LadyJanus

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 11

2009-07-19T19:40:33Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 11: The Roar of Silence Echoes in the Bone
Word Count: 1,380 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 11: The Roar of Silence Echoes in the Bone

“Then why haven’t you authorised a frakking Raptor reconnaissance, Admiral!” Laura Roslin shouted angrily.

Bill Adama’s eyes widened in surprise at the sheer, raw fury emanating from the president … like heat waves from pavement in the height of summer.

“As Colonel Tigh would have no doubt told you, if he’d been given a chance, Madam President,” Bill said in clipped, even tones, “more than a third of our Raptors are down for necessary maintenance, and we can’t pull the others off patrol or combat readiness rotations without endangering the safety of the Fleet. As well, fuel is also an issue; we’ve already had to suspend all non-essential flights within the fleet.”

She folded her arms across her chest and walked away from him and Tigh; his old friend had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Studying her tense, angry posture, Bill knew that there was more to Laura’s behaviour than just his failure to authorise a Raptor reconnaissance of a star system that might yield much-needed food supplies.

“Saul, if you’ll excuse us,” Bill said quietly. “Get an update from Tyrol on the progress of the overhaul and check with Apollo about the pilots’ schedules.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Tigh said gruffly; the look his eyes said, “Good luck, Old Man, ’cause you’re gonna need it.”

As the hatch clanged shut, he said, “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

She stiffened—her back still to him. He waited in silence for a moment and then walked over to the table to pour a couple glasses of ambrosia. Her face was closed, emotionless as he handed her a glass, but there was no doubt about the fury in her eyes. It made him mentally re-evaluate whether he’d done anything lately to piss her off.

“It’s back,” she said at last; her voice was low and hoarse. He stared at her in puzzlement, unable to fathom what she was referring to. A sense of unease pushed at his puzzlement as he met her furious jade-green gaze.

Before he could respond, or say something inane, she continued, “The cancer is back. Cottle told me last night. We’ll start diloxin chemotherapy within the next week, but he’s already started me on immune boosters, a number of supplements and Chamalla extract …”

He listened to her cold, dispassionate voice with horror mounting in his gut. It took long minutes for his mind to catch up to and process what his ears were hearing.

“No!”

The word escaped him in the sudden exhalation of one who’d forgotten to breathe.

She looked angry and annoyed with him now. “We’ve got to face facts, Bill,” she ground out. “It may very well come down to a mastectomy.”

To his shock, Bill realised he’d missed most of what she’d been saying while he’d processed those four simple words, “The cancer is back”.

“Right now it’s on the table—when the time comes?” She shrugged; he saw the sadness in her eyes. “I intend to keep working for as long as possible, but we may have need of a smooth, orderly transition, so you should probably start developing a rapport with Zarek—”

“Like frak I will.”

Anger leapt back into her eyes at his outburst. “He is the current vice president of this government,” she said. “And you and I both know that by rights, he should have been the legitimate president, not me.”

Bill pulled a sour face as she threw the irregularities of her position into his face; she barked a bitter laugh.

“I’ve been president twice, and as Baltar’s frakking book never ceases to trumpet it, the fact is I was never elected to the post either time,” she said. “You will have to learn to work with Zarek. He’s changed, Bill—has he changed enough? I honestly don’t know—I doubt it. But the Gods know he won’t be denied again. He won’t just walk away again.”

“So that’s it?” he said angrily—angry that she seemed to be giving in without so much as a fight. “You’re just going to give up and die. Turn the presidency over to frakking Zarek!”

She was coldly silent for a long moment. “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” she bit out. “Would I be putting myself through all this if I was just going to give up and die? I’m well acquainted with diloxin—I know what it does despite efforts over the last three decades to mitigate its toxic effects. You have to want to live in order to consider running that poison through your frakking veins!”

She stepped towards him, her eyes flashing emerald fire. “And believe me, I want to live!” she said and he suddenly felt horribly ashamed of himself. “But I have to be realistic, Bill. I got a reprieve once—days and months that were a gift from you,” she said softly, and his heart leapt at the private double meaning inherent in her words. “I can’t count on receiving such a miraculous gift again.”

“Why not—” he began, remembering how quickly the blood of the hybrid Cylon child had sent her cancer into remission the first time.

“Because I won’t accept it,” she replied holding his gaze, her implacable voice dashing that fragile hope even as she cupped his cheek with one gentle hand. “I’ll accept anything else from you but that.”

“I don’t know how to live with this again!” she snarled as she paced, trying to come to terms with the reality of this new death sentence. Bill felt as if he’d been crying for days and would never stop again. Yet since her initial revelation, he hadn’t been able to cry; the tears were there, just below the surface, yet they wouldn’t come.

He reached up and took her hand, stilling her in her latest circuit in front of his couch. It stopped the flow of her rant as she looked down into his eyes; all his emotions constricted his chest, as if clawing at the scar that bisected him from sternum to navel.

He pulled her gently to him, down into his lap and gathered her close as a fresh deluge of tears surged over the barriers of her control.

It had been two days since she’d told him of her cancer’s return, and he was no closer to accepting it than he had been then.

But right now, she didn’t need his acceptance; she just needs him to be there for her ... to listen to what she says and to what she does not say.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered at last. She made to move away from him but he held her firmly. She stiffened for a moment and then relaxed back into him, laying her head against his shoulder.

Bill lifted Laura's hand to his mouth and began to kiss the pulse beating on her wrist. After a moment, she looked up into his eyes.

“Rest here for a little while, Laura,” he said gently. “Zarek and the gods-damned Quorum of the frakking People will call you again soon enough; and you’ll go and let them tear their strips of flesh from you. I know there’s nothing I can do about that, but you need to rest, even if it’s just for a few hours. Stay here tonight." He didn’t make it a question, and there were tears in her eyes as she nodded yes.

Bill slipped his arm beneath her knees and the other supporting her back as he rose and carried her to his rack. Bill sat her down on the bed then began to remove her clothes. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she made no effort to stop him. Bill pulled her pants down over her hips, and soon enough she was clad only in her bra and underwear. Bill draped her clothing over a chair, before deftly removing his own uniform. Finally, clad only in his boxers, tees and dog tags, he climbed into bed and drew Laura's body to his own. Wrapping her arms around him, Laura continued to cry softly against his chest, until slowly her sobs quieted and she drifted off to sleep.

Hand stroking her luxuriant, auburn mane, Bill kept his silent vigil listening to her sleep.

#

To Chapter 12

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ... Chapter 10

2009-07-05T00:41:21Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 10: A Gift of Cut Flowers Eventually Withers
Word Count: 1,275 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 10: A Gift of Cut Flowers Eventually Withers

By the time she left the small alcove of a washroom, the doctor was already in the room, file folder in hand, watching Tory clear a spot on Laura’s desk for the tea tray.

“Sorry, Madam President, there weren’t any sandwiches left,” she said apologetically. “The kitchen sent up these fritters instead.”

“That’s fine,” she assured the young woman. “Thank you. You’d better hurry up though, or you’ll miss the next Raptor flight to Galactica.”

The girl nodded and walked briskly from the office. Laura turned her attention to her guest and smiled.

“How are you, doctor?” she asked, gesturing for him to sit. He carefully laid the file folder on his lap as he sat down.

“Fine, just fine,” he replied. She poured the tea into the cups and handed one to him. Holding out the plate of fritters out to him, she waited as he chose one, before perching herself on the edge of her desk. She took a bracing sip from her cup and studied the old man as she nibbled on a fried algae dumpling, realising suddenly how sad and depressed he looked.

“So what’s the problem this time?” she asked gently. “Are you having issues with medication supply … hoarding?”

Cottle shook his head. “There are always issues with medication supply,” he replied, meeting her gaze and then looking away. She could swear he looked almost discomfited—not a natural state of affairs for Sherman Cottle. It made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

He sighed, picked up the folder and held it out to her as he met her gaze again. “I won’t beat around the bush, Laura,” he said, his voice far more hoarse than she was used to. “These are the results of your recent physical.”

Laura stared at the folder as if it were a live viper. Willing her hands to be steady, she put her teacup down and placed the half-eaten fritter back on the plate. She reached for one of the linen napkins on the tray and slowly, deliberately wiped her mouth and hands. When she was sure all her fingers were sufficiently grease-free, there was nothing left to do but take the ordinary tan-coloured folder from him.

She opened it; looked down at the contents without really seeing them. She knew in her gut what they said.

“Are you sure?” The whispered croak sounded nothing like her voice.

“Yes, the bloodwork confirms the mammographic images,” he replied. “You’re no longer in remission. The cancer is back.”

“But you said I was cured,” she said, her mouth parched like desert sand.

Cottle shook his head. “I’m a doctor, Laura,” he said. “We rarely deal in absolutes like cures unless we’re damned certain a desease is irradicated for good. Baltar said you were cured—I told you that the cancer appeared to be gone. The tumors were gone and your bloodwork showed you were cancer-free as far as I could detect.”

“That’s why you insisted on the quarterly check-ups,” she said flatly.

“Yes.” He reached out and stilled her trembling hands. “The bad news is that there are lumps in both breasts and they’re very aggressive—growing rapidly,” he said as the tears rained down her cheeks. “The good news is that I think we caught it early enough this time that intense courses of diloxin chemotherapy have a chance of working—of targeting the cancer cells more specifically while they’re rapidly multiplying and killing them. After a full course of six cycles, we can re-evaluate whether the masses have shrunk and are contained enough for lumpectomies to be effective, or whether more drastic measures would be required in conjunction with subsequent courses of chemotherapy.”

“Diloxin,” she croaked. Her right hand sought out the soft contours of her left breast of its own accord—as if to confirm it was still present.

On diloxin chemotherapy, her mother had gone from a beautiful, vibrant woman who loved life, to a faded, grey wraith begging Laura to let her die. She had fought hard in the process losing both her breasts, her hair … any shred of dignity.

“Or we could ask—”

“Stop right there!” Laura said, easily following his train of thought. Cottle opened his mouth to protest. “Just stop.”

“Laura—”

Laura could feel her skin crawl at the thought; her stomach heaved, filling her mouth with the taste of vomit.

“I said no!” she screamed. “It’s my frakking body and I said no!”

Cottle took an involuntary step back from her. Her tears came harder and she stumbled blindly away from him, clutching onto her chair back in an effort to remain standing. Despite her very visceral revulsion, it would be so easy to drink from that fountain again, but she knew if she did, she’d lose what little she had left of her soul. She also knew that if she didn’t make her wishes crystal clear now, she might not be able to later—or worse, she might not be strong enough to resist the temptation if offered it again.

“I had no choice the first time,” she said, drawing on her anger to face him again. “You, Adama, and frakking Baltar forced it on me! I know that you did it for the best,” she said seeing the stricken look in his eyes. “And don’t think I haven’t been grateful for the second chance, because I have. But I’d made my peace with the knowledge that I was going to die. You took that away, and then I had to learn to live all over again. And I had to learn to live with the knowledge of where that frakking treatment came from!

“Well, not again,” she said, her voice harsh and grating. “Never again! I’ll take the diloxin therapy and I’ll have the lumpectomies—and most likely the gods-damned double mastectomy when the lumpectomies don’t work. I will do everything humanly possible to beat this. But I refuse to become some frakking parasite on that child!” she screamed. “Is that understood, doctor?”

“Yes,” he replied hoarsely.

She took a deep, cleansing breath and wiped her eyes in an effort to bring herself back under control. “I’d like to be alone now,” she said softly. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning at 0730 to work out the logistics of the diloxin treatments with you and Tory. I’ll draft a formal Statement of Patient Intent, which I will expect you to countersign and abide by. Then I have a meeting with Admiral Adama at 0900 hours and a Quorum meeting at 1300 hours back here on Colonial One. If there’s time and you require anything else, I should be able to see you between those two meetings before I leave Galactica.”

“Understood, Madam President,” Cottle said quietly as he turned to go. He stopped on the threshold. “I’m sorry, Laura,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Laura bit her lip to keep from crying again. She nodded to him and hoped that he understood that she accepted his sympathy and that in no way did she blame him.

After the curtain closed behind him, Laura stood holding onto the chair. She couldn’t move of her own will; all she could do was to shake uncontrollably while tears poured down her face again. Finally, she stumbled to her little cot and collapsed onto it—shoes and all—curled into a ball, and wailed her heartbreak into her pillows.

To Chapter 11

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ... Chapter 9

2009-07-05T00:18:14Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 9: Balanced on Night's Edge
Word Count: 1,750 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 9: Balanced on Night’s Edge

That gut-wrenching nausea in the aftermath of a jump will never get better, Laura decided. After three years and thousands of jumps, she still wasn’t used to it.

Her eyes automatically went to her office porthole. Galactica appeared exactly where she expected her to, and she slowly let out the breath she didn’t realise she was holding. Tearing her gaze away, she brought her attention back to the other occupant of the room.

I hate that insufferable smirk, she thought irritably as she met her vice president’s knowing expression.

She schooled her own expression to one of bland indifference, but his quiet chuckle told her that he didn’t buy it.

Frak! When had Tom Zarek, of all people, learned to read me so well?

As her assistant, Tory, entered with a tea tray, Zarek said, “Shall we continue, Madam President?”

Frakker! Laura thought as she accepted a cup of the pungent root tea from Tory. She sipped it, grimacing at the heavy, earthy taste that robbed it of any pleasure it might have had, but it was better than nothing.

“Next item on the agenda—the Saggitaron representative has lodged a protest,” he continued as her ever-efficient assistant handed her the appropriate file.

“Oh great!” She didn’t bother to censor the distaste from her voice or her expression. “What now?”

“What else but complaints about your fine admiral, Madam President?” Zarek replied with the same hint of humour colouring his voice. But she heard his insinuation loud and clear in the way he said “your fine admiral”.

“Or rather, Admiral Adama’s presence among Baltar’s judges.”

“It was a fair lottery,” Laura said tiredly.

“You’re not that naive,” he said pointedly, humor gone now from his eyes. “You were never that naive, Laura. It only requires the appearance of impropriety for people to start talking. Jacob Cantrell feels that Adama should recuse himself from the proceedings, and Saggitarons represent a large enough fraction of our population that if he starts to rile them up, it could get very ugly very quickly. And that doesn’t even take into account the Geminese.”

“So you think that he should just drop out,” she said in a flat, hard voice.

Surprisingly, he shook his head. “No, it’s already come too far for that,” he replied. “Perhaps if he’d done it within a few hours of his name being picked, it would have worked, but we’ve already had preliminary discoveries and motions ruled on. Leaving now would only make him—and by extension, you—look weak, cede to Cantrell and your critics the high ground. I’m just saying that you need to make sure that Adama understands that there can’t be any irregularities on his part that could be construed as bias.”

Laura nodded; she didn’t fail to notice that by saying “your critics” he’d made it clear that he was distancing himself from the situation. This was her problem and subsequently Adama’s.

After everything had died down following the disasterous attempt at colonisation—which Zarek and Baltar had pushed—and Adama’s brave rescue of their population from New Caprica, she’d expected Zarek to revert to type as one of her staunchest political adversaries, and though he’d made some compromises to smooth her way into the presidency again, she could feel him in the background watching and plotting for another opportunity.

“I’ll speak to the Admiral,” she promised. “And perhaps you could speak to Mr. Cantrell, remind him that he was all for Baltar’s policies and that he wouldn’t want his people to dig too deeply into his dealings with Baltar—and therefore the Cylons—during the occupation of New Caprica.” He looked at her with deepening respect. “Let him know that although the general amnesty regarding collaboration with the Cylons on New Caprica will be upheld, some people have long memories of things he wouldn’t want shared with the press.”

He nodded, smiling predatorially. “I’ll just do that, Madam President,” he said before moving on to the problems in the food-supply chain.

As usual, human greed was mostly to blame there, but their gradually dwindling supply of algae was also a huge problem. If they couldn’t increase the production yields of the agro-pods and algae-growing vats, they would soon be in trouble. It wasn’t the agro-techs’ fault ... no one’s fault really except the Cylons who’d recently destroyed one vat-ship and damaged another.

After Zarek left and she’d dismissed Tory for the evening, Laura sat back in her chair and tried to relax. Four non-stop hours of wrestling over fleet problems with Zarek had worn her down and it was late, but she had a number of files and reports to go through before she could sleep.

Her gaze fell on Galactica again, and inevitably, her thoughts turned to wondering what Bill was doing for the evening. Glancing at the clock told her that he’d be just coming off-duty; barring emergencies, she knew his daily schedule as well as she knew her own. She glanced at the phone, debating whether to call him. After all, they had an early morning meeting to discuss the food situation and possibly detouring to investigate a planetary system some light years off their projected course. Perhaps it was time for some preliminary discussions.

You’re pathetic, she told herself sternly. You just want to hear his voice. A small, quiet moan escaped her involuntarily at the thought of his voice. His gorgeous bedroom voice, as she’d come to think of it; the voice he used when he spoke to her over the wireless from the privacy of his quarters, not the admiral’s tones he used when in CIC. A subtle difference, maybe, but … oh what a difference!

She chewed on her bottom lip as she continued to stare out the porthole at the metal behemoth that was the guardian of the fleet, her mind dwelling on Galactica’s master. He definitely wasn’t the usual type of man she was attracted to, but then, Bill Adama wasn’t the usual type of man—period. In the last few months, although they’d still clashed over a lot of issues—including her confession that she’d hidden Hera Agathon from her parents—he’d done a lot to help her get past the pain and the memories of the Cylon occupation, much of it without even knowing that he had. It was just the way he was.

Quickly turning from those dangerous thoughts of the New Caprica occupation, she focused again on Adama. For such a hardened military man, he was a gentle man and really rather sweet. She giggled softly to herself—sweet was really the only word to describe the man beneath her admiral. Well … there is cute, her little imp reminded her, and sexy … and those deep, deep, blue eyes … and that mouth—oh Gods, that kissable mouth!

She remembered that one kiss they’d shared—just one gentle, tender kiss, but it was enough for that fleeting taste to linger and become indelibly stamped on her memory. Sighing deeply, she wondered if the rest of him would taste of sweet-spice and ambrosia. She wished she’d taken the initiative and made love with him during that night they’d spent cuddling beneath the stars, sharing the cigarettes she’d made from the mild euphoria-inducing plant she’d found and talking till the sun came up. But it had seemed as if they’d had plenty of time to explore that deeper connection blossoming between them and she hadn’t wanted to damage it by moving too fast.

So now she was haunted—haunted by his eyes … by his lips … by his voice … and by the thought of what he’d do with his hands—

The shrill ringing of the phone shattered the pleasant spell her imagination was just starting to weave for her and she nearly jumped out of her visibly flushed skin. Gathering her wits as the phone rang again, she picked up the receiver as she brought her breathing under control.

“Yes, what is it?” she said rather irritably to her assistant.

“Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am, but I just spoke to the landing bay,” Tory replied. “Doctor Cottle has just arrived on the evening shuttle from Galactica and he insists on speaking with you.”

Laura sighed; she wasn’t in the mood for any medical shortages to be piled onto the food shortage, but she was president and the fleet’s problems didn’t just stop because she was tired … or horny, her impish inner voice whispered, laughing, and she smiled ruefully.

“All right, send him right in when he gets here.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Tory said briskly. “Do you need me to stay?”

Laura knew that the younger woman had plans on Galactica with someone, but was reluctant to speak about it. Laura hadn’t pushed. Although they’d exercised together a couple of times now, Tory wasn’t like Billy Kiekeya, her first assistant; a shy, awkward boy who’d seemed barely out of his adolescence when they’d first met and literally wore his heart on his sleeve. She could tease Billy about his love affair with Anastasia Dualla—Galactica’s communications officer—whom he’d fallen head over heels for right after the holocaust had claimed the Colonies.

But Dualla had broken Billy’s heart by dumping him in order to pursue Lee Adama. Apollo. And Laura’s poor boy couldn’t compete with the young god of the fleet. Laura looked sadly at the picture of herself and Billy, perched on the right-hand corner of her desk. In the end, Billy had died to save the woman he loved, and Lee had won Dualla, a woman he didn’t love but married because he couldn’t have the one he did love … Kara. Starbuck.

Laura shook off the bitter thought and returned her attention back to the conversation at hand. “No, you go ahead, Tory,” she said smoothly. “If there’s a problem with the medical supplies, I’ll get the preliminary reports from Cottle and we’ll deal with it in the morning. I doubt there’ll be much we can do about it tonight.”

“Understood.”

“Before you go, could you please call down to the kitchen and have them send up another tea tray, perhaps with a few sandwiches or something for the doctor?” she requested.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Tory replied.

Laura hung up the phone and walked briskly to the washroom. It wouldn’t do to have Cottle come in and catch her in a state of arousal, no matter how mild. She chuckled softly again; the old doctor was just too observant for her liking.

To Chapter 10

Back again

2009-07-04T23:45:32Z

Back again online after self-imposed exile. Real life just got too hectic and needed to concentrate all my efforts on home and hearth (and well work also). Will be updating various fics if anyone's still interested.

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 8

2009-02-18T09:50:07Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 8: The House Among the Stars
Word Count: 2,450 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 8: The House Among the Stars

“All senior officers report to the bridge.”

Janeway’s husky tones cut across Chakotay’s weary consciousness like phaser fire. Automatically, his body roused ahead of his mind and he was half-dressed before registering the room’s other occupant hastily pulling on her own uniform.

Nika flashed him a tired smile as she leaned over to kiss him. It was 01:52 hours according to the chronometer; they’d been asleep less than three hours.

“I’ll get you some coffee,” she said, moving briskly into the other room. Chakotay marvelled at how comfortable his relationship with the former Borg, Seven of Nine, had become, and how quickly it had evolved since learning that they were trapped in this universe. But she wasn’t Seven anymore … at least not to him. With every passing day, Annika Hansen blossomed in a thousand different ways, and he delighted in each facet she revealed to him.

