pair of powerful pulse PHASRs and almost 200 full-sized quantum torpedos.
Pegasus was a fleet unto itself, and Paris had been granted the privilege of leading that fleet into the coming armed disciplinary operation against the Enemy Tribes and the inmates of Earth.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were in love," quipped Lieutenant Harry "Buster" Kim, as he joined his man in admiring the graceful lines of modern, 23rd Century peacekeeping technology.
"Only the love of the friend, Harry, as only one of us is capable of expressing," Proton joyfully replied. "Though, I must admit, those masculine affections are certainly...shall I say, aroused, by the sight of all these impressive machines."
"I can't say I blame you," Buster replied, in a whisper equally as raptorous as Proton's own.
"Good," Paris then said,"because there's no one I'd rather have commanding the scout-escort flotilla than you, especially with Rockstar damned for eternity because of his traitorous father."
"Captain," he added.
"Thank you, Tom," Buster replied.
"Who will command the Raptors?" he then asked.
"What do you think of Rozhenko?" Proton asked.
"Thank frak you suggested him," a relieved Buster remarked.
"Who did you think I was going to suggest?" Proton replied."Wesley Crusher?"
"You're shitting me?!" he then said, when there was no answer from Buster.
"You're not shitting me," Proton added.
"He has the seniority over—" Buster started to remark.
"Statists, and militarists are obsessed with seniority," Proton reminded his man."Starfleet is not a military organization, but a professional, peackeeping force, primarily focussed on science and exploration."
"Professionals," he added,"go by merit and achievement, and Alex Rozhenko's got more of both in his little finger, than that little frak Weaseley Crusher has in his entire useless body. You remember the flyby during graduation, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah," Buster remarked.
"One simple little manuever any frakkin' rook could've done drunk, blindfolded, and with one hand tied behind his back," Proton reminded Buster, shaking his head at only one of the many memories he had of Crusher's utter and complete frakking incompetence,"and he just has to be the one to not only screw the pooch, but take all of us down with him, and I had to take the heat for Zack Adama getting killed over his screwup, just because Weasely was Jean-Luc Baldhead's little bastard."
"So, no," he concluded. "Little Weasel will just have to be satisfied with being considered competent enough to pilot a Raptor."
"Just," Buster commented.
"Just," Proton agreed, with a chuckle.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.Y38PH 14:39:50
"In the beginning, there was Earth."
Six words.
All that had been necessary for the world to change before his eyes.
The chief scientific advisor to the Council of the Twelve whispered those six words, the first line of the Anethma, over and over.
Before finally moving on the rest of the The Cycles of Twelve.
Reading through it, Wilker was convinced that this had been how the Book Of the Word had begun originally, even if it had lacked a creation narrative.
More or less.
Because there were accounts of the lives of the Twelve Lords of Kobol.
As human beings.
Those lives told as cycles of birth, growth, love, loss, great achievements, terrible failures, death, and rebirth as other men and women to begin the cycle anew.
Over thousands of years.
Years.
Further reserach into the languages of Earth had come upon the word for year in German.
Jahr.
Pronounced similar to yahren.
Wilker nodded absently, as he continued to read through these cycles of birth and rebirth, fascinated by how the human race, through these Cycles of Twelve, had grown from frail animals, defensless against cold and predators, to peoples of poetry, music, culture, great works and achievements, fearsome in their awesome power, noble in their striving, wise at their peak, tragic in their fall to brutality.
Courageous, even magnificent, in rising from their falls, starting over again, applying the lessons learned from mistakes they made, even if they didn't always remember the lessons, and kept making the same mistakes.
He smiled slightly, reaching the end of The Cycles of Twelve, pausing a moment, looking up from The Passage Through Lightning, the next of the scrolls of the Anthema, to the quarters around him.
They were as Adama himself as kept them, Lords Of Kobol rest his soul, the simple, neatly-kept bunk of an ordinary warrior in the far corner, the desk free of clutter, the recording wand in its receptacle next to the scanner which often displayed Adama's words, as he'd spoken them into his personal journal, the single picture of Adama, his wife Ita, their three children, when they had been much younger, framed on the corner of the desk opposite the scanner, the bookshelf with all the works of literature, poetry, law, science, philosophy spanning the entire life of the Twelve Civilized Tribes from the Exodus to the Holocaust.
And, perhaps central to the entire room, next to the scanners showing him the readouts from every part of Galactica, a window into space, in a recess between the thick, twin riveted walls of the battlestar's armor belt, a weakness in its defenses, a doorway for the radiations of space to enter, thus a rarity on a military vessel, its only twin being the much larger viewport on the bridge, sealed by a massive armored slab during combat.
That window was a privilege of rank, for a man who found such rank a terrible burden in the yahren since he'd led the survivors of the Colonies away from those seeking their destruction, a chance for him to look into the heavens around his fleet, and remind himself that he and his were a part of something greater.
That they had come from the humblest of origins and had both fallen beneath and risen beyond those origins, while never, ever forgetting themselves.
Wilker breathed deeply, turning back to the Anethma, to the Passage Through Lightning immediately following the Cycles of Twelve.
"So it came to pass," he read aloud,"as it so often did, when the tribes of Man were at their best, that some complained at the fortune of others, and talked of being persecuted and put upon with hard labor by all the others, though all were equal in favor and good fortune.
And these hungry and discontented, as equal in fortune and favor to those they hated and whose favor and good fortune they coveted, formed their own tribe, a tribe who were as hot, as cold, as hard as iron, and who lusted to see the good Earth bathed in blood.
And. this tribe, forged in iron, hungry for blood, would, in time, beget the Children of the Storm and the Urge, who would rise to dominion over that tribe."
42.Y38PH 14:40:00
Though, having been a warrior once, Boomer should have known better, he was still shocked by just how small this AdNF Vesta—a name shared with a Lord of Kobol—was in comparison to a Colonial battlestar.
The Eastern Alliance destroyers were one-sixth the size of that Earth ship, the President of the Council reminded himself, as the shuttle drew closer to the Earth cruiser,and their 5.33-metric railguns caused untold damage to the Fleet and to Galactica herself with their near-lightspeed rocket projectiles.
These Earth vessels, he further reminded himself,also dispatched one of the Others' raidstars, which was much larger, by at least an order of magnitude, than their ships.
The shuttle carrying him and the other members of the Twelve settled into place over an airlock at the top of the tapered cylinder of their main hull, behind and slightly above the tapered, flattened, almost blade-like cylinder of the forward hull bristling with gun turrets.
Behind the main hull, a conical lattice of pipes and struts, at the end of which was a spike-studded cylinder housing the Earth cruiser's main drives.
Certainly, these Earth ships are more elegant than Alliance destroyers, Boomer remarked to himself.
The Earth ship had no internal hangar, so the shuttle had to dock externally, the airlock in its belly clanking, as it linked up with its counterpart on Vesta.
"Pressure and atmosphere normalized, Sire President," the Galactica shuttle pilot reported a moment later.
"Thank you, Flight Sergeant," Boomer replied, leading the rest of the Council through the opening interior hatch, through two airlock chambers, and onto the deck of the Earth warship.
A half-score of warriors in grey-green powered armor, and a lissome woman in a blue spacesuit and a black beret over her short blonde hair came to attention, as Boomer saluted a flag with a white compass rose against a field of blue as bright as the young(ish) woman's spacesuit painted on the bulkhead beside him.
"Sire Boomer, " he introduced himself,"President of the Colonies, with the members of the Council of the Twelve. Permission to come aboard?"
The woman flinched, swallowed hard, then, with a tightly-controlled voice, she introduced herself as "Capitaine de frégate Kara Greystoke Thrace, first lieutenant of the Vesta. Permission granted, Sire Boomer."
"The Haut Amrial's waiting for you in the wardroom; if you'll come with me, please."
Thrace and her warriors led the way from the airlock, through a common area with tables. chairs, a kitchen area, and some kind of scanner, to a ladder in the middle of the commons, with quarters ringing the common area, the ring bisected by the airlocks at either end.
The warriors formed two ranks of five on either side of the ladder, Thrace prompting Boomer and his fellow Councillors with,"if you'd follow me, sirs, and madam," before turning around, and climbing up the ladder.
Boomer followed, climbing up into a red-lit circular room with an outer ring of control stations separated by the narrowest of margins from a pair of what apparentally were command stations in the center, the outer ring of stations broken only by a hatch directly behind the two center stations which Thrace led the representatives of the Twelve Colonies through.
At the end of another hatch was a cozy, circular room, a small kitchen in one corner, a sofa and small table at the opposite corner, a conference table and several chairs in the center.
A husky, white-haired man, skin a slight shade lighter than Boomer's own, rose from the chair at the head of conference table, and extended his hand.
"Haut Amiral du Terre Edward McDugan," the man introduced himself, Boomer taking his hand, and saying "Sire Boomer, President of the Council of the Twelve."
He then introduced the other Councillors, McDugan replying:
"An honor meeting you all. Coffee?"
The Haut Amiral du Terre indicated a steel serving urn and several ceramic cups at the center of the table, adding:
"Your medico and mine have assured me it's compatiable with your physiologies."
"Thank you, yes," Boomer replied, he and the others taking seats around the table at McDugan's invitation, the Earth admiral pouring cups of this coffee for the others, before helping himself, and resumung his place at the head of the table.
Boomer took a tenative sip of his coffee...and a larger one, when he found it to be stronger, more robust in flavor, yet far less bitter than the kaff served in the Galactica's Officer's Club.
"It's from the SecGen's own private garden," McDugan explained."She grows this, as a hobby, and she tinkers with crossing the various species of coffee plants to produce a blend she likes."
"It's delicious," Siress Teilia remarked,"thank you, Haut Amiral."
"I heard about Commander Apollo," McDugan then said, coming straight to the sore point. "About what happened."
"You shouldn't rush to...any sort...of...judgement," Boomer said hesitantly."As some of my colleagues already have."
"He broke the law, plotted open rebellion against the Council," Sire Dammerman of Sagitara insisted.
"He's been a warrior at war his entire adult life," Siress Teilia replied,"and he's seen his family, his wife, so many under his command killed."
"And, much of that is our fault," Sire Geller acknowledged."If we hadn't been so quick to lift the martial law decree after our initial encounter with the Terrans, those Alliance enforcers wouldn't have been in a position to escape our custody, and cause trouble for our people later on."
"And, we agreed," the old man ruefully added,"to send Adama and Salik to the Others...to their...."
He sighed, Sire Wong of Aerilon remarking:
"'Never judge a man, until you've walked a centar in his boots.'"
"'Til you've walked a mile in his moccasains,' " McDugan said.
"And, it's not my place to judge," he added, eyes distant."I've also been fighting all my adult life, and...a lot of good people have died on my watch."
A silence settled over the room, broken only after McDugan asked:
"I did expect to see Colonel Starbuck with you, though. Where is he?"
"Coordinating the transfer of his wounded warriors to your medical ships," Boomer answered,"as well as the evacuations of those fleet ships whose power systems have failed."
"Yeah," McDugan said, after another sip of coffee. "You've had another four ships break down on you."
"Five," Sire Fenrick of Canceron spoke up."The Comp-Tel ship experienced complete power failure before we left Galactica."
McDugan nodded.
"And," Boomer said,"we've had reports from the Gemmonse freighter; their energizer is shorting out. They've always had trouble with their systems, since they were the most overloaded with people, more than they should've taken on board, when we evacuated our Colonies, but...."
"Yeah," McDugan said again. "I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of decisions those captains...your Commander Adama...had to make then, how many to leave behind to be..."
The elderly Earth warrior trailed off, shaking his head, sighing.
"I've been authorized by Earthdome," he then said,"to offer what resources les Nations can spare to finding you a new home, whether you want to settle amongst us, or colonize a new world on your own. We have data on every star system in known space, plus the ones IPX has explored, but we haven't been able to colonize. You can even settle on Earth, if that's your wish, though we're still terraforming her, repairing the damage done by the Kobolds and ourselves.
Earthgov's recomissioning one of their colony ships; it's similar in size and shape to the mobile airdock we're using to repair the Galactica, and it can hold forty times your current population; when you decide, we can have it here in an hour, maybe two."
McDugan then touched a few keys on a hologram floating from a flexible band around his head, and star charts now floated over the center of the conference table.
"The star systems firmly held by us are in blue letters," he informed the others,"the ones held firmly by the Kobolds and their subject races are in red, the ones which are active battlefields are in yellow, star systems of non-aligned races are in white, and explored but uninhabited systems are in green.
Our holograms are hard light and tactile, meaning you can manipulate them in a manner similar to using physical input/output devices; simply touch the name of the star system you want to explore, and that star will expand into a more detailled map of its systems, while touching any object on the system map will call up all the data we have on that object.
Our shipnets also have voice interface, if you're more comfortable using that."
"Thank you," Boomer said.
"We're all Humans here, aren't we?" McDugan replied, smiling.
"We haven't much time, if any, before the Kobolds attack in force," he added. "Why don't we get to work?"
42.Y38PH 14:42:19
She'd remembered the first time she'd visited Landing Bay Alpha, and smiled.
The smile faded, as Cassiopeia, Galactica's senior life-sciences officer, supervised the loading of the last wounded members of Galactica's crew onto shuttles which would transport them to waiting Earth medical ships.
"You," her husband whispered, gently holding her from behind,"are as beautiful now, as you were, when we were first in this landing bay together."
"I'm older now," Cassi reminded him.
"I'm older too," Starbuck replied,grinning, a bit of the swaggering, fumarello-smoking gambler still left within him."Since we've grown old at the same time, that means you haven't changed a bit, so...."
Cassiopeia smiled widely, letting herself sink into Starbuck's embrace.
If only for a moment.
She sighed, as, reluctantly, Starbuck let her go, and she resumed her check of the life pods of wounded Galactica warriors, speaking what words of comfort she could think of speaking, before, with as equal reluctance as Starbuck had moments before, she let them go into the care of the blue and greenish-grey suited Earth medics and their white berets.
"They'll be in good hands, I promise," an oddly-lilting voice reassured Cassiopeia, Galactica's senior life-sciences officer looking up into the warm, kindly eyes of a man with almost pure black skin, contrasting with his salt-and-pepper hair.
"Doctor Benjamin Kyle," he introduced himself, "AD Leonis Base's chief medical officer."
