Battlestar Galactica: New Revelations
Virtual Season 4, Pegasus series
By Eric Paddon
May 6, 2019

Chapter One

     They had told her that she would experience nothing during suspended
animation.  The 
effect would be sleep without dreams.  Just a general sensation of
nothing with no way to perceive how much time had elapsed.  The
arch-Skeptic in the group had told her that it would be a foreshadowing
of the sensation that all people would eventually experience upon death,
which had prompted a sharp and angry retort from her to keep his opinions
on such matters to himself.
     Signs of journey's end, she had been told would be akin to a slow
return from deep sleep.  A dim awareness of surroundings, and maybe the
indistinct forms of people accompanied by the sound of voices in a
hollow, distant kind of echo that would make it hard to distinguish
specific words at first.  It might take centons or even a centar or two
to regain total awareness of where she was, but it would come back.
     So when her blue eyes began to dimly sense the shadowy forms of
people moving about, and her ears began to discern those hollow echoes of
voices, she knew right away that she was returning from the suspended
state.  And if she was returning from the suspended state......it could
only mean one thing.  That the incredible risk she had chosen to
undertake had been successful.  And if it was successful, that would
mean......she would be experiencing the greatest answer to a prayer she
had made every day of her life for the more than two yahrens leading up
to when she'd stepped into the shuttle and the hatched had been sealed
shut.
     And so even as things remained too fuzzy to see clearly and too
indistinct to hear clearly, her mouth formed a smile.  A smile of
total.....happiness that when her vision cleared, she would see the face
of her one and only love.  And he would be saying her name........
     "Ila?"
     Yes, yes.  That was it!  The words were becoming more distinct!  It
was true.  Everything she had hoped and dreamed for when she'd insisted
on being the one to do this undertaking in which so much was riding on
the outcome.  Technically, the personal happiness it would bring her was
to be but a fringe benefit.  But for this initial moment of awakening,
she could put the larger picture on hold and think only of what this
meant for herself.
     "Ila?  Ila, can you hear me?"
     The voice was more distinct though the form was still hazy. 
But......now that the voice was more distinct, her mind realized that
something wasn't right.  It should have been one voice in particular, but
it wasn't.  It was another voice.  A familiar voice to her, but one that
her mind was totally unprepared to hear.  Because it was a voice that she
didn't associate with the realm of the living.  And if it was that
voice......did that mean she was.......
     Abruptly, she bolted upright in the Life Station bed she way lying
in, her eyes opening to their widest, the smile gone and replaced by a
look of near frozen terror.
     "Ila!  Ila!" the man sitting next to her bed reached out and grabbed
her shoulders.  "Ila, it's me, Cain!  Cain!  I'm alive and you're aboard
the Pegasus!"
     She turned her head slowly to face him.  A look of disbelieving
shock to see not the face of her husband, Commander Adama of the
Battlestar Galactica, but instead Commander Cain of the Battlestar
Pegasus.
     "Cain," Ila forced the name out with a whisper, "Cain,
you're......alive?"
     "Yes," he said tenderly.  "Yes, I am.  That's......a very long and
complicated story, just like.....I'm sure you have a long and complicated
one too, but we have plenty of time for that.  The important thing is
you're alive and safe."
     "Safe," she slowly leaned back in the bed.  "Am I....safe?  I......"
     "Why don't you rest, Ila," Cain's tone remained tender, "Just get
some normal sleep and it'll clear out all the side effects of suspended
animation.  We can talk then."
     "Talk," she whispered.  As Cain looked at her face, which was still
extraordinarily beautiful for a woman of early middle age, he could tell
that shock combined with disappointment was Ila's dominant emotions at
that instant.  The shock over seeing him alive that was giving way now to
the disappointment that she wasn't where she had expected to find herself
after coming to.
     May the Lords forgive me if I'm to blame for that happening, Cain
thought as he silently left the Life Station.


     When he entered the hallway, Tolen was there waiting for him.  The
Executive Officer had waited outside since Cain had felt it was important
to be alone when Ila had come to.
     "How is she?" 