He pulled on his boots, straightened his new grey and black uniform tunic over the red turtleneck. Janeway had decided that they should start using the pattern of the new uniforms the admiralty had sent via the Midas Array.

“It will represent a new beginning for the crew, yet still acknowledge our past ties to Starfleet,” she’d said.

In the living room, he found Nika holding a cup out to him, and sipping on her own cup of liquid nutritional supplement.

He accepted the coffee gratefully and followed her out the door, admiring the way she filled out her new uniform with its blue turtleneck. As he sipped the coffee, the cobwebs cleared from his mind, and by the time the turbolift reached the bridge, his curiosity was definitely piqued by the late night summons.

He was surprised to see B’Elanna there, pacing the floor behind Paris’ station, with baby Miral on her shoulder. Unlike everyone else, she hadn’t stopped to dress, but had simply thrown a white robe over her light blue pyjamas.

He moved to stand next to Janeway, who probably hadn’t left the bridge for the evening.

Except for the uniform, she still looked pretty much the same as she had seven years ago when he first confronted her over the viewscreen regarding the Caretaker’s array. Then he realised that assessment of her wasn’t strictly true. Her hair—now pulled back neatly in a clip—was also shorter than the lion’s mane she’d kept coiled in the “iron bun”. However, it was longer now than the neat bob she’d worn for the last three years; she hadn’t cut it since their arrival in this new universe. There were also fine lines about her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there seven years ago.

“Captain, what’s going on?” he asked.

She flashed him an apologetic smile. “Sorry to wake you, commander, but we had a proximity alert in the village. Klingon lifesigns—care to guess how many?”

Chakotay grinned. “Seven adolescent Klingons?” he replied and she nodded.

“We’ve got visuals now,” Kim reported as he brought up the main viewscreen.

“We’ve sent down a camouflaged probe,” Kathryn murmured as the large dining hall in the main house at the centre of the village came up on the screen; it would have been the house of the chieftain for which the village was named.

The seven young people congregated in the dining hall after obviously searching the house.

“There’s no one here, Lorsel!” one boy shouted at the young girl Chakotay recognised as the one who had asked for B’Elanna’s help. “You p’taq—the entire place is completely deserted!”

“You said that the Lady would be here,” another girl cried. “You said she would protect us!”

“Enough!” one of the older boys roared as the girl, Lorsel, shivered in her wet clothes. “Leave her alone—she’s done more for our escape than either of you have!”

“Moag is right—without Lorsel’s urging, we would still be tied up on our way to the slaughter,” the oldest girl said. “They’re obviously gone—in fact it’s like they’ve never been here. Perhaps they were only ghosts upon the road. In any case, we should concentrate now on getting as far away from here as possible.”

“We could have been even further away if she hadn’t insisted on coming here,” the first boy said venomously. “If we hadn’t stupidly believed her when she said that her Great Lady would take us into her High House Among the Stars!”

A sudden blanket of silence descended on the bridge; even the normal thrum of the engines and noises of their instruments seemed muted.

B’Elanna turned to Janeway in shock. “Captain, you heard the entirety of our exchange with the warriors—there is no way those children could know about Voyager,” she said incredulously.

The other young people raced for the heavy double doors of the dining hall; Lorsel stood in the centre of the room, seemingly rooted to the spot.

“My Lady,” the girl said, lifting her head and looking directly into the hidden probe’s pick-up with uncanny accuracy. “My Lady B’Elanna, Daughter of M’Ral of the House of Moh’Kai, have we not proven ourselves warriors by escaping? I promise we will serve you and your House with honour to our dying breath. Please, my Lady,” she pleaded desperately. “Have we offended you? Is it because I brought the others here? Should I have come alone?”

“Lorsel, come on!” Moag called above the baying of the hounds. “The warriors are almost here.”

“Am I not destined to serve you and your daughter in the High House Among the Stars,” Lorsel cried as Moag dragged towards the door. “Am I not honourable enough to serve as Shield Warrior to the Kavaq’moq, the Great Heart and Saviour of All Klingons? Please, my Lady!”

B’Elanna and Tom stared at each other in shock and then at the baby quietly fussing in B’Elanna’s arms.

“How could she possibly know about the Kuvah’magh?” B’Elanna said in shaken voice. “We left those Klingons behind in the delta quadrant—in another damned universe entirely! Why is this happening again?”

“Why don’t we find out?” Janeway said decisively, shocking Chakotay as much as the girl had. “Mr. Kim, do we have a transporter lock on the young people?”

“Yes captain,” Kim replied. “But the warriors are closing in fast on their position.”

“Captain, what are you doing?” Chakotay asked in concern—although it was patently obvious, just as it was also completely out of character for his very “by the Prime Directive” captain.

She held up one hand to silence his protest. “Beam them directly to the bridge, Mr. Kim,” she ordered.

“Aye captain,” the operations officer replied. “Transport in progress.”

Seven forms in various stages of flight coalesced in front of the helm. They stopped short, staring at Voyager’s crew in bewilderment, before their instincts took over and they fell into more defensive postures.

Lorsel was the first to recognise the situation; she stepped forward and fell to her knees before B’Elanna. Bowing her head and bringing her right arm to thump her chest in the traditional Klingon salute, she said, “Great Lady B’Elanna, Daughter of M’Ral of the House of Moh’Kai, thank you for deeming these poor warriors worthy enough to be brought into your presence and the presence of the Star Child, the Great Heart and Saviour of All Klingons.”

The other six young people also fell to their knees and gave the same salute.

“Captain …” B’Elanna growled desperately as she stepped back from kneeling Klingons.

Janeway went to stand beside her distraught engineer, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Just talk to them, B’Elanna,” she said gently.

Torres took a deep breath and handed Miral to her husband before turning to face the Klingons again. “First of all—get off your damned knees!” she growled defensively.

“My Lady?” Lorsel said in bewilderment, her head still bowed.

“I thought you were warriors,” Torres said. “Are you ghargh to be slithering around on your bellies, grovelling before me?”

They looked at each other in confusion and then scrambled to their feet, heads still bowed. “We are warriors, my Lady,” Lorsel replied. “We meant no offense, only to honour you, your daughter and the warriors of your High House Among the Stars.”

“Well, enough!” B’Elanna declared irritably. “I like to speak to people face to face as equals, not to the tops of their heads.”

Again there were some sidelong glances between the young people, before each slowly lifted his or her head to regard the bridge crew. In their faces the awe was plain, but Chakotay could see the shrewdness in the eyes of the eldest girl as she assessed them.

“Yes, my Lady,” Lorsel replied, meeting B’Elanna’s gaze almost.

“That’s another thing, I’m no lady,” she said. “My name is simply B’Elanna—B’Elanna Torres. Is that understood?”

“Yes, my—” Lorsel hastened to amend her answer. “Yes, B’Elannatorres.”

“So may I know the names of the warriors who would seek to serve this House?” B’Elanna asked.

“My name is Lorsel, daughter of T’Kahl, of the House of Kembor, B’Elannatorres,” the girl replied.

“My name is Moag, son of Hoq, of the House of Harq, B’Elannatorres.”

“I am Juroth, son of Corok, of the House of Romlak, B’Elannatorres.”

“I am Durok, son of Corok, of the House of Romlak, B’Elannatorres.”

“I am Torsk, son of Gawhok, of the House of Frotov, B’Elannatorres.”

“My name is M’Renna, daughter of Khalina, of the House of Harq, B’Elannatorres.”

“I am Kehlan, daughter of L’Ral, of the House of Kembor, B’Elannatorres.”

Chakotay fought hard to contain his laughter; by the time the young people had finished their introductions, Torres looked about to explode. He could see her temper building with each repetition of her full name as one long word. Looking around, he saw smiles twitching on almost every mouth. The unholy look of glee in Paris’ eyes told Chakotay that his old friend was in for a merciless round of ribbing from her smart-assed husband.

“My name is B’Elanna Torres,” she said, jaw clenched against her anger and frustration. “It’s two words. From now on, just call me B’Elanna, unless I’m on duty—wearing my uniform,” she said gesturing to Janeway’s attire. “Then you should call me Lieutenant Torres, which is my rank and last name. Do you understand?”

“Yes, B’Elanna,” they all chorused dutifully, seeming infinitely more confident.

“Now, where did you get the idea that you were meant to be in my service, Lorsel?” Torres asked. “How did you know about my daughter?”

The young girl smiled shyly again. “It was my destiny foretold to me by the Hov jatlH’wI of our village,” she said proudly. “In celebration of my first blooding as a woman, my mother took me to have my Path divined. The Old One told me that in my time greatest despair, I would meet a Great Lady upon the Road to the Stars, where Klingons once walked with the Gods.”

Voyager’s crew gaped at the girl in complete shock as she continued.

“She told me that if I was brave and proved my worth, I would be allowed the great honour of tending my Lady’s daughter, the Star Child, the Kavaq’moq—the one who is destined to become the Great Heart and Saviour of All Klingons—in the High House Among the Stars. And she said I would know my Lady by the bloodstar in the heart of her golden shield. When I saw your symbol upon the hilt of your knife, I knew that if we escaped, proving that we are brave warriors, cunning of mind and stout of heart, you would allow us the honour of serving you.”

Janeway was the first to recover her voice after long moments of stunned silence. “How long ago did you go to have your destiny foretold, Lorsel?” she asked hoarsely.

The girl glanced at Kathryn in surprise and then looked back at B’Elanna as if asking her permission to answer.

“Please answer Captain Janeway, Lorsel,” B’Elanna said tiredly. “She is the leader of this ship—this High House Among the Stars. In fact, her rank of “Captain” means she is the High Chieftain of this place; the one to whom we have all pledged our honourable service.”

The young people all looked at Kathryn with new respect.

“My first womanly blooding began at last moonphase twenty-four days ago, Captain Janeway,” Lorsel said smartly. “The Old One said she could see my Path most clearly that day.”

There was another long, stunned silence as the crew did the math; twenty-four days on Qo’NoS was the equivalent of about thirty-six standard Terran days, which matched their arrival in this new universe almost to the hour.

“And the rest of you?” Janeway asked. “Was this also your foretold destiny?”

“Men do not generally have their destinies foretold, Captain Janeway,” Juroth replied smiling at her. “No womanly blood to help the Old One in her scrying.”

“My destiny was also foretold in Lorsel’s blood that day, Captain Janeway,” Moag said solemnly. “As was her brother, Kemboth’s. My Lady T’Kahl was most generous to me, as I have been sworn Warbrother to Kemboth and Lorsel since I was three years old. I was told that I would tread the Path to great honour, but only if I chose to follow where my Warsister led. Kemboth was told he should not be afraid of dying without honour, because when the time came, he would meet battle with great honour and bravery and in doing so, save Lorsel.”

“My brother feared most that because his mind was that of a scholar, he would be ill-prepared to defend the honour of our House,” Lorsel explained, her voice thick with sorrow. “Kemboth fell to Gar’s blade defending our mother and me, so that Moag could get us away. My mother later fell in battle when Moag was knocked out.”

“My mother didn’t believe in old superstitions,” Kehlan said, a shade of defiance in her voice.

The last girl—M’Renna—laughed as Janeway shifted her gaze to her. “I’m afraid Old T’Lurak’s vision was unusually clouded the day of my first womanly blooding, Captain Janeway,” she said cheekily. “Although the free flow of bloodwine during the Festival of SoqH’toth might have had something to do with it.”

The crew couldn’t help but laugh at her most unKlingon-like quip.

“She told me that there were many paths laid down before me, and that I needed to remember to choose with my head and not my heart, but not to forget when to choose with my heart.” She laughed again, eyes twinkling with unmistakeable mischief. “Anyway, we were hoping that because we were also present when Lorsel met B’Elanna, her destiny might encompass us as well.”

To Chapter 9

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 7

2009-02-18T09:28:57Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 7: Offerings to the Qap'vah Qun
Word Count: 2,535 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 7: Offerings to the Qap’vah Qun

Chakotay wiped the sweat from his ridged brow as he looked up from the food samples he was scanning, and wished that he really were a Klingon. Even this late in day, with the sun falling rapidly towards the horizon, the air was still heat-laden and humid. Across the field, Torres looked cool and comfortable as she helped Ayala carry sacks of yub’naH fruit from the orchard to the storehouse just outside the abandoned village in the Ketha Lowlands. Once in the storehouse, Voyager could transport the food without having to worry about prying eyes.

Getting to Qo’NoS had been an undertaking as they struggled to maintain the warp field. The anomaly’s transphasic resonance traces contaminating the hull, kept destabilizing the field whenever the ship tried to go above warp five. But there had been much jubilation when they’d limped in-system three weeks ago and found that not only did Praxis have the same composition as the moon in their universe, but there were also Klingons present on Qo’NoS. However, that joy was short-lived as it was just as obvious that something cataclysmic had happened to the Klingons approximately five thousand years ago.

Voyager had found ancient satellites and spacecraft on the nearest moons and a neighbouring planet. They’d also found evidence of mass destruction of fairly advanced cities all around the Klingon homeworld’s dominant super-continent. Some of the ruins were radioactive, indicating that nuclear and energy weapons had been used, while others showed impact craters consistent with the use of mass drivers to bombard the planet.

However, the tenacious Klingons had survived and thrived, and though they were still largely agrarian, they were starting to relearn some of their lost technology. A few of the northern cities already had electricity and the consensus was that within a decade or two, they would crack the secret of the internal combustion engine.

He could see the relief in B’Elanna’s eyes at the confirmation of the Klingons’ survival. Despite her discomfort with her mixed parentage, Chakotay knew that her Klingon heritage was still very important to her. And like her, he hoped that humans and Earth had also survived in this universe.

The first two weeks in-system had been spent mining Praxis and completing repairs to Voyager. It was only in the last week that they’d beamed down to this abandoned village to gather food from its fields and orchards, and the nearby forest.

“Heads up, sir,” Crewman Moira Jarvis said quietly as she handed him a bat’leth. The tall, blonde security woman was barely recognisable beneath her Klingon disguise.

Chakotay followed her gaze towards the forest on the edge of the village’s communal farm. They didn’t know why the village had been deserted; only that it had been abandoned within the last decade.

About fifty Klingon warriors rode out of the forest, most astride hulking sarqHs, large horse-like animals. But, while some of the warriors had carcases of targs and other wild game tied to carry sticks hanging off the backs of their mounts, it was obvious that hunting had been a secondary activity.

In a large cage on a cart pulled by a team of sarqHs were about two dozen frightened children ranging from toddler age to approximately five or six years old. On a forced march behind the cart was a dirty, ragged line of older children between thirteen to sixteen standard years of age—four boys and three girls.

“Everyone, we have company—keep working, but stay alert,” he muttered, sliding the tricorder into a sack of root vegetables. Everyone wore their communicators on the inside of their clothing and had been given sub-dermal locators for extra security, in case they needed an emergency beam out.

B’Elanna and Ayala moved to stand beside him as three male warriors and two females approached. B’Elanna stepped out in front, her hand on the hilt of the dagger that hung from her waist.

“Who are you to trespass on our lands?” she challenged with a low growl.

“I am Gar, son of Jerok, First Warrior of the House of Baroth,” the lead warrior roared, glaring down at her. “The Warriors of Baroth go where they will, woman.”

“Not on our lands they don’t,” she said, standing her ground.

Gar and the other warriors roared with laughter. “These lands are plague lands of the accursed Rompir,” he said.

“The House of Rompir is no more,” B’Elanna returned imperiously. “These are Moh’Kai lands now. I am B’Elanna, daughter of Miral of the House of Moh’Kai.”

Gar chuckled softly. “Well met, daughter of Moh’Kai,” he said. “You’re lucky our bellies are full and we have no need for any more sacrifices to the Qap’vah Qun, woman.”

B’Elanna’s eyes widened and she stiffened visibly as the warriors laughed again and then spurred their steeds onwards. Chakotay heard one woman spit the word “farmers” as if it were an epithet.

“If you travel two days east, you will find more lands to add to Moh’Kai holdings,” the woman laughed as she rode past.

However, as the children passed, there was such fear in the eyes of the younger ones and hatred in the eyes of the teenagers that Chakotay felt a chill down his back.

“Help us, Great Lady,” a girl, no more than thirteen years old, whispered desperately.

A startled Chakotay started forward, but B’Elanna caught his wrist in an iron grip, holding him back. They stood watching the group as they passed through the village before turning towards the river and disappearing from sight.

“B’Elanna?” Chakotay said trying to keep the anger from his voice. “They need our help—she asked you for help.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Torres bit out, jaw clenched with fury. “You don’t even have any idea of what the hell that was, Chakotay!”

“What do you mean, B’Elanna?” Ayala asked in concern.

Instead of answering him, she called out, “Torres to Voyager.”

“We’re listening, B’Elanna,” Janeway replied quietly.

“Captain, can you track those warriors?”

“We’re doing so right now. They’re headed towards the footbridge, but as soon as they left the village, their pace slowed considerably.”

“Good, the children are slowing them down,” Torres said. “That wasn’t a normal hunting party, Chakotay. The children’s village has probably been burnt to the ground and their parents—all the adults—slaughtered. That’s what the insult meant when they gave us directions to other lands to add to Moh’Kai holdings. And in the past, Klingons went to war over three things—honour, territory and resources … and religious reasons.”

“I didn’t think there was a Klingon religion,” Ayala said.

“There isn’t now,” she said grimly. “As the legend goes, the first Klingon, Kotar, killed our gods. But, before Kahless united the Empire, there were older cults centred on the QuprIp’vagh Qun—the Elder Gods. They pronounce it differently here—but the point is that they had some pretty brutal practices. The very young children … they’re lucky; they’re still young enough to be indoctrinated into their places as slaves and foot soldiers for the House of Baroth. Children older than five or six would already be too proud—too apt to stick a knife in the back of their master. The warriors would have slaughtered any children between seven and thirteen, and babies younger than three.”

They stared at her, horror-stricken. “What about the older children?” Chakotay asked. “Wouldn’t they be even more dangerous than a bunch of seven or eight-year-olds?”

“They would be if they lived long enough to become a threat; they’re sacrifices, Chakotay,” B’Elanna replied in the painful, horrified silence. “The ones that survive the march will be deemed to have strong warrior hearts, worthy sacrifices for the gods. Depending on how brutal this particular cult is—executions can be swift and clean, or long and torturous.”

“We can’t just leave them to be killed,” Ayala croaked. “You heard that child. She was begging us for help.”

B’Elanna answered grimly. “I know,” she said. “But we have to think this through. If we rescue them, we can’t leave them here, yet we can’t take them with us either.”

“What do you mean, B’Elanna?” Janeway asked.

“I mean, we have to think this through very carefully—they have no parents, Captain,” she replied. “Without family, without a village, they’ll be dead within a week. Unless we find somewhere isolated and secure where they can survive, they’re simply a bunch of children all alone. It will make them targets no matter where on this planet we put them.”

“And the only places isolated enough are very hostile or still radioactive,” Chakotay said softly in disappointment.

Lorsel’s belly hurt and her head ached, but she barely noticed it. She watched on the guard as he grumblingly made his way to the cook-fires to gorge himself before grudgingly bringing them a meagre meal of water and dried meat. The babies were lucky; their guards would keep them well fed and healthy. The House of Borath wanted strong slaves.

The gods were surely smiling on her, for Rork was one of the more discontented warriors … resentful of being left alone to guard the “useless whelps” as he called Lorsel and her fellow sacrifices.

“Moag,” she called. Her brother’s best friend lifted his gaze to her; Kemboth had fought most bravely defending their mother, but in the end he’d fallen under Gar’s sword.

“What is it, Lorsel?” he replied softly.

“Do you remember what Old T’Lurak told me on the celebration of my first womanly blooding?” she whispered excitedly.

“Yes,” he replied slowly in confusion.

“It is time to make our escape, my Warbrother,” she said, invoking the bond she and Kemboth had shared with him since they were infants. “We have just met the Great Lady upon the Road.”

“What?” he nearly shouted.

“What are you talking about?” Durok asked.

“Did you not see the hilt of her knife, Moag?” Lorsel asked.

“No,” he replied. “I had other things on my mind—like assessing if there was any place to hide if we got away. But I doubt those weaklings would have the backbone to fight for anything, much less us.”

“They are not weak, Warbrother,” she replied. “They have more strength than you would imagine.”

“I saw the knife, Lorsel,” quiet Juroth, Durok’s brother, said. “It had a blood red star set into a golden shield.”

“Yes!” Lorsel said happily, finding it difficult to keep her voice down.

Moag’s eyes bulged. “Are you sure?” he demanded.

“Quite sure,” Juroth replied. Although Juroth was the eldest of them all, much to his father’s everlasting ire, he’d shown no interest in becoming a warrior. “You have not answered Durok’s question; what are you talking about, Lorsel?”

“The Old One told me that one day, in my time greatest despair, I would meet a Great Lady upon the Road to the Stars, and if I was brave and proved my worth, I would be allowed to tend my Lady’s daughter in the High House among the Stars. And she said I would know my Lady by the bloodstar in the heart of her golden shield.

“If we escape and return to that village,” Lorsel continued earnestly, “I know my Lady will take us all into her service if we pledge our honour to her and her House among the Stars.”

“It was just an old, abandoned village,” Durok scoffed. “You heard how the warriors—they’re nothing but scavengers!”

“Scavengers don’t have knives like that, little brother,” Juroth said thoughtfully. “Nor bat’leths or mek’leths or yan like that. These many years I have apprenticed our weapons master, I’ve been a good student. And I know that my old master would have wept unashamedly had he crafted even the least among those weapons.”

“Do you really think that she will take us all?” Kehlan asked anxiously. “The Lady was your destiny, Lorsel. What if my mother didn’t believe in taking me to have my Path divined?”