"Cassiopeia," she said, shaking hands with Kyle."This is my husband, Colonel Starbuck, acting commander of the Galactica."
"Doctor Kyle," Starbuck said, warmly shaking the other man's hand.
"Ben, please Colonel," Ben said.
"Starbuck," her husaband replied, before asking:
"So, you're going to take our wounded to this base of yours?"
"As quickly as we can," Ben replied."The Base medcenter has superior facilities to even a medship, and the Kobolds aren't just going to wait around before launching another attack against your fleet."
"No," Starbuck agreed,"they won't. They'll be back, in force, in the time it takes for them to plot the lightspeed jump from whatever base they came from."
"The one at Epsilon Eridani," Ben said,"is nearest to us. It was a major Centauri fleet yard, until the Kobolds defeated them almost forty years ago. The bastards expanded its facilities, and have been using its docks to build more, newer ships and weapons, since we cut them off from their homeworlds, when we blew the Ring Of Fire straight to Hell and gone."
He turned his attention back to the shuttles, as the last one started raising its cargo ramp.
"I better get going," Ben said."It's been good meeting you both; I will let you know immediately, if something should arise with any of your patients, Cassiopeia."
"Thank you," Cassi replied.
"It was good meeting you both," Ben said, as he ran toward the slowly-rising cargo ramp of that last shuttle.
"We better get clear," Starbuck remarked, even as Cassi turned toward the lift leading to the rest of the battlestar, her husband just a step behind her, as they got a safe distance away from the Earth shuttles, as they fired up their drives, and launched themselves out of the landing bay.
Starbuck put his arm around her, and Cassi leaned in against him, as they stepped onto the lift.
Neither of them said anything, as the lift carried them from the landing bay to the Galactica's main deck.
Starbuck sighed, as he regarded the fire-blackened corridor, cabling hanging from the ceiling, the lights which had been slowly, but surely, failing over the last few yahren.
"I know," Cassi whispered."It's hard seeing her like this, isn't it?"
"A lot of things have been hard lately," Starbuck remarked, as they walked along the corridor to their quarters.
"Apollo?" she asked, even knowing the answer.
"I just can't believe he..." Starbuck started to whisper, trailing off.
"I should talk to Sheba, " Cassi said.
"Yeah," Starbuck said, letting go, as he just looked into her eyes.
"She needs someone to talk to right now," he said.
"I just...thank the Lords of Kobol I have you," he added, as tears ran down his face.
"In the beginning, there was Earth."
Six words.
All that had been necessary for the world to change before his eyes.
The chief scientific advisor to the Council of the Twelve whispered those six words, the first line of the Anethma, over and over.
Before finally moving on the rest of the The Cycles of Twelve.
Reading through it, Wilker was convinced that this had been how the Book Of the Word had begun originally, even if it had lacked a creation narrative.
More or less.
Because there were accounts of the lives of the Twelve Lords of Kobol.
As human beings.
Those lives told as cycles of birth, growth, love, loss, great achievements, terrible failures, death, and rebirth as other men and women to begin the cycle anew.
Over thousands of years.
Years.
Further reserach into the languages of Earth had come upon the word for year in German.
Jahr.
Pronounced similar to yahren.
Wilker nodded absently, as he continued to read through these cycles of birth and rebirth, fascinated by how the human race, through these Cycles of Twelve, had grown from frail animals, defensless against cold and predators, to peoples of poetry, music, culture, great works and achievements, fearsome in their awesome power, noble in their striving, wise at their peak, tragic in their fall to brutality.
Courageous, even magnificent, in rising from their falls, starting over again, applying the lessons learned from mistakes they made, even if they didn't always remember the lessons, and kept making the same mistakes.
He smiled slightly, reaching the end of The Cycles of Twelve, pausing a moment, looking up from The Passage Through Lightning, the next of the scrolls of the Anthema, to the quarters around him.
They were as Adama himself as kept them, Lords Of Kobol rest his soul, the simple, neatly-kept bunk of an ordinary warrior in the far corner, the desk free of clutter, the recording wand in its receptacle next to the scanner which often displayed Adama's words, as he'd spoken them into his personal journal, the single picture of Adama, his wife Ita, their three children, when they had been much younger, framed on the corner of the desk opposite the scanner, the bookshelf with all the works of literature, poetry, law, science, philosophy spanning the entire life of the Twelve Civilized Tribes from the Exodus to the Holocaust.
And, perhaps central to the entire room, next to the scanners showing him the readouts from every part of Galactica, a window into space, in a recess between the thick, twin riveted walls of the battlestar's armor belt, a weakness in its defenses, a doorway for the radiations of space to enter, thus a rarity on a military vessel, its only twin being the much larger viewport on the bridge, sealed by a massive armored slab during combat.
That window was a privilege of rank, for a man who found such rank a terrible burden in the yahren since he'd led the survivors of the Colonies away from those seeking their destruction, a chance for him to look into the heavens around his fleet, and remind himself that he and his were a part of something greater.
That they had come from the humblest of origins and had both fallen beneath and risen beyond those origins, while never, ever forgetting themselves.
Wilker breathed deeply, turning back to the Anethma, to the Passage Through Lightning immediately following the Cycles of Twelve.
"So it came to pass," he read aloud,"as it so often did, when the tribes of Man were at their best, that some complained at the fortune of others, and talked of being persecuted and put upon with hard labor by all the others, though all were equal in favor and good fortune.
And these hungry and discontented, as equal in fortune and favor to those they hated and whose favor and good fortune they coveted, formed their own tribe, a tribe who were as hot, as cold, as hard as iron, and who lusted to see the good Earth bathed in blood.
And. this tribe, forged in iron, hungry for blood, would, in time, beget the Children of the Storm and the Urge, who would rise to dominion over that tribe."
42.Y38PH 14:40:00
Though, having been a warrior once, Boomer should have known better, he was still shocked by just how small this AdNF Vesta—a name shared with a Lord of Kobol—was in comparison to a Colonial battlestar.
The Eastern Alliance destroyers were one-sixth the size of that Earth ship, the President of the Council reminded himself, as the shuttle drew closer to the Earth cruiser,and their 5.33-metric railguns caused untold damage to the Fleet and to Galactica herself with their near-lightspeed rocket projectiles.
These Earth vessels, he further reminded himself,also dispatched one of the Others' raidstars, which was much larger, by at least an order of magnitude, than their ships.
The shuttle carrying him and the other members of the Twelve settled into place over an airlock at the top of the tapered cylinder of their main hull, behind and slightly above the tapered, flattened, almost blade-like cylinder of the forward hull bristling with gun turrets.
Behind the main hull, a conical lattice of pipes and struts, at the end of which was a spike-studded cylinder housing the Earth cruiser's main drives.
Certainly, these Earth ships are more elegant than Alliance destroyers, Boomer remarked to himself.
The Earth ship had no internal hangar, so the shuttle had to dock externally, the airlock in its belly clanking, as it linked up with its counterpart on Vesta.
"Pressure and atmosphere normalized, Sire President," the Galactica shuttle pilot reported a moment later.
"Thank you, Flight Sergeant," Boomer replied, leading the rest of the Council through the opening interior hatch, through two airlock chambers, and onto the deck of the Earth warship.
A half-score of warriors in grey-green powered armor, and a lissome woman in a blue spacesuit and a black beret over her short blonde hair came to attention, as Boomer saluted a flag with a white compass rose against a field of blue as bright as the young(ish) woman's spacesuit painted on the bulkhead beside him.
"Sire Boomer, " he introduced himself,"President of the Colonies, with the members of the Council of the Twelve. Permission to come aboard?"
The woman flinched, swallowed hard, then, with a tightly-controlled voice, she introduced herself as "Capitaine de frégate Kara Greystoke Thrace, first lieutenant of the Vesta. Permission granted, Sire Boomer."
"The Haut Amrial's waiting for you in the wardroom; if you'll come with me, please."
Thrace and her warriors led the way from the airlock, through a common area with tables. chairs, a kitchen area, and some kind of scanner, to a ladder in the middle of the commons, with quarters ringing the common area, the ring bisected by the airlocks at either end.
The warriors formed two ranks of five on either side of the ladder, Thrace prompting Boomer and his fellow Councillors with,"if you'd follow me, sirs, and madam," before turning around, and climbing up the ladder.
Boomer followed, climbing up into a red-lit circular room with an outer ring of control stations separated by the narrowest of margins from a pair of what apparentally were command stations in the center, the outer ring of stations broken only by a hatch directly behind the two center stations which Thrace led the representatives of the Twelve Colonies through.
At the end of another hatch was a cozy, circular room, a small kitchen in one corner, a sofa and small table at the opposite corner, a conference table and several chairs in the center.
A husky, white-haired man, skin a slight shade lighter than Boomer's own, rose from the chair at the head of conference table, and extended his hand.
"Haut Amiral du Terre Edward McDugan," the man introduced himself, Boomer taking his hand, and saying "Sire Boomer, President of the Council of the Twelve."
He then introduced the other Councillors, McDugan replying:
"An honor meeting you all. Coffee?"
The Haut Amiral du Terre indicated a steel serving urn and several ceramic cups at the center of the table, adding:
"Your medico and mine have assured me it's compatiable with your physiologies."
"Thank you, yes," Boomer replied, he and the others taking seats around the table at McDugan's invitation, the Earth admiral pouring cups of this coffee for the others, before helping himself, and resumung his place at the head of the table.
Boomer took a tenative sip of his coffee...and a larger one, when he found it to be stronger, more robust in flavor, yet far less bitter than the kaff served in the Galactica's Officer's Club.
"It's from the SecGen's own private garden," McDugan explained."She grows this, as a hobby, and she tinkers with crossing the various species of coffee plants to produce a blend she likes."
"It's delicious," Siress Teilia remarked,"thank you, Haut Amiral."
"I heard about Commander Apollo," McDugan then said, coming straight to the sore point. "About what happened."
"You shouldn't rush to...any sort...of...judgement," Boomer said hesitantly."As some of my colleagues already have."
"He broke the law, plotted open rebellion against the Council," Sire Dammerman of Sagitara insisted.
"He's been a warrior at war his entire adult life," Siress Teilia replied,"and he's seen his family, his wife, so many under his command killed."
"And, much of that is our fault," Sire Geller acknowledged."If we hadn't been so quick to lift the martial law decree after our initial encounter with the Terrans, those Alliance enforcers wouldn't have been in a position to escape our custody, and cause trouble for our people later on."
"And, we agreed," the old man ruefully added,"to send Adama and Salik to the Others...to their...."
He sighed, Sire Wong of Aerilon remarking:
"'Never judge a man, until you've walked a centar in his boots.'"
"'Til you've walked a mile in his moccasains,' " McDugan said.
"And, it's not my place to judge," he added, eyes distant."I've also been fighting all my adult life, and...a lot of good people have died on my watch."
A silence settled over the room, broken only after McDugan asked:
"I did expect to see Colonel Starbuck with you, though. Where is he?"
"Coordinating the transfer of his wounded warriors to your medical ships," Boomer answered,"as well as the evacuations of those fleet ships whose power systems have failed."
"Yeah," McDugan said, after another sip of coffee. "You've had another four ships break down on you."
"Five," Sire Fenrick of Canceron spoke up."The Comp-Tel ship experienced complete power failure before we left Galactica."
McDugan nodded.
"And," Boomer said,"we've had reports from the Gemmonse freighter; their energizer is shorting out. They've always had trouble with their systems, since they were the most overloaded with people, more than they should've taken on board, when we evacuated our Colonies, but...."
"Yeah," McDugan said again. "I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of decisions those captains...your Commander Adama...had to make then, how many to leave behind to be..."
The elderly Earth warrior trailed off, shaking his head, sighing.
"I've been authorized by Earthdome," he then said,"to offer what resources les Nations can spare to finding you a new home, whether you want to settle amongst us, or colonize a new world on your own. We have data on every star system in known space, plus the ones IPX has explored, but we haven't been able to colonize. You can even settle on Earth, if that's your wish, though we're still terraforming her, repairing the damage done by the Kobolds and ourselves.
Earthgov's recomissioning one of their colony ships; it's similar in size and shape to the mobile airdock we're using to repair the Galactica, and it can hold forty times your current population; when you decide, we can have it here in an hour, maybe two."
McDugan then touched a few keys on a hologram floating from a flexible band around his head, and star charts now floated over the center of the conference table.
"The star systems firmly held by us are in blue letters," he informed the others,"the ones held firmly by the Kobolds and their subject races are in red, the ones which are active battlefields are in yellow, star systems of non-aligned races are in white, and explored but uninhabited systems are in green.
Our holograms are hard light and tactile, meaning you can manipulate them in a manner similar to using physical input/output devices; simply touch the name of the star system you want to explore, and that star will expand into a more detailled map of its systems, while touching any object on the system map will call up all the data we have on that object.
Our shipnets also have voice interface, if you're more comfortable using that."
"Thank you," Boomer said.
"We're all Humans here, aren't we?" McDugan replied, smiling.
"We haven't much time, if any, before the Kobolds attack in force," he added. "Why don't we get to work?"
42.Y38PH 14:42:19
She'd remembered the first time she'd visited Landing Bay Alpha, and smiled.
The smile faded, as Cassiopeia, Galactica's senior life-sciences officer, supervised the loading of the last wounded members of Galactica's crew onto shuttles which would transport them to waiting Earth medical ships.
"You," her husband whispered, gently holding her from behind,"are as beautiful now, as you were, when we were first in this landing bay together."
"I'm older now," Cassi reminded him.
"I'm older too," Starbuck replied,grinning, a bit of the swaggering, fumarello-smoking gambler still left within him."Since we've grown old at the same time, that means you haven't changed a bit, so...."
Cassiopeia smiled widely, letting herself sink into Starbuck's embrace.
If only for a moment.
She sighed, as, reluctantly, Starbuck let her go, and she resumed her check of the life pods of wounded Galactica warriors, speaking what words of comfort she could think of speaking, before, with as equal reluctance as Starbuck had moments before, she let them go into the care of the blue and greenish-grey suited Earth medics and their white berets.
"They'll be in good hands, I promise," an oddly-lilting voice reassured Cassiopeia, Galactica's senior life-sciences officer looking up into the warm, kindly eyes of a man with almost pure black skin, contrasting with his salt-and-pepper hair.