     "Shocked and confused," the Juggernaut sighed.  "I think it's
obvious that when that shuttle was programmed to leave the Colonies, the
intent was to try and catch up to the Galactica.  So that's why it was
programmed to disengage the instant it locked onto a Battlestar's wake. 
They never expected they'd find another battlestar instead because they
didn't know we've been out here all this time."
     "And she's Commander Adama's wife," Tolen still couldn't believe it.
     "Yes," Cain nodded, "And also my wife's best friend.  Adama swore
that she'd been killed in the Destruction.  But evidently......she wasn't
where he thought she was."
     "What does it all mean, sir?"
     The Juggernaut let out a combined shrug and grunt.
     "All I can tell, Tolen, is that we're dealing with variables that
even I never considered," they kept walking down the corridor.  "From the
very beginning, I've had a picture of the Colonies as a place where all
humans who got left behind had been exterminated.  Just as thoroughly as
the Cylons exterminated the Delphians.  That picture's clearly wrong,
now.  And for Ila to have made her way out from there in a craft with
those special modifications.....that means something much bigger is going
on back there and we need to find out from her just what that is."
     The Juggernaut then stopped and looked at the executive officer,
"And on the heels of this development with those four centurions you
brought back from Delta Aquinas, we could be looking at a *really*
dramatic turn of events.....for the better."
     Their journey came to an end in front of the Electronics Lab.  When
they entered they saw the head of the division, Dr. Arnoff engaged in an
actual conversation with the gold centurion, Commander Cobre.
     "That's *very* interesting!" Arnoff said, "We had literally no idea
that second-brain Cylons could be so......discriminating."
     "Second brain Cylons believe all begins and ends with them," Cobre
spoke in the lower tone sound of gold centurions, but as always, the
signs of genuine emotion were evident now.
     "Yes," Cain stepped forward, "Yes, and with a proper alliance,
Commander......you would agree that their attitude could be turned
against them......for the benefit of those like yourself."
     Cobre lifted his gold helmet toward Cain, "If it were possible."
     "I would like to make it possible," Cain said, "You and your fellow
centurions from the garrison would be glad to help?"
     "We would of course welcome your insights and opinions on *any* plan
of action that might be undertaken," Tolen chimed in.  He was still much
quicker than Cain to recognize that the key to winning trust with these
Cylon traitors was to stress that they saw them as equals, and not
underlings trading one set of masters for another.
     Cobre nodded, "Yes," and then looked back at the three silver plated
regular class centurions.  All of whom nodded and said in unison, "By
your command."
     On the one hand, he felt like laughing at the irony of how simple it
all seemed to deal with these centurions.  But on the other.....there
remained in the back of Cain's head a lingering distaste for the fact
that he was in this position of treating them this way.  A position that
he had to admit had been forced upon him by Tolen, and which he'd needed
some convincing on.
     Is this really the right thing for us to be doing?


     Three centars later, Cain was back in the Life Station, where first
he paid a visit to venerable old Dr. Laughlin.  He'd always considered it
fortunate that the medical officer had been part of the Pegasus for so
many yahrens that personal loyalty to Cain had dictated his decision to
stay behind and not evacuate with the bulk of his medical team to the
Galactica when the injured were transported.  If that hadn't happened,
the Pegasus would have been without the services of anyone with
professional training in medicine these last two and a half yahrens.
     "No side effects from the suspended animation?" Cain asked.
     "None," he said in his familiar Aerian brogue.  "I have no expertise
in the field of suspended animation, but whoever designed it for her was
a genius.  All of her life signs are completely normal.  She's had a
couple centars of regular sleep to let everything reach total
equilibrium.  Whenever she feels like getting up......she can go."
     "Has she said anything?"
     "Just thank you when a med-tech brought her water.  Since she woke
up, she's mostly been.....staring straight ahead.  Nothing catatonic,
just......someone lost in thought."
     "I don't blame her," Cain sighed.  "I know this isn't what she
expected.  I'll try talking to her now.  Don't let anyone disturb us
unless it's a Red Alert attack signal."
     "Yes sir."
     Cain entered the room.  Ila was lying upright in bed, her eyes open
and as Dr. Laughlin indicated her expression was one of deep thought and
contemplation.  The shock being replaced by a coming to terms with how
things were.  That was already from Cain's standpoint an encouraging
sign.  It told him that he wasn't likely to see any hysteria or emotional
breakdowns from her, but instead would see her intellect take charge. 