“Then you meet Destiny blind—like a man would,” M’Renna replied. “Would you not rather fight for the chance that this Lady will take us to her Star House? Or would you rather go meekly to the slaughter like frightened tI’qa vIghro?”

“I am no animal to be led to the slaughter,” Durok said hotly.

“Rork has been eyeing me,” M’Renna said with a hard, calculating look. “He is too low to catch the attention of any of the women and he’s frustrated. I’ll get him to kneel beside me … goad him into trying to take my honour. Moag, you and Juroth can jump him then. And by the gods, do it quietly! Now lie down and pretend you’re all sleeping.”

They did as she instructed as best they could with all their hands bound together. After a few minutes, Rork returned with a waterskin. Through slitted eyes, Lorsel watched the surreal tableau unfold before her.

M’Renna blatantly opened her legs and growled deep in her throat as he threw the waterskin to her. He stopped, staring down at her. A familiar pungency assailed Lorsel’s senses—M’Renna’s womanly arousal. She prayed that the boys would keep their wits about them.

She needn’t have worried. The moment Rork dropped to his knees, so intent on getting his greasy hands beneath M’Renna’s tunic, Moag struck swiftly like a kos’karii serpent coiling around the soul of the dishonoured dead. In one blinding move he had drawn Rork’s knife and was plunging it into his neck as Juroth snapped the warrior’s head back.

Rork didn’t even have a chance to scream before the boys tossed his body aside and cut their friends’ bonds.

“His blood is all over me,” M’Renna said in disgust. “And my scent will be easy for the grint hounds to follow.”

“No more than the rest of us,” Juroth assured her. “It will wash off in the river, but we must get as far away from here as possible before they realise we’re gone.”

They raced for the river and dove in. Halfway across, Lorsel realised that Torsk still stood shivering on the bank.

“What’s wrong with you?” Juroth demanded angrily. “Get in!”

“I can’t swim,” the younger boy admitted shamefacedly. “I thought we would take the bridge.”

“There’s no time,” Juroth said. “Going straight across cuts our journey time in half!” As Juroth pleaded with Torsk, Lorsel put all her effort into fighting the current. At last, strong arms gripped her, dragging her out of the water just as she felt her strength begin to wane. She smiled gratefully into Moag’s eyes.

As she returned her gaze to the dark water, she could just make out two heads bobbing along with the current. Juroth was carrying Torsk on his back. Lorsel felt a flash of admiration for Juroth’s strength and loyalty, but there was also anger for Torsk’s cowardice.

Twice they disappeared beneath the surface, and twice they reappeared a little further downstream. Finally, Lorsel helped Durok pull his friend, coughing and shivering out of the water, while Moag and M’Renna helped Juroth onto the bank. After a few moments trying to catch his breath, Juroth urged them onward, up the embankment towards village.

Across the water, the hounds were already baying for blood.

To Chapter 8

New Fic: Burn

2009-01-23T06:22:38Z

Title: Burn
Word Count: 595 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: Roslin/Adama
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them.
Spoilers: Season 4 up to Episode 4.11 – Sometimes a Great Notion
Summary: Life … burns …

Burn

Drip …

Burn …

Life … burns and so does this bringer of life. Liquid fire burns in my veins. It will either burn me to ash from the inside or raise me from death like a Phoenix of old.

His voice burns in my blood.

“It started like it always did. With a body. This one was in the river, and I could tell she had once been beautiful, but this bullet and fast current had taken away from her. All we are, or that we think we are, all that we are certain about, is taken away from us. When you've worked the streets and seen what I've seen, you become more and more convinced of it every day. Caprica City has been my teacher, my mistress. From the moment I opened my eyes, she is in my blood, like cheap wine. Bitter and sweet, tinged with regret. I'll never be free of her, nor do I wanna be, for she is what I am. All that is, should always be.”

It is a good burn.

Burn

Drip …

Burn …

“Just love somebody.”

Love … burns and so does the shrill wail of the harbinger of my death. But in the burning, I find reason to live.

“You go. You go. You go to your rest now. I'm not gonna be selfish anymore. You go. Rest.”

In the interstitial spaces between one moment and the next, I burn.

“Missed you.”

I burn …

“Me too.”

I burn …

“Love you …”

Burn

“Might be worth pondering what else you’ve been wrong about.”

In the crucible of this life, relationships burn on the pyre of living.

Burn

"Crew of Galactica. People of the fleet. This is Admiral Adama. Three years ago I promised to lead you to a new home. We've endured a difficult journey, we've all lost, we've all suffered, and the truth is I questioned whether this day would ever come. But today our journey is at an end. We have arrived, at Earth."

In the crucible of this galaxy, planets burn on the thermonuclear pyre of Time.

“Earth …”

The radioactive soil sings this world’s funeral dirge.

"It's perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another."

Burn

“They’re not human. They’re Cylon.”

On the burning Wheel of Time, they perished in the flames of the Children of Cylon returning home. All this has happened before and it will happen again. Burn.

“The Thirteenth Tribe, a tribe of Cylons, came to this planet and called it Earth.”

Burn

Burn …

“The Pythian Prophecies …”

Burn …

“Cottle told me you didn’t show up for your diloxin treatment.”

Drip …

Burn …

“That’s right.”

Burn …

“Do you want to tell me why?”

Burn …

“I didn’t feel like it.”

Burn …

“You’re gonna reschedule.”

Burn …

“I don’t think so.”

Burn …

“Laura, you need your treatments.”

Burn …

“No, I don’t.”

Burn …

“What are you doing? You just gonna … lie down and quit? You’re the one who made me believe in this.”

Burn …

“You shouldn't have listened to me. When the Cylons first attacked, you should have held your ground and kept fighting. Because I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. And all those people who listened, and they trusted me, and they followed me … all those people … they’re dead …”

Burn …

“Don’t … stop …”

Burn …

“Burn …”

Burn

Fin

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 6

2009-01-18T05:10:58Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 6: Swimming too Close to Scylla
Word Count: 1,980 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 6: Swimming too Close to Scylla

“How many chances do we give a man like Gaius Baltar?” Captain Aaron Kelly asked quietly. He didn’t look up at Adama, just sat on the edge of the brig cot staring down at his hands. Hands that had set the bombs that had killed one of Baltar’s lawyers, and nearly killed a second. “All in the name of justice!”

“It’s all we have left,” Adama said; those few words drying his mouth out like so much ashes, he felt like he was choking on them.

“No!” Kelly said firmly, rising and meeting Adama’s gaze now. “It isn’t justice; it’s a perversion of justice! Give him this trial, Admiral, and he will worm out of it like he’s wormed out of responsibility for his any of his actions. Because for a man like Baltar, no matter what the consequences of his actions, it will never be his fault; it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s right there in that foul book his lawyer smuggled out for him.”

“Be that as it may,” Adama replied, “whether or not he was responsible for what happened on New Caprica, it is for a court to decide. I will not have terrorist bombings and summary executions on board my ship. Did you ever stop to think about the pilot of that raptor or the innocent soldiers or civilians your bomb could have killed—the innocent civilian you did kill?”

“Innocent civilian,” the other man said with a bitter laugh. His eyes were hard and cold. “There are no innocents anymore, Admiral. That is what the Cylons took from us; that is what Gaius Baltar took from us!”

With that he turned his back on Adama and sat down on the far side of the cot. Bill knew instinctively that he wouldn’t get another word out of the man who—until a few hours ago—he’d thought of as one of his best, most dependable officers.

Frak! he thought angrily as he turned and finally left the brig.

The stars glinted like shards of ice in the cold dark. They didn’t twinkle; Laura missed that in this endless trek across the vast nothingness of space. She missed the beauty of stars twinkling through a planetary atmosphere. The last time she’d seen the stars properly was on New Caprica, although such nights had been few and far between.

She turned her mind quickly from the thought as she turned her back on the porthole and climbed into her bed.

Too late. Thoughts of New Caprica inevitably led to thoughts of what had happened there—sometimes good things, but mostly bad. Even something as innocuous as the thought of twinkling stars conjured memories that still flayed her soul. And Gaius Baltar’s trial would only make it worse.

Oh, they hadn’t done anything that would leave marks—no, the Cylons were far too smart for that. Arrest after arrest, the unreasonable questioning … a humiliating internal exam by a Simon … being forced to dress in front of a leering Cavil ... cycles of hot and cold where she alternately boiled and froze in her flimsy prison-issue garb … the days of constant, unrelenting white light that guaranteed that she didn’t get sufficient sleep—and what little she got was not restful. But it was not nearly as harrowing as the interminable time spent locked in the small, black box.

Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, she threw back her coverlet, and sat up trying to get her breathing under control before she started to hyperventilate. With a trembling hand, she turned on her bedside lamp, biting her lip to stop the incipient sobs that rose in her throat to form a hard knot, making it almost impossible to breathe for a few moments.

Stop it! Just stop thinking about it—think about the good times! she told herself fiercely, but the avalanche was implacable and she was in its path. With it came the memory of the inevitable stench of her own wastes—it’s only your natural bodily functions … nothing to be ashamed of … nothing to be ashamed of … nothing to be ashamed of—and the humiliation of the box opening and them hauling her out into the brightly-lit cell.

Tears came now as she forced herself to breathe through it. Her new mantra—it’s only a flashback, it’s not real … it’s not real … it’s not real—coursed through her mind, drowning out her need to scream and her memories of her screams. And when the need passed, it settled down again in the back of her mind, a constant companion whispering to her, it’s not real. One day she might even believe it.

Finally, Laura relaxed her hands so that her fingernails wouldn’t cut into her palms. Stumbling to her small, cramped bathroom, she splashed cool water on her face, washing it as if to wash away her tears. Straightening up, she surveyed her reflection. Ever since start of the tribunal process, she was finding it difficult to sleep—more difficult now than even after the rescue.

Her suit hung on the back of the door; President Laura Roslin. However, it was the comfortable sweat pants and t-shirt folded on the hamper that she reached for now. She quickly removed her nightclothes and put it on, before returning to her bedroom and rummaging through her small trunk for the large, old cable-knit sweater Bill had given her on her return from New Caprica.

Through the open door of her bathroom, she again surveyed her reflection. Everything was in place. Normal. Now what?

Everyone was asleep and she didn’t need to be awake for another five or six hours. She closed her eyes; I have to face facts, I’m afraid to go to sleep.

Laura wondered if she would ever get back to the point when she could get a good night's sleep. For the last few weeks, four fitful hours was all she could manage most nights before she plunged into that hellish blackness, fighting the terror of insistent hands that touched every inch of her naked self, inside and out; fighting her own body … her own weaknesses … her own fears …

Now in the armour of Bill’s sweater, she drew a little comfort and felt her control returning. Perhaps she could clear the cobwebs with a tour of the ship before getting back to work on those interminable reports that seemed to literally breed on her desk.

Half an hour later her head was anything but clear. If anything, she had sunk deeper into a fog, but she kept walking, thankful that at this time of the morning there were few people in the corridors to see her. She stopped suddenly—where the hell am I? Oh yes, near the cargo holds …

"Good night, Madam President, or should I say good morning."

Laura froze and then whirled to face her chief aide; she felt her face flushed with a fleeting panic that she was sure did not escape Tory’s notice.

"I'm sorry, Laura, I didn't mean to startle you," the young woman said quietly.

Laura forced a smile, taking in for the first time Tory's black, form-fitting exercise attire. "No apologies necessary, Tory, I was just thinking about something. I wasn't paying attention—I wasn't expecting … I mean there are so few people about this time of morning …" Her voice trailed off, unable to think of anything else to say.

Tory grinned as they continued down the corridor. "I know. I couldn't sleep either, so rather than chase that black-winged demon, Phantasos, I decided it would probably be more productive, and easier on our staff, if I did battle with a few old demons."

"Sounds like a wise plan," Laura returned. "Well, have a good work-out," she said as Tory stopped in front of the small control room near the cargo holds, which the crew and passengers of Colonial One used as a makeshift gym. She sighed inwardly—might as well get back to her office. This walk wasn't doing what she had intended. She hadn't taken more than three steps when Tory called out to her.

"Would you care to join me, ma’am?"

Surprised at the offer, Laura scrutinised her aide for a moment, noting a slight anxiety and a genuine eagerness there, but nothing more. Still she held back.

"Thank you, but I have some work to do."

"I understand, Madam President. I just figured …" She shrugged, watching as Laura considered the offer again.

"How long do you intend to be?"

"Probably not more than an hour or so. After all, I wouldn't want to shock our poor staff or the Quorum by being too mellow," she said with a short laugh.

Janeway grinned—a genuine unconscious grin, and shook her head. "No, we can't have that," she said. "All right, Tory, lead the way."

As they entered the deserted, Tory turned to Laura, suddenly looking very uncomfortable.

"I'm not really that good at the asanas of the old yogin practice, but my mother used to do them. I find that doing what I remember of them, they remind me of her and lately they seem to calm my mind … help me to focus better. You don't have to do them all—just whatever you're comfortable with."

Laura smiled ruefully. “To tell you the truth, Tory, I have only a vague idea of what yogin is and no idea of what an asana is—why don’t you start at the beginning … like you would with a five year old just learning to add,” she said with a quiet chuckle.

Tory smiled, anxiousness flowing away like the tide. “Asanas are the physical movements used in combination with breathing exercises central to yogin practice,” she said dragging two well-used mats to the centre of the room.

“We’ll start slowly with a few poses and you can just rest when you feel you need it. The type of yogin I know best is called Surya, or the Salutation to the Sun. My mother would do it in the mornings at sunrise.”

With a gesture, she invited Laura to stand on the mat in front of her. “There are twelve asanas in one cycle of Surya, with each posture flowing into the next and some are repeated. Two cycles are performed in a round, with the opposite leg being moved first in the second cycle and the oldest form employ mantras to keep the mind focused, but we can get into that later if you want. Your breathing is also important, so with each pose, you either inhale or exhale.”

At Laura’s dubious look, she laughed. “It’s not as complicated as it sounds,” she said. “I’ll do a round to show you, and then we’ll do a round together.”

“Okay,” Laura said, suddenly very curious and realizing that she knew so little about her aide.

“This first pose is the Prayer Pose,” she said, standing with her hands pressed together. “Each asana has a name, but you can learn them later also. Right now, we’ll just go through the movements.”

Without further explanation, Tory launched gracefully into a series of movements that reminded Laura of a beautifully choreographed dance. As the young woman returned to the “Prayer Pose”, her face was serene as she paused for a beat and then launched into the movements again, leading off with her left leg this time.

Tory smiled as she emerged from her serene focus. "Don't worry, you'll do fine," she said bringing her hands together in the Prayer Pose. Waiting for Laura to assume the first pose, she slowly led her through the other movements, calling out when to inhale or exhale.

Clumsily mimicking the younger woman’s movements, for the first time in a long time, Laura felt her mind surface above the darkness … the terror that threatened to drown her, and she inhaled.

#

To Chapter 7

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 5

2009-01-18T04:40:35Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 5: Brave New Universe
Word Count: 1,735 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that! An ensemble piece, but mostly from the point of view of Adama, Roslin and Janeway.
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 5: Brave New Universe

Chakotay pulled B’Elanna into a tight hug as she and Tom arrived for the senior staff briefing. It had been nine hours since their arrival at their current position.

“So how is our newest addition?” he asked gently.

“Sleeping, thank god,” B’Elanna replied. “Naomi’s pulling special babysitting duty—Sam’s keeping an eye on both of them in sickbay.”

Tom held her chair out for her and she sank down into it gratefully; even with modern medicine, giving birth was still more exhausting than a Klingon training exercise in full battle armour.

Janeway was the last to arrive, bustling in with an armful of padds, which she dumped with a noisy clatter onto the table before coming around to hug B’Elanna and say a heartfelt “congratulations” to both her and Tom.

“Thanks for coming,” she whispered gently. “Let me know when you get tired.”

B’Elanna nodded. “I will, Captain,” she replied. Lieutenant Rollins had called her a few hours earlier to do a preliminary analysis of the ship’s sensor readings during the transwarp conduit’s collapse. With half of engineering nursing the dilithium re-crystallisation matrix and the warp plasma flows, while the other half went EVA with Seven to fix the burnt out array in the deflector dish, the external sensors and armour generators, and with Janeway buried in the guts of her ship repairing everything from plasma conduits to the bioneural gel packs, there had been no one to analyse the sensor data.

Janeway resumed her seat and took a bracing sip coffee from the cup Tuvok handed her. She nodded gratefully and murmured “thank you”, before turning her gaze on Harry Kim. “All right, Ensign, let’s start with you—I take it you’ve recovered from that bump on the head?”

Kim laughed. “Yes Captain,” he replied.

“Any idea where we are?” Paris asked.

“Actually, yes,” he said soberly. “It looks like we’re in the heart of what should be the Klingon Empire—about four light years from Qo’NoS.”

“What should be the Klingon Empire?” B’Elanna queried, getting over her shock before the others.

“Yeah,” Kim replied. “As soon as we got sensors back, I noticed right away that there were no subspace signals anywhere.” Again, a sense of shock permeated the room and there was complete silence for a few moments.

“In fact,” he continued, “we couldn’t find evidence of any known faster than light communications signals or space/subspace field stress indicative of warp travel within normal sensor range, Captain. Once the astrometric sensors are up and running, we can extend the range and search parameters, refine our scans. But as far as I can tell, none of the known powers in the alpha and beta quadrants—within sensor range—are putting out any signals that would indicate a warp-capable, or even space-capable, society.

“Therefore, I took a closer look at all our readings, and although everything appears to be roughly where they should be, there are differences—”

“What sort of differences, Harry?” Chakotay asked.

“Well the closest and most obvious is in the Qo’NoS system, sir,” Kim replied as he got up and activated the briefing room’s viewscreen. “The moon Praxis was destroyed in 2293—”

“Decimating Qo’NoS’ atmosphere and leading to the truce between the Klingon Empire and the Federation,” B’Elanna finished his sentence. “The Homeworld still relies on the atmospheric replenishment tech the Federation helped them develop. It’ll take at least another century and half before Qo’NoS can survive without that technology.”

“Exactly,” he said, bringing up the scan of the Klingon’s home solar system. “Except that in this solar system, Praxis is still there in one piece.”

“And Qo’NoS’ atmosphere is intact,” Janeway said.

“Yes, Captain, that appears the case,” Kim said. “Praxis and other anomalous readings like the expansion of the Hromi Cluster, which now seems to be developing into the major star-forming region, a couple of new stars that aren’t in any of our databases, some missing stars and couple of additional supernova remnants, led me to ask the Doctor to run quantum resonance scans on his patients. I’ve also started scans of the ship itself and of the surrounding space, but—”

“But you suspect that we’re no longer in our own quantum universe,” Chakotay finished for him.

Kim nodded—his open, boyish face sorrowful. “That’s correct, commander,” he replied, “that and a bit of time travel—approximately five to six thousand years into the future relative to our universe’ time-frame, accounting for galactic and stellar motion.”

“Well, that certainly explains a few things,” B’Elanna muttered, shocked at the thought that she and her daughter might be the only Klingons in existence—and not even full Klingons at that!

“B’Elanna?” Tom said gently.

“Harry, can you tell if this Qo’NoS is inhabited?” she asked.

“Not from this distance,” Kim replied. “Perhaps once we get the astrometric sensors online—”

“And even then we may not be able to tell definitively,” Tom said quickly, squeezing her hand gently—seeming to read her fears with uncanny accuracy. “If they’re in an agrarian stage or even early industrial, we wouldn’t be able to tell unless we go there.”

“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea,” Janeway said thoughtfully.

“Captain?” Chakotay said.

“Before its destruction, Praxis was a rich source of dilithium and other ores for the Empire,” Janeway replied. “The Klingons had been mining it for centuries—and they still mine the asteroids that resulted from its destruction. We have main power and shields back now, and at warp six, it would only take four days to get there. It would use up quite a bit of our reserves, but unless the composition of that moon has been drastically altered from what it was in our universe, we should be able to find a lot of the resources we need there, and perhaps food supplies from Qo’NoS itself.”

“That’s a great idea, captain,” Kim said enthusiastically. “And if we do find Klingons here, then it’s possible that we’ll find humans, Vulcans and other alpha quadrant species as well.”

“That does not necessarily follow Mr. Kim,” Tuvok said in his clipped, precise tone. “No more than it would logically follow that not finding Klingons would mean we would not find other alpha quadrant species.”

B’Elanna could feel her hackles rising at the instant dimming of the light in Harry’s eyes as the younger man visibly slumped into himself. She knew how much Harry wanted to go home—how much he missed his family, even his old girlfriend, Libby. Now with this news that they were in a completely different universe, it would be hard for him to give up all hope, and it made her furious that Tuvok would squash Harry’s need to have something to hope for.

However, Janeway beat B’Elanna in responding to Tuvok. “You’re correct, Tuvok,” the captain said. “But Mr. Kim does have a valid point. If we do find Klingons or evidence of them on Qo’NoS, it may indicate that there might be a certain amount of parallel evolution between the two universes, and indeed, be indicative that other familiar alpha quadrant species or their descendants may be found, considering the humanoid seeding of M-Class planets that went on in our galaxy courtesy of the Progenitors.”

Tuvok nodded courteously to the captain, an oddly chastened gesture.

“All right,” Janeway continued. “B’Elanna, you said that Harry’s theory that we are no longer in our universe “explains a few things”. What did you mean by that?”

“Rollins asked me to analyse the sensor readings from the transwarp conduit,” B’Elanna replied. “Basically from what I can tell, we accidentally created the anomaly.”

There was a jumbled wave of protest, but as the realisation sunk in, it died as quickly as it began.

“How so, B’Elanna?” Chakotay asked soberly.