"Doctor Benjamin Kyle," he introduced himself, "AD Leonis Base's chief medical officer."
"Cassiopeia," she said, shaking hands with Kyle."This is my husband, Colonel Starbuck, acting commander of the Galactica."
"Doctor Kyle," Starbuck said, warmly shaking the other man's hand.
"Ben, please Colonel," Ben said.
"Starbuck," her husaband replied, before asking:
"So, you're going to take our wounded to this base of yours?"
"As quickly as we can," Ben replied."The Base medcenter has superior facilities to even a medship, and the Kobolds aren't just going to wait around before launching another attack against your fleet."
"No," Starbuck agreed,"they won't. They'll be back, in force, in the time it takes for them to plot the lightspeed jump from whatever base they came from."
"The one at Epsilon Eridani," Ben said,"is nearest to us. It was a major Centauri fleet yard, until the Kobolds defeated them almost forty years ago. The bastards expanded its facilities, and have been using its docks to build more, newer ships and weapons, since we cut them off from their homeworlds, when we blew the Ring Of Fire straight to Hell and gone."
He turned his attention back to the shuttles, as the last one started raising its cargo ramp.
"I better get going," Ben said."It's been good meeting you both; I will let you know immediately, if something should arise with any of your patients, Cassiopeia."
"Thank you," Cassi replied.
"It was good meeting you both," Ben said, as he ran toward the slowly-rising cargo ramp of that last shuttle.
"We better get clear," Starbuck remarked, even as Cassi turned toward the lift leading to the rest of the battlestar, her husband just a step behind her, as they got a safe distance away from the Earth shuttles, as they fired up their drives, and launched themselves out of the landing bay.
Starbuck put his arm around her, and Cassi leaned in against him, as they stepped onto the lift.
Neither of them said anything, as the lift carried them from the landing bay to the Galactica's main deck.
Starbuck sighed, as he regarded the fire-blackened corridor, cabling hanging from the ceiling, the lights which had been slowly, but surely, failing over the last few yahren.
"I know," Cassi whispered."It's hard seeing her like this, isn't it?"
"A lot of things have been hard lately," Starbuck remarked, as they walked along the corridor to their quarters.
"Apollo?" she asked, even knowing the answer.
"I just can't believe he..." Starbuck started to whisper, trailing off.
"I should talk to Sheba, " Cassi said.
"Yeah," Starbuck said, letting go, as he just looked into her eyes.
"She needs someone to talk to right now," he said.
"I just...thank the Lords of Kobol I have you," he added, as tears ran down his face.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.Y38PH 14:40:27
"So very good of you to finally visit your own husband," Apollo said with disdain, as the guard outside let Sheba into his cell.
"I'm surprised," he added, not rising from his bunk, as Sheba stood in front of it,"you even remember you are still sealed to me, given that you have Bojay now."
This, again, she thought, but did not dare give vent to.
She simply closed her eyes, as she cocked her head up at the ceiling, breathing deeply.
"I should've come sooner," she admitted."I couldn't, I...couldn't face you."
"It wasn't as if," her husband bitterly remarked,"you were ever there for me in the first place."
She opened her eyes, balling her fists tightly at her sides, as she glared at him.
"Thirty yahren, Apollo," she said through clenched teeth."Thirty yahren. I was there, always, trying to be a shoulder for you to lean—"
"You turned against me," Apollo accused,"same as all the others! You turned against your own husband, and sided with those fracks on the Council of the Twelve!"
"I am a warrior, Apollo," Sheba replied hotly,"and I swore the same oath as you, as your father, and as m—"
"You leave my father out of this!" Apollo screamed in her face, as he stood up, staring down at her."I'm not my father, that should be obvious to anyone in this fleet, I'm never, ever going to be the man my father—"
"Frack that!" Sheba screamed back at him, in spite of herself."No one ever expected you to be Adama; Adama never expected you to be him!"
"But, you're not you, Apollo!" she added. "You haven't been you for a long time now."
Tears ran down her cheeks, and she couldn't help the sob in her voice, as she whispered:
"I miss you."
A silence passed between them.
Apollo broke it after a moment, looking away from his wife, as he spoke:
"I am the same man I've always been; you're the one who's changed, Sheba, you, Starbuck, Boomer...you're the ones who turned against me, betrayed me and this fleet to the Council!"
"Even Boxey betrayed you?" she asked, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, but no longer caring.
He glared at her.
"Boxey supported the Council too," Sheba whispered."Or, have you forgotten the last words between you and him, before he launched?"
"How fracking dare you!" Apollo spat.
"He swore the same oath to obey the lawful orders of the Council of the Twelve," Sheba pushed,"to uphold and defend the Covenant of the Twelve, and everything our civilization stood for, as the rest of us.
Including Adama."
"Again with my father!" Apollo said through clenched teeth."How about we discuss your father, the great and legendary Commander Cain, who disobeyed orders whenever it suited his ego."
"He disobeyed one order, and accepted the consequences for it," Sheba said tautly, as Apollo kept pushing back:
"You put him on a pedestal, and worship him like he was one of the fracking Lords of Kobol; the sun rises and sets by your father's command, he can do no wrong in your sight."
He snorted contempt at her, turning away, as he said:
"Some warrior you are. All you have ever been, Sheba, is some spoiled little girl who wants her daddy back, so he can kiss her bruises and tuck her in at night."
"You fracking son of a whore," came out of Sheba's mouth, before she could think to stop herself.
Then the lights turned red, and the battle stations klaxons sounded.
Apollo snickered.
"You should get to your Viper, little girl," he mocked,"and pretend to be something you're not."
42.119AC 21:44:30
"Done," Pegasus' chief medical officer, Major Julian Bashir, said to Sisko, thirty seconds before the fleet spun up their FTL drives, and jumped.
And, was knocked back down into normal space, alarms screaming throughout the darkened CIC, as Pegasus shuddered from multiple impacts, multiple penetrations, Chakotay reporting:
"Decks 15 to 21 gutted, no survivors; power out on Decks 2 to 14, FTL offline, internal heat 47 degrees, continuing to—"
"Launch all craft!" Sisko shouted over comms."Tac, quantum torpedos, full spread! Engineering, I need FTL back up, and I need it back up now!"
"I suppose," Major Miles O'Brien's holoimage talked back to him,"you want a pony and a plastic battlestar as well, Comman—"
"Marines!" Sisko shouted."Administer a jury trial and appropriate sentence to Mister O'Brien; I will not have senior command staff—"
The CIC went dark again, as Chakotay told him,"all birds away, Skipper."
"Helm," Sisko ordered,"evasive maneuvers, max burn, three seconds. Nav, plot evasives for the helm, and firing solutions for Mister Rozhenko's torpedo volleys!"
"Cruisers jumping in, directly ahead!" a sensor watchstander cried out, as Sisko watched an Akira-class torpedostar die on Pegasus' master holoprojector. "153,000 kilometers downrange and closing fast at three thou—"
Again, CIC went dark, and alarms shrilled in the gloom.
"Severe damage to impulse engine," Chakotay reported."No better than 800G max burn available; engineering reports impulse thermopile is shorting out."
"Return fire, all PHASRs!" Sisko ordered."CAG, we'll hold them here! The real target are the Enemy Tribes! Jump into the middle of their formation, and frakkin' kill them all!"
"Aye, sir," Paris replied, as DRADIS showed Pegasus' entire remaining air wing going FTL.
2275.2.12 20:45:00
"Launch Starkillers, now!" Capitaine de frégate Kara Greystoke Thrace screamed, even as Capitaine de corvette Armand Chaing salvoed the multi-warhead anti-battlestar missiles as fast as the tubes' electromagnetic motors could launch them.
"Max burn, one second," she ordered,"Nav, plot evasives for the helm! Aux Con, Combat, stand by point defenses! Comms, tell the Galahad and the medships to jump clear, now!"
The CIC team acknowledged their first lieutenant's orders, as Haut-amiral McDugan took his place at the station to Kara's right.
"Mister Thrace," he said, not asking for a sitrep, not needing to, while Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Maurice Henley reported the Galahad and the medships had jumped clear.
"Leaving only the other refugee ships," Mackie observed, studying the tactical situation floating over his MFD, before barking out over comms "Vesta to Agammenon, Alexander, and Churchill, jump into the middle of those Kobold fucks stranded without hyperdrive, and take them out! Viper and Starfury squadrons, stick close to the refugee ships, and keep them safe; that is your only job! Carriers will support!"
"Multiple vampires inbound!" Henley reported a few moments later, even as Vesta's point defenses leapt into action, burning as many Kobold multiple-warhead meson torps out of hyperspace, then out of normspace, as fast as they could.
"Tac, downfire lasers in mounts Charlie One and Charlie Two, assist point defenses in burning down those torps," Kara ordered, as CIC went dark a second, Captaine de corvette Elisabeth Udoh's holo reporting,"primary electrics 84% disrupted, no penetrations beyond 'tween deck spaces; internal heat 52 degrees, continuing to rise!"
"Multiple small-craft Cherenkov signatures detected!" Henley then reported."Hostiles jumping in, now!"
"Galactica, four Intrepid-class jumping," reported Vesta's intel officer, Lieutenant de vaisseau Mechelle Ng, as Raptors, Aquarius-class scout-escorts, and Viper Mk. IXs jumped into normspace and burned hard on intercepts for the refugee ships.
2275.2.12 20:47:50
"By flights! Break and attack!" Capitaine de corvette Warren Keffer shouted over comms, flushing his last remaining pair of anti-battlestar missiles, before he led a flight of three 675-ton Starfury gunships on an intercept for the Vipers and scout-escorts vomiting forth from the hangars of the Kobold battlestar.
"Keep them away from the refugee ships, at all costs!" he added unecessarily, as the cloud of enemy small craft spread out to cover the over two hundred ships either deadstick and drifting, or desperately firing their engines and RCS thrusters in an attempt to evade.
While the Jupiter-class battlestar plowed straight through, lasers and kinetic penetrators boiling away its armor, its phased-array lasers, ion cannon, and multiple meson-warhead torp launchers blazing away at refugees and Earth warships alike, two of the four Intrepids who'd jumped in with the Galactica tumbling end over end through space.
Keffer fired his RCS thrusters, added brief moments of 200G burn from the triple torches, jinking and burning hard at the same time he triggered his four 90mm railguns and his 200nm UV laser, not even seeing what he was shooting at, just maneuvering and firing to the tune of warning and lock tones shrilling inside his helmet, letting his shipnet confirm any kills, for doing so himself would get him killed.
Enterprise's CAG found himself in the path of a large number of meson warheads screaming down on a broken-down, patched-together commercial transport(so it looked to him), the veteran Marine d'Etoile Starfury pilot firing a quick burst of las and torch-assisted tungsten penetrators in toward them, before a warning tone had him jinking, burning, violent killing momentum along his previous vector, and just as violently building it back up along a different one, the diamagnetics threatening to crap out and turn him into a bloody, greasy paste spread thinly across the cockpit.
A quick, blind squirt from the railguns, a photoflash of white, strobing light out of the corner of his eye, another jink and burn, more violent deceleration and acceleration, alarms shrilling in his ears, as he just kept moving and firing, jinking and burning.
"Son of a bitch!" he heard Ensigne Valery Rossosovsky swear over squadron tacnet, Keffer viscerally aware of a larger strobing roar of hot light somewhere to his starboard.
42.Y38PH 14:49:23
"They got the frackin—" one of Galactica's pilots shouted out.
"I know what they got!" Sheba roared over comms, even as she pumped laser bolts into an enemy Raptor trying to boost away from her.
While, out of the corner of her eye, Galactica's strike captain could see the prison barge, gutted, broken, tumbling lifelessly through the darkness.
Warning tones screamed at her, her scanner picking up at least a dozen warheads screaming toward her, Sheba cutting in her turbos, jinking hard, knowing it wasn't going to be in—
Rapid laser fire from another Viper intersected those warheads, removing them from her sky just barely in time, her wingman, Flight Sergeant Cass, burning past her, her lasers still cycling as rapidly as it was possible for them to.
"Thanks," she said, as she flew past the Gemmonse freighter, badly overloaded with their people, the elderly ship, never meant for deep-star travel, firing her engines and her thrusters to try and get clear of the fighting.
When her engines exploded in a titanic flare, the ship violently shot forward a great distance, then drifted dead and silent.
As a pack of enemy Vipers screamed toward it, and Sheba cut in her turbos to intercept.
2275.2.12 20:51:59
"Intercept vector, emergency burn!" Sulu roared."Put us between those Kobolds and that ship!"
"Tac, transfer main laser firing control to my station!" Gideon ordered."Downfiring main lasers in support of point defenses!"
"Aye, sir!"s rang in Sulu's ears, as AdNF Enterprise roared in, main and point-defense lasers burning into the three dozen Kobold Viper Mark VIIs streaking down on easy prey, with only a single Colonial Viper otherwise offering opposition to that.
The CIC's multi-function displays and red lighting momentarily went dark, Pavel reporting:
"Primary and secondary electrics completely burned out; Mount Alfa One offline! Mesons have penetrated weps and crew decks, with severe damage! Internal temp now sixty degrees, continuing to rise!"
"Maintain present intercept!" Sulu ordered.
"Aquarius-class scout-escorts converging on us from all vectors!" Theissing reported, as CIC went dark again.
"Maintain present intercept!" Sulu repeated, as another voice said over tacnet:
"Galactica Gold Spar Leader to Enterprise; we'll keep those ships off your backs."
"Arigato, Gold Spar Leader," Sulu replied.
"Just get those bastards off the Gemmonse frieghter, and the ambrosia's on—no, no, those miserable fracking sons of whores!"
In the master holoprojector, Sulu watched the first Colonial Viper to come to the defense of the helpless Gemmonese freighter die.
"Additional Kobold Vipers, Raptors and escorts closing with Gemmonse freighter," Theissing almost whispered."Galactica now closing with Gemmonse freighter; two Intrepid-class now closing Enterprise."
Sulu nodded, studied the master holoprojector and his own tactical board a moment, and decided:
"Tac, target the Galactica, and launch Starkillers; the railguns and main lasers will come to bear on the Intrepid.
Maintain present vector."
"So very good of you to finally visit your own husband," Apollo said with disdain, as the guard outside let Sheba into his cell.