And Cain, having known Ila for more than thirty-five yahrens knew that
intellect was something she had an overwhelming abundance of.  He'd seen
that on the first night Adama had proudly introduced her to him.
     The memory of that night was always so vivid to Cain.  He had run
into Adama, whom he hadn't seen in more than four yahrens on a skybus
where both were returning from their respective battlestars to begin a
six sectar furlon (standard policy in those days where combat crews
rotated duty after more than a full yahren and a half away from home and
took advantage of extended down time to relax and avoid the phenomenon of
combat burnout).  Adama had told him that since they'd last met he had
become sealed to a Professor of Drama and Music at the Caprican Fine Arts
Institute named Ila.  Since Cain, unattached at the time, had no
immediate plans on what to do on his furlon (which he had tried hard to
get out of since the thought of an extended absence from combat wasn't
something he relished in the slightest), he had accepted Adama's
invitation to dinner at their Caprica City apartment, where he
immediately saw how lucky his friend had been to find a woman of such
refined beauty and intellect.
     That night had also had even greater ramifications for Cain.  After
dinner they'd invited him to a play at the Caprican National Theater that
featured in the cast a woman named Bethany who had been Ila's best friend
since childhood.  The play had been awful but Ila's friend had given a
spellbinding performance that captivated Cain and stole his heart
completely.  Before Cain's six sectar furlon was over, Bethany had become
his wife.  His one and greatest love as surely as Ila had been Adama's.  
     "Ila?" 
     Commander Adama's wife looked over at him and slowly shook her head
but in amazement, not disbelief.
     "It really is you," her voice was low and soft but normal.  "You
really are alive."
     "Well like I said......it's very long and complicated, just as I'm
sure it is for you to explain.....everything," Cain moved over so he
could sit down by her bedside.  "I'm.....trying to figure out what the
best way is for me to condense my story, so I can get to hearing your
story."
     "Well, you can obviously dispense with the fact you weren't killed
at Molocay," Ila said.  "That much I can figure out.  But......if you
survived Molocay then.....why didn't you try to get back home?"
     Cain let out a sad sigh and lowered his head.  This was forever the
one thing that would stick in his craw as the greatest mistake of his
entire military career.  Making a decision not to try and get back at a
time when he had no conception whatsoever of all the political
machinations going on that had resulted in the phony Peace accord
arranged by Baltar that had resulted in the Destruction and the
Holocaust.  Nothing could ever make him escape the thought that if he'd
been there, he might have been able to prevent that by warning the people
against the peace offer.
     "I......used to have an explanation that I thought was a good one,"
he finally answered her, "Time has proven me wrong on that.  It's.....the
reason why I'm still this close to home and not with......Adama and the
Galactica."
     "Then you've seen him!" Ila came forward in the bed so that she was
just inches away, looking into his eyes.
     "Yes, yes, I have," Cain nodded.  "Two and a half yahrens ago we
hooked up near Gomorrah.  I.....helped get two pursuing baseships off his
back, and then......I slipped away and headed back into charted space
while he and the Fleet went off into the Alpha Quadrant in search
of.....the Thirteenth Tribe."
     "And you've made no contact with him since?" her voice was still
anxious.
     The Juggernaut shook his head.  "No.  We've had no contact since
then, but that's....because we've basically spent all that time going in
opposite directions."
     Ila looked down at the bed trying to process this information.
     "Exactly how far away from the Colonies have I come?" she finally
asked.
     "We're near the Hatari Sector in the Alpha Quadrant." he then added,
"According to the chronometer in your ship, you were only in flight for
about three sectans."
     Adama's wife closed her eyes with sad regret.  "I was supposed to go
much further than that," she whispered, "All the work we did putting that
together, all the calculations we made......I was supposed to be in
stasis for as long as three or four yahrens to try and cover all the
distance he's gone since the beginning."
     "I assumed as much," Cain understood her disappointment,
"Your.....ship was programmed to hone in to the unique drive of a
battlestar's wake.  But that meant.....it did so with the first
battlestar it came across, which was the Pegasus, not the Galactica."