B’Elanna nodded to Tom; he rose and brought up her analysis on the viewscreen. “The detonation of the transphasic torpedoes had an unintended effect on the transwarp conduit,” she continued. “It created a divergence anomaly—something similar to the subspace scission that duplicated Voyager back in our second year in the delta quadrant. I found that all our readings doubled as the anomaly interacted with our shields. But while our engines stalled, the other Voyager accelerated down the transwarp conduit.” They stared at her in mute shock.

“It’s possible that the other Voyager was in phase with the conduit and therefore our original universe,” Seven said finally. “While we were more in phase with the scission and got sucked into it.”

“And that’s why we lost most of our anti-matter,” Kim said in quiet realisation. “The majority of it went to the other Voyager.”

“That would be my guess, Harry,” B’Elanna said with grim finality. “After listening to your report, the sensor readings while we were caught in the anomaly make a lot more sense to me now. I think that this transwarp scission was a sort of trans-dimensional phenomenon that crashed through the barriers between multiple universes, losing energy as it went, before dissipating and depositing us here in this universe. Captain, I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the analysis is complete, it finds that we’re in a universe with a quantum signature very different from our native one. Furthermore, as the anomaly appears to have dissipated, and we’ve apparently travelled in time, it would be virtually impossible for us to get back.”

“I see,” Janeway said softly. The captain rubbed her temple tiredly and B’Elanna felt a rush of sympathy and affection for the older woman. Like Kim, Janeway had a lot to return to the Federation for—unlike B’Elanna, who had the most important people to her on Voyager.

“Captain,” she said gently. “Your quick thinking saved the ship, Ma’am. If you hadn’t shored up the shields and structural integrity—stopped fighting it—and positioned us to ride out the wave, we would have been destroyed.”

“At least we know that somewhere out there, another Voyager probably made it home,” Tom quickly chimed in. “And we did make it back to the alpha quadrant—even if it is someone else’s alpha quadrant.” Soft chuckles greeted his attempt to dispel the sombre atmosphere and B’Elanna was glad for his eternal optimism and ability to cheer people up.

Janeway lifted her gaze to meet theirs, nodding gratefully. “Thank you, lieutenants,” she said hoarsely. “Okay everyone, until the quantum and temporal analyses are done let’s complete the repairs, and then head to Qo’NoS.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” they all replied sharply.

To Chapter 6

WOW!!! Season 4.5 with a bullet!!!

2009-01-17T22:00:59Z

I must admit I haven't really thought to use this journal for discussing the episodes, but having seen last night's episode and taken a few hours to digest it, I had to just say "WOW!!!"

By the end of it, I thought that I'd personally run a marathon as revelation after revelation rolled across the screen with the violence of an inevitable hurricane--literally ... figuratively ... emotionally.

All the actors definitely brought their A-Game, especially Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos. Laura's loss of faith, culminating in the scene where Bill finds her burning the scriptures left me speechless and openly crying. This calibre of acting, from these two performers, is the reason I don't go to many movies anymore, because I'm so often disappointed. BRAVO! to both these wonderful actors!

Dualla's suicide--GAH! I did NOT see that coming ... and Adama's grief was so palpable, as it has been for all his "daughters". And I don't know what to think about his other "dead daughter" Kara, only that she was the final Cylon ... or maybe the "Angel of Death".

As for the revelation of the last Cylon--Ellen Tigh came out of left field, but when I thought about it, I'd considered her a candidate for Cylon-hood in the 1st and 2nd seasons, but not after she died on New Caprica and especially not after Saul was revealed as a Cylon. I'm of two minds about this--one is "okay, I accept this, although it feels like an ass-pull to me", while the second is "okay, this is another red herring" and Saul simply falls for women who remind him of his "Earth-Ellen" like Colonies-Ellen and Caprica-Six and whoever else he's been with over the last two thousand years.

I know it's probably the former and I guess that I'll just have to see where it all leads, but WOW! Great beginning to the Final Ten episodes!

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 4

2009-01-15T12:00:44Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 4: Staring into Shadows
Word Count: 585 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that!
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 4: Staring into Shadows

Gaius Baltar sat in his favourite lounge chair, staring out over the lake as the sun fell towards the horizon, its last rays painting the sky crimson.

Funny how not until this lake house was destroyed did I ever stop to consider that I might have a favourite chair, or that it would be this one, he thought distantly.

“What will the subject of this chapter be, Gaius,” his angel ... his devil ... his Siren asked, her voice teasing, mellifluous as her head rose above the edge of the hot tub. There was a playful look in her eyes.

“I don’t know yet,” he replied. Lengthening shadows from the palisade of tall, ancient trees surrounding the property cast stripes across the deck.

“You have yet to give thanks to God,” she said, resting her chin on her folded arms on the lip of the tub; the playful look left her gaze.

“Ah yes, God,” he said with a bitter twist of his mouth. “I have so much to thank God for—I’m in a frakking prison cell if you hadn’t noticed!”

“Do not blaspheme, Gaius,” she said in that low, dangerous voice that was always the harbinger of violence. “Without God, you wouldn’t be here right now—you could have been left on the Eye of Jupiter planet when the its sun went nova, or you could have been recaptured by the Cylons and be on the baseship right now, answering for D’Anna’s crimes of disobedience and defiance of the collective Cylon will, not to mention your own crimes.”

Baltar shuddered involuntarily. He remembered how the Cylons had acted when they thought he’d been responsible for deliberately infecting them with a deadly pathogen they had no immunity against—like feral, rabid dogs ready to tear his throat out.

“Human death can be so very … permanent,” she said nastily. “And without God, sending me to help you withstand Roslin and Adama’s tortures, I doubt you’d be sitting in that cell awaiting trial. Do you really think Madam President would allow a little thing like justice to get between her and an airlock evacuation button?”

A decided chill trickled down Baltar’s back; in many ways, Laura Roslin scared him more than the Cylons did. Every time she looked at him, he got the feeling that she could see right through him … that she saw every bluff and lie he’d ever told for what they were—and the only thing that stopped her from summarily ordering his death was the fact that she had no proof.

Six rose out of the hot tub and manoeuvred her way around to the back of his chair. Snaking her wet arms about his neck, she purred in his ear, “God has chosen me to be your guardian, Gaius, and your guide. He has chosen you to spread His Word. You must teach your people to see the light of the One God. Your people are waiting to be led from the darkness of their false gods into the light of His Love. God is Love, Gaius, God is Love.”

The details of his dingy brig cell in the bowels of Galactica suddenly snapped into sharp focus. In the harsh light, the bars threw shadows across the floor and the bed where he sat hunched over, scribbling frantically on one of the precious sheets of paper his lawyer had smuggled in to him.

At the top of the page was written, “God is Love.”

To Chapter 5

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ... Chapter 3

2009-01-15T11:46:55Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 3: Comes a Bright Dawn
Word Count: 1,090 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that!
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 3: Comes a Bright Dawn

It was Tom Paris’ voice that brought Kathryn Janeway back to consciousness this time.

“Captain, are you all right?” he asked in concern as he helped her to rise from the deck.

The bridge was smoke-filled and bathed in dim emergency lighting. A security team was working damage control, putting out fires at the ops station and the engineering sub-station.

“I’m fine, Tom,” she replied. “A little singed around the edges, but I’ll be just fine. Any idea of where we are?”

He shook his head. “Wherever it is, we’re dead in the water, captain,” he replied. “Seven reports that we’ve got most of our armour, but it’s damaged and the generators are offline, while shields are at about fifteen percent. But other than life support and emergency power, that’s it as far as we can tell. Propulsion is offline and communications are down.”

Another security team climbed out of the emergency access hatch as Tom quickly moved over to scan Harry Kim and Chakotay, who was now lying between the young man and an equally unconscious Tuvok.

Kathryn took control of the situation. “I’ll see what I can do about communications. Seven, head to engineering and give them a hand down there,” she ordered.

“Yes, captain,” the former Borg said in her usual clipped tones. But she hesitated as she looked down at the unconscious Chakotay.

Paris caught her anxious hesitation and smiled as he dispensed a hypospray against Chakotay’s neck. “Don’t worry, Seven,” he said. “Harry will be fine—just a concussion—” He waved the security officers, carrying a couple of portable anti-gravity stretchers, over. “I’m sending him to sickbay as a precaution. Chakotay’s concussion is much milder,” he continued as the big, decidedly groggy, Indian began to come around.

Seven nodded and walked briskly to the access hatch and crawled in, disappearing from sight.

As Kathryn worked to pull the burnt out communication relays from the ops station, Paris helped the security personnel load Kim and Tuvok onto the stretchers.

“What’s wrong with Tuvok?” Kathryn asked. She hadn’t failed to notice that Paris—Voyager’s greatest nose for information and juicy gossip—had assumed that Seven’s concern had been directed at Harry Kim.

“I’m not sure,” Paris replied. “He doesn’t have a concussion that I can detect. From the tricorder data, I’d have to guess that he’s put himself into some sort of Vulcan healing trance.”

“That would be consistent with what I saw, captain,” Lieutenant Ayala said as he returned the fire-fighting equipment to its alcove near the security station. “Commander Tuvok wasn’t thrown to the deck like most of us were when the ship went through whatever that was. He and Seven both remained standing. Then after a few seconds, it was like he fainted. He just dropped to the deck without a sound and he had the strangest look on his face.”

As Marla Gilmore and a maintenance team arrived via the turbolift, Kathryn waved Tom towards it. “All right, Tom, get the injured to sickbay,” she ordered. “With propulsion down, I get the feeling that you’ll do far more good down there than up here.”

Paris’ face lit up despite the dire circumstance. “Yes, captain,” he said. “Thank you.”

Kathryn smiled back as the doors closed and spared a moment to hope that everything was fine with B’Elanna and the baby.

“Ms Gilmore, let’s get these communications relays replaced as quickly as possible,” she said. “Ensign Culhane, Mr. Tessoni, try to get sensors up and running—see if we can get a look at where we are.”

“Aye captain,” they chorused and set to work.

Sickbay was in chaos when Tom got there. He experienced an almost painful sense of déjà-vu as his mind threw to the fore of his memory, the carnage the Caretaker’s displacement wave had caused seven years ago. But that time, Harry had been at his side, not a candidate for one of those beds.

The Emergency Medical Hologram, Samantha Wildman, Juliet Jurot and Crewman Lynda White circulated through the crowd of the ambulatory-injured, quickly performing triage, before moving on to other patients. Noah Lessing finished treating an unconscious crewman and directed Tom to put his charges on nearby beds.

“How’s it going?” Tom asked as he helped get Tuvok settled.

“Pretty good, all things considered,” Crewman Lessing replied. “Lots of bumps on the head, sprains and broken bones, but we haven’t lost anyone yet. Do you know what happened? Any idea of where we are?”

“The captain is working on figuring that out right now,” Tom replied, trying to sound confident as he looked anxiously around the sickbay. “B’Elanna—”

Lessing smiled. “She and the baby are just fine,” he assured Paris. “We needed all the sickbay bio-beds, so Doc moved them to the iso-lab,” he said giving a quick nod in the direction of the lab. “Go see them—we can hold down the fort for a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Paris said gratefully and hurried to the lab.

He stopped short on the threshold and his breath caught in his throat. He’d never seen his wife look so beautiful or so content as she did at this moment with their baby sucking noisily at her breast.

And then she looked up and smiled at him so radiantly that he had to revise his assessment of only a moment ago.

“Hey,” she said tiredly, jolting him from introspection.

His feet found their own way forward. “Oh B’Elanna,” he whispered reverentially, seeing his daughter for the first time. Her little face was screwed up tight with fierce concentration as she sucked lustily at her mother’s breast, one tiny fist resting possessively against it.

Tom ran a finger lightly along one soft cheek and leaned in to kiss her delicately ridged forehead. “Hey there,” he whispered; his daughter ignored him and continued sucking.

B’Elanna chuckled. “So, you like?”

His gleeful laughter answered her and he met her gaze, and at that moment felt as if his very soul was laid bare before her. He leaned in to gently kiss her lips. He felt her soft lips broaden into a wide grin against his and couldn’t help his own wide smile.

“Oh, I like very much,” he replied.

She gently disengaged the baby from her breast; their daughter gave a loud squawk in protest as B’Elanna settled her into Tom’s arms. “Miral, say hello to your Daddy,” she said closing her robe. Tom looked down into his little girl’s blue eyes and fell in love all over again.

To Chapter 4

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before … Chapter 2

2009-01-08T04:28:33Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 2: In the Maelstrom's Aftermath
Word Count: 1,060 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that!
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 2: In the Maelstrom’s Aftermath

Laura Roslin didn’t pay attention to the marine guard’s challenge. The young man’s words were a distant echo in her mind as she opened the hatch.

“Admiral Adama left orders that he was not to be disturbed.”

Like so much aboard this ship now, in the aftermath of Kara Thrace’s death, his words were muted somehow, as if dampened by the collective grief of an entire battlestar. And perhaps it was. She didn’t hear how her own guard captain had answered the marine; she didn’t care.

Laura stepped into Adama’s quarters and closed the hatch behind her. For a moment, she imagined—like she always did whenever she entered his space—that she could blot out the entire universe outside these rooms. It was like being cocooned in a womb of privacy where they could just be … where they could have for a few minutes—or hours, if they could manage it—some semblance of the man and the woman they’d been before the holocaust that had enveloped their civilisation. For her it was even more so than when she was in her ostensibly private space on board Colonial One, the nominal seat of her government. There, she always was—and always would be—the President.

But it only took her another moment to realise that the universe had indeed intruded on this little oasis he’d shared with her. Her breath caught in her throat, wrenching forth a small sob at the sight of the exquisite model sailing ship, which he’d spent hours creating, smashed … bits and pieces strewn across the floor like so much flotsam on an ocean of grief. The golden figurine of the Goddess Aurora lay at her feet. Laura stooped to pick it up—it had been the last thing Kara had given him before taking her Viper out on patrol.

Her gaze was inevitably drawn to him, sitting on the edge of his rack, his head in his hands. She crossed quickly to his side and drew him, unresisting, into her arms without stopping to think about it. Wrapping his arms about her waist, he shook as he pulled her closer, until she was standing between his legs. She stroked his hair, tears flowing down her face even as his soaked through her thin shirt, wetting her stomach beneath.

Laura studied the pattern of light and shadow that played across his craggy features as he slept, his head still cradled in her lap. She sat with her back against the wall at the head of his rack, stroking Bill’s hair, face, neck and shoulders, tracing his features as if learning them by heart.

He was one of the strongest men she’d ever known and she was almost overwhelmed by the trust he’d placed in her by allowing her to hold him in his most vulnerable moment. But she knew what Kara meant to him; and she knew what the young woman’s death meant to him. Kara was his last connection to his son, Zach, and she was the daughter of his heart.

Yet for such a strong man, he could be so gentle. It was that gentleness, that kindness she sensed in him that had first attracted her.

“Never lend books.”

Such a simple gesture had first sparked the thought that there might be more to this bluff old spacer than met the eye. That he was a superb commander had been evident in those first turbulent days after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, and that he was essentially a good, compassionate man had come out in his speech at that first memorial for the fallen—the speech in which he’d first told them about finding Earth and the Thirteenth Tribe. That it had all been a lie didn’t matter; all that mattered was that he’d given the people hope!

But it was his gift to her of the book Dark Day that had first brought Bill Adama out from behind Commander William Adama for her to see.

And it was moments like this, she thought as she looked down fondly on his face still so troubled even in sleep; it was moments like this when she wanted nothing more than to explore this thing between them. She wanted to drag it kicking and screaming into the light for all to see.

But to do so could destroy it before it was ready—before she was ready. No, despite their burgeoning feelings, their mild flirtations and gentle touches, this thing was still too fragile for such scrutiny. Gods knew that she’d never been tentative in—dare she name it love?—before, but she was now and it left her with a sense of fragility she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

But it had brought her there tonight; to this place he shared so willingly with her. As soon as she’d heard, she’d dropped everything and raced over to Galactica from Colonial One. It never even occurred to her that he might not want her there; all she’d known, in the instant her aide Tory had given her the news of Kara’s death, was that he needed her.

Bill came awake abruptly. Her hand stilled its journey through his thick, soft salt and pepper hair as his eyes flew open. There was a sudden burst of joy in their blue depths for just a moment as he locked his gaze with hers, then reality reasserted itself and pain clouded that brief happiness.

“How long—” he began hoarsely. He cleared his throat and sat up. Laura didn’t know what to do with her hands. They hung idle in the air for a moment before coming to rest on her lap, which suddenly felt bereft … barren.

“How long have I been out?” he asked gruffly, embarrassment tainting his low voice now.

“A few hours,” she replied. “Three or four.”

His eyes widened at her quiet answer. “You’ve been here all that time?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Where else would I be?

He nodded as if he’d heard what remained unspoken between them.

“Thank you.”

Wordlessly, she drew the tiny figurine of the Goddess of the Dawn from her jacket pocket and held it out to him.

“Thank you,” he repeated, accepting it and tracing its features with trembling fingers.

New tears coursed down his cheeks. Laura wrapped her arms about him and he laid his head on her shoulder.

To Chapter 3

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ... Chapter 1

2009-01-06T04:40:01Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Chapter 1: To Brave Charybdis
Word Count: 3,100 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that!
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Chapter 1: To Brave Charybdis

“Fire!”

Kathryn Janeway watched the transphasic torpedoes race towards their targets in the Borg transwarp hub. As Voyager hurtled through the transwarp corridor just ahead of the shockwave, she sent a brief prayer of thanks to Admiral Janeway for making it possible. Her time-travelling future self had made the ultimate sacrifice … allowing herself to be assimilated so that she could infect the Queen and the Borg Collective in a bid to get Voyager’s crew home sixteen years earlier than in the original timeline—in seven years rather than the twenty-three it originally took the admiral.

But no matter what happened today, Kathryn would always be grateful for that sacrifice.

A sudden jolt shook the ship, nearly knocking her from her seat, as the leading edge of the transwarp shockwave impacted on Voyager’s warp field. There was an instantaneous power drop across the board. She opened her mouth to contact engineering, but no sound came out. On the viewscreen, a Borg Sphere entered the collapsing transwarp corridor from an adjacent one.

The universe crawled to a stop and then imploded … sucking Voyager into the maelstrom. And for one brief instant, as she stood upon the cusp of eternity, Kathryn Janeway knew that she had failed utterly.

They’ll all die because I failed them, was her last despairing thought.

“No, they won’t, Aunt Kathy,” said a familiar voice. “There is a way to save them.”

It took an almost Herculean effort to turn her head to face the being seated in her First Officer’s seat. She stared mutely at Q Junior.

“You haven’t failed them,” he continued fiercely. “No matter what happens, always remember that.”

“Are—” Her voice cracked, mangling that simple word; she lifted her hand to rub her throat, soothing away the tight knot that had formed there.

“Are you responsible for this, Q?” she demanded, gesturing with her free hand to her crew frozen like mannequins at their respective stations.

He shook his head slowly; she realized she’d never before seen such sadness in his eyes. “You see, this is the moment before your deaths, Aunt Kathy,” he said quietly. “I’ve only removed you from that moment in the space-time trajectory of that universe. When we’ve finished speaking, I’ll return you to that moment.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t have to die,” he replied. “You don’t have to die, but you do have to make a choice.”

“I’ll do anything, just save them, Q!” She hated the desperate, begging tone in her voice. But after seven years of failure, it was all she had left in her.

“Not so fast, Aunt Kathy,” the young Q said firmly as he rose from his seat. “You may not want to agree before you have all the facts.”

“We just want to go home,” she whispered brokenly.

“And Voyager does make it home to your alpha quadrant, just not this Voyager,” Q said, holding one hand out to her. After a moment, she took it and rose from her seat. “Look at the viewscreen.”

She did as directed and watched Voyager being pulled inside the Borg Sphere hurtling towards the transwarp exit terminus. As the Sphere breached the threshold of normal space, it exploded from within and Voyager sped from the centre of the roiling fireball into a large formation of Federation starships.

Tears spilled unchecked down Kathryn’s cheeks as she watched her ship sail into the bosom of the Federation. The lump returned to her throat and she had to take a deep breath to steady herself.

“You did nothing wrong, Aunt Kathy,” Q said gently. “But the transphasic torpedoes had one interaction with transwarp that neither you nor the Admiral could have foreseen—”

Kathryn looked at him in askance as she dried her tears. He pointed to the viewscreen as he continued his explanation; she watched as the shockwave interacted with Voyager’s warp field. Suddenly, there were two identical ships on the screen; one immediately stalled, while the other accelerated down the corridor towards the Borg Sphere.

“The explosion created a transwarp scission, which when it interacted with Voyager’s warp field, duplicated the ship and everything in it except—”

“Except the anti-matter,” Kathryn said hoarsely. “But this happened to us once before, so why didn’t the two ships stay connected?”

“Because the first time it happened as a result of an interaction with a subspace scission—a divergence of subspace fields,” Q replied. “It left the two ships slightly out of phase, drawing on the same source of anti-matter and relatively stationary. But this time it happened while you were in a transwarp conduit, and while the other ship was a little more in phase with the matter of the conduit, your ship was a little more out of phase with it. As a result, the other Voyager accelerated away from the scission, taking with it the majority of the anti-matter—”

“And leaving us with so little, my Voyager stalled and was sucked back into the scission,” Kathryn finished the grim analysis.

“Exactly,” Q said quietly. “I’m sure once everything calms down in the alpha quadrant, that Aunt Kathy will probably wonder what caused the drop in anti-matter level and investigate. But that leaves you and this crew just as deserving of life and home, and with no home to go to. This universe, this particular time stream, created moments ago by the scission, has terminated. The Continuum was of the mind to let you terminate with it—”

“But let me guess, you’ve convinced them otherwise,” Kathryn said with a rueful smile, daring to hope again.