"I'm surprised," he added, not rising from his bunk, as Sheba stood in front of it,"you even remember you are still sealed to me, given that you have Bojay now."
This, again, she thought, but did not dare give vent to.
She simply closed her eyes, as she cocked her head up at the ceiling, breathing deeply.
"I should've come sooner," she admitted."I couldn't, I...couldn't face you."
"It wasn't as if," her husband bitterly remarked,"you were ever there for me in the first place."
She opened her eyes, balling her fists tightly at her sides, as she glared at him.
"Thirty yahren, Apollo," she said through clenched teeth."Thirty yahren. I was there, always, trying to be a shoulder for you to lean—"
"You turned against me," Apollo accused,"same as all the others! You turned against your own husband, and sided with those fracks on the Council of the Twelve!"
"I am a warrior, Apollo," Sheba replied hotly,"and I swore the same oath as you, as your father, and as m—"
"You leave my father out of this!" Apollo screamed in her face, as he stood up, staring down at her."I'm not my father, that should be obvious to anyone in this fleet, I'm never, ever going to be the man my father—"
"Frack that!" Sheba screamed back at him, in spite of herself."No one ever expected you to be Adama; Adama never expected you to be him!"
"But, you're not you, Apollo!" she added. "You haven't been you for a long time now."
Tears ran down her cheeks, and she couldn't help the sob in her voice, as she whispered:
"I miss you."
A silence passed between them.
Apollo broke it after a moment, looking away from his wife, as he spoke:
"I am the same man I've always been; you're the one who's changed, Sheba, you, Starbuck, Boomer...you're the ones who turned against me, betrayed me and this fleet to the Council!"
"Even Boxey betrayed you?" she asked, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, but no longer caring.
He glared at her.
"Boxey supported the Council too," Sheba whispered."Or, have you forgotten the last words between you and him, before he launched?"
"How fracking dare you!" Apollo spat.
"He swore the same oath to obey the lawful orders of the Council of the Twelve," Sheba pushed,"to uphold and defend the Covenant of the Twelve, and everything our civilization stood for, as the rest of us.
Including Adama."
"Again with my father!" Apollo said through clenched teeth."How about we discuss your father, the great and legendary Commander Cain, who disobeyed orders whenever it suited his ego."
"He disobeyed one order, and accepted the consequences for it," Sheba said tautly, as Apollo kept pushing back:
"You put him on a pedestal, and worship him like he was one of the fracking Lords of Kobol; the sun rises and sets by your father's command, he can do no wrong in your sight."
He snorted contempt at her, turning away, as he said:
"Some warrior you are. All you have ever been, Sheba, is some spoiled little girl who wants her daddy back, so he can kiss her bruises and tuck her in at night."
"You fracking son of a whore," came out of Sheba's mouth, before she could think to stop herself.
Then the lights turned red, and the battle stations klaxons sounded.
Apollo snickered.
"You should get to your Viper, little girl," he mocked,"and pretend to be something you're not."
42.119AC 21:44:30
"Done," Pegasus' chief medical officer, Major Julian Bashir, said to Sisko, thirty seconds before the fleet spun up their FTL drives, and jumped.
And, was knocked back down into normal space, alarms screaming throughout the darkened CIC, as Pegasus shuddered from multiple impacts, multiple penetrations, Chakotay reporting:
"Decks 15 to 21 gutted, no survivors; power out on Decks 2 to 14, FTL offline, internal heat 47 degrees, continuing to—"
"Launch all craft!" Sisko shouted over comms."Tac, quantum torpedos, full spread! Engineering, I need FTL back up, and I need it back up now!"
"I suppose," Major Miles O'Brien's holoimage talked back to him,"you want a pony and a plastic battlestar as well, Comman—"
"Marines!" Sisko shouted."Administer a jury trial and appropriate sentence to Mister O'Brien; I will not have senior command staff—"
The CIC went dark again, as Chakotay told him,"all birds away, Skipper."
"Helm," Sisko ordered,"evasive maneuvers, max burn, three seconds. Nav, plot evasives for the helm, and firing solutions for Mister Rozhenko's torpedo volleys!"
"Cruisers jumping in, directly ahead!" a sensor watchstander cried out, as Sisko watched an Akira-class torpedostar die on Pegasus' master holoprojector. "153,000 kilometers downrange and closing fast at three thou—"
Again, CIC went dark, and alarms shrilled in the gloom.
"Severe damage to impulse engine," Chakotay reported."No better than 800G max burn available; engineering reports impulse thermopile is shorting out."
"Return fire, all PHASRs!" Sisko ordered."CAG, we'll hold them here! The real target are the Enemy Tribes! Jump into the middle of their formation, and frakkin' kill them all!"
"Aye, sir," Paris replied, as DRADIS showed Pegasus' entire remaining air wing going FTL.
2275.2.12 20:45:00
"Launch Starkillers, now!" Capitaine de frégate Kara Greystoke Thrace screamed, even as Capitaine de corvette Armand Chaing salvoed the multi-warhead anti-battlestar missiles as fast as the tubes' electromagnetic motors could launch them.
"Max burn, one second," she ordered,"Nav, plot evasives for the helm! Aux Con, Combat, stand by point defenses! Comms, tell the Galahad and the medships to jump clear, now!"
The CIC team acknowledged their first lieutenant's orders, as Haut-amiral McDugan took his place at the station to Kara's right.
"Mister Thrace," he said, not asking for a sitrep, not needing to, while Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Maurice Henley reported the Galahad and the medships had jumped clear.
"Leaving only the other refugee ships," Mackie observed, studying the tactical situation floating over his MFD, before barking out over comms "Vesta to Agammenon, Alexander, and Churchill, jump into the middle of those Kobold fucks stranded without hyperdrive, and take them out! Viper and Starfury squadrons, stick close to the refugee ships, and keep them safe; that is your only job! Carriers will support!"
"Multiple vampires inbound!" Henley reported a few moments later, even as Vesta's point defenses leapt into action, burning as many Kobold multiple-warhead meson torps out of hyperspace, then out of normspace, as fast as they could.
"Tac, downfire lasers in mounts Charlie One and Charlie Two, assist point defenses in burning down those torps," Kara ordered, as CIC went dark a second, Captaine de corvette Elisabeth Udoh's holo reporting,"primary electrics 84% disrupted, no penetrations beyond 'tween deck spaces; internal heat 52 degrees, continuing to rise!"
"Multiple small-craft Cherenkov signatures detected!" Henley then reported."Hostiles jumping in, now!"
"Galactica, four Intrepid-class jumping," reported Vesta's intel officer, Lieutenant de vaisseau Mechelle Ng, as Raptors, Aquarius-class scout-escorts, and Viper Mk. IXs jumped into normspace and burned hard on intercepts for the refugee ships.
2275.2.12 20:47:50
"By flights! Break and attack!" Capitaine de corvette Warren Keffer shouted over comms, flushing his last remaining pair of anti-battlestar missiles, before he led a flight of three 675-ton Starfury gunships on an intercept for the Vipers and scout-escorts vomiting forth from the hangars of the Kobold battlestar.
"Keep them away from the refugee ships, at all costs!" he added unecessarily, as the cloud of enemy small craft spread out to cover the over two hundred ships either deadstick and drifting, or desperately firing their engines and RCS thrusters in an attempt to evade.
While the Jupiter-class battlestar plowed straight through, lasers and kinetic penetrators boiling away its armor, its phased-array lasers, ion cannon, and multiple meson-warhead torp launchers blazing away at refugees and Earth warships alike, two of the four Intrepids who'd jumped in with the Galactica tumbling end over end through space.
Keffer fired his RCS thrusters, added brief moments of 200G burn from the triple torches, jinking and burning hard at the same time he triggered his four 90mm railguns and his 200nm UV laser, not even seeing what he was shooting at, just maneuvering and firing to the tune of warning and lock tones shrilling inside his helmet, letting his shipnet confirm any kills, for doing so himself would get him killed.
Enterprise's CAG found himself in the path of a large number of meson warheads screaming down on a broken-down, patched-together commercial transport(so it looked to him), the veteran Marine d'Etoile Starfury pilot firing a quick burst of las and torch-assisted tungsten penetrators in toward them, before a warning tone had him jinking, burning, violent killing momentum along his previous vector, and just as violently building it back up along a different one, the diamagnetics threatening to crap out and turn him into a bloody, greasy paste spread thinly across the cockpit.
A quick, blind squirt from the railguns, a photoflash of white, strobing light out of the corner of his eye, another jink and burn, more violent deceleration and acceleration, alarms shrilling in his ears, as he just kept moving and firing, jinking and burning.
"Son of a bitch!" he heard Ensigne Valery Rossosovsky swear over squadron tacnet, Keffer viscerally aware of a larger strobing roar of hot light somewhere to his starboard.
42.Y38PH 14:49:23
"They got the frackin—" one of Galactica's pilots shouted out.
"I know what they got!" Sheba roared over comms, even as she pumped laser bolts into an enemy Raptor trying to boost away from her.
While, out of the corner of her eye, Galactica's strike captain could see the prison barge, gutted, broken, tumbling lifelessly through the darkness.
Warning tones screamed at her, her scanner picking up at least a dozen warheads screaming toward her, Sheba cutting in her turbos, jinking hard, knowing it wasn't going to be in—
Rapid laser fire from another Viper intersected those warheads, removing them from her sky just barely in time, her wingman, Flight Sergeant Cass, burning past her, her lasers still cycling as rapidly as it was possible for them to.
"Thanks," she said, as she flew past the Gemmonse freighter, badly overloaded with their people, the elderly ship, never meant for deep-star travel, firing her engines and her thrusters to try and get clear of the fighting.
When her engines exploded in a titanic flare, the ship violently shot forward a great distance, then drifted dead and silent.
As a pack of enemy Vipers screamed toward it, and Sheba cut in her turbos to intercept.
2275.2.12 20:51:59
"Intercept vector, emergency burn!" Sulu roared."Put us between those Kobolds and that ship!"
"Tac, transfer main laser firing control to my station!" Gideon ordered."Downfiring main lasers in support of point defenses!"
"Aye, sir!"s rang in Sulu's ears, as AdNF Enterprise roared in, main and point-defense lasers burning into the three dozen Kobold Viper Mark VIIs streaking down on easy prey, with only a single Colonial Viper otherwise offering opposition to that.
The CIC's multi-function displays and red lighting momentarily went dark, Pavel reporting:
"Primary and secondary electrics completely burned out; Mount Alfa One offline! Mesons have penetrated weps and crew decks, with severe damage! Internal temp now sixty degrees, continuing to rise!"
"Maintain present intercept!" Sulu ordered.
"Aquarius-class scout-escorts converging on us from all vectors!" Theissing reported, as CIC went dark again.
"Maintain present intercept!" Sulu repeated, as another voice said over tacnet:
"Galactica Gold Spar Leader to Enterprise; we'll keep those ships off your backs."
"Arigato, Gold Spar Leader," Sulu replied.
"Just get those bastards off the Gemmonse frieghter, and the ambrosia's on—no, no, those miserable fracking sons of whores!"
In the master holoprojector, Sulu watched the first Colonial Viper to come to the defense of the helpless Gemmonese freighter die.
"Additional Kobold Vipers, Raptors and escorts closing with Gemmonse freighter," Theissing almost whispered."Galactica now closing with Gemmonse freighter; two Intrepid-class now closing Enterprise."
Sulu nodded, studied the master holoprojector and his own tactical board a moment, and decided:
"Tac, target the Galactica, and launch Starkillers; the railguns and main lasers will come to bear on the Intrepid.
Maintain present vector."
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.275M3 20:54:00
"Sheba," he heard his brother Ciaphas whisper, as he watched his daughter's Viper die.
One more reason John was damned to eternal recurrence.
As he stood behind his oldest friend—one of his most stalwart, if relucatant, champions, from when he'd been a god—watched him stand there, and watch the child of his flesh die in the Council Hall augur room's warp eye, John mused on the chain of events which had brought the survivors of twelve of fallen Kobol's Colonies to having to fight for their lives against the descendants of the thirteenth tribe.
The tribe of Mosha, who, like John, had also had many names.
Daniel, Merdrot, Benjamin, Henry, Doremus, Joshua, Osiris, Iblis, Horus.
Child Of the Storm and the Urge.
Katar.
Son.
"Will she," Ciaphas asked, voice trembling,"at least find peace, my lord?"
"No," John replied.
"She wants to see you," he added."She knows you, like her, are fated to recur."
"Who in the frakkin' Warp decides that?!" Ciaphas angrily demanded. "She has done nothing to warrant that curse!"
"If," he whispered,"she has made mistakes, they're only from loving someone too much.
Twice."
"I know, brother," John replied, mind drifting, as it often did, to the final confrontation between himself and Katar.
The G'Quon Valley, on a world left barely alive by the Centauri, and now a moonscape of glassy, radioactive craters.
Aboard his son's battle barge in the skies over another Earth, named Holy by those who'd ruled in his name for ten thousand years.
Then the field at Camlann, when there had been just the one Earth, before the ships of the hunted and the hated passed through the Lightning he had unleashed, triggering the Divergence.
And, finally, the first time, here, in the streets of this very city.
"At least she still loves you, Ciaphas," John softly said."As much as I still love my own child."
"Still, my lord?" Ciaphas asked.
"You are a parent yourself, my old friend," John reminded his companion through adventure and hardship. "You should know that answer already."
A silence, then Ciaphas said:
"I do."
"Go to her," John said."Please.
Before it is too late."
2275.2.12 20:55:08
"Five seconds, emergency burn!" Syuzen ordered, as CIC went dark again, came back up again, alarms howling in her wearable, as Botsleidner made her report.
While Kalsi and Montigny jinked, burned, and maneuvered Gennadi Ivanovich Koniev into position to hammer the Kobold Galaxy with railguns and Starkillers, while the heavy patrol cruiser's main 200nm UV lasers slashed out toward a pair of Defiants closing Koniev from opposing vectors, and the point defenses struggled to keep up with the sheer amount of Vipers, Raptors, scout-escorts, and ordinance being vectored their way.
CIC went dark still again, still again coming back to life, the Kobold fleet battlestar enveloped by photoflash after photoflash of hot light eating away his armor in bubbling, boiling bites, while both harassing Defiants spun end over end, gutted and glowing with the residual heat of their demise, an Akira screaming forth to take their places, as Koniev jerked down hard and sharply to the right.