     "We had no idea," Ila shook her head, "No idea at all there was
another one."
     Her eyes then narrowed, "What have you been *doing* the last two and
a half yahrens?"
     "Preparing," Cain said.  "We had battle damage to repair and
weaponry to replace.  If I was to make the Pegasus a formidable threat to
the Cylon Empire and their holdings close to home, I needed to take the
time to build our strength back to something in excess of what it was.
So.....I've spent all this time raiding isolated Cylon supply depots and
looting abandoned ones, as well as making contact with scattered human
outposts in the Alpha Quadrant where there was food to be had."
     "Toward what end?" 
     Cain sighed again, "Toward.....whatever results in crippling the
Empire to the point where they won't ever be any kind of threat to Adama
again."
     She looked at him thoughtfully, "You've never really had a
plan......except eventual suicide."
     "Well now, I'm not sure I'd put it that way," he grew slightly
defensive.
     "One battlestar thinking it can take out the whole Empire by itself? 
Cain, that's....." she trailed off, unable to think of anything else she
could say.  It made him wonder if she was upset that his presence had
thwarted her goal of reaching the Galactica for a reason she didn't think
was a good one.
     He decided he had to change the subject to something more positive.
     "I, ah......met your son and daughter.  They're alive and well."
     Ila's head darted back up, "My son and daughter?"
     "Yes.  Apollo is.....quite a fine warrior.  I got to know him very
well.  Other than the fact his hair hasn't changed color, he's the image
of his father."
     "He always was," her voice grew quiet.  "And you met.....Athena?"
     "Yes, I didn't get a chance to talk with her, but she was working in
the Galactica Bridge section."
     To his surprise, Ila didn't seem overly happy by this news he'd
revealed.  Instead, her expression was still tense.
     "What about Zac?" she finally asked quietly, "My youngest son?"
     Cain frowned at first.  And then....an uneasy memory of something
Adama had told him came back to him.  About how Adama's youngest son had
been the first casualty of the battle.
     Oh my God, Cain thought.  I have to be the one to tell her......
     As it turned out, he didn't need to say anything.  Ila was able to
guess the truth from his face and his body language.  She lowered her
head and closed her eyes.  And then, she brought her hands up to her face
and began to cry softly.
     "Zac, my baby," Ila whispered through her quiet tears, "Why you? 
Why you?  Why not me instead of you?"
     Cain felt totally ashamed of himself.  He rose from his chair and
began to awkwardly pace up and down the room.
     "Hades Hole, Ila, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I've fracked everything up
trying to explain what's happened.  I guess none of it makes sense. 
Maybe, I....." he stopped and shook his head, "I don't know.  I just
don't know."
     "It's okay, Cain," Ila wiped her eyes and slowly exhaled, trying to
get her strength back.  "I would have had.....just the same kind of
reaction if I'd heard the news from Adama.  And Cain....don't apologize
for anything else.  It's not your fault that things.....didn't happen the
way I thought they were going to happen.  I guess maybe it's just
realizing that all this time......there's been missed signals between you
and those of us in the Colonies.  If we'd.....both known about our
situations, we.....really could have been doing a lot to help each
other."
     Cautiously, the Juggernaut resumed his seat next to the bed.
     "I ah....guess this is now where I get to learn a lot of things I
haven't known before," he said.  "Unless you'd rather it wait a bit,
because you need some more time because of...... Zac."
     Ila vigorously shook her head, "No, no.  I'd rather start doing some
explaining to you."
     "All right," Cain nodded.  "It'll help me if you start from the
beginning.  Adama told me that he and Apollo went down to the surface of
Caprica after the Destruction and found what was left of your house.  It
took a direct hit."
     Ila finished wiping her eyes and smiled mirthlessly as she leaned
back against the headboard of the bed once again.  "Yes.....he assumed I
was right where I said I was going to be that night.  The night all of
Caprica and all of the Colonies were going to come together to celebrate
the end of the thousand yahren war and take part in the greatest, festive
celebration in the history of mankind.  Well.....I didn't feel like going
to one of the big celebrations in downtown Caprica City.  My husband and
my children were all on the Galactica to be part of the Fleet rendezvous
with the Imperious Leader that never was for the treaty signing that
never was.  My best friends were either gone like Bethany or moved off
from Caprica and all my former colleagues at the Fine Arts Institute had
their own plans.  So......I just decided I was going to sit on my terrace
looking at the ocean with a glass of ambrosia.  I remember how there were
all these boats lined up along the seashore and they were all loaded with
fireworks ready to go off the micron the word came through from President
Adar that the treaty had been signed and the war was officially over. 