He grinned at her. “Hey, it’s good to have godsons in high places,” he said impudently. “There is a universe I could send you to, but it’s very far away from this one and very different. There would be no hope of ever returning to your homes and families, but it would be a chance for you and your crew to live full lives … a chance to make a difference … to do a lot of good.”

“What about the species already there?” Kathryn asked in concern. “Depending on their level of technology, we could have a great deal of influence on their natural development.”

“Actually, Aunt Kathy, I’m hoping that you and your people will light one hell of a quantum torpedo under them,” he said chuckling as she stared in shock. “You probably won’t want to throw all your Federation principles out the window, but I don’t think there’s going to be much of a reason to hold on so tightly to your Prime Directive. Believe me—nothing about the development of this universe is very natural.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?” she asked warily.

“I mean, it was created by a rogue Q,” he began. “The one Captain Kirk knew as Trelane.”

“Trelane?” Kathryn asked in confusion. “He’s a Q? I thought Kirk showed that he depended on some sort of technology to give him his godlike abilities.”

Q grinned. “It’s even more complicated to explain Trelane’s origins than to explain my own,” he said. “Needless-to-say, he was somewhat of an aberration even for a Q. In layman’s terms, he was a bastardization of a Q born at the beginning of an entirely new and rather warped multiverse. He was taken in by the Continuum for training before he could destroy his native multiverse, and was actually my father’s protégé for a while—but let’s just say, “It was a bust,” and leave the discussion there. However, he got into so much trouble here that the Continuum had no choice but to … ah … isolate him. Believe me, where he is—it’s not a good place to be right now. Anyway, what Kirk met was simply one aspect of Trelane that was … ah … being punished for another transgression. The mechanism Kirk saw was simply a representation of a Q device meant to teach him to focus on one plane of the multiverse. But that incident got him even more interested in humans than he had been at that point.”

“Why do I get the feeling that wasn’t a good thing?” Kathryn said grimly.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t healthy,” Q replied, equally grim. “This universe that I propose to send you to is one of a number of—what you can call—pocket universes that Trelane created while he was part of this Continuum,” he explained. “He duplicated your reality somewhat, including your Milky Way galaxy—but it was mainly humans he was interested in—and then proceeded to run experiments.”

“He was experimenting on people—on humans?”

Q nodded, shame flaming his youthful face. “He used other species as well, but they suffered mostly collateral damage if they got in the way of his goals. The Continuum eventually caught onto what he was doing, tried punishment again, second … third chances … but nothing worked, and since they couldn’t kill him—without sacrificing the multiverse to which he’s integral and all the beings in it—they’ve basically imprisoned him inside his own Continuum, from which he’ll probably destroy his native multiverse anyway, and therefore, himself. He likes to play with the time streams underpinning the very foundations of each universe, altering their trajectories through the multiverse at will. But not even a Q can do that for long and escape the consequences.”

The sudden coldness in the young Q’s voice sent shivers up Kathryn’s spine.

“So what did Trelane do to these people?” she asked, not at all sure that she wanted to know.

“He developed a taste for playing god,” Q replied and at her raised eyebrow, smiled. “More so than your average Q’s penchant for playing god, that is. It was a game. He created this particular Milky Way galaxy to run according to the rules he set—a “predestination paradigm” I suppose you can call it—which he ran over and over and over using the humans. But because it’s a closed—and very limited—system, the same energy, souls, and life motifs if you will, get recycled over and over … swap a few elements from this one to that one … change a few things for this one there … a prince in this lifetime becomes a pauper in another …”

Kathryn’s hand flew to her lips. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Worse, it’s been running so long that—with each reiteration, each sub-cycle within the iterations—some of them remember distorted impressions of past lives.”

“Like eternal deja-vu.”

“Yeah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You want to hear the really sick part, Aunt Kathy? He set it up so that the humans never win. Sometimes, he’d let them get close to their heart’s desire … even close enough to have just a taste of salvation and then snatch it away. On the first iteration, Trelane’s test subjects actually won, but of course he couldn’t allow it, so he destroyed them, re-configured the playing field. In another, they wandered the stars for thirty years and came within a hair’s breadth of being able to lay down their burdens, before he changed the rules and condemned them to oblivion. During the one before this, the last few survivors were allowed to think they were safe it before Trelane’s minions destroyed them, which started this last iteration. That’s when the Continuum caught up to him, but instead of shutting down the experiment or removing the predestination paradigm he’d forced on it, they allowed it to continue running.”

“Why?” Kathryn croaked.

Q shrugged. “They simply didn’t care,” he replied. “They figured the entire thing would run down by itself in a few billion years anyway—and the humans and other mortals would be gone long before that point, so why waste the effort. And frankly, in the grand scheme of things, this particular pocket universe is not important to the Continuum or to the multiverse as a whole. He used different time periods in human history—time periods from your reality—as templates to shove his playing pieces into at the start of each cycle.”

Kathryn nodded. “So what’s the mission, Q?” she asked. “Why do you need my crew so badly?”

Q folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not allowed to give you the specifics, but the endgame of this cycle has begun,” he said grimly, “and if allowed to run to its projected, predetermined course, it will mean the destruction of all humanity—and possibly all life in this particular galaxy and possibly this universe. You see, Trelane knew the Continuum was coming for him, so he set up humanity to fail most spectacularly.”

“One last act of defiance from a being bent on utter nihilism.”

“Yeah. Often in his scenarios, the greatest threat came from without; he liked to play it for the maximum chaos and carnage, but always a variation on a theme. In one iteration, it was a thousand-year war with an implacable foe created by another species that drove the endgame,” Q explained. “This time, humanity created the instruments of their own destruction. But even there, they might have been able to dodge the bullet if their creations hadn’t been twisted—made even more powerful artificially by an outside force.

“Each cycle starts from the end of the last iteration, and events of previous cycles do affect and inform on subsequent cycles. There are also subcycles running within and concurrent to the main cycle. As a result, some things have gotten hopelessly confused—and not only among the humans. But the cause of each re-start is the same; the humans begin to win at a game they don’t even know they’re playing, so he changes the rules. And although Trelane is no longer able to directly influence events, he’s left behind a powerful proxy … a minion he’d used before in other iterations; a corrupted being that now fancies himself a god. Anyway, the Q refuse to change these aspects of this universe—personally, I think that they’re just being defensive because they couldn’t control Trelane and allowed things to get so bad.

“However,” he said, a sudden devilish smile banishing the sorrow in his eyes. “They’ve agreed to let me level the playing field somewhat by throwing a certain little redheaded captain and the intrepid crew of the good ship Voyager into the mix, then sitting back and watching the fireworks!”

She glared at him; he sobered up instantly.

“So what do you say, Aunt Kathy … ready to take on a new universe?”

“I don’t see that I have much choice,” she replied tiredly. “But all those things I know you’re not telling me—especially about that minion of Trelane’s—worry me. I don’t want to deliberately throw my people into another meat grinder, Q.”

He smiled gently at her. “I can’t say any more on that subject except that you’ll pretty much know him when you meet him—” He hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear, “And I’ve seen you take on both gods and devils, and win! After all, you managed to make a person out of me.”

He let her go and stood back, waiting patiently. It didn’t take Kathryn long to make up her mind.

“Well, like my Aunt Martha used to say, ‘where there’s life there’s hope’,” she said philosophically as she gazed around the bridge, her people frozen in desperate battle. “They’re good people, and if I can’t give them back their homes, perhaps I can give them the hope of a new home.”

Q pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!” he shouted gleefully as she looked on in bemusement.

“Okay, there’s not much time now,” he said reining in his enthusiasm. “You’ll be allowed to keep your technology and knowledge. I trust that you’ll want to keep your memories of this encounter?”

She nodded in affirmation. “I’m nothing if not the sum of my memories.”

“All right, but it means that you won’t be able to tell anyone what really happened here. Ever.”

“I figured as much,” she replied. “Don’t worry, it’ll be our secret.”

He smiled sadly now. “Actually, Aunt Kathy, it’ll be your secret alone,” he said. “After this, you won’t see me again.”

A startled gasp caught in her throat and she felt her heart constrict painfully.

“Another of the Continuum’s conditions,” he said simply. “Win or lose, this universe will truly be what you and the other inhabitants make of it. And I know you, Aunt Kathy; you always play to win!”

“Oh Q,” she said, gathering him up into another tight hug as tears flowed down her cheeks again. Finally, she let him go and stepped back. “Thank you,” she said smiling through her tears.

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re welcome, Aunt Kathy,” he said and snapped his fingers. “Go get ’em!”

Seven’s voice came as if from a great distance. “Captain! Engineering reports that somehow we’ve lost over ninety-two percent of our anti-matter,” she called from the ops station.

Kathryn could make out Kim’s prone body on the floor as Chakotay crouched to check his vitals.

“We’re caught in the wake some kind of transwarp anomaly—I can’t break us free, and trying to hold position is tearing us apart!” Paris shouted from the helm.

“Hull stress is rising to critical levels,” Tuvok reported.

“Then stop fighting it,” Kathryn ordered, surprised at the calmness in her voice. “Tom, try to position us on the crest of the anomaly. Janeway to engineering; take warp engines off-line and route all available power to shields and structural integrity fields.”

“Understood, captain!” Lieutenant Rollins replied.

“Captain?” Chakotay shouted in confusion.

“If we try to fight it, we’ll be destroyed!” Kathryn said as the ship jolted violently again. “We just don’t have enough power, commander. The transwarp conduit is disintegrating—there’s nothing we can do now but try to ride it out and hope that between the new armour, the shields and the structural integrity fields, Voyager holds together long enough for us to come out the other side.”

“All hands, brace for impact!” Chakotay barked over the comm system.

“Structural integrity fields at eighty-seven point eight percent,” came Seven’s calm soprano. “Shields holding steady at sixty-three percent.”

Ensnared in the maelstrom of chaos, the ship whipsawed crazily, slamming into eddies of subspace plasma and transwarp energy as the anomaly raced on for an eternity. Then Kathryn felt it—the sensation of the universe folding in on itself. All around her, she could feel the death-screams of every being that had ever existed in the universe—as if they’d all died at once.

And then she died.

To Chapter 2

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

2009-01-05T05:56:25Z

Title: The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before ...
Prologue: Endgames
Word Count: 1,390 words
Rating: T (PG-13)
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my craziness in this nBSG/Voyager crossover story. Battlestar Galactica belongs to Glen A. Larson, Ron D. Moore, David Eick, the Sci-Fi Channel, various and sundry companies and whoever owns them. Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Paramount Studios, UPN, Viacom and whoever else owns pieces of the Star Trek franchise.
Spoilers: For nBSG - to Crossroads Part 2; for ST:V - to Endgame. Everything beyond is definitely alternate universe and a fairly cracked one at that!
Summary: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the crew of the intrepid starship Voyager must find a way to break the cycle ...

The Last Iteration: All This Has Happened Before …

Prologue: Endgames

The deaths of mortals are the worst, he decided as he rode the tide of energy that beckoned—with the brutally beautiful and seductive death-cry of billions—to this small, run-down pocket universe he’d never really taken notice of before.

Of course he’d known it was there … he’d always known it was there, and in the instant between thoughts, he knew everything about this little wretched corner of the multiverse as he slipped across the dimensional barrier. Only a handful of old, decaying galaxies spun lazily, accelerating molasses-like from the multiverse nodal flashpoint that had spawned this wretched little abortion of a universe.

The Boy Who Was Not A Boy stopped short as the knowledge of who had created this little playground—and for what purpose—assaulted him now. No wonder these deaths had called to him.

“Father!” he shouted angrily, although “anger” could barely touch the surface of the multitude of suns roiling in the core of his being, and “shout” was not exactly the right word for the burst of primordial energy he sent careening through the multiverse into that nether-place that connected them all. The Continuum.

“Father!” he called again.

“What now?” came the irritated voice a moment before his parental being flashed into existence next to him, wearing a familiar red and black uniform. Then taking a look around, his father said, “Oh.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“Well, what do you expect me to say?” his father replied sarcastically.

“Look at it, Q!” the boy raged.

“I know, they’ve really let the place go,” the older being replied trying for levity and failing miserably under his son’s glare.

“What?” he said, seeking refuge in irritation. “It’s not like it was my fault … this time. If I remember correctly, the Continuum had banished me to the primordial ooze of Celtuxis Five for my crimes against the Dendul, which led to the premature rise of the Calamaraine and eventually wiped out those dreadfully dull little creatures. I was hardly in any position to pay much attention to the messes Trelane got himself into.”

His son increased the intensity of his glare. “I assumed that the other Q took care of it when they punished Trelane,” he said in exasperation. “I didn’t realize that they’d left the damned thing running!”

“They are not things,” the boy Q said tightly as he watched the thermonuclear carnage envelope the star nation of twelve worlds, while their defenders scrambled to meet the enemy. “They’re human beings.”

The boy felt his father’s surprise at the tears that sparkled on the cheeks of his human facade.

“This iteration of his game has been running for over four millennia relative to this universe’s timeframe,” he said hoarsely.

“Well that’s easy enough to take care of,” his father replied, lifting his hand to snap his fingers.

“No!” the boy shouted in outrage, watching the humans throw themselves valiantly against the tides and tides of machines that infiltrated the very technologies they’d tasked to protect them. But here and there, small pockets of humanity survived … by hiding … by running … by fighting back!

“The endgame has begun,” he continued.

“And it will conclude like all the other iterations,” his father said impatiently. “Why not just end it now? They’ve been through so many cycles and sub-cycles of this … lived so many lives that they barely know who or what they are about anymore. By ending it now, you’d probably be doing them a kindness.”

“And yet they endure,” the boy said, admiration evident in his voice. “The spirit of who they are endures. Can the same be said of the Q if put through such horror over and over … lifetime after lifetime of such abuse? I dare say, Father, the only Q with the imagination and empathy great enough to possibly comprehend this abomination, stared into the face of that same abyss and committed suicide … and you helped him do it.”

Q regarded his son thoughtfully. “They’ll still lose,” he said at last, as the pitifully few human ships huddled in the safety of the magnetic storm and the shadow of the weapons depot they’d hidden there. “The machines have the clear advantage. It’s a war of attrition now and they hold all the cards. If the humans run, they will only lead their executioners back to their origin like all the other times—and then humanity really will end in this pathetic, little backwater universe, for the Continuum will permit no more iterations.”

An unholy light flared in the young Q’s eyes.

“I know that look,” his father said with a sly grin. “What are you cooking up in that devious, immortal mind of yours, Junior?”

“We level the playing field,” Q Junior said angrily.

Q frowned at him. “The Continuum won’t allow such meddling,” he said. “We either end it now or allow it to run its course. The restrictions placed on Trelane apply to all Q now.”

“And the Continuum was supposed to stop all his experiments!” Junior said hotly. “Each pocket universe was supposed to be wiped clean of his traces and allowed to run its course in space-time, merging time streams where necessary or branching and budding new universes into the multiverse. So why then is this one still cycling? Why hasn’t it spawned its own branching along a space-time trajectory? It’s still following the same predestination paradigm Trelane set it on, starting from the endpoint of the last iteration and his fingerprints are still all over it. The only difference now is that he’s left his proxy to do his dirty work—make sure the train stays on the same bloody track! Well, I say we throw a monkey wrench into the works and derail this train once and for all! And I know just the woman to do it—”

“No!” It was Q’s turn to shout in outrage.

“Why not?” Junior demanded. “Aunt Kathy and her merry band of misfits are the perfect solution to this mess,” he said with an impish grin.

Q smirked. “Even if you could get the Continuum to agree, I doubt that our beloved Kathy would give up her cushy new job as a Starfleet Admiral, not to mention leave her beloved alpha quadrant, which she fought so hard to get back to, in order to come to this dreary little pocket of the multiverse and help save this rapidly dwindling twig of humanity.”

“She would if it meant saving her crew—giving them another chance at life,” his son replied.

“You were supposed to get rid of them!” Q snarled, turning on his son in sudden fury as he realized what the young Q was thinking. “You have no right to mess around with a Fundamental Time Stream’s trajectory through the multiverse. You could destroy it completely!”

“I know,” Junior replied with some asperity. “I’m not an idiot, Dad. They have been allowed to go a-coherent. I haven’t tampered with them. But we both know that it’s fairly simple to take them at the instant of a-coherence and drop them into this universe. That’s what I think we should propose to the Continuum.”

Q Junior saw the respect in his father’s eyes … his entire being … and knew that he had persuaded him.

“You don’t like the thought of any version of your Aunt Kathy dying, do you?” Q asked with sudden gentleness.

“No,” the young Q replied sadly.

“Neither do I,” his father admitted.

“It wasn’t fair,” the young immortal continued as the human leaders of the little rag tag fleet came together, in a room of illusions, to stare up at the jewelled constellations that hung above the ring of standing stones.

“To do everything right … to come so close to the threshold of home and fail … it wasn’t fair,” he repeated. “Dad, she knew; in that instant before death, she knew she’d failed completely. But it wasn’t her fault; it was the universe that wouldn’t allow her to succeed. It was … horrible.”

“As horrible as a universe that won’t allow these people to win,” Q said.

“Yes.”

“All right, son, let’s go take on the Continuum,” Q said in resignation. “Your mother’s going to kill me.” Junior erupted with laughter as they winked out of existence.

To Chapter 1

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T19:13:59Z

It's the new year and I am here vegging out and watching Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard, et al in "Mumford". I'd forgotten what a silly, wonderful little move it was! I think I'll watch "Passion Fish" next and make a mini marathon of it today.

Looking over my fics, I find that I haven't added much in the last year - real life, illness, and my Muse turning up her nose at much of the stuff I was writing did not make for a productive year. I did however at last manage to get my fics updated as far as I've written before the year-end. YAY!

However, my Muse did rear her head occasionally for a new Voyager/BSG cross-over, so I'll be starting the new year by posting the first parts of that.

Happy New Year!

Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 2

2008-12-29T19:41:00Z

Title: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 2
Word Count: 3,685
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: This particular episode takes a detour into Kara's story.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.
Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination. This is the seventh story in my "Aftermath" series. The others are "Goodbye, Captain Apollo", "Icarus' Choice", "To Chain Thanatos", "Mnemosyne's Children", "The Songs of Polyhymnia" and "Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle".

The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1

Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 2

“Frak … that was one weird dream,” Kara muttered as she clawed her way up the slippery slope of perception to full consciousness. “Anybody get the serial number of that frakking raider?”

“Sorry little one,” replied a strangely accented woman’s voice, “can’t say that we did.”

Spinal reflexes took over banishing the last cobwebs from her mind, and Kara hurtled off the bed into a defensive crouch as the cavernous, sterile, white medical facility registered. She looked around wildly for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing convenient. Taking stock of herself, she found she was wearing soft, blue coveralls and a pair of flat, brown shoes that moulded to her feet, but felt as thin as paper.

“Easy there, Captain Thrace,” the old woman with the long, white hair said; she was the owner of the voice. She looked like someone’s kindly grandmother, but Kara wasn’t about to be fooled.

Backing up towards the nearest wall, she sneered as she tried to swallow her fear, “Which frakking model are you?”

“Model?” another voice—male this time—queried. It was then that she noticed the small group of people to the left of the old woman. At the front were a tiny woman and a tall, black-haired man who continued as they regarded her curiously. “What do you mean by model?”

“Come off it, Cylon,” she shouted hoarsely. “Stop playing frakking games with my head! How many times do I have to kill you skinjobs before you realize it’s not cost-effective to frak with me?”

They looked at each other in confusion. “Cylon? Skinjobs?” the small woman, who seemed to be their leader, said carefully.

“I thought you toasters were supposed to learn from death,” Kara spat. “Didn’t my killing Leoben six frakking times on New Caprica teach you anything?”

Their confusion deepened as they stared at her. The tiny woman walked towards her, palms facing down in supplication.

“Please, calm down Captain Thrace,” she said. “We don’t know what you’re taking about.”

“Oh, like you’re not the Final Five! You’ve got to be dumber than the other seven models put together if you think I’m going to believe that!”

The woman glanced quizzically at her four companions; the plain-faced, black-haired man, the old woman, the tall, massively muscled, blond-haired man and the beautiful, young black-skinned woman.

She smiled ruefully. “You think that we’re Cylons?”

“Well this is certainly no ship in the Fleet,” Kara retorted.

“I take it these Cylons are your enemy,” she continued. Kara said nothing, just stared belligerently at the woman. “If we could prove that we’re not Cylons, would you calm down and speak with us like civilized people.”

After a few moments, she took Kara’s silence for assent. “First of all, what are Cylons?” she asked.

“Like you don’t know,” Kara muttered, edging away down the wall still searching for something to use as a weapon.

“Please, just humour me, Captain Thrace. What are Cylons?”

“Machines!” Kara shouted in frustration at the toaster’s mind games. “You’re frakking genocidal machines—worst damned mistake humanity ever made!”

For the first time in three and a half years, Commander James Bryson saw an expression of jaw-dropped shock on the face of his usually unflappable captain … and if Suzuki’s jaw was flapping against her chest, he knew his own was scraping the floor.

Zhang was the first to recover her wits. “We’re certainly not machines, Captain Thrace,” she said primly. “We’re human beings just like you. My name is Dr. Zhang Xue … you may call me Dr. Zhang. I’m the chief medical officer for this ship.”

“What?” the young woman scoffed. “You run out of the Simon doctor models?” she said sarcastically.

Christos stepped forward bristling annoyance, pulling his knife from the top of his boot. “This is ridiculous,” he growled, drawing the blade across his palm. Crimson blood welled up from the wound. “Machines don’t bleed. We’re human, you paranoid neobarb.”