"Another Akira burning hard on intercept!" Hollande reported, as meson warheads flew from the Kobold fleet battlestar and the two Akira-class torpedostars."Plus thirty by 6.5, 200 kiloklicks downrange and closing!"
"Eight seconds, emergency burn!" Syuzen ordered."Nav, plot evasives for the helm! AuxCon, Combat, overfire point-defense lasers!"
"Internal heat now 62.6 degrees, continuing to rise, Skipper!" Val warned."Overfiring the PDs will—"
"I know," Syuzen replied tersely, knowing also the chances of escaping most, if not all those meson warheads closing on Koniev were so close to zero, as made no o—
The torpstar to starboard died in a flash of light, its inbound meson warheads dispatched by a Marine d'Etoile cruiser rapidly closing from astern.
Another cruiser, also rapidly closing astern, passed Koniev to her portside, hammering the remaining Akira to a hollowed-out hulk.
"You didn't really think you'd get out of taking me dancing that easily, did you, Syuzen'ka?" her Sondra's image quipped over her wearable.
"I wasn't planning to get out of it, moya lyubimaya," Syuzen replied, grinning from ear to ear, as she concentrated all fire on the Kobold Galaxy.
42.Y38PH 14:55:16
"No," Starbuck whispered, as he sat uselessly on the bridge of the derelict Galactica, and listened to his Viper pilots' comms on Alpha channel.
"No!" he screamed, just as uselessly pounding his fist into the command console. "We've got to...."
He trailed off, sighing heavily, wetly.
"What can we do, Starbuck?" Cassi asked, her voice also heavy with grief.
She'd been closer to Sheba than he had, even when Sheba had resented her for her relationship with Cain.
And, now she was gone, just like that.
Just like her father, trading her life for her people's.
For the extremes and the values her people had placed between them.
As a warrior should.
But, that didn't make it right, or hurt any less.
Simply necessary, and that just made it hurt worse.
And, there was nothing Starbuck could do, but listen to more of his pilots risk their lives, and, very possibly, give up those lives as well, because...Galactica was in no shape to move, let alone fight.
The engineering teams from the Sir Galahad had barely had time to begin their work, before the Other Colonists had launched their second attack, but, what little they had been able to thus far only confirmed what Galactica's acting commander had already known.
The damage she'd suffered from the raidstar's attack earlier had accelerated the inevitable.
One energizer was completely destroyed, the power grid for the entire starboard side burned out and irreplaceable, the surviving energizer, having long shown signs of failing as well, since the fire on board after the attack on Gomoray, a fire which had irrepairably damaged much of Galactica's systems, including the starboard energizer that had only been replaced by cannabalizing one of the energizers from that last Cylon base ship they'd destroyed.
"Starbuck," Boomer's grief-stricken voice said over Beta channel."Starbuck, I..."
"I know, Boomer," Starbuck replied.
"I should be out there!" his old friend then angrily said."I was a warrior once, for frack's sake!"
"We both should be," was all Starbuck could think to say, as blindly, he reached out for his wife's hand.
2275.2.12 20:55:37
"The Romulo and the McQueen are moving to support Enterprise," Henley reported.
"Helm, Nav, take this ship right down that Intrepid's throat!" McDugan ordered."Tac, take that Kobold bastard out of my sky!"
"Aye, sir!"s met the orders of the Haut-amiral du Terre, as the Astronef des Nations Fédérés Vesta poured Starkillers, torch-assisted penetrators and 200nm ultraviolet-wavelength las into that 700-kiloton hull, peeling back his armor, exposing his structural members, boiling them off into space, as the Intrepid-class aegisstar, in its turn, salvoed multiple-warhead meson torps, particle beams, and 600nm UV las at Vesta, now jinking and burning violently, at the same time she kept all her guns bearing on her antagonist.
CIC went dark, came back up again, went dark again, came back up again, the veteran professional head of Earth's military tuning out the alarms, taking only superficial notice of Lochley's report of the primary electrics being burned out, and temperature at 65 degrees Centigrade and still rising, as his ship and he did the only damn thing either of them could do to live through this damn war: Drive on.
"Admiral?" Thrace asked...they'd found her on Tau Ceti III, after they'd liberated it thirty-five years ago, Kobold bastards having brought her with from one of their damn Colonies, Caprica...issued her, like you'd issue a man a set of web gear, and used much, much worse, and she'd driven on, won through, lived, in spite of them.
"'—I've got a woman who knows her man, drive on," McDugan realized he'd been singing."It don't mean nothin', it don't mean nothin'. Driiivve on.'"
42.119AC 21:56:00
CIC went dark, Adama ignoring the screaming of Galactica's XO, ordering the helm to "maintain present vector!" as the last Jupiter-class battlestar, the ship his grandfather had used to lead His Natural Aristocracy to victory over the fempervs and their State 119 years ago, bulled through the enemy, her rows of twin-turreted, rapid-firing, quantum torpedo launchers, twelve prow-mounted spinal particle PHASR lances, multiple PHASR generators, and point-defense PHASR batteries burned and blasted at the four puny, primitive, clumsy Terran hulls daring to block his path to the freighter infested with Enemy Tribesmen drifting silently just beyond them.
They made fumbling attempts to jink and burn their way clear of the loving, violent judgement Adama's flagship visited upon them, their rocks and mere lasers tearing through the battlestar's armor, causing CIC to go dark yet again.
"Starboard flight pod is gone!" Hoshi reported."Decks 3 to 21 have been gutted, no survivors! Power is out on all decks below 21! Starboard impulse engines offline! FTL offline! Wireless offline! DRADIS fire control offl—"
"All batteries, continue firing!" Adama roared over comms, as Galactica—his Galactica—closed with the four warships of the inmates of Terra.
His sole regret was his Benjamin's earlier attack damaging the Enemy's excuse for a battlestar too badly for it to stand in the field of battle, but this was even better; he would cleanse those heretics who'd relied on that battlestar for their protection from the skies of His Creation, while his pilots dispatched their pilots, with those still aboard that battlestar helplessly looking on.
Just before they were permitted to die.
He smiled, chuckled, as several of his starboard quantum torpedo turrets instantly destroyed several ships infested with the remnants of the Enemy Tribes, leaving them drifting, tumbling, and dead in the darkness, the port rank of quantum torpedo turrets raking two of their heavy cruisers(those militarist terms again), rendering them as dead as the other miserable ape things they had the arrant, unmitigated gall to presume they had any right to s—
42.119AC 21:57:50
Death is only gain, Sisko thought, as CIC went dark still again.
But, not for you, dear William, he added, with a smirk, as Pegasus continued evading and fighting off her attackers.
Bashir, the fleet battlestar's resident Section 31 operative, as well as its chief medical officer, had personally seen to that.
The public, of course, would know only that Admiral William Troy Adama, hero of His New Colonies, as well as of those Colonies lost to them these last 28 years, had ascended to Deo sapiens for his leadership in the final extermination of the Enemy Tribes, and for the example of personal courage he'd set with his crew's heroic sacrfice.
They must continue believing, after all, that they were destined to be Gods, meant to sit at the Table with Him and His Twelve.
"Sir!" the DRADIS operator reported."We've located the battlestar of the Enemy Tribes! It is at the Terran base in this system! DRADIS shows it being towed toward one of their—"
"FTL online, Commander," Chakotay informed him at the same time.
"Start the clock!" Sisko ordered, without hesitation.
42.Y38PH 14:57:50
"What do you want now, Colonel?!" Apollo sullenly demanded.
"Have you come to tell me about the additional damage we've sustained so far in this latest attack?" he then added.
"Oh, yes, that's right," he remarked sarcastically,"isn't it? We're out of the battle, thanks to your decision to abandon the Fleet, and let the humans from Earth—"
"It's about your wife," Starbuck forced himself to say, trying hard to throttle the anger toward his brother.
"I have no wife," Apollo told him.
"No," Starbuck whispered, the anger and grief leaking through anyway."Not anymore, Apollo."
There was a moment of stunned silence, Apollo's mouth working, but no words coming out.
Finally, he whispered:
"What do you mean by that, Starbuck?"
"What the frack do you think I mean?!" Starbuck snapped, the tears returning.
"Sheba's dead, Apollo," he spat the words out."She died defending the Gemmonese freighter from the Others."
"She's—" Apollo whispered, a trace of the warrior Starbuck had served alongside, the brother he'd found after yahren without a family, surfacing for just an micron.
Before the klaxon howled, and the lights turned red.
"Oh no," Starbuck whispered, knowing what this meant."No, no, for frack's sake!"
"Starbuck?!" he heard Apollo shout after him, as Starbuck ran for the bridge as fast he could.
2275.2.12 20:58:12
"Admiral!" shouted Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Eleni Hassaphas.
"I see it, Quartermaster," Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura replied tautly, as the Kobold fleet battlestar spun up for jump."And, I know where the bastard's going. Squadron, on me, prepare to enter hyperdrive! Nav, plot an intercept! Comms, advise Vesta of our situation!"
And, AdNF Agammenon led her squadron into hyperdrive, exiting it less than a hundred kiloklicks from the enemy battlestar, now burning hard on an intercept for the crippled Galactica, under tow by a dozen yard tugs toward one of the orbitals on the far side of AD Leonis III, 17 Escadron Croisseur salvoing Starkillers, as they vectored point-defense fire against the multiple-warhead meson torps the Kobold bastard shotgunned into space from his forward tubes, as his 600nm ultraviolet-wavelength, phased-array lasers lashed out at the squadron, forcing them to jink and burn, even as the Kobold jinked and burned.
"Churchill reports all remaining Kobold capital ships and escorts have entered hyperdrive," Capitaine de frégate Janice Rand reported, even as Hassaphas warned them of multiple hyperdrive exits, and fifteen badly-mauled, but still-operational Defiant-class raidstars charged in at full burn, ion cannon, PHASRs, meson-torp launchers, and 6" railguns firing full bore, along with five dozen Aquarius-class scout-escorts salvoing their multiple-warhead meson torpedos as fast as their tubes could fire them, their twin ion cannon thudding into the armor of the twelve Nation Fédérés heavy patrol cruisers now forced to devote railguns and point defenses toward dealing with the new arrivals.
42.119AC 21:58:12
Paris smirked at the flash of actinic light inside one of the lumbering ship's many domes.
And, at that light giving way to cleansing fire.
If only there was a way to hear their screams, Pegasus' CAG thought to himself, as he streaked past the domed ship, flipped his Viper Mark IX round, killed his momentum, and built it back up on a new intercept vector for that ship, arming another quantum torpedo, as he aimed his Viper at another dome, and made his—
His DRADIS warning receiver screamed just a fraction before laser bolts screamed toward his Viper, Paris jinking, burning, cancelling his momentum again, as he charged one of the Enemy's Vipers at emergency burn, chopping into his spaceframe with 30mm railgun rounds, while he easily, almost contemptiously, matched his every evasive maneuver.
The Enemy Viper—a crude representation of the Mark II used during the Great Crusade against the Caprican State over a century ago—again fired a volley of las, as if that would be able to scratch the paint job on this modern starfighter, the primitive starfighter jinking and burning out of the path of 30mm rounds vectored his way, the veteran Colonial Starfleet pilot matching this rank amateur's evasives still again, squeezing off another burst from his railguns, the militarist, statist Enemy firing another ineffectual volley of primitive laser fire which Paris, again, easily evaded, as, again, he matched the Enemy Colonist's evasives.
Smiling, as another blip came up fast on his DRADIS screen, that blip detaching four triangular blips which separated into more luminescent triangles converging on the large circular representations of domes.
Paris chuckled, imagining the look on the poor statist drone's face, when he saw everything in the three remaining domes burn, and knew nothing he did mattered.
Not even the las he drove through Paris' magnificent tool of modern science, peacekeeping and exploration, or even that his shots were fatal to Paris.
Death, after all, was only ga—
42.Y38PH 14:59:06
"Clear the bridge!" Starbuck ordered the skeleton crew manning Galactica's bridge stations, the mortally-wounded battlestar's acting commander then transferring all controls to the command console, before putting himself on unicom.
"Everyone aboard Galactica is to evacuate! Immediately! Get to the shuttles on Alpha Landing Bay, and go!"
"That," he added, using one of the forward port laser turrets to cut the cables between the tugs and the battlestar,"is my final order as a Colonial officer. May the Lords of Kobol go with you all."
Freed of the tugs, Starbuck fired the old girl's remaining engines and maneuvering thrusters, aiming her at the saucer shape of the Others' battlestar now twisting and turning away from the two dozen Earth warships fighting it and its consorts.
"Starbuck?!" came Cassi's pained voice over the scanner.
"I love you, Cassi," he whispered, shunting as much power from the remaining energizer as he could into the mega pulsars, arming the remaining air-to-air missiles, and engaging the shields, closing off the view of space in front of him.
Switching off the unicom channel, as he glanced at what the ship's working sensors were telling him, nodding, as all of Galactica's remaining shuttles fled the doomed battlestar's remaining landing bay, and he opened fire on the enemy battlestar with the mega pulsars and the missiles, even as he prepared to accelerate the ship to lightspeed.
42.275M3 21:00:00
"No!" poor Sheba screamed at the warp eye, helpless to stop what would come next.
As John was.
The mortally-wounded battlestar Galactica, holding some of the last of the descendants of the three hundred thousand he'd sent through the Squall to the world they'd dubbed Kobol, as well as the people of one of the Earths created by his decision to intervene, turned toward the battlestar of the tribe of Mosha who had all but destroyed Kobol, before being driven from it by the survivors of the tribe of Adama and the other eleven tribes, firing upon it with its mighty forward lances and salvo after salvo of missiles.
Which the battlestar of Mosha—or Daniel Morden, as he'd also been known to those people, that Earth—evaded, as John knew he would.
Just as he also knew Galactica had one terrible weapon left to deploy.
And, who would remain behind to deploy it, as the rest of his people, and the Earth people who'd been helping them, reached the safety of the base beyond.
Including Sheba's husband.
"Father, you have to do something!" she screamed at poor Ciaphas, sobbing, as she begged him "Please! Don't let this happen to Starbuck, what will Cassiopeia and Dillon do without him?!"