And......I'll never forget sitting on the terrace and seeing one little
plume of fireworks that one boat set off prematurely.  How it just went
up and let out a little tiny burst as if it was anxious to usher Peace
in.  And how it was a glimpse of something that would never happen."
     Ila reached over to the table next to the bed where a water
container had been set up.  She lifted it and took a deep gulp and set it
down again.
     "It was about two centons after that little trail of fireworks went
off that my telecom rang.  It turned out to be my closest friend next to
Bethany.  You probably remember her since Bethany knew her well. 
Zakiya."
     "Zakiya," Cain thought and then nodded, "Oh....yes.  I do remember
the name.  I don't think I met her more than a couple times over the
yahrens."
     "Well, she had moved off of Caprica about a yahren after Bethany
died to be close to her children on Gemon.  But it turned out she was
back on Caprica that night because she wanted to be on her home planet
the night the war ended.  And she had gotten two tickets for a reception
at the Astral Needle and insisted I *had* to join her.  So.....with just
a little reluctance I pried myself off the terrace, changed into my best
stola and took an airtaxi to downtown where I met her in the Astral
Needle lobby."
     Ila then took a deep breath, "We got in line for the outside lift. 
The one on the Needle that let you look through transparent glass on the
whole of Caprica City as it took you to the top of the Needle and the
restaurant.  The most glorious view of the city imaginable.  And....while
we were in the line, that was when the attack began.
     "The whole.....panic that erupted was just horrific.  For some
reason, there were actually people so spooked they did the dumbest thing
possible which was get *inside* the lift when it opened up.  Zakiya and
I.....we managed to head in the direction of the bomb shelter underneath
the Needle.  That was where all its machinery for powering the glass lift
and the restaurant with its revolving gears were housed.  We got
ourselves inside all secure......and then during the attack, Cylon fire
severed the Needle right in its mid-section and sent the top section that
included the restaurant crashing to the bottom, where it landed on top of
the entrance to the shelter, burying everyone who had gotten inside it
including Zakiya and me."
     Her words were as dispassionate and objective as they could be, but
Cain could see in her eyes the trauma of reliving that experience.  But
he didn't dare ask her to stop because she knew she was performing a
necessary service to him and to history by revealing what had really
happened to her on that horrible night and which those she loved most had
no idea was the truth.
This was what she had planned on telling Adama.  He had to stand-in for
him at this critical moment.  And to also for the first time get a true
insight into just how horrific that night had been for everyone.
     "How long were you trapped in there?" he asked.
     Adama's wife sighed, "Two sectans.  Well past the point when Adama
had all the people he could get evacuated off Caprica and the rest of the
Colonies to join in the Exodus."
     She looked over at Cain, "Do you know what was agonizing about that? 
We were trapped but we had plenty of food down there from the restaurant
storage lockers.  We had bottled water to drink.  Even the portable turbo
flush still worked.  We just couldn't get out because the stairwell was
buried.  But the cruelest thing was that three hundred feet above us,
there was a hole in what had been the street that was big enough to let
the outside air in so we could breathe.  We just couldn't access it
because it was like.......being in the center of a vast temple structure
and above you, the high ceiling at the center has a hole in it that lets
the sun and the rain and the air in......but you can't access that hole
to get out because it's too high up.  But it lets the air in so you can
breathe.  And it also meant that public announcements being made in the
streets during the evacuation could be heard.  That meant......I heard
the announcement that was repeating itself on an endless loop from the
BNC telling everyone to report to the nearest aerodrome facility to try
and get off Caprica in the next three cycles to join up with the
Galactica.  The announcement that.....Adama made." 