“Damn it, Major,” Zhang muttered as she picked up an aerosol bandage canister and grabbed his hand to seal the wound.

The girl laughed, a genuine mirthful sound, which made her voice sound all the more harsh when she spoke again. “We stopped being fooled by Cylon blood and guts … what four years ago?” she sneered. “That proves nothing!”

“So Cylons look, feel and are anatomically similar to humans,” Suzuki said thoughtfully.

“You could hardly have infiltrated the Colonies and the Fleet if you weren’t,” Thrace retorted. “I know you all think that humans are stupid, but I think we’d kind of notice the three metre tall chrome toasters!”

“And there are only twelve models,” the captain continued.

The young woman shot her a venomous glare. “I’m not playing this frakking game anymore, Cylon,” she said from between clenched teeth.

“Please, just answer this last question,” Suzuki said soothingly. “There are only twelve models, aren’t there? Seven you’ve seen and a “final five” cohort that you haven’t … that you think we five are?”

“Yes!” she shouted. “At least that’s what we’ve been told—if you haven’t been screwing us around about that as well.”

“Twelve models,” Suzuki reiterated, “with multiple copies or variations on those twelve models.”

“Yes,” Kara Thrace said hoarsely, tiredly, as she slid down the wall like a marionette whose strings had been cut. “Kill one frakker, he just downloads into an identical body and keeps coming back.”

“Bryson,” Suzuki said, not taking her eyes off the young woman. “Use the doctor’s console and contact Murdock. Tell him to get his class up here … and get Major Soros and his greenhorns from the flight deck up here as well.”

Bryson nodded and stepped past Zhang to use the closest med console. He could have easily used his implant’s links to contact the officers in question and pass on their orders, but he knew why the captain had specified the use of the console. No use freaking out the young woman any more than necessary, since with the implant and all his other judicious enhancements, he, and everyone else on board Excalibur were technically cyborgs.

Hmm … cyborg … Cylon. Oh boy.

Glancing at his captain as he passed along her orders, he realised that her keen mind was already analysing the situation from all angles.

Suddenly, he was glad this whole responsibility rested ultimately on her slender shoulders, and with that thought, he knew that he’d been right when he’d decided to finish his tour as her Exec instead of taking command of the light cruiser, Berlin, which Admiral Schwerdt at Sector HQ Personnel Bureau had offered him two months ago. It certainly had been a coup, but he’d known in his gut he wasn’t ready, although it had taken every ounce of strength he possessed for him to admit it.

He returned to her side and verbally passed on Murdock and Sorros’ acknowledgements; not that he’d needed to as they would have automatically logged their acknowledgements of her orders to Suzuki’s implant link probably without thinking about it.

Kara Thrace studied the captain warily. “Look, can we just skip straight to the torture part?” she said flippantly. “I was never one for foreplay—so what are you waiting for?”

“Proof that we’re not Cylons,” Suzuki said gently. “Proof that we’re human.”

She barked a bitter laugh. “And how are you going to prove that?”

Suzuki grinned. “I’m not,” she said as doors opened at both ends of the medbay. “They are.”

Kara stared in shock at the multitude of young people pouring into the hanger-sized sickbay. Individual people, not ranks and ranks of identical clones. Each wore a uniform similar to the tiny commanding woman and her group.

“I am Captain Theodora Suzuki, Captain Thrace,” the woman said smiling. “My ship is called Excalibur and this,” she said gesturing the young people, “is but a fraction of my crew. Excalibur is a training ship in the Terran Confederacy Space Navy. These are some of my command systems and pilot officer trainees.”

A strangled mewl escaped Kara’s throat as she continued to stare dumbly at the sea of young faces looking curiously at her. She blurted out the first thing that came into her head.

“They’re all nuggets?”

“Nuggets?” Suzuki asked.

“It’s what we call trainee pilots in the Colonial Fleet,” she replied in a calm voice that surprised even her. “Finding a candidate who can be a good pilot is like finding a nugget of gold; you just need to mould her with proper training.” She hesitated before adding. “I am … was Galactica’s flight instructor.”

“Ah,” Suzuki said. “Yes, that is correct; they are all nuggets. But they’re less than a quarter of my nuggets. Overall, my crew compliment is approximately twenty-eight hundred.” She held her hand out to the young woman. “I hope you won’t need to meet all twenty-eight hundred individuals before you’re convinced we’re not Cylons, or all ten thousand on Avalon Station when we get there in another ninety minutes, or all seventeen million on Alba, the planet Avalon orbits.”

Kara chuckled and felt a wave of relief wash over her as she took Suzuki’s hand; the woman helped lever her to her feet.

“I’m too exhausted--” Her stomach growled loudly and she couldn’t help but laugh; there was a ripple of answering laughter from the crowd. “And much too hungry to fight right now.”

Excalibur’s captain grinned and looked pointedly at her white-haired CMO.

“She’s cleared to leave sickbay,” the old woman said. “Just take it easy and don’t overdo it.”

The young woman laughed, eyes sparkling devilishly. “Doc, about the only thing I tend to overdo is alcohol,” she said and the old doctor’s eyes widened at her blunt admission. “And well … men …”

Admiral Raymond Stewart chuckled softly at Excalibur’s crew’s shock as his granddaughter singled out a few of the young men, including Suzuki’s XO, appraising them with a frankly predatory gaze.

After a long moment of tense silence, she exploded into delighted giggles. “Guys, relax,” she said. “I’m really not that bad. Anyway, my Sammy might agree to let me nibble on one or two of you choice, delectable morsels just to taste, but like most husbands—possessive creatures that they are—he’d probably object to me chowing down on the entire buffet.” There was a ripple of nervous laughter at the highly off-colour joke that would have bordered on sexual harassment in the Confederacy navy. “Of course he might consider it if I gave him my permission—”

“Captain Thrace!” Suzuki barked out.

The younger woman raised a saucy eyebrow. “Too far?” she queried.

“Too far,” Suzuki confirmed.

“Story of my sorry life,” she said in humorous exasperation. “I never know when to quit—which is how I ended up here in the first gods-damned place. Where in Hades is here, by the way?”

As Suzuki turned to dismiss the trainees, the chief psychologist Raymond Stewart had hastily reassigned from headquarters, Dr. Hannah Graydon, spoke, the quiet mirth bubbling beneath her words, “She certainly is colourful, sir.”

“That she is,” Raymond replied thoughtfully, “and my little Sheba is still terrified.”

“Sir?”

He heard the concern in her voice and continued. “She’s simply using her humour and brash outrageousness to cover her fear,” he said as Suzuki led his granddaughter from the sickbay.

“You think she’s still afraid that we’re these cyborg enemies of theirs?”

“No,” he replied. “I think that she’s afraid we’re exactly what we say we are. Human. She’s hesitant to push it any further.”

“Because if she accepts that we’re human, that will begin to upset her worldview,” Graydon said, following his logic to its inevitable conclusion.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, leaning forward to watch as the security surveillance followed his granddaughter, Suzuki and Christos to the officer’s mess. Sheba’s intelligent gaze took in everything, assessing it with the experienced eyes of a soldier.

She’s beautiful, he thought fondly, with his son’s mop of bright blonde hair and his daughter-in-law’s changeable grey eyes. Raymond watched as her eyes widen as the mess’ head steward came to tend their table.

“I don’t know—what do you have?” Sheba said when the steward asked for her order. The venerable master chief handed her an electronic menu pad and she looked at it in bewilderment for a few moments.

“Are you having trouble reading the language, Captain Thrace?” Suzuki asked in concern.

“No,” she replied, placing the menu down. “The alphabet is practically the same, but the actual words … what in Hades is “su-shi” or “te-ri-ya-ki” and I understand the word fried, but what’s “to-fu”? I guess I expected that since we spoke the same language—your accents are kind of weird, but it’s the same language …”

She broke off uncertainly, taking a sip of water as Suzuki smiled and nodded in comprehension.

“Sushi is raw fish,” Theodora explained and Sheba choked on her water, just managing not to spew it at a chuckling Major Christos.

“What?” she demanded in outrage. “I mean, don’t human beings cook their food on the planet you come from?”

“For the most part, we do cook our food,” Suzuki replied. “But in Japanese culture, my native culture, certain fish and other traditional delicacies are prepared specially and eaten raw.”

Sheba shook her head in disbelief. “And here I thought the nomads from the Red Sand Desert on Virgon who fry and eat bugs from the inside of sand daggits’ entrails were frakked,” she muttered ruefully. “Look, at this point, I don’t care if it’s still running around on my plate; I’ll eat whatever you have to offer, Captain Suzuki. My fleet’s been surviving for the last couple of months on nothing but algae, and before we found the algae planet, a lot of people were keeping their bellies full of paper. So believe me, I’m ready to eat just about anything, including this raw su-shi fish. Just make sure there’s enough ambrosia around to lubricate its passage down into my stomach and guarantee I won’t have to think about it after the hangover clears.”

Raymond couldn’t help but chuckle at Sheba’s last statement, yet for all its comic brashness, it didn’t cover the heartbreaking fact of her first statement or Zhang’s finding of malnutrition; her fleet was on the brink of starvation, surviving on algae and paper.

Suzuki stared at Sheba for a long moment before murmuring orders to the steward. He then took Christos’ order and left. Another steward, a young woman, took his place smoothly; a gleaming silver cart with a selection of alcoholic beverages hovered beside her. She reached unerringly for a bottle of red wine and held it in white-gloved hands for her captain to inspect.

Suzuki nodded and the steward proceeded to pour a small amount into her glass. Sheba watched in interest as Suzuki swirled the wine, tasted it and nodded again to the steward, who filled the glass to what Raymond was sure would be within a nanolitre of what the Sommelier Guild Handbook declared as standard glass for that wine. As the young woman poured glasses for Sheba and Christos, the head steward returned with a young man guiding a hover cart with their food.

The young steward placed the dishes before each officer and deftly removed the covers under the watchful eye of the head steward, before smoothly stepping back.

After staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the steak on her plate, not to mention the mound of potato, mushrooms and vegetables, Sheba gave both young people a frankly impressed gaze. “Wow, I haven’t had restaurant service this good since Zach took me to the Acropolis overlooking Caprica City the night he proposed,” she said. “Are you sure this is a war ship?”

A smile played on Suzuki’s lips. “Quite sure,” she said and began to eat.

After a moment, Sheba tucked into her own meal with obvious relish. In fact, as Raymond watched her, he was sure she was fighting the impulse to gobble the food.

Taking a moment to breathe between bites, she took a deep draught of her wine, swallowing it with a blissful expression on her face.

“Gods,” she sighed. “By the Lords of Kobol that’s so good! It’s not ambrosia, but it could make me forget how much I love the “Drink of the Gods”. What is it?”

“Red wine,” Suzuki replied, “a rather robust pinot from Tremblay region on the planet, Mirabelle. I find it an excellent compliment to red meat.”

As she started eating again, she chuckled around a mouthful of food and sighs of delight. “Well it’s good to know my taste buds haven’t been permanently scarred with Chief Tyrol’s rotgut,” she mumbled. “And this food—the steak is simply heavenly.”

“Try to take it a little more slowly, Captain Thrace,” Suzuki cautioned. “Your metabolic scans say your body can handle it, but you can still get sick if you eat too much too quickly.”

Sheba shook her head vehemently. “When there isn’t a lot to go round, Captain, you learn pretty quickly to keep anything and everything down, no matter what it is or how much it wants to go the wrong way back out your gullet.”

“Why is your fleet in such dire straits?” Suzuki finally asked the question Raymond Stewart had been waiting for.

He watched his granddaughter’s body automatically stiffen and her whole demeanour radiated wariness. She looked down at her plate and slowly brought another forkful to her mouth.

Placing her fork down, she lifted her eyes again to study Suzuki’s face thoughtfully as she chewed and swallowed. Taking another sip of wine, she blotted her lips on her napkin before setting it down.

“Well then, I guess it’s time to get down to business,” she said. Suddenly radiating palpable fear, she stood up and paced a short distance from the table. “Grab your gun and bring the cat in, Starbuck,” she whispered before taking a deep breath. “Gods, I wish the Old Man or even Roslin were here … I’m just a frakking Viper jock.”

“Captain Thrace?” Suzuki said gently.

“Have you ever heard of Earth?” she blurted out. Raymond glanced at the equally shocked psychologist before turning his gaze back to the holographic display.

Suzuki stared, utterly flabbergasted. “Yes, I know of Earth,” she said, breaking her sudden paralysis.

“Are you from Earth? Does it still exist? Do you know where it is? Can you show me the way there?” Sheba demanded; her dark eyes were filled with desperate hope.

“No, I’m not from Earth,” Suzuki replied slowly; the light died in the girl’s eyes as if snuffed out.

“But I am.”

Sheba whirled to face Harry Christos. A small whimper escaped her and Raymond realized that she was trembling.

“And yes, it still exists,” Christos continued, “and yes, we know where it is … and yes, we can show you the way there. The big question is—how do you know of Earth?”

“And an even bigger question is why do you want to go there?” Suzuki chimed in.

Tears flowed down Kara’s face; she made no effort to stop them as she processed their words. “We didn’t know at first, not really,” she said. “We thought Earth and the Thirteenth Tribe were just legends from the scriptures—an apocryphal story from the Sacred Scrolls, meant to teach … like Kobol and the Exodus of the Twelve Tribes before the Great Blaze enveloped the planet.” She laughed hysterically.

“But after the Cylons destroyed the Colonies, Admiral Adama told us that Earth was real and he would take us to our brethren of the Thirteenth Tribe. Of course he was just trying to give us some hope that we could get away from the Cylons. Then we found Kobol and Roslin had her visions and it seemed like the ancient Prophecies of Pythia were coming true … so I defied the Old Man and went back to Caprica and got the Arrow of Apollo, which opened the Tomb of Athena and gave us the first part of the map to Earth. And then that fraktard Baltar won the election and settled us on New Caprica. The people were tired of running and the search for Earth and he convinced them that we’d outrun the Cylons.

“Of course the Cylons found us again, like fat frakking cows chewing our cuds in a pen. The Old Man barely got our asses off that gods-forsaken mudball before the skinjobs got around to farming us or wiping us out for good. We found an ancient beacon left by the Thirteenth Tribe in the Lion’s Head Nebula and the Temple of Five on the algae planet. When the star in that system went nova, the Eye of Jupiter was revealed and gave us our next clue, the Ionian Nebula. We were on our way there, but had stopped for repairs near the planet with that weird storm vortex. Well I went through it following …”

Kara shook her head violently and collapsed into her chair utterly drained. “Following what I don’t know, but suddenly it was there before me and I knew that I had to go through it.”

“Why?”

Feeling unaccountably angry at Suzuki’s calm question, Kara’s head snapped up. “How the frak should I know?” she snarled. “Maybe it was my gods-foretold destiny like Leoben says, or maybe I was so damned depressed by my own completely frakked-up life, I tried to commit suicide in the atmosphere of that gas giant, screwed up like always, and by some freak accident, ended up here.” She was silent for a long moment, feeling as if all the energy had drained out of her. “I don’t know. All I know is that at that instant, hovering on the horizon of that maelstrom, it felt right to fly directly into the eye.”

She met Suzuki’s gaze again. “So, will you help me?” she pleaded. “Will Earth help my people? There aren’t many of us left—just about forty thousand out of a civilisation of over twenty billion—”

“Twenty billion?” Christos whispered horror etched on his handsome face.

Kara nodded. “The Cylons destroyed the Twelve Colonies in a day,” she said hoarsely. “Nuked all our worlds in one massive attack. What’s left of our people is packed onto aged, decaying civilian ships that were never meant for the stresses of jumping so much for so many years. Galactica is our only warship and she’s over forty years old—we did have Pegasus for a while, but she was destroyed during the liberation of New Caprica.”

There was an oppressive silence as Kara held Suzuki’s gaze.

“Yes, we’ll help you,” Suzuki said at last. “Earth and the Terran Confederacy will do everything in its power to help your people.”

All of a sudden it was like a dam broke in Kara’s chest and the tears poured down her face. It took her a while to realise that the hoarse sobbing was coming from her. Only after Suzuki rose and drew her into a warm embrace did it occur to Kara to be embarrassed, but she was too wrung out to care. She just held on, trying to ride out the emotional storm.

#

To Part 3

Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1

2008-12-22T04:12:27Z

Title: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1
Word Count: 2,125
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: This particular episode takes a detour into Kara's story.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.
Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination. This is the seventh story in my "Aftermath" series. The others are "Goodbye, Captain Apollo", "Icarus' Choice", "To Chain Thanatos", "Mnemosyne's Children", "The Songs of Polyhymnia" and "Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle".

Aftermath: The Daughter of Clotho - Part 1

Ensign Darius Sanchez stared at his console, trying desperately not to show how mind-numbingly bored he was with his assignment to the junior communications slot barely halfway through his three week rotation at that station. He’d been so excited when, after seven months on board and serving in three different departments, his bridge rotation finally came up that he’d hardly slept the night before his first shift. Now he’d be happy to return to the bowels of Drive Maintenance; at least things happened there. Here, all he had to do was manually run through endless frequency channels for comm. chatter—something a simple string could be written to do.

But Excalibur was a training ship—an ancient, centuries-old battlecruiser—so everything was done the old fashioned way … laboriously and by hand. And even after millennia of space travel, the Terran Confederacy Space Navy still believed that the best way to train newbie officers and ship crews was the old fashioned way.

He glanced at fellow greenhorn, Rena Holcomb, running simulator drills at the junior navigation station under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Tyler Cooke. Beyond Holcomb, his friend Jason Styles was busy cataloguing space dust. The only problem was that Styles actually liked cataloguing space dust out here at the ass-end of nowhere. Darius turned his attention back to his console as he moved in sequence to the next range of frequencies—frequencies so obsolete, no one but a few devolved worlds used them anymore.

“Krypter! Krypter! Krypter!”

The female voice burst over his earpiece so unexpectedly, it made him jump and as he scrambled to isolate and document the transmission, he accidentally put it through to the bridge speakers.

“Krypter! Krypter! Krypter!” the strangely accented voice repeated. “Galactica—Starbuck … looks like I’ve exited the maelstrom … must have passed out or something for a while there.”

Darius made to cut off the bridge speakers, but Lieutenant Commander Murdock stayed his hand. Looking up at the senior communications officer, Darius was surprised to see him nod at Captain Suzuki’s silent order.

“I’ll get right on it, Ma’am,” Murdock said briskly as he swivelled back to concentrate on his console.

“Galactica? Is anybody out there?” the voice called, fear shredding that simple sentence. “Starbuck to Galactica … Starbuck to any Colonial unit … I say again, this is Captain Kara Thrace, Viper 8737 from the battlestar Galactica to any Colonial units… I’ve got bingo fuel … ohhh frak!” The voice gave a hysterical little laugh and spoke in the low tones of the damned. “Looks like I’ve got bingo air as well. Please render assistance. According to my gauges, I’ve been in that storm vortex thing for nearly forty-eight hours, so I’ve got less than ten minutes of air left.”

“Mr. Murdock?” Suzuki called a shade impatiently.

“We’ve got her, Ma’am,” he replied, bringing up the location in the main 3-D holotank. “About half an hour ago, Scan registered a small spike of six point eight Radaks approximately three light seconds away—barely above background level of normal space noise. Hyper profile suggests an extremely constricted Type Four hyper-tunnel—even so, the ship she’s in must be awfully small.”

“That could explain why she only has forty-eight hours worth of air—use of the term Viper suggests a fighter like our Blackhawks,” Suzuki said thoughtfully. “Relay the co-ordinates to the helm.”

“Co-ordinates locked and plotted,” Chief McDougall replied.

“Then take her in, Chief,” she replied.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Starbuck forced herself to continue breathing in steady, even breaths … but with each breath, the air grew noticeably thinner. Stars like diamond dust glittered in the velvet black, mocking her. She laughed softly; her famous “Starbuck” luck had finally given out. There were no planetary systems near by, so she didn’t even have a hope of finding a conveniently habitable world.

She remembered Apollo’s frantic voice calling to her, telling her to pull up … that she would hit the hard deck, but locked in her vision—with a hallucination of that frakker Leoben of all people as some sort of spiritual guide to her destiny following an equally hallucinatory Cylon heavy raider—she’d dove into that strange storm vortex in the atmosphere of the gas giant. And now she was here. Where? She hadn’t a clue.

“Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer,” she whispered through shallow, gasping breaths. “It’s me, your daughter Kara Thrace. I promise, Lords, if I get out of this one alive, I’ll never pull such a crazy-assed stunt again.”

She gave another hysterical little giggle. Her head felt stuffed with cotton wool and it became impossible to concentrate. Anoxia … oxygen starvation, she thought distantly and there was nothing to do but sit back and slip deeper into eternal sleep.

Her head lolled to the side and she watched as a great black creature devoured the stars.

“Ohhh, frakkk me!” she gasped as the creature resolved into a recognizable ship.

“Sorry doll,” a strange male voice chuckled in her ear, “but you’re not my type, if that means what I think it means.”

A sleek, black fighter appeared beside her and a grinning blond-haired young man waved impudently at her.

“All right boys and girls,” he said, “let’s round up our star buck and herd her into the coral.”

Starbuck felt her Viper vibrate violently, and then the black swallowed her up.

“Dr. Zhang, you said that you had something to report?”

Captain Theodora Suzuki swept into the medbay like a self-contained hurricane; something Commander James Bryson was used to from the fighter jock once known as “Ball Lightning”. She was tiny, only about one hundred and fifty-five centimetres tall, but Bryson knew more than one ensign who’d actually publicly blurted out—much to the greenhorn’s horror—that he hadn’t realised how short his captain was.

Dr. Zhang Xue looked up from her display and smiled at Suzuki as Major Harry Christos, head of Excalibur’s Marine contingent entered.