"I can't," Ciaphas whispered, turning away from his daughter, catching John's eye, and mouthing the two words John had come to hate most:
"My lord."
Ten thousand years, after he'd fallen out of pride, and took his brothers and sisters down with him, those same brothers and sisters had prayed to him, begged him to be their light in the darkness, and there had been so little he could do for them.
So many people calling his name throughout all the realities, and so damned little he could do.
Even when he'd been able to help, he'd only made things worse in the end.
Still...he was human.
He was human.
And, he had to try.
42.Y38PH 15:00:00
"Fracking die!" Dillon screamed, charging the enemy escort ship who'd burned every living thing in all the agro ship's four domes, including the people rescued from the Rising Star earlier, the enemy ship jinking, burning, firing pulse after blue-hot pulse from his twin pulsers, Dillon cutting in turbo thrust for a micron, dodging the other ship's fire, as he poured a flurry of pulses from his twin lasers into him, ripping him to shreds, and leaving his gutted corpse tumbling in the darkness.
But...all those people...they were still—
42.119AC 22:00:08
"You stupid, stupid frak," Ensign Wesley Eugene "Weasel" Crusher sneered at the Enemy Colonist whose tailpipe he'd just shoved a nuke, jinking and burning his Raptor Mark VI out of the path of las and torch-assisted penetrators, lining it up with another flying hangar queen of the Enemy Tribes, loosing another pair of nukes, before breaking hard right, down, and away.
"What happens," he remarked,"when you get fixated on your tar—"
42.Y38PH 15:00:08
He swallowed hard, heart hammering in his chest, lead in his stomach.
This wasn't what he wanted to do.
The enemy battlestar continued evading the fire from Galactica's rapidly-failing mega pulsars, shooting down the missiles he'd vectored toward it.
Alarms screamed at him, warning him the one surviving energizer—overstressed from fire damage and having to do the work of two from the Cylon suicide attack after Gomoray until they'd destroyed that last Cylon base ship, further stressed by yahren of battle and headlong flight for a planet many had stopped believing in—and the remaining engines would soon fail.
The scope showed the enemy battlestar releasing more of those meson torpedos which had sealed the battlestar's fate, as Starbuck's hands shook, almost too badly to shift the engine control levers forward.
Almost.
The last battlestar of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, Galactica, shot forward at lightspeed, then dropped back into normal space, an instant before she plowed into the other battlestar...
...and, Starbuck found himself in one of the shuttles, too stunned and shocked to do anything other than let a tearful Cassiopeia hug him tight enough to crush him.
As, through the shuttle's viewports, he saw the two battlestars floating conjoined, lifeless, and broken in the darkness.
"W-wha...how..." he stupidly gabbled, Cassi whispering, sobbing, "I don't care how."
"I don't care," she repeated, as she held on and did not let go.
As did he.
"Sheba," he heard his brother Ciaphas whisper, as he watched his daughter's Viper die.
One more reason John was damned to eternal recurrence.
As he stood behind his oldest friend—one of his most stalwart, if relucatant, champions, from when he'd been a god—watched him stand there, and watch the child of his flesh die in the Council Hall augur room's warp eye, John mused on the chain of events which had brought the survivors of twelve of fallen Kobol's Colonies to having to fight for their lives against the descendants of the thirteenth tribe.
The tribe of Mosha, who, like John, had also had many names.
Daniel, Merdrot, Benjamin, Henry, Doremus, Joshua, Osiris, Iblis, Horus.
Child Of the Storm and the Urge.
Katar.
Son.
"Will she," Ciaphas asked, voice trembling,"at least find peace, my lord?"
"No," John replied.
"She wants to see you," he added."She knows you, like her, are fated to recur."
"Who in the frakkin' Warp decides that?!" Ciaphas angrily demanded. "She has done nothing to warrant that curse!"
"If," he whispered,"she has made mistakes, they're only from loving someone too much.
Twice."
"I know, brother," John replied, mind drifting, as it often did, to the final confrontation between himself and Katar.
The G'Quon Valley, on a world left barely alive by the Centauri, and now a moonscape of glassy, radioactive craters.
Aboard his son's battle barge in the skies over another Earth, named Holy by those who'd ruled in his name for ten thousand years.
Then the field at Camlann, when there had been just the one Earth, before the ships of the hunted and the hated passed through the Lightning he had unleashed, triggering the Divergence.
And, finally, the first time, here, in the streets of this very city.
"At least she still loves you, Ciaphas," John softly said."As much as I still love my own child."
"Still, my lord?" Ciaphas asked.
"You are a parent yourself, my old friend," John reminded his companion through adventure and hardship. "You should know that answer already."
A silence, then Ciaphas said:
"I do."
"Go to her," John said."Please.
Before it is too late."
2275.2.12 20:55:08
"Five seconds, emergency burn!" Syuzen ordered, as CIC went dark again, came back up again, alarms howling in her wearable, as Botsleidner made her report.
While Kalsi and Montigny jinked, burned, and maneuvered Gennadi Ivanovich Koniev into position to hammer the Kobold Galaxy with railguns and Starkillers, while the heavy patrol cruiser's main 200nm UV lasers slashed out toward a pair of Defiants closing Koniev from opposing vectors, and the point defenses struggled to keep up with the sheer amount of Vipers, Raptors, scout-escorts, and ordinance being vectored their way.
CIC went dark still again, still again coming back to life, the Kobold fleet battlestar enveloped by photoflash after photoflash of hot light eating away his armor in bubbling, boiling bites, while both harassing Defiants spun end over end, gutted and glowing with the residual heat of their demise, an Akira screaming forth to take their places, as Koniev jerked down hard and sharply to the right.
"Another Akira burning hard on intercept!" Hollande reported, as meson warheads flew from the Kobold fleet battlestar and the two Akira-class torpedostars."Plus thirty by 6.5, 200 kiloklicks downrange and closing!"
"Eight seconds, emergency burn!" Syuzen ordered."Nav, plot evasives for the helm! AuxCon, Combat, overfire point-defense lasers!"
"Internal heat now 62.6 degrees, continuing to rise, Skipper!" Val warned."Overfiring the PDs will—"
"I know," Syuzen replied tersely, knowing also the chances of escaping most, if not all those meson warheads closing on Koniev were so close to zero, as made no o—
The torpstar to starboard died in a flash of light, its inbound meson warheads dispatched by a Marine d'Etoile cruiser rapidly closing from astern.
Another cruiser, also rapidly closing astern, passed Koniev to her portside, hammering the remaining Akira to a hollowed-out hulk.
"You didn't really think you'd get out of taking me dancing that easily, did you, Syuzen'ka?" her Sondra's image quipped over her wearable.
"I wasn't planning to get out of it, moya lyubimaya," Syuzen replied, grinning from ear to ear, as she concentrated all fire on the Kobold Galaxy.
42.Y38PH 14:55:16
"No," Starbuck whispered, as he sat uselessly on the bridge of the derelict Galactica, and listened to his Viper pilots' comms on Alpha channel.
"No!" he screamed, just as uselessly pounding his fist into the command console. "We've got to...."
He trailed off, sighing heavily, wetly.
"What can we do, Starbuck?" Cassi asked, her voice also heavy with grief.
She'd been closer to Sheba than he had, even when Sheba had resented her for her relationship with Cain.
And, now she was gone, just like that.
Just like her father, trading her life for her people's.
For the extremes and the values her people had placed between them.
As a warrior should.
But, that didn't make it right, or hurt any less.
Simply necessary, and that just made it hurt worse.
And, there was nothing Starbuck could do, but listen to more of his pilots risk their lives, and, very possibly, give up those lives as well, because...Galactica was in no shape to move, let alone fight.
The engineering teams from the Sir Galahad had barely had time to begin their work, before the Other Colonists had launched their second attack, but, what little they had been able to thus far only confirmed what Galactica's acting commander had already known.
The damage she'd suffered from the raidstar's attack earlier had accelerated the inevitable.
One energizer was completely destroyed, the power grid for the entire starboard side burned out and irreplaceable, the surviving energizer, having long shown signs of failing as well, since the fire on board after the attack on Gomoray, a fire which had irrepairably damaged much of Galactica's systems, including the starboard energizer that had only been replaced by cannabalizing one of the energizers from that last Cylon base ship they'd destroyed.
"Starbuck," Boomer's grief-stricken voice said over Beta channel."Starbuck, I..."
"I know, Boomer," Starbuck replied.
"I should be out there!" his old friend then angrily said."I was a warrior once, for frack's sake!"
"We both should be," was all Starbuck could think to say, as blindly, he reached out for his wife's hand.
2275.2.12 20:55:37
"The Romulo and the McQueen are moving to support Enterprise," Henley reported.
"Helm, Nav, take this ship right down that Intrepid's throat!" McDugan ordered."Tac, take that Kobold bastard out of my sky!"
"Aye, sir!"s met the orders of the Haut-amiral du Terre, as the Astronef des Nations Fédérés Vesta poured Starkillers, torch-assisted penetrators and 200nm ultraviolet-wavelength las into that 700-kiloton hull, peeling back his armor, exposing his structural members, boiling them off into space, as the Intrepid-class aegisstar, in its turn, salvoed multiple-warhead meson torps, particle beams, and 600nm UV las at Vesta, now jinking and burning violently, at the same time she kept all her guns bearing on her antagonist.
CIC went dark, came back up again, went dark again, came back up again, the veteran professional head of Earth's military tuning out the alarms, taking only superficial notice of Lochley's report of the primary electrics being burned out, and temperature at 65 degrees Centigrade and still rising, as his ship and he did the only damn thing either of them could do to live through this damn war: Drive on.
"Admiral?" Thrace asked...they'd found her on Tau Ceti III, after they'd liberated it thirty-five years ago, Kobold bastards having brought her with from one of their damn Colonies, Caprica...issued her, like you'd issue a man a set of web gear, and used much, much worse, and she'd driven on, won through, lived, in spite of them.
"'—I've got a woman who knows her man, drive on," McDugan realized he'd been singing."It don't mean nothin', it don't mean nothin'. Driiivve on.'"
42.119AC 21:56:00
CIC went dark, Adama ignoring the screaming of Galactica's XO, ordering the helm to "maintain present vector!" as the last Jupiter-class battlestar, the ship his grandfather had used to lead His Natural Aristocracy to victory over the fempervs and their State 119 years ago, bulled through the enemy, her rows of twin-turreted, rapid-firing, quantum torpedo launchers, twelve prow-mounted spinal particle PHASR lances, multiple PHASR generators, and point-defense PHASR batteries burned and blasted at the four puny, primitive, clumsy Terran hulls daring to block his path to the freighter infested with Enemy Tribesmen drifting silently just beyond them.
They made fumbling attempts to jink and burn their way clear of the loving, violent judgement Adama's flagship visited upon them, their rocks and mere lasers tearing through the battlestar's armor, causing CIC to go dark yet again.
"Starboard flight pod is gone!" Hoshi reported."Decks 3 to 21 have been gutted, no survivors! Power is out on all decks below 21! Starboard impulse engines offline! FTL offline! Wireless offline! DRADIS fire control offl—"
"All batteries, continue firing!" Adama roared over comms, as Galactica—his Galactica—closed with the four warships of the inmates of Terra.
His sole regret was his Benjamin's earlier attack damaging the Enemy's excuse for a battlestar too badly for it to stand in the field of battle, but this was even better; he would cleanse those heretics who'd relied on that battlestar for their protection from the skies of His Creation, while his pilots dispatched their pilots, with those still aboard that battlestar helplessly looking on.
Just before they were permitted to die.
He smiled, chuckled, as several of his starboard quantum torpedo turrets instantly destroyed several ships infested with the remnants of the Enemy Tribes, leaving them drifting, tumbling, and dead in the darkness, the port rank of quantum torpedo turrets raking two of their heavy cruisers(those militarist terms again), rendering them as dead as the other miserable ape things they had the arrant, unmitigated gall to presume they had any right to s—
42.119AC 21:57:50
Death is only gain, Sisko thought, as CIC went dark still again.
But, not for you, dear William, he added, with a smirk, as Pegasus continued evading and fighting off her attackers.
Bashir, the fleet battlestar's resident Section 31 operative, as well as its chief medical officer, had personally seen to that.
The public, of course, would know only that Admiral William Troy Adama, hero of His New Colonies, as well as of those Colonies lost to them these last 28 years, had ascended to Deo sapiens for his leadership in the final extermination of the Enemy Tribes, and for the example of personal courage he'd set with his crew's heroic sacrfice.
They must continue believing, after all, that they were destined to be Gods, meant to sit at the Table with Him and His Twelve.
"Sir!" the DRADIS operator reported."We've located the battlestar of the Enemy Tribes! It is at the Terran base in this system! DRADIS shows it being towed toward one of their—"
"FTL online, Commander," Chakotay informed him at the same time.
"Start the clock!" Sisko ordered, without hesitation.
42.Y38PH 14:57:50
"What do you want now, Colonel?!" Apollo sullenly demanded.
"Have you come to tell me about the additional damage we've sustained so far in this latest attack?" he then added.
"Oh, yes, that's right," he remarked sarcastically,"isn't it? We're out of the battle, thanks to your decision to abandon the Fleet, and let the humans from Earth—"
"It's about your wife," Starbuck forced himself to say, trying hard to throttle the anger toward his brother.
"I have no wife," Apollo told him.
"No," Starbuck whispered, the anger and grief leaking through anyway."Not anymore, Apollo."
There was a moment of stunned silence, Apollo's mouth working, but no words coming out.
Finally, he whispered:
"What do you mean by that, Starbuck?"
"What the frack do you think I mean?!" Starbuck snapped, the tears returning.
"Sheba's dead, Apollo," he spat the words out."She died defending the Gemmonese freighter from the Others."
"She's—" Apollo whispered, a trace of the warrior Starbuck had served alongside, the brother he'd found after yahren without a family, surfacing for just an micron.
Before the klaxon howled, and the lights turned red.
"Oh no," Starbuck whispered, knowing what this meant."No, no, for frack's sake!"
"Starbuck?!" he heard Apollo shout after him, as Starbuck ran for the bridge as fast he could.
2275.2.12 20:58:12
"Admiral!" shouted Quatre-maitre de 1er classe Eleni Hassaphas.