     She let out a mirthless laugh, "There I was.....trapped and hearing
my husband's voice over and over warning everyone about the danger that
existed if we didn't get off Caprica.  And I couldn't do a thing about
it.  That message kept repeating itself on a loop for the first three
cycles until finally......when it stopped, I knew he was gone.  And that
all of us.....if we managed to get out alive were going to face the Cylon
occupation forces once they finally moved in."
     "Well how did you finally get out?"
     Ila sighed, "That was when......the next phase of my life began. 
When Commander Deval and his team came to our rescue."
     "Deval?"
     "At the time, he was Lieutenant Deval of the Battlestar Solaria,"
she said.  "When his ship was destroyed, he chose not to join other
pilots who were able to land on the Galactica.  Instead, he chose to pull
out from the battle and go to Caprica to see what was happening. 
Apparently.....he found his wife buried under the wreckage of his house
and decided that he would rather stay behind on Caprica until she was
freed rather than report to the aerodrome and join the evacuation.  He
organized a group of other survivors and got his wife out two days after
the Exodus ended, and from that point on, he began taking charge of all
other survivors he could round up who had also missed the Exodus."
     "And that was when your group was found."
     "Yes," Ila nodded.  "They.....used some plastic explosives to blast
away the debris that was blocking the stairwell and finally......after
two sectans, I and Zakiya and thirteen other people emerged from our
prison still in our tattered formal gowns and tunics."
     "And it was too late to use any kind of ship to try and catch up
with the Galactica?"
     "We had no access to ships.  The first places the occupation forces
secured were all the aerodrome facilities.  And if you tried to get off
the planet in something smaller like a skybus or an air taxi, it only
took about three centons for some Cylon tracking device to atomize you. 
We see a lot of that as we straggled our way through what was left of
downtown Caprica City to try and find a place of safety."
     "And obviously you found one," Cain had never heard a more
spellbinding narrative in his life.
     "Deval led about......three hundred of us to the old Caprican
Agricultural Institute just outside the city.  The Institute had just
opened a new facility twenty kilometers away but was in a transitional
shutdown phase of the old Institute so it hadn't been completely
abandoned yet in terms of functioning laboratories.  And more
importantly, it still had operating experimental greenhouses.  That
proved to be our salvation because the next thing the Cylons did to try
and flush out all of the humans who were still in hiding was to introduce
pluton into the atmosphere so it could get into the food and water supply
on the surface and contaminate everything.  When we.....heard a warning
announcement from them that this was what they were going to do,  we
managed to save enough additional seed and soil samples before it was too
late, and we also tapped further into the underground artesian water
which was shielded from the surface level contamination.  That allowed
all of us to go safely underground within the old Institute campus and
use the laboratories and greenhouses as our nerve center for surviving. 
And.....the first yahren after the Destruction was the time when we
pretty much stayed hidden, and just.....tried to find some semblance of
living."
     She leaned back again and closed her eyes indicating how exhausting
and trying it had been to relate this narrative.
     "I have two more yahrens of history to fill you in on, Cain, and
they're even *more* important but......right now, I'm exhausted.......and
I'm having another delayed reaction about......Zac."
     "I understand," Cain said quietly.  "You're probably hungry too.  I
can have something brought up."
     "Thank you," Ila said, "And....thank you for still being a good
friend of the family."
     "I always will be."
     But when Cain made his way out and left her alone to rest, he found
himself tortured by the greatest feelings of guilt and regret that he
hadn't known in his life since he was too late to reach Bethany's bedside
when she died.  This was the first time he had ever heard an eyewitness
narrative about the events of the Destruction as it took place on Caprica
from anyone.  Until now the only perspective he'd heard was Adama's and
Ila's husband had only seen the aftermath.  To hear things this way, was
something different.  It finally brought the magnitude of what had taken
place that night home to him with a clarity he'd never begun to imagine.
     And right now, after hearing Ila's narrative of what had happened on
the night of the Destruction he also knew that he wanted to reconsider
everything that was happening in regards to the four Cylon centurions
Tolen had brought back from Delta Aquinas.

Chapter Two     

"Can you recall a time before you were deactivated when you felt
this.....discontent about 
the IL class?"  Dr. Arnoff asked.
     Commander Cobre lowered his head in a way that suggested
contemplation.