“Ah, we’re all here,” she said. “Excellent!”

“Have you determined which neobarb world she’s from, doctor?” Christos goaded.

Zhang’s smile widened to a predator’s grin. Her clashes against Christos’ ingrained sense of superiority—a condition endemic to many from the motherworld and her oldest daughter colonies—were infamous.

Bryson got the feeling that she was about to take a sizeable chunk out of the good major’s ass.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she replied in a deceptively quiet voice. “She’s from that barbaric old world called … Earth.”

They stared at her in shock. “What?” shouted Christos.

“Doctor, please explain,” Suzuki said regaining her composure quickly. “That’s certainly no Terran fighter down on my flight deck.”

“In fact it looks like one of those old jet fighters they use on Madrigal,” Bryson said thoughtfully. “But those are strictly atmospheric—like planes from pre-space Earth—and this bird was able to withstand passage through a tunnel, not to mention it uses a type of fuel Major Moran and an entire engineering team are still trying to characterise.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Zhang replied dismissively. “But during our examination, Dr. Alowolo found that this young woman has a third-generation Rossacher neural implant—damaged, but still unmistakeable.”

“She has an interface?” Christos asked; his brows drew together in a scowl marring his singularly handsome face.

“Nketchi?” Zhang said to the beautiful, cocoa-skinned woman.

The young doctor took a deep breath and met her captain’s enquiring gaze.

“As Dr. Zhang indicated, the patient has a non-functional neural implant, a juvenile series Rossacher III, consistent with those typically implanted in children between the ages of three months and five years of age,” she reported. “This primary juvenile series implant was used mostly for identification on Confederacy worlds starting three hundred and seventy years ago until approximately thirty years ago, when it was supplanted by the current Rossacher V series. It has basic medical interface and diagnostic functions as well as a locator beacon.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Zhang said with a dramatic flourish at the young, blonde woman lying unconscious on the bed. “Meet Miss Sheba Kathleen Stewart, daughter of Captain Kathleen Mary Davidson and famed historian Dr. Dimitri Miles Stewart … and,” she continued, enjoying their confusion, “granddaughter of Admiral Raymond Connor Stewart.”

Bryson couldn’t help the gasp that escaped him. “The sector commander? That Admiral Stewart?”

“The very same,” Suzuki said quietly.

“Then that means that her brother is Vice Admiral Miles Connor Stewart, in command of the Sixteenth Fleet,” Bryson continued as information regarding the Stewarts and their immediate family flowed through his implant’s link.

“Exactly,” Zhang replied. “Once we had her genetic profile, discovering her identity was fairly simple.”

“Almost forty-two years ago, Captain Davidson disappeared with her husband, three year-old daughter and all hands aboard the science explorer Morning Star,” Suzuki said. “This young woman will be able to tell us where they disappeared to.”

Zhang’s smile faltered for the first time. “Well, wherever it was, it wasn’t necessarily a good place,” she said grimly.

“Doctor?” the captain queried in concern.

Zhang turned the diagnostic monitor towards them. “Her scans show that she sustained severe head trauma when she was approximately five years old, which is probably how the implant was damaged,” she said quietly. “In addition to the head trauma, she shows signs of rather extreme juvenile abuse well into her adolescence, including having every finger broken on both hands.”

“Gods!” The epithet escaped Bryson before he could consciously screen it.

“More recently,” the doctor continued grimly, “she’s torn up her right knee and been beaten within an inch of her life several times, judging by the broken nose, ribs, various healed-over bone fractures and lingering deep muscle trauma.” They gaped at her, appalled at the abuse the doctor had catalogued.

“She’s malnourished, has had both hands severely burned recently and suffered an old-fashioned, chemically propelled bullet to the gut,” Zhang said holding Suzuki’s gaze. “And to top it all off, at about the same time as the surgery to repair that wound, some butcher hacked off half of her left ovary for no sane reason I can detect.”

Theodora Suzuki studied the impenetrable mask that solidified on the face of her old mentor beneath his shock of white hair as he absorbed Zhang’s report. She knew why Raymond Stewart chose to bury himself all the way out here on the fringe of nowhere when he could have had his pick of any assignment anywhere in the Confederacy.

“Are you sure, Teddy?” he asked hoarsely, eyes flint-hard now where there had been so much jubilation only moments ago at the news that his granddaughter was still alive. Theodora Suzuki could hear the deep sorrow in his voice and the even deeper fury at the catalogue of abuse the girl had suffered.

“Yes, sir,” she replied quietly.

His eyes flicked away from her face and he nodded to someone out of pick-up range before focusing on her again. “I’ll be leaving Sector HQ within the hour and rendezvous with you at Avalon Station within twelve hours,” he said. “Connor’s task force will be there in twenty-two hours.”

“Understood, sir,” Suzuki replied. “Excalibur will get to Avalon in three hours, but Dr. Zhang reports that your granddaughter will awaken naturally in about fifty minutes.”

“You have authorization to stream Warrior’s Dawn as soon as she begins to wake up,” he said—and she also heard what he didn’t say, and damn the regulations against frivolously tying up relay bandwidth so that an old admiral can watch his precious granddaughter wake up for the first time in over forty years.

“Understood, sir,” she replied gently. “Sir, one other thing—it’s in my report with the recordings of our first contact, but she may not remember you, sir, or anything to do with the Confederacy. In her mayday, presumably to her fleet, she refers to herself as “Starbuck” and “Captain Kara Thrace”. Now, “Starbuck” was emblazoned on a plaque affixed to her craft, and is probably her callsign—”

“I know what a callsign is, Captain,” Stewart said impatiently.

“Yes, sir,” she replied smiling ruefully, but quickly sobered as she continued. “But the fact that she calls herself “Kara Thrace”, and prays to some deities called the “Lords of Kobol”, suggests that her parents or the survivors from the expedition had no choice but to socialise her as one of these “Colonials”—”

“Which means they would have followed SOP and buried her real identity and memories when they destroyed their ship and went to ground,” he finished grimly.

“That’s our guess, sir,” Suzuki said, “and it also means we’ll have to handle her situation very carefully. Like most of these cases, she’s probably not going to handle us turning her worldview upside down very well.”

“But it has to be done.”

“Yes sir.”

To Part 2

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Epilogue

2008-12-14T18:22:45Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Epilogue: Hallelujah
Word Count: 700
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Epilogue: Hallelujah

She awoke later, captivating him with a sexy, sleepy smile as she slowly focused clear emerald eyes on him. He couldn’t help but smile back—the look of satisfaction on her face gave new meaning to the phrase, “the cat that got the best cream.”

“Hey,” he husked.

“Mmm,” she sighed, snuggling closer to him under the blanket so that she lay half on him, her head on his shoulder—one naked sock-clad leg thrown over his hip.

He held her close and with his free hand, gently traced the contours of her face beneath the light blue scarf he’d helped her put on and tie before she fell asleep. It tickled him that Laura Roslin was in his rack wearing nothing but a scarf and a pair of socks—and it also saddened him because of what those two articles of clothing meant. Even with his body heat to warm her … in spite of his love … the cold was seeping in; her fingertips playing with the scar on his chest were icy.

“Have you been awake long?” she asked finally.

“All night,” he replied rather sheepishly.

“Bill!” she said, admonishment clear in her voice as she pushed herself up on her elbow to look down into his eyes. “You needed your rest as much as I did.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said simply. He chuckled softly. “I generally have trouble sleeping after momentous occasions, and you must admit, that was a momentous occasion.”

Laura giggled like a schoolgirl. “Momentous huh,” she murmured finally when she could speak again.

“Yup!”

“Well you certainly chose the right music to accompany such a momentous occasion,” she said. “I never would have pegged you as a fan of the Lion of Kobol.”

He laughed again. “I was actually introduced to his music thanks to Saul—”

“Saul?” she said incredulously. “Saul Tigh—I wouldn’t think he’d know the Bard from a briar-bird squawking.”

“He wouldn’t,” Bill chuckled. “But he did know a certain young lady at a certain gentlemen’s club near the Leonis Spaceport. She used to do a rather … umm … inventive strip tease while singing, “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-on”.”

Laura exploded into giggles again. “Oh my gods!” she gasped. “A bunch of my friends and I nearly got expelled from university our first year for singing that in the school’s old amphitheatre one night—well that and the fact that we were drunk and we broke in. It was one of those traditional, open-air theatres with stone seats in a terraced semi-circle set into the side of a hill—it was fairly easy to climb over the fence.”

“Wow, you were quite a rebel when you were younger, Ms Roslin,” he teased.

She licked her lips suggestively. “Well, I certainly wasn’t an angel, Admiral Adama,” she replied. “By the time I left university, I’d collected almost every extant version of the Bard’s recordings—including some rather ribald versions. Actually,” she said thoughtfully, “now that I think about it, there was one song you played tonight that I’ve never heard before.”

Bill looked at her in surprise. “Really, which one?”

She blushed bright red, which intrigued him no end. How she could go from sultry minx to almost girlish innocence in the blink of an eye was beyond him.

“Which one?” he insisted.

She shifted to stretch out, fully covering him with her body so that they were face to face. He slipped his hands down to possessively cup her ass.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it was that rather uplifting one that was playing while you showed me that eloquent tongue of yours could be used for much more than just … ah … talking,” she replied, tracing his full lips with one gentle finger.

He frowned in confusion for a moment before it dawned on him what she was referring to. He chuckled softly. “Ah, you mean “Hallelujah”,” he said.

“That’s the one, hah-le-lu-yah,” she replied, sounding out the unfamiliar word.

“I looked it up once,” he said. “It’s actually an ancient benediction meaning, ‘Praise to the Gods’.”

Laura chuckled. “Well that’s certainly a fitting description for this evening,” she said as he joined her laughter. “Hallelujah, Bill … Hallelujah!”

The End

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Chapter 4

2008-12-14T17:30:02Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Chapter 4: Dance Me To The End Of Love
Word Count: 1,015
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Chapter 4: Dance Me To The End Of Love

The feel of her soft skin against his was exquisite as their nude bodies slipped into the rhythms of the next song. Bill cupped her chin gently as he sang to her.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

As the next verse began, he lifted his hand to the wig she wore. Laura stiffened, dance forgotten, and through her tears, she saw the question in his eyes. Permission?

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone

Without conscious decision, she nodded, unable to speak. An overwhelming feeling of vulnerability washed over her as Bill slipped the wig from her hairless scalp and gently placed it on his desk, taking care to lay it flat.

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

When he turned back to her, she wanted nothing more than to turn away, but he held her mesmerized by those blue, blue eyes and all the love she saw there. She’d never felt so truly naked before.

As he held her naked body against his again, she felt a sudden sensation roar through her. Hunger. I hunger for him, she realised in shock. Skin hunger—the hunger for human touch. No one has touched me like this in nearly five years. Oh Gods, how I crave this. She clung to him … nuzzled into him, as if trying to get beneath his skin.

Throughout the instrumental portion of the song, he danced her into the small alcove at the back of his quarters that housed his rack.

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long

He sat down, pulling her down to him. She came willingly, straddling his lap, his erection already insistent against her thigh.

We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Laura gave an involuntary cry as Bill’s fingers found that little bud at the apex of her thighs. The first gentle caress across her clitoral hood sent an unexpectedly strong spark of an orgasm racing through her. Her eyes widened as she looked down into his smouldering blue gaze. She’d always been passionate and her body had been very responsive in her youth—and she’d never lacked for lovers who could take her to heights of orgasmic pleasure. But it had been years since she’d been this responsive to a simple caress.

As she grew older, sex became a thing of comfort and companionship—especially in those last years with Richard. More often than not she’d failed to reach orgasm, and she’d accepted it as an inevitable consequence of getting older.

Now, as Bill’s finger dipped into her body, she found surprise again; she was already wet … dripping wet … and a familiar tightening sensation began to build in the pit of her belly as he spread that wetness about he nether lips before concentrating again on her clitoris.

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn

Her breathing was ragged as she undulated above him, bowing her head to kiss him passionately before breaking the kiss with a hoarse, gasping cry as he felt her sex throb and spasm against his insistent fingers.

Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

“Please!” she growled, looking down again into Bill’s eyes with an almost frightening intensity. “Please Bill, I need you,” she whispered, voice hoarse and thick with need.

“You have me,” he husked back. “You will always have me, Laura.”

With one hand on her hip and the other on his burgeoning erection, he guided himself into her at last. A soft indrawn hiss was the only indication of discomfort before she gave a long drawn-out moan as he slid fully into her. All movement stilled for a long moment and they gazed into each other’s eyes.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove

Then she began to move, slow, languorous movements that drove him mad with desire as she seemed to flow around him, liquid and illusive. Bill knew that he wouldn’t last long. At his age, he had no illusions about his stamina. Slipping his hand between their joined bodies, he found her clit again—“the only human organ with no other function but the pleasure of its owner,” an old girlfriend had once told him—and proceeded to coax it from its hiding place.

She cried out hoarsely again at his touch and began to move faster … riding him … her breath coming in loud gasps now as her fingers dug into his biceps.

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

The song began again as the last “la, la, la” of the Bard’s female chorus died away, but wrapped in the wet, warm sheath of her, Bill no longer cared as the song repeated; he’d set it to repeat twice because it was his favourite.

Laura’s luminous face above him was never more beautiful as she cried, straining towards completion, pulling him involuntarily in her wake. He didn’t know how much longer he would last caught in the maelstrom of pure sensation spreading inexorably from the epicentre of his groin, but pulling her closer … lost in her keening cries … he gave himself over to the storm of emotions.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin …

#

To Epilogue

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Chapter 3

2008-12-14T17:17:04Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Chapter 3: Ain't No Cure For Love
Word Count: 1,185
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Chapter 3: Ain’t No Cure For Love

By the time Bill came to his senses, the next song had already begun.

I loved you for a long, long time
I know this love is real
It don't matter how it all went wrong
That don't change the way I feel

Deftly, he extricated himself from her grasp and took a step back, trying to remember what he’d planned for this piece. Her nimble fingers reaching for the next button on his uniform jacket—she’d already managed to get the top three undone without him noticing—reminded him.

And I can't believe that time's
Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of

Unbuttoning his jacket the rest of the way, he quickly pulled it off and laid it across his desk. Her fingers were underneath his tanks before he could continue, pushing them up and caressing his chest. Her head dipped in and his breath caught as her lips and wet, maddening tongue traced the puckered scar that bisected is torso from navel to sternum, where he’d been cut open to remove the bullets from the Cylon Boomer’s assassination attempt.

There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure,

Catching the hems of his tanks, he pulled them off in one fluid motion as he felt her fingers unbutton his pants and begin to lower the zipper, her caresses deliberately tantalising. Again, the delicious feeling raced through him, spreading from his groin to every millimetre of him.

There ain't no cure for love

Stepping back again from her, he chuckled at her adorable pout; Laura looked like a two-year-old who’d suddenly been deprived of her favourite stuffed bear. Her lips were still delightfully full and red from their earlier bout of kissing.

I'm aching for you baby
I can't pretend I'm not

Reaching again for her, Bill made short work of the buttons on the old, comfortable white blouse she’d changed into for her diloxin treatment.

I need to see you naked
In your body and your thought

As he slipped the shirt off her shoulder, Laura suddenly felt self-conscious about the state of her body. Unable to keep much down for the last few weeks, she knew she was unattractively thin—her bones too prominent under her skin … all her softness and womanly curves she’d always prided herself on were gone.

I've got you like a habit
And I'll never get enough
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure for love

Bill stopped as she stiffened beneath his touch and turned away, shrugging the shirt back on. For a moment he froze, afraid that he’d read the situation wrong ... dreading that he’d read her wrong.

There ain't no cure for love
There ain't no cure for love
All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky

Then suddenly, instinctively, he wrapped his arms about her waist from behind and just held her as her sobs told him what she could not. She leaned back into him and simply cried, her too-thin body shaking with the course of her tears.

The holy books are open wide
The doctors working day and night
But they'll never ever find that cure for love
There ain't no drink no drug
(Ah tell them, angels)
There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love

After a few moments, her sobs subsided and she turned her head to meet his gentle, non-judgemental gaze.

“I love you, Laura,” he husked. “I love you, no matter what.”

Laura smiled through her tears and turned in his arms to hug him. “I love you too, Bill,” she replied. It was such a relief to be able to say it again and know it in her heart … to assure herself that the first time wasn’t simply because of her fear of losing her humanity, which had manifested itself in her vision of Elosha, and of Bill and his family at her deathbed.

I love him, fully and truly, she realised, snuggling into the warmth of his of his body with a contented sigh. However, it wasn’t long before his musky scent assailed her senses again, igniting her desire and spreading it from the epicentre of her belly across her skin like wildfire.

I see you in the subway and I see you on the bus
I see you lying down with me, I see you waking up
I see your hand, I see your hair
Your bracelets and your brush

Laura captured his mouth again in a bruising kiss as she tried to struggle out of her blouse. Bill chuckled as they came up for air. Reaching behind her, he freed her arms from her sleeves and dropped the shirt unceremoniously onto the desk.

And I call to you, I call to you
But I don't call soft enough

Laura giggled again when he demonstrated that he’d lost none of those skills he’d learned as a hot-shot young pilot; he deftly popped open the front-closure of her bra.

There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure for love

Again, she felt a wave of self-consciousness as he freed her breasts. That they were a bit softer, less full than they’d once been made her more nervous than the thought that they’d been her body’s weapon of choice against her.

You’re not twenty-five—or even thirty-five, she chided herself. You’re a fifty-five year old woman with a fifty-five year old body that’s more than seen its share of life.

Laura gasped as Bill drew her left nipple into his mouth, while his thumb teased the other mercilessly. All her insecurities and self-recriminations vanished as he feasted hungrily on one and then the other.

I walked into this empty church I had no place else to go
When the sweetest voice I ever heard, whispered to my soul
I don't need to be forgiven for loving you so much

Gorging himself on her delightful breasts did nothing to sate Bill’s appetite for her; if anything it was increased tenfold. He kissed her deeply again as his hands made quick work of her pants, lowering it with her underwear over her hips.

It's written in the scriptures
It's written there in blood
I even heard the angels declare it from above
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure for love

His hands were everywhere, caressing her back, squeezing her ass, fondling her breasts, while his mouth devoured her very breath. Her lungs burned—her entire body felt as if it was on fire … as if she was being consumed by him.

There ain't no cure for love
There ain't no cure for love

She gasped for air as his mouth left hers at last to suckle the sensitive skin in the hollow of her at the base of her neck. “If this is love,” she rasped out, “I hope they never find a cure!”

All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky
The holy books are open wide
The doctors working day and night
But they'll never ever find that cure,
That cure for love

#

To Chapter 4

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Chapter 2

2008-12-14T05:52:07Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Chapter 2: I'm Your Man
Word Count: 825
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Chapter 2: I’m Your Man

When the first song was finished, he let her go and stepped back. She looked at him with a bemused smile playing on her lips as she wiped her tears away with trembling fingers.

And as the next song began and he started a little soft-shoe routine, Laura burst into giggles in recognition. She had to lean back against his desk for support, laughing helplessly as he sang the lyrics with exaggerated movements.

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you

Leering at her comically, he waggled his eyebrows, sending her into even greater paroxysms of laughter. Bill realized that he would make himself the fool a thousand times over if he could hear her laugh like that every day, especially after the gut-wrenching disappointment of the planet below—the world that was to have been their haven ... their salvation ... their Promised Land.

If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I'm your man

“You certainly are,” he heard her say softly as he began a little shadow-boxing, acting out the next part of the song.

If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I'll examine every inch of you

She caught him by surprise as he attempted to run his hands over her hips, surging forward and capturing his mouth in a searching, searing kiss. For a moment, the song was forgotten as she pressed up against him and he felt his groin tighten even more. He moaned into her mouth.

She giggled. “I’ve always loved playing doctor,” she said impudently.

If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I'm your man

Snaking one arm about her waist, he swung her into a simple two-step, which she fell into so naturally, it was as if they’d always danced together.

Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep

“Oh Bill,” she whispered, tracing his rugged cheek with one finger as the lyrics of the ancient song articulated what he couldn’t. But looking into his eyes, she saw everything there—everything he couldn’t put into words, he said with those eloquent blue, blue eyes.

Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees

She raised one elegant eyebrow in naughty askance and Bill laughed. “I’m way too old, Laura,” he said chuckling. “If I got down on my knees, I’d probably never get up again—at least not without Cottle’s assistance. And I doubt you want to entertain his annoying ass this evening—unless of course you do, in which case I’ll have to see what I can arrange.”

Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat

Laura’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline in shock as she gasped, “Bill!” and swatted him—whereupon, he actually did let out a pained howl through his laughter at her outrage.

And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man

“I guess threesomes really aren’t your thing, Madam President,” he said still chuckling.

“Not on the first date!” she retorted primly, eyes sparkling.

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you

Bringing her lips close to his ear, Laura said in her most presidential voice, “But I’ll let you know when, Admiral …” Immediately, Bill became almost painfully hard.

And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you

As he stumbled against her, she insinuated one sinfully long leg between his, her thigh deliberately adding to his stimulation, and he found to his dismay, that she was now leading the dance.

If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man

“But first you’re going to need training, Husker,” she continued, an unholy light ghosting through her eyes as she expertly swung him around and dipped him. He felt the desktop against the back of his thighs and hastily moved his hand from her ass to grab the desk in order to steady himself. “Lots and lots of special one-on-one training …” she declared as she leaned in to kiss him hard, the friction of her thigh throwing more fuel onto his already raging fire.

If you want a lover
I'll do anything that you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you

#

To Chapter 3

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Chapter 1

2008-12-14T05:27:22Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Chapter 1: Take This Waltz
Word Count: 910
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Chapter 1: Take This Waltz

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women

“I’ve always thought that this Vienna was a very poor place,” he said, guiding her gracefully about the room. “Now, I certainly know that it was; it didn’t have you.” She blushed prettily, tears sparkling like jewels on her lashes.