"I see it, Quartermaster," Contre-amiral Nyota Uhura replied tautly, as the Kobold fleet battlestar spun up for jump."And, I know where the bastard's going. Squadron, on me, prepare to enter hyperdrive! Nav, plot an intercept! Comms, advise Vesta of our situation!"
And, AdNF Agammenon led her squadron into hyperdrive, exiting it less than a hundred kiloklicks from the enemy battlestar, now burning hard on an intercept for the crippled Galactica, under tow by a dozen yard tugs toward one of the orbitals on the far side of AD Leonis III, 17 Escadron Croisseur salvoing Starkillers, as they vectored point-defense fire against the multiple-warhead meson torps the Kobold bastard shotgunned into space from his forward tubes, as his 600nm ultraviolet-wavelength, phased-array lasers lashed out at the squadron, forcing them to jink and burn, even as the Kobold jinked and burned.
"Churchill reports all remaining Kobold capital ships and escorts have entered hyperdrive," Capitaine de frégate Janice Rand reported, even as Hassaphas warned them of multiple hyperdrive exits, and fifteen badly-mauled, but still-operational Defiant-class raidstars charged in at full burn, ion cannon, PHASRs, meson-torp launchers, and 6" railguns firing full bore, along with five dozen Aquarius-class scout-escorts salvoing their multiple-warhead meson torpedos as fast as their tubes could fire them, their twin ion cannon thudding into the armor of the twelve Nation Fédérés heavy patrol cruisers now forced to devote railguns and point defenses toward dealing with the new arrivals.
42.119AC 21:58:12
Paris smirked at the flash of actinic light inside one of the lumbering ship's many domes.
And, at that light giving way to cleansing fire.
If only there was a way to hear their screams, Pegasus' CAG thought to himself, as he streaked past the domed ship, flipped his Viper Mark IX round, killed his momentum, and built it back up on a new intercept vector for that ship, arming another quantum torpedo, as he aimed his Viper at another dome, and made his—
His DRADIS warning receiver screamed just a fraction before laser bolts screamed toward his Viper, Paris jinking, burning, cancelling his momentum again, as he charged one of the Enemy's Vipers at emergency burn, chopping into his spaceframe with 30mm railgun rounds, while he easily, almost contemptiously, matched his every evasive maneuver.
The Enemy Viper—a crude representation of the Mark II used during the Great Crusade against the Caprican State over a century ago—again fired a volley of las, as if that would be able to scratch the paint job on this modern starfighter, the primitive starfighter jinking and burning out of the path of 30mm rounds vectored his way, the veteran Colonial Starfleet pilot matching this rank amateur's evasives still again, squeezing off another burst from his railguns, the militarist, statist Enemy firing another ineffectual volley of primitive laser fire which Paris, again, easily evaded, as, again, he matched the Enemy Colonist's evasives.
Smiling, as another blip came up fast on his DRADIS screen, that blip detaching four triangular blips which separated into more luminescent triangles converging on the large circular representations of domes.
Paris chuckled, imagining the look on the poor statist drone's face, when he saw everything in the three remaining domes burn, and knew nothing he did mattered.
Not even the las he drove through Paris' magnificent tool of modern science, peacekeeping and exploration, or even that his shots were fatal to Paris.
Death, after all, was only ga—
42.Y38PH 14:59:06
"Clear the bridge!" Starbuck ordered the skeleton crew manning Galactica's bridge stations, the mortally-wounded battlestar's acting commander then transferring all controls to the command console, before putting himself on unicom.
"Everyone aboard Galactica is to evacuate! Immediately! Get to the shuttles on Alpha Landing Bay, and go!"
"That," he added, using one of the forward port laser turrets to cut the cables between the tugs and the battlestar,"is my final order as a Colonial officer. May the Lords of Kobol go with you all."
Freed of the tugs, Starbuck fired the old girl's remaining engines and maneuvering thrusters, aiming her at the saucer shape of the Others' battlestar now twisting and turning away from the two dozen Earth warships fighting it and its consorts.
"Starbuck?!" came Cassi's pained voice over the scanner.
"I love you, Cassi," he whispered, shunting as much power from the remaining energizer as he could into the mega pulsars, arming the remaining air-to-air missiles, and engaging the shields, closing off the view of space in front of him.
Switching off the unicom channel, as he glanced at what the ship's working sensors were telling him, nodding, as all of Galactica's remaining shuttles fled the doomed battlestar's remaining landing bay, and he opened fire on the enemy battlestar with the mega pulsars and the missiles, even as he prepared to accelerate the ship to lightspeed.
42.275M3 21:00:00
"No!" poor Sheba screamed at the warp eye, helpless to stop what would come next.
As John was.
The mortally-wounded battlestar Galactica, holding some of the last of the descendants of the three hundred thousand he'd sent through the Squall to the world they'd dubbed Kobol, as well as the people of one of the Earths created by his decision to intervene, turned toward the battlestar of the tribe of Mosha who had all but destroyed Kobol, before being driven from it by the survivors of the tribe of Adama and the other eleven tribes, firing upon it with its mighty forward lances and salvo after salvo of missiles.
Which the battlestar of Mosha—or Daniel Morden, as he'd also been known to those people, that Earth—evaded, as John knew he would.
Just as he also knew Galactica had one terrible weapon left to deploy.
And, who would remain behind to deploy it, as the rest of his people, and the Earth people who'd been helping them, reached the safety of the base beyond.
Including Sheba's husband.
"Father, you have to do something!" she screamed at poor Ciaphas, sobbing, as she begged him "Please! Don't let this happen to Starbuck, what will Cassiopeia and Dillon do without him?!"
"I can't," Ciaphas whispered, turning away from his daughter, catching John's eye, and mouthing the two words John had come to hate most:
"My lord."
Ten thousand years, after he'd fallen out of pride, and took his brothers and sisters down with him, those same brothers and sisters had prayed to him, begged him to be their light in the darkness, and there had been so little he could do for them.
So many people calling his name throughout all the realities, and so damned little he could do.
Even when he'd been able to help, he'd only made things worse in the end.
Still...he was human.
He was human.
And, he had to try.
42.Y38PH 15:00:00
"Fracking die!" Dillon screamed, charging the enemy escort ship who'd burned every living thing in all the agro ship's four domes, including the people rescued from the Rising Star earlier, the enemy ship jinking, burning, firing pulse after blue-hot pulse from his twin pulsers, Dillon cutting in turbo thrust for a micron, dodging the other ship's fire, as he poured a flurry of pulses from his twin lasers into him, ripping him to shreds, and leaving his gutted corpse tumbling in the darkness.
But...all those people...they were still—
42.119AC 22:00:08
"You stupid, stupid frak," Ensign Wesley Eugene "Weasel" Crusher sneered at the Enemy Colonist whose tailpipe he'd just shoved a nuke, jinking and burning his Raptor Mark VI out of the path of las and torch-assisted penetrators, lining it up with another flying hangar queen of the Enemy Tribes, loosing another pair of nukes, before breaking hard right, down, and away.
"What happens," he remarked,"when you get fixated on your tar—"
42.Y38PH 15:00:08
He swallowed hard, heart hammering in his chest, lead in his stomach.
This wasn't what he wanted to do.
The enemy battlestar continued evading the fire from Galactica's rapidly-failing mega pulsars, shooting down the missiles he'd vectored toward it.
Alarms screamed at him, warning him the one surviving energizer—overstressed from fire damage and having to do the work of two from the Cylon suicide attack after Gomoray until they'd destroyed that last Cylon base ship, further stressed by yahren of battle and headlong flight for a planet many had stopped believing in—and the remaining engines would soon fail.
The scope showed the enemy battlestar releasing more of those meson torpedos which had sealed the battlestar's fate, as Starbuck's hands shook, almost too badly to shift the engine control levers forward.
Almost.
The last battlestar of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, Galactica, shot forward at lightspeed, then dropped back into normal space, an instant before she plowed into the other battlestar...
...and, Starbuck found himself in one of the shuttles, too stunned and shocked to do anything other than let a tearful Cassiopeia hug him tight enough to crush him.
As, through the shuttle's viewports, he saw the two battlestars floating conjoined, lifeless, and broken in the darkness.
"W-wha...how..." he stupidly gabbled, Cassi whispering, sobbing, "I don't care how."
"I don't care," she repeated, as she held on and did not let go.
As did he.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford
-
U.P. Cinnabar
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3930
- Joined: 2016-02-05 08:11pm
- Location: Aboard the RCS Princess Cecile
Re: Sons And Daughters Of Earth(completed and cleaned up)
42.275M3 21:01:25
"Thank you, my lord," Ciaphas said, as the two stood in the augur room. "For the sake of my child."
"I wish you'd not call me that, Ciaphas," John said,"even if it's just in private."
"That was who I first knew you as," Ciaphas reminded him.
"And," John reflected, as the battle raged in the warp eye in front of them,"it doesn't alter the fact they've lost their child to this battle."
"He's at peace, at least," Ciaphas said."It's not much consolation, but, you do what you can.
As you did."
"I almost didn't succeed in doing that little," John admitted."The battle barge's teleportarium had trouble establishing a lock; its targeting circuits are starting to deteriorate."
"Perhaps one of the cogboys could have a look at it," Ciaphas said.
"Not important at the moment," John said. "How is your daughter accepting her...altered circumstances?"
"She regrets a great many things, brother," Ciaphas replied,"including not fighting hard enough for Apollo."
"She did what she could," John said."But, ultimately, that is Apollo's decision."
"Or his failure," he added."Either way..."
He gazed out into the raging combats between the people of this Earth, the survivors of Kobol, and the tribe of his son, Daniel.
"...there's nothing we can do.
For now, at least."
2275.2.12 21:04:06
"Now, Tac!" Syuzen screamed, as Koniev's guns came to bear on a Kobold raider.
"Fire!" she barked over shipnet, las, torch-assisted penetrators, and a pair of anti-battlestar missiles slamming through the Defiant, and sending him spinning, gutted and broken through the eternal night.
Amidst the drifting wreckage of Kobold warships and one Colonial battlestar.
Koniev's point defenses slashed and burned the last few scout-escorts out of the sky, and Hollande reported there wasn't any more enemy left to fight.
For now.
For now, Syuzen, sinking into the back of her, thought, as she breathed deeply and often.
"Stand down from combat stations," Larenya ordered."Nav, Helm, I believe we were heading for the Base, when all this started. Take us there, if you please."
"Sir," Kalsi and Montigny both replied.
"Quartermaster," Syuzen asked, eyes still on the wreckage drifting in the master holodisplay, "status of the Galactica survivors?"
"All safely aboard Base Orbital Facility Romeo, Commandante," Hollande replied, as Koniev briefly fired her torch and her RCS thrusters to line herself for approach to one the Base's orbital facilities.
"Thank God for that," Syuzen observed, eyes now on the Galactica and the Kobold Galaxy, co-mingled for eternity in the endless night.
"For small favors," she added softly.
2275.2.12 21:07:23
Haut-amiral du Terre Edward McDugan could not take his eyes away from the terrible carnage all around his ship.
Twenty-eight refugee ships had either been destroyed outright, or, like those poor bastards on the agro ship, still more-or-less intact, but everyone on board burned alive and slaughtered.
Hydra and Dokdo were drifting dead, gutted internally, radioactive, the shells of what remained bearing little indication of what had killed them.
If detonated close enough, meson warheads didn't leave much in the way of external marking, maybe a scorch or two, that was...
The professional head of Earth's military sighed...he'd known Hydra's Christina Lang and Dokdo's Dieter Kessler for as long as he'd been on service, since the time all three had been ensigns together on the Enterprise, when she herself had been new.
Another sigh.
He'd find something to say to their families, and to the families of the 194 others killed aboard those two ships, the eighteen Starfury pilots shot down in combat, and the almost 100 other crew on the rest of the ships under his command.
He'd find something to say.
Because he had to.
His gaze drifted to the Enterprise, his first command, all beat to shit, her blue and grey paint job scorched along nearly every meter of its length, a charred, slagged hole where the Alfa One mount of two turreted 90mm railguns used to be, the wound trailing wisps of lithium and subliminated metal.
Over a fifth of her 150 crew hadn't survived the battle to save that single refugee transport.
Hikaru Sulu had won his gamble, however; the Gemmonese frieghter had narrowly escaped death, and those aboard her were being recovered by medships dispatched from Base.
McDugan nodded.
"Dillion," Sire Boomer's pained image said via wearable."Merciful Lords, how am I going to explain to Starbuck...and Cassi...how, he..."
"We'll find something to say, Mister President," McDugan resolved.
"We will find something to say," he softly repeated to a master holoprojector now wavering and blurred in his eyes.
44.Y38PH 07:16:27
"And, so the Lightning," Wilker read from the Anethma,"came, and had always come, since the beginning, reddish-violet clouds and forks, howling winds, and darkness, the inky darkness, blacker than the sky at night, and it girdled the Earth from end to end, in the present moment and backward from that moment, to the beginning, throughout all the Earths which had arisen, and the ships of the hunted and the hated passed through the Lightning, through the Squall, driven to and fro, and almost carelessly cast aside, to the other side, to the calm waters of a new ocean in a new world, a world they would call Kobol."
He sighed, looking up from the park bench on which he sat, at the curve of the world above him, and around him, the hub which bisected this O'Neill cylinder, one of ten, on one of 24 orbital facilities comprising the Earth people's base here in the AD Leonis system.
More importantly, he just looked at all the life teeming on this cylinder alone—forty kilometers long, according to what Yorktown's second in command had said, about the same in Colonial measure.
All the life, humans from Earth and its colonies, Narn, Centauri, Drazi, the occasional Brakiri, and one of the carrion eaters Vir had told him of, a Pak'Ma'Ra, he believed it was called, a small band of the grey ones, V'ree, if he was not mistaken.
All those lives.
His Earth bretheren in this cylinder alone accounted for more people than all of the surviving Colonists, and there was still room for them, either here, on Earth, or wherever the Council of Twelve decided they would settle.
If they stayed together, and there was no guarantee of that.
Maybe that was what Apollo had feared all along, Wilker mused, one of the things, anyway, that our people might not want to remain together, that they'd want to scatter across the face of the Earth, her colonies—her other Colonies—and throughout the cosmos, and, in so doing, lose themselves, their identity as the Twelve Civilized Tribes of Kobol.