     "Memory banks suggest the discontent was always present.  No way
until now to express it openly."
     "Can you account for that, Commander?" the electronics scientist
persisted.  "Was there a.....distinct change within your programming that
you can recall that......allowed you to express your beliefs openly?"
     "Insufficient to determine causal effect of change," Cobre said. 
"It was simply.....there."
     "I see," Arnoff decided it was too dangerous to press.  If the key
to establishing a bond with these Cylons was to act casual as Tolen had
been suggesting, then pushing them too much might come off as dominating
and thus remind the centurions of the inferior status they held in
relation to the higher-class Cylons.
     "I think that will be all for now," Arnoff rose, "You and your
fellow centurions are....free to do as you please."
     "That is.....appreciated."
     Amazing, the scientist thought as he bid a retreat from the room
where Cobre and the three silver centurions stayed seated as if they were
doing a Cylon version of meditation.
     "Well?" Tolen asked as soon as the scientist entered the corridor.
     "I'm at a total loss," Arnoff said.  "The explanation in theory
should be that something was done to their programming to bring out this
new attitude of hostility toward the higher classes of Cylons, and
yet......they don't recall expressing that *before* they were put into
sleeper mode on Delta Aquinas.  Now when you reactivated them, you didn't
do any tampering with their circuits?"
     "No," Tolen shook his head, "There wasn't time for that.  We just
re-powered them and won them over initially by feeding them some double
talk about how the war was over and we'd defeated the Empire and how
centurions were now being used by the human winners for new purposes."
     "And they accepted that."
     "Well.....Commander Cobre did accuse me of lying at first, and I had
to lay on the double talk even more but they eventually did go along."
     "Hmmm," the scientist briefly glanced behind him at the closed door
that led back to the room where the centurions were.  "There was
obviously something latent within them that was willing to accept the
idea of a universe without superior class Cylons.  There was
no.....instinctive loathing for humanity as one might have assumed that
would have made them willing to die rather than work with humans."
     "And that's supposed to be part of their primary programming," Tolen
noted.
     "Yes.....but if their programming hasn't been tampered with.....then
what we're seeing is more like a kind of change that in a sentient
biological creature we'd call.....micro-evolutionary."
     "That they're spontaneously changing or adapting into something
different from what they've been?"
     "Well we're not talking about the more discredited theories of
macro-evolution which deal with a wholesale change of one species into
another.  It's more like the kind of change within a species that when
they're placed in a different environment, they suddenly over the
long-term adapt to that environment by changing in distinct ways.  Like
when humans spend generations living on planetoids with heavier
atmosphere, their lungs adapt to it and the body can't function in
thinner environments as well."
     "But their environment *hasn't* changed!" Tolen still found all of
this hard to comprehend.  "It can't be a response to that."
     "I'm only guessing at this point," Arnoff admitted, "Conventional
answers that pertain directly to my area of expertise which is
electronics, are proving futile.  The answer behind this behavior
increasingly looks to be elsewhere."
     At that instant, they saw Cain coming down the corridor.  Before the
electronics scientist could say anything, the Juggernaut was practically
in his face with an angry look.
     "Dr. Arnoff," he said, "You are to turn off those four tin cans
*immediately*!"
     The scientist was taken aback, as was Tolen.  "But.....Commander!"
     "No arguments," Cain was at his full bearing, "Turn them off and if
they don't like the idea of being turned off, then I'll make sure a
security team turns them into a junk pile!"
     "Commander, no!" Tolen exclaimed, "You can't do that!"
     The Juggernaut spun and glared at his executive officer, who in all
the yahrens of his service had never once challenged him so openly.
     "Who is the Commander of this ship, Tolen?" he said quietly.  
     "You are, *sir*, but this issue's been gone over already."
     "I am exercising my prerogative to change my mind!" Cain snapped, "I
will not disgrace our people any longer by treating mass murdering
butchers as if they were old chums to share a tankard with in the
Officers Club!"
     Right away Tolen realized there could only be one explanation for
Cain's abrupt change on this issue.
     "Sir, what did Commander Adama's wife say that brought this on?"
     "Tolen, you're out of line."
     "No, sir, I am not!" the executive officer raised his voice. 