There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

“The first time I heard this song was my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary,” Laura said looking at him through her tears. “I was eight, and snuck out of my room to watch them dancing in the living room. It was the first truly sensual thing I’d ever seen, although I wouldn’t understand that till years later.”

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Bill’s mournful, unmistakeably gravelled tones joined the instruments, blending seamlessly with the Great Bard’s—caressing her to the depths of her wounded soul.

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you

“Oh you do, do you?” she said saucily, taking refuge in levity.

On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating

His only answer was to continue singing, hand again possessively grabbing her ass, pulling her closer so that she could feel his undeniable arousal as his hardness pressed into her groin.

In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

Her gasp became a wordless moan and she stumbled in her surprise, momentarily losing the rhythms of the formal old waltz.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

Pressing his advantage, he kissed her—not the gentle, formal peck she was expecting to receive from him, but the kind that devoured her very breath. She moaned again as their tongues battled for supremacy, until finally, they broke for air.

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years

I’m like this waltz, Laura thought, clinging to him as she tried to catch her breath. She felt safe in his arms as he sailed her effortlessly about the room, softly serenading her.

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow

He held her gaze, and in his fathomless, blue eyes, she indeed saw that all her sorrows, her hopes and fears and dreams were reflected in them. And for a moment—there in his arms—she could believe that her dreams would come true.

All your sheep and your lilies of snow
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

Her voice didn’t fail her and it was his turn to stare in surprise as she began the final verse of the ancient song. She laughed inwardly at his shock; most Colonials—even the most educated—knew the Bard’s work in passing, but few knew it in any detail. And while he was still a hero among the lusty Leonis and cosmopolitan Capricans, the more repressed Geminese and Saggitarons had banned the Bard’s ancient works.

But Laura’s misspent youth as a wild child collecting friends from among poets, artists and other assorted Bohemians, had netted her almost every known recording of the Bard, which she’d cherished as she moved onto other, more adult, pursuits.

Until the Cylons had destroyed the Colonies, wiping away millennia of art and culture in a single day.

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist

As Bill held her gaze, he marvelled as her lovely soprano soared—and then broke on the last part of the verse, which she whispered to him, her heart in her eyes.

Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is.

As the Bard’s female chorus’ voices faded, trailing off into gentle “La, la, la,” with crashing cymbals punctuating each phrase, she laid her head on his shoulder, tears soaking through his shirt while they swayed for the last few moments of the song.

#

To Chapter 2

New Skin For The Old Ceremony: Prologue

2008-12-14T04:46:55Z

Title: New Skin For The Old Ceremony
Prologue: Love Calls You By Your Name
Word Count: 725
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing ... BSG and its characters all belong to the Lords of Kobol ... the song lyrics used or referred to in this fic are all by that incomparable Bard, Leonard Cohen. The songs in order of appearance are Take This Waltz, I'm Your Man, Ain't No Cure For Love and Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Author's Note: I wrote this over the summer, but was only able to post it to the Survival instinct archives last fall. Since I've gotten access back, I thought I'd post it here. Enjoy.

Prologue: Love Calls You By Your Name

It was only after everyone was safely back on Galactica and the other ships in the fleet … only after they’d returned from the shattered wasteland that was Earth, and he’d once again taken command of his ship, since leaving it to Saul was now out of the question until his friend’s status, and that of the other Cylons, was decided once and for all … only after he and Lee had put their disappointment aside to reassure the people … only then did he retire to his quarters.

He found her there, curled up in quiet self-possession on his couch as if she had always been there … had always belonged there—and perhaps she had.

She cradled the charred copy of Searider Falcon on her lap. Cottle had released her from sickbay about two hours ago, but responsibility had kept Bill from spending more than a few minutes at her bedside eight hours ago, while she began her latest round of diloxin treatment for her cancer.

No more, he decided. Nothing will keep me from her anymore. If this latest disappointment with Earth has taught me anything, it is that I cannot afford to waste any more time; she’s still dying and there will never be the perfect time to start a relationship. Well, no more putting everyone else first—this is our night.

Laura’s eyes were focused in the distance when he entered, but as he shut the hatch and spun the lock, her gaze shifted to him and she slowly smiled. Bill gravitated to her—he certainly wasn’t aware of walking over there—drawn inexorably by that smile, which was at once peaceful and content, yet enigmatic … as if she could see into every individual atom of his very being.

“I love you.”

The unspoken that had always been between them was now spoken.

“About time.”

He’d taken refuge in humour at the time, but the unasked had now been asked and it was time for him to give her his answer.

Standing before her, he returned her smile, his heart thumping an ancient rhythm in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to gather her up in his arms and devour her with kisses, but he knew that if he touched her, this perfect moment would not come again.

He moved over to his antique music player and went down on one knee beside it. For all it looked like an old wooden box, the cabinet that housed the two hundred-year-old machine and its speakers was reinforced with steel, hardwired to its power supply and riveted to the deck. Opening the cabinet, his knowledgeable fingers found the disk he wanted in its protective case and the slim, hardcover book filed next to it.

Slipping the small, thin, silver disk from its casing, carefully handling only the edges, Bill slipped it into the player and cued up the selections he wanted from memory. Deft fingers fiddled the various knobs to set the playback levels.

He rose, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, and turned to face Laura again. She was still smiling, her eyes sparkling with laughter and curiosity. He held his hand out to her, like a gallant knight from an ancient tale reaching for the Lady in his shield.

And so she is, he realised with crystal clarity. And like a knight of old, he would lay down his life for his Lady.

A soft giggle bubbled up and escaped her as she placed the book on the couch, rose and took his hand; her eyes gently mocked his attempt at old-fashioned chivalry. Cupping her ass, he pulled her to him and stole a light peck from her lips, before reaching down to press the play button. In the few seconds it took for the machine to find its first cue on the disk and begin to play, he deftly steered her away from the obstacles of the couch and coffee table to a clear area on the deck.

As the first strains of music rose from the ancient piano and violins, her eyes widened with immediate recognition.

“Is that—” she began in a hoarse whisper as they began to sway with an almost natural instinct for the music.

“The Great Bard himself,” Bill replied softly, “the Lion of Kobol.”

“Take This Waltz,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

#

To Chapter 1

Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle

2008-12-09T06:07:01Z

Title: Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle
Word Count: 3,195
Rating: T (PG-13)
Pairing: Adama/Roslin with all the usual suspects all crowded in one room!
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness.
Spoilers: To "Crossroads Part 2" ... everything from there is definitely my imagination. This is the sixth story in my "Aftermath" series. The others are "Goodbye, Captain Apollo", "Icarus' Choice", "To Chain Thanatos" and "Mnemosyne's Children" and "The Songs of Polyhymnia".

Aftermath: Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle

By the time the group followed him into his quarters--after ordering the marines not to speak about what had happened in the brig--Bill was bursting with questions. Glancing at Laura as he led her to the couch, he could see the same questions shining in her eyes.

As Lee shut the hatch behind Cottle and spun the lock, Bill wasted no time confronting Saul … Paul--whatever the frak his best friend’s name was. “How?” he demanded. “Why? Why this elaborate hoax?”

The five Earthers (Earthers!) looked at each other. Finally, Saul took a deep breath and walked over to the decanter on the side table to pour a couple glasses of ambrosia. He handed the fist to Bill. “You’d better sit down, Bill--you too, Laura,” he said gently, pouring a glass of water and handing it to her. Laura accepted it with a grateful smile as she sat down.

Something in Saul’s voice must have attracted Kara’s attention and she looked quizzically from him to Bill as he sat down nursing his drink, and then finally to Laura.

“What’s going on?” she asked quietly.

It was Lee who answered her. “The president’s cancer is back,” he said hoarsely.

Shock flared in Kara’s dark eyes and then sympathy. “Aw frak!” she said with an angry shake of her head. “I'm so sorry. When did you find out?”

“Last week,” Laura replied quietly. "Doctor Cottle has me on diloxin treatments this time."

Suddenly, a wide smile lit up Kara's face. "But that's no problem now," she said excitedly and Bill regarded her in shock at her uncharacteristically cavalier attitude towards such a grave prognosis. The others stared in confusion. "Guys, we're still thinking like Colonials," she said laughing as comprehension dawned.

"By the Gods!" Saul exclaimed, as he reached for Laura's hand. "Earth! Laura, the Terran Confederacy has had the cure for all manner of cancer for millennia--no one dies of cancer anymore. No one!"

Kara nodded vigorously in agreement. "And the ships they're sending are top of the line cruisers--the largest warships the ancient tunnels could handle," she reported. "They have fully equipped medical bays and within a week, we'll have at least three more warships, and a hospital ship, the Nightingale, is set to arrive once the area is secure."

Bill could see the hope in Laura's eyes, but it was banked by fear ... the fear that all this was too good to be true. Bill squeezed her hand gently and was rewarded with a faint smile.

"Perhaps--" Laura's voice was a whispered croak of so many emotions. Gripping Bill's hand tighter, she cleared her throat and tried again. "Perhaps we can discuss that later, but right now, we need to know what's going on. You haven't answered Bill's question, Saul; why such an elaborate scheme to hide who and what you are?"

Saul contemplated his ambrosia for a moment before setting the glass down in the centre of the table, untouched. "Because, Madam President," he said meeting her gaze before shifting his to hold Bill's blue stare. "Almost forty-five years ago when we arrived, I realised that Colonial society wasn't ready for what we represented; no more than you were twenty-five years ago, when I was forced by our ship's failing systems to remove the children from stasis. You're not ready now, but we have no choice anymore."

"What do you mean by 'what you represented'?" Bill asked.

"Earth's version of history is very different from the Colonies' version, sir," Kara said. "And even after going all the way to Earth, seeing irrefutable proof of it ... even after having what memories a three-year-old could have, unblocked, so that I could remember my family and friends, it's still very hard to accept."

"What is hard to accept?" Laura asked.

The silence stretched almost to the breaking point before Saul replied, "That humanity originated on Earth about a hundred thousand years ago, not Kobol."

"What?"

Bill felt the trembling shudder roar through Laura's slender frame as the single word tore from her throat.

"Humanity first ventured from Earth into space nearly six thousand years ago," Saul replied and Bill's breath caught in his throat. "Before that, we flourished for over ten thousand years on our world--from the rise of the earliest civilisations to the time we boosted ourselves via chemical rockets into orbit, and then to our moon, the neighbouring worlds in our solar system and finally to one of the nearest star systems. It was in that system, Alpha Centauri, we found our first natural hyper tunnel, learned to understand what it was, and learned not only how to exploit it, but how to build our own tunnels to go where we wanted.

"And for a thousand years, we did go where we wanted," Saul said with a bitter laugh. "We were giants, walking among the stars, bringing civilisation to barren worlds. We spread ourselves far and wide. Our sphere of claimed space was about two thousand light years in radius, with Earth at the centre. But in some areas, we'd explored out to twelve, fifteen thousand light years from Earth. And in all that time, we found no trace of extra-terrestrial intelligence in any corner of the galaxy we'd explored. So like fools, we thought ourselves gods, believed we could keep expanding forever."

"But that wasn't the case," Bill said in comprehension, suddenly aware that he had no trouble believing Saul's assertion that Earth was the first world. "You found another intelligent species out there."

"The R'sachi," Saul replied. "Another species who not only thought they were the only intelligence in the galaxy, but believed they were the only species that had the right to exist--a divine right bestowed on them by their God. And if the R'sachi were the divinely chosen Children of God--"

"Then humanity was the damned spawn of demons," Laura said with a harsh laugh.

"Exactly, Ma'am," Tyrol said with a strange faraway look in his eyes. "Apparently we were even more of a shock to them than they were to us. They'd been exploring space for nearly three thousand years by then and hadn't run into any other species with the intelligence above that of a housecat."

"And suddenly they were faced with a species that was not only indisputably intelligent, but one that had its own space ships and was actively exploring the galaxy using the hyperspace tunnels and building their own tunnels," Saul continued. "Well, as you can imagine, they went berserk--tried to wipe us out. We did the only thing we could do ... we fought back. The war lasted over a thousand years."

Bill gaped at Tigh in patent disbelief; a thousand years?

"A thousand years," Tigh repeated. "In that time they destroyed countless colonies and nearly found Earth twice. After the second incursion came as close as Epsilon Indi, less than twelve light years from Earth, we used the Omega Option."

"The Omega Option?" Lee said hoarsely.

"Xenocide," Saul whispered. "We wiped another sentient species from existence."

Silence sucked the air from the room … from their very lungs.

"We had no choice," he continued. "We smashed fifteen hundred living, inhabited worlds to rubble, but we didn't come out of it unscathed either. We lost almost as many colonies over the course of the war … trillions of people--most of them innocent civilians caught in the middle. The war would ebb and flow ... like the tides; they would smash and we would rebuild--we would smash and they would rebuild. But the worse things were the colonies where the hypertunnels were destroyed, cut off for centuries from the Confederacy; few were in any shape to participate in our galactic community for a long time after we found them again. Even after more than three millennia, there are worlds where travel to different continents is seen as impossible--much less travel to the stars. So much history, art, science lost …"

Again, the silence was oppressive, deadening, as the enormity of it sank in for each of the Colonials.

"Anyway, in the four hundred and thirty-eighth year of the war, when the R'sachi made their first incursion into Near-Earth space in the Sigma Draconis system, about twenty light years from our home Sol system, it was decided that we couldn't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket. We needed to make sure humanity would survive even if Earth and the Confederacy fell to the enemy. So over the next two hundred years, Earth sent out six great arks."

"Arks?" Laura asked.

"From a story of a prehistoric flood told in a number of different ancient religions and cultures on Earth," Tyrol replied. "In its most basic form, it's about a God, being displeased with the first race of man he created, decides to destroy it in a great flood. He directs one man to build a great ship to preserve life and repopulate the Earth after the calamity. On his God's word, this man takes onto the ark, his family and every species of animal and plant in the world--in some stories, God leads them into a cave where they are kept safe. Then the heavens open up … a river or the seas swell and the Great Deluge wipes everything from the face of the Earth. Then the waters recede and the world starts anew, repopulated by this man and his family, and by the organisms he saved."

"The arks were named after the men in those myths; Ziusudra, Noah, Manu, Deucalion, Manqo Qhapaq and Paikea," Tigh said taking up the story. "They were then sent out along hypertunnel passages in different directions--natural and artificial tunnels that were such closely guarded secrets, eventually even official knowledge of them was lost. It took a long time to reconstruct what happened. In the last four millennia, we’ve accounted for most of our lost colonies. During the varying periods of isolation, different cultures inevitably developed, so we brought those that wished to do so back into the fold as allies, left as independents the ones that asked to be left alone, and established protectorates over those that couldn’t fend for themselves against unscrupulous neighbours.

“But over time, as the threat from the R’sachi faded, finding the lost arks--and the civilisations that arose from them--became a cultural obsession, especially for people from Earth and the First Colonies, the places from which the bulk of the colonists were drawn from. Until one hundred years ago, we’d found four; two were intact--but rather backward--civilisations, while a third civilisation had flourished for about fifteen hundred years before they destroyed themselves just as they were moving back out into space.”

“And the fourth?” Laura asked hoarsely.

“Our evidence suggests that it never even got close to its intended target system,” Saul replied. “It was destroyed. Approximately fifteen years after its launch, a short, desperate communication was received by the Confederacy. It was a Code Zulu, the only signal the arks were allowed to send back. It meant the Mission Commander had set the self-destruct rather than allow imminent capture by the R’sachi.”

“Why?” Cottle asked, startling Bill with his gravel-crusher voice; he’d forgotten the old doctor’s presence.

“Because R’sachi like their meat fresh.”

Bill felt the earthquake shudder that tore through Laura at Saul’s grim pronouncement. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stumbled clumsily away from the table, knocking over her glass of water as she fled to the head.

Saul shrugged at Bill’s glare. “Sorry,” he said quietly as retching sounds permeated the room. Lee grabbed a towel from the linen cupboard to sop up the spilled water.

Bill hurried into his closet-sized bathroom. Laura was doubled over, dry-heaving into the toilet bowl. From the looks of it, she hadn’t brought much up beyond mucous and bile--probably because there wasn’t anything in her stomach to begin with.

As the heaving abated, her sobs grew louder. Bill pulled her to him and stroked her hair until she was quiet. Wordlessly, she pulled away from his embrace and turned to the sink. Meeting his eyes in the mirror, she whispered, “Thanks.”

Bill nodded, leaned in and dropped a kiss on her right temple before leaving.

As he entered the room, he stopped, floored by the sight of Saul tenderly cupping Kara’s cheek and chuckling softly in genuine wonder. After so many years of animosity between his best friend and his adopted daughter, it was a truly stunning sight for Bill to behold.

“I can understand about the kids, but I still don’t understand why you did this to yourself, Colonel,” Cottle was saying as Laura left the bathroom. “Or how?”

Bill turned solicitously and helped her back to her seat. Lee was at the hatch receiving a tray from a young crewman, who turned and left quickly, shutting the hatch behind him.

Lee set the tray down on the table in front of Laura. “Tory ordered you some consommé and a pot of hot ginger root tea,” he said gently.

“Thanks,” she replied gratefully. He nodded and moved away as Laura turned her attention to keeping her hand steady as she poured herself a cup of tea.

As she sat back, sipping the tea … the warmth spread from the epicentre of her belly, overtaking the nausea and fatigue, Tigh answered Cottle.

“Grief,” he said hoarsely, looking down at his hands. “You see, I was never meant to forget permanently. When our ship came out of the tunnel near the Colonies with almost everyone dead, I cloaked it and landed it on a moon in rings of the gas giant you named after the Titan, Iapetus. Imagine my shock at finding an entirely independent human civilisation out on the rim of the galaxy, locked in pitched battle with genocidal robots of their own creating. I carefully scouted the surrounding system and on a trip to Leonis, made the acquaintance of a young veteran named Solomon Tigh, who’d been a gunner’s mate on the Brenik. He was only too happy to tell his story to someone who would listen.”

“What’s your real name?” Bill asked gruffly. Laura heard the anger in his voice; so much he’d known about his friend wasn’t real.

“Paul,” Tigh replied. “Pilot Officer Paul Robert Davidson, junior pilot, late of the Terran Confederacy science ship Morning Star.”

“Was any of it real?”

“Oh yes, Bill,” his friend said earnestly. “Solomon died in a knife fight outside a bar on Leonis--after that, it was all me. He knew I was desperate for an identity … I’d tried to steal his ID so that I could copy it. He caught me … didn’t say anything … didn’t ask me about it … just kept on telling me all about himself. As he died in my arms, he pressed his wallet into my hand … said he didn’t need it anymore. He was about my apparent age, so it was easy to alter his ID photo to look more like me. I gave the authorities my name to put on the death certificate … told them he was a kid I picked up in a bar. He didn’t have any family, so I paid for him to be buried on Leonis--although he came from Caprica. And then I reported to the Bellerophon and fought the Cylons till the end of the war.

“During the war, I’d managed to buy or salvage some of the things the ship needed to continue functioning and stay hidden, but by the end of the war, it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to repair it enough to get home. Parts, especially components for our computers, were increasingly difficult to acquire, and it was too much for one man to repair. So I was left with a dilemma--what to do with the children? I decided to keep them in stasis until I could save enough money to take care of them--figure out how I’d explain having nine children who weren’t mine. In the end, the breakdown of the ship’s systems decided it for me. I had to get them out of stasis before they died in their pods.”

Tigh rose and went over to the table with the decanter of ambrosia. He poured himself couple of fingers and tossed it back. He poured another shot and returned to his seat before continuing.

“By then I was working any freighter jobs I could find. There was no way to keep the kids … to provide for them, so I suppressed their memories and one by one, took each child to a different colony and arranged a private adoption. I didn’t trigger the memory loss right away--I wanted that to be a last resort in case I was captured and my cover blown. I worked it such that each time the freighter I’d signed on to put into port where I’d left one of the children, I’d check up on them--make sure they were safe.

“Then about a year after I’d given up the children, I went to visit a boy named Evan, who had been adopted by a family on Virgon, a sweet, sunny eight-year-old,” he whispered sorrowfully. “I couldn’t find a trace of him or the family. Instead, I found another family living in their house--they’d been living there for almost a year. It took me almost a week of frantic research to find out that Evan and his new parents had died in a transport crash only three weeks after he’d been adopted. They’d never even had a chance to get to know the neighbours.”

Laura watched Saul Tigh’s hands fidget with the tumbler of ambrosia as he continued his heartbreaking narrative. “I jumped ship and went to check up on the other kids; I used up all of my money to get as close as I could without spooking the families, but found them all safe. However, I started to follow a lot tighter schedule of visits. Eight months later, my best friend’s twelve-year-old daughter, Anya, was dead--killed senselessly with four other children in a shooting at a posh school on Canceron … all because some spoiled brat was bullying some spineless little slug, who decided to kill him and ended up killing everyone else in the room but him.”

“I remember that incident,” Laura said quietly. “It was just at the start of my teaching career--led to the zero tolerance policy on bullying in schools.”

Saul nodded without looking up at her. “Then three months later, Sheba disappeared from Libron … from the face of the Colonies altogether,” he said softly. “I went mad with grief … searched everywhere for her on every colony--in every database I could find … my sister’s baby girl and I’d lost her …”

The silence in the room was overwhelming as Kara drew her distraught uncle into her embrace.

“Three of them … just gone in less than two years … two innocents and my little Sheba--I tried to drink myself to oblivion,” he whispered hoarsely, “and when that didn’t work, I wiped my memory … forgot all about them and didn’t set the retrieval trigger.”