Which was ridiculous, when one thought things through, he concluded, as a middle-aged Centauri male, hair cut short and not in the crests he'd seen amongst other Centauri men on station, his uniform the blue armored spacesuit of the Earth forces, came up to him, a leather bound book in Narn syllables in his hands.
"Ah, Vir," he said,"hello."
"Good morning, Doctor," Vir replied, sitting beside Wilker on the bench.
"The Book of G'quon?" Wilker asked, indicating the book Vir now gently, reverently, spread open on his lap.
"One of the few remaining copies," Vir replied."Other than the ones stored digitally, of course, but—"
"They're never the same," Wilker replied, understanding completely.
"No," Vir said,"no, they're not."
He then looked up, intent on the world passing around him.
"I come here, sometimes," he explained,"and just watch the cylinder rotating on its axis, the people moving along, talking...everywhere I get a chance to, in fact, I..."
He trailed off.
"I understand that too," Wilker remarked.
60.Y38PH 00:20:28
"'At the going down of the sun,'" Starbuck whispered, reading from the monument in front of him,"'And, in the morning. We will remember them.'"
"'We will remember them,'" the former Colonial warrior repeated, as he stood on the beach, looked out to sea, a rusting naval warship leaning to one side, half-submerged by the rising water.
"The local inhabitants of this village," Apollo said, as he stood beside him,"say there's another ship sunken underneath that one, from another war for these islands."
"Sheffield," Starbuck replied softly."From the tribe they call the British. They'd fought another tribe, called the Argentines, for posession of these islands, though I'll be fracked if I know why, there's not much to—"
"It's never about the land, Starbuck."
Sheba's voice gave both men a sudden start, Apollo and he turning at the same time.
She stood there, in the uniform of a Colonial Warrior, except pure white, where it was supposed to have been brown and tan.
"The Ship Of Lights," Starbuck whispered, understanding now,"They...you...me..."
"The land," Sheba remarked,"is an excuse, the politics, an excuse, the religion, an excuse.
Small men in gaudy uniforms started the first war over these islands almost 300 yahren ago, because they wanted to distract their people from the hunger in their bellies and the blood on their hands with an easy victory over two little rocks in the sea they didn't think anyone would give a runny felgercarb about, not even the tribe from whom they stole them."
A silence passed.
"S-sheba," Apollo stammered,"Sheba, I—"
"I know, Apollo," she whispered,"I know."
"I was so scared of losing you too," Apollo whispered, his voice choked with emotion."You, Starbuck, Boomer...you were all I had left, after my father died, after Boxey....I-i..."
"You pushed all of us away," Sheba simply said.
"Yes," Apollo whispered.
"Except, that didn't work," Sheba told him, shaking her head sadly."It never works, because those who cared for you still did, and still tried to be there for you, even though you didn't want them to."
"Even if it hurt," she added, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"And, I forgive you," Sheba said, embracing her husband, Apollo embracing her, the two kissing, as Starbuck looked away.
"I have to go now," she whispered, as Starbuck turned back around to see Sheba's hand lingering on Apollo's cheek, as she turned to walk away.
"Sheba," Starbuck spoke up.
"Starbuck?" she said.
"Why?" he simply asked.
"Because I begged them to," Sheba answered."Because we're still human. Because we could."
She headed off his next question:
"I only wish we could've done the same for Dillon."
"Isn't he—" Starbuck started to ask.
"He's at peace, Starbuck," Sheba told him."Something I'll never find, nor will any of the others. We're not gods, not angels, and where we are now isn't heaven or hell, it just simply is."
Another silence, as she caressed her husband's cheek one last time.
"How is Cassi taking it?" she asked.
"She bore him, birthed him..." Starbuck said, trailing off with a sigh."In many ways, it's harder on her than it is me, and it's pretty hard on me."
He swallowed, the tears coming, as he continued:
"We have good days, and bad days, and worse days, and probably always will. He was my child...our child...that's not something you get over, not something I think you can ever get over..."
Apollo put his arm around his friend's shoulder.
"We have each other," Starbuck resolved, smiling bravely,"and, by the Lords of Kobol, that's gonna count for something."
Sheba nodded, and another silence came, as she turned back to Apollo.
"Will I see you again?" he ultimately asked.
"Unfortunately," Sheba softly replied, "I think you will, Apollo."
Then she turned, and walked away.
"Thank you, my lord," Ciaphas said, as the two stood in the augur room. "For the sake of my child."
"I wish you'd not call me that, Ciaphas," John said,"even if it's just in private."
"That was who I first knew you as," Ciaphas reminded him.
"And," John reflected, as the battle raged in the warp eye in front of them,"it doesn't alter the fact they've lost their child to this battle."
"He's at peace, at least," Ciaphas said."It's not much consolation, but, you do what you can.
As you did."
"I almost didn't succeed in doing that little," John admitted."The battle barge's teleportarium had trouble establishing a lock; its targeting circuits are starting to deteriorate."
"Perhaps one of the cogboys could have a look at it," Ciaphas said.
"Not important at the moment," John said. "How is your daughter accepting her...altered circumstances?"
"She regrets a great many things, brother," Ciaphas replied,"including not fighting hard enough for Apollo."
"She did what she could," John said."But, ultimately, that is Apollo's decision."
"Or his failure," he added."Either way..."
He gazed out into the raging combats between the people of this Earth, the survivors of Kobol, and the tribe of his son, Daniel.
"...there's nothing we can do.
For now, at least."
2275.2.12 21:04:06
"Now, Tac!" Syuzen screamed, as Koniev's guns came to bear on a Kobold raider.
"Fire!" she barked over shipnet, las, torch-assisted penetrators, and a pair of anti-battlestar missiles slamming through the Defiant, and sending him spinning, gutted and broken through the eternal night.
Amidst the drifting wreckage of Kobold warships and one Colonial battlestar.
Koniev's point defenses slashed and burned the last few scout-escorts out of the sky, and Hollande reported there wasn't any more enemy left to fight.
For now.
For now, Syuzen, sinking into the back of her, thought, as she breathed deeply and often.
"Stand down from combat stations," Larenya ordered."Nav, Helm, I believe we were heading for the Base, when all this started. Take us there, if you please."
"Sir," Kalsi and Montigny both replied.
"Quartermaster," Syuzen asked, eyes still on the wreckage drifting in the master holodisplay, "status of the Galactica survivors?"
"All safely aboard Base Orbital Facility Romeo, Commandante," Hollande replied, as Koniev briefly fired her torch and her RCS thrusters to line herself for approach to one the Base's orbital facilities.
"Thank God for that," Syuzen observed, eyes now on the Galactica and the Kobold Galaxy, co-mingled for eternity in the endless night.
"For small favors," she added softly.
2275.2.12 21:07:23
Haut-amiral du Terre Edward McDugan could not take his eyes away from the terrible carnage all around his ship.
Twenty-eight refugee ships had either been destroyed outright, or, like those poor bastards on the agro ship, still more-or-less intact, but everyone on board burned alive and slaughtered.
Hydra and Dokdo were drifting dead, gutted internally, radioactive, the shells of what remained bearing little indication of what had killed them.
If detonated close enough, meson warheads didn't leave much in the way of external marking, maybe a scorch or two, that was...
The professional head of Earth's military sighed...he'd known Hydra's Christina Lang and Dokdo's Dieter Kessler for as long as he'd been on service, since the time all three had been ensigns together on the Enterprise, when she herself had been new.
Another sigh.
He'd find something to say to their families, and to the families of the 194 others killed aboard those two ships, the eighteen Starfury pilots shot down in combat, and the almost 100 other crew on the rest of the ships under his command.
He'd find something to say.
Because he had to.
His gaze drifted to the Enterprise, his first command, all beat to shit, her blue and grey paint job scorched along nearly every meter of its length, a charred, slagged hole where the Alfa One mount of two turreted 90mm railguns used to be, the wound trailing wisps of lithium and subliminated metal.
Over a fifth of her 150 crew hadn't survived the battle to save that single refugee transport.
Hikaru Sulu had won his gamble, however; the Gemmonese frieghter had narrowly escaped death, and those aboard her were being recovered by medships dispatched from Base.
McDugan nodded.
"Dillion," Sire Boomer's pained image said via wearable."Merciful Lords, how am I going to explain to Starbuck...and Cassi...how, he..."
"We'll find something to say, Mister President," McDugan resolved.
"We will find something to say," he softly repeated to a master holoprojector now wavering and blurred in his eyes.
44.Y38PH 07:16:27
"And, so the Lightning," Wilker read from the Anethma,"came, and had always come, since the beginning, reddish-violet clouds and forks, howling winds, and darkness, the inky darkness, blacker than the sky at night, and it girdled the Earth from end to end, in the present moment and backward from that moment, to the beginning, throughout all the Earths which had arisen, and the ships of the hunted and the hated passed through the Lightning, through the Squall, driven to and fro, and almost carelessly cast aside, to the other side, to the calm waters of a new ocean in a new world, a world they would call Kobol."
He sighed, looking up from the park bench on which he sat, at the curve of the world above him, and around him, the hub which bisected this O'Neill cylinder, one of ten, on one of 24 orbital facilities comprising the Earth people's base here in the AD Leonis system.
More importantly, he just looked at all the life teeming on this cylinder alone—forty kilometers long, according to what Yorktown's second in command had said, about the same in Colonial measure.
All the life, humans from Earth and its colonies, Narn, Centauri, Drazi, the occasional Brakiri, and one of the carrion eaters Vir had told him of, a Pak'Ma'Ra, he believed it was called, a small band of the grey ones, V'ree, if he was not mistaken.
All those lives.
His Earth bretheren in this cylinder alone accounted for more people than all of the surviving Colonists, and there was still room for them, either here, on Earth, or wherever the Council of Twelve decided they would settle.
If they stayed together, and there was no guarantee of that.
Maybe that was what Apollo had feared all along, Wilker mused, one of the things, anyway, that our people might not want to remain together, that they'd want to scatter across the face of the Earth, her colonies—her other Colonies—and throughout the cosmos, and, in so doing, lose themselves, their identity as the Twelve Civilized Tribes of Kobol.
Which was ridiculous, when one thought things through, he concluded, as a middle-aged Centauri male, hair cut short and not in the crests he'd seen amongst other Centauri men on station, his uniform the blue armored spacesuit of the Earth forces, came up to him, a leather bound book in Narn syllables in his hands.
"Ah, Vir," he said,"hello."
"Good morning, Doctor," Vir replied, sitting beside Wilker on the bench.
"The Book of G'quon?" Wilker asked, indicating the book Vir now gently, reverently, spread open on his lap.
"One of the few remaining copies," Vir replied."Other than the ones stored digitally, of course, but—"
"They're never the same," Wilker replied, understanding completely.
"No," Vir said,"no, they're not."
He then looked up, intent on the world passing around him.
"I come here, sometimes," he explained,"and just watch the cylinder rotating on its axis, the people moving along, talking...everywhere I get a chance to, in fact, I..."
He trailed off.
"I understand that too," Wilker remarked.
60.Y38PH 00:20:28
"'At the going down of the sun,'" Starbuck whispered, reading from the monument in front of him,"'And, in the morning. We will remember them.'"
"'We will remember them,'" the former Colonial warrior repeated, as he stood on the beach, looked out to sea, a rusting naval warship leaning to one side, half-submerged by the rising water.
"The local inhabitants of this village," Apollo said, as he stood beside him,"say there's another ship sunken underneath that one, from another war for these islands."
"Sheffield," Starbuck replied softly."From the tribe they call the British. They'd fought another tribe, called the Argentines, for posession of these islands, though I'll be fracked if I know why, there's not much to—"
"It's never about the land, Starbuck."
Sheba's voice gave both men a sudden start, Apollo and he turning at the same time.
She stood there, in the uniform of a Colonial Warrior, except pure white, where it was supposed to have been brown and tan.
"The Ship Of Lights," Starbuck whispered, understanding now,"They...you...me..."
"The land," Sheba remarked,"is an excuse, the politics, an excuse, the religion, an excuse.
Small men in gaudy uniforms started the first war over these islands almost 300 yahren ago, because they wanted to distract their people from the hunger in their bellies and the blood on their hands with an easy victory over two little rocks in the sea they didn't think anyone would give a runny felgercarb about, not even the tribe from whom they stole them."
A silence passed.
"S-sheba," Apollo stammered,"Sheba, I—"
"I know, Apollo," she whispered,"I know."
"I was so scared of losing you too," Apollo whispered, his voice choked with emotion."You, Starbuck, Boomer...you were all I had left, after my father died, after Boxey....I-i..."
"You pushed all of us away," Sheba simply said.
"Yes," Apollo whispered.
"Except, that didn't work," Sheba told him, shaking her head sadly."It never works, because those who cared for you still did, and still tried to be there for you, even though you didn't want them to."
"Even if it hurt," she added, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"And, I forgive you," Sheba said, embracing her husband, Apollo embracing her, the two kissing, as Starbuck looked away.
"I have to go now," she whispered, as Starbuck turned back around to see Sheba's hand lingering on Apollo's cheek, as she turned to walk away.
"Sheba," Starbuck spoke up.
"Starbuck?" she said.
"Why?" he simply asked.
"Because I begged them to," Sheba answered."Because we're still human. Because we could."
She headed off his next question:
"I only wish we could've done the same for Dillon."
"Isn't he—" Starbuck started to ask.
"He's at peace, Starbuck," Sheba told him."Something I'll never find, nor will any of the others. We're not gods, not angels, and where we are now isn't heaven or hell, it just simply is."
Another silence, as she caressed her husband's cheek one last time.
"How is Cassi taking it?" she asked.
"She bore him, birthed him..." Starbuck said, trailing off with a sigh."In many ways, it's harder on her than it is me, and it's pretty hard on me."
He swallowed, the tears coming, as he continued:
"We have good days, and bad days, and worse days, and probably always will. He was my child...our child...that's not something you get over, not something I think you can ever get over..."
Apollo put his arm around his friend's shoulder.
"We have each other," Starbuck resolved, smiling bravely,"and, by the Lords of Kobol, that's gonna count for something."
Sheba nodded, and another silence came, as she turned back to Apollo.
"Will I see you again?" he ultimately asked.
"Unfortunately," Sheba softly replied, "I think you will, Apollo."
Then she turned, and walked away.
—endit—
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
---Doctor Christine Blasey-Ford