Something he wouldn't have dared do before he took part on the Delta
Aquinas mission.  "This issue impacts the future well-being of your
battle plan and the future well-being of your crew, and that's the reason
why you recognized the importance of keeping them alive!  If Commander
Adama's wife has said something to make you change your mind on this,
then I want to know what that is so I can tell the men!"
     So intense had the exchange become that neither were aware of Dr.
Arnoff bidding a silent awkward retreat back into the lab.  Or of Captain
Skyler, Strike Leader of Silver Spar Squadron halfway down the corridor
who had stopped in his tracks when he saw what was unfolding and was
looking in slack-jawed disbelief.
     Before Cain could respond to Tolen's last challenge, Skyler was
uneasily clearing his throat to get their attention.  The commander and
executive officer both turned and immediately straightened themselves
out.
     "Yes, Captain?" the displeasure hadn't faded from Cain's voice.
     "Um......Commander, maintenance has finished their report on the
shuttlecraft."
     "Oh.....right.  I should look that over before I talk with Ila
again," he then glared at the executive officer, "As for you, *Colonel*,
I'll be discussing your rank insubordination later!"
     He stormed off down the corridor in the direction of his quarters. 
So angry was his bearing that once he reached out with his swagger stick
and slapped it against the corridor wall.
     Tolen noticed Skyler still standing uneasily and embarrassed.
     "Is there anything else you have to do, Captain?"
     "No, sir," Silver Spar Leader shook his head.
     The Executive Officer then gave him the most sarcastic look
possible, "Then go join your fellow pilots in the Officers Club and let
the gossip begin."
     And without waiting for a response, Tolen disappeared back into the
lab so he could tell Arnoff to ignore the last order he'd heard from
Cain.


     Once Cain had departed, Ila allowed herself a few more centons to
cry for her youngest son.  Like all parents who had more than one child
she had always known how important it was to divide the love evenly, and
to never let any child think that one had been favored over another.  But
what was easy to do in the heart, where Ila's love for Apollo, Athena and
Zac was always in perfect proportions of equality, was not always easy to
do in outward execution.  
     Apollo, being her first, had carried from the beginning the
responsibility that all firstborn sons received in Colonial society.  The
expectation of inheriting the father's titles and property and with it
the expectation of measuring up to the standards set by the father.  It
was because of that, Ila had raised Apollo with nowhere near the levels
of open affection she would later give Athena and Zac.  Not because she
loved Apollo less but because Ila's sense of dignity and respect for
Colonial tradition made her fearful that to do so would be harmful to
Apollo in later years.  To her, it was more important to see Apollo
strike the deeper bond with Adama and if that meant it had to be at the
expense of spoiling him less than her maternal instincts yearned to do,
so be it.  When she saw Apollo bonding with his father over matters of
Colonial history and religious philosophy, it made her happy.  She felt
as if she had performed the duty that had been expected of her as a
Caprican mother raising the first born son of the family.  It also helped
that appearance and genetically, Apollo was definitely more Adama than
her.  He had Adama's taste for quiet reflection and occasional solitude
over formal socializing.  Not to mention the shyness Ila had seen in
Adama that she'd found so endearing during their courting days.
     Athena by contrast, represented everything that was part of Ila's
personality.  Outgoing and  fun-loving, with a bubbling sense of
optimism.  Ila's pet name for her daughter had been "Sunshine" because
her optimistic personality just seemed to radiate like a rising sun that
never wanted to go down.  And yet......while that had allowed a more
personal bonding than Ila had shared with Apollo it also was limited,  as
Athena preferred to spend more time with first her playmates, and as she
got older, with her boyfriends than taking part in family activities. 
Athena was always appreciative of special mother-daughter bonding
moments.....so long as they came in limited dosages.
     With Zac, there had been a lot more.  She had known from the
beginning of her third pregnancy that it would be her last and it had
filled her with a sense of self-awareness over all the things she'd known
had been limited with Apollo and Athena.  And why she was determined to
not let it be limited with her third child.  Ultimately, Zac, as the baby
of the family had received ultimately more in the way of smothering
maternal affection than Apollo or Athena had.  With hindsight, Ila knew
she'd done that more for herself and because she wanted the vivid
impressions of being a young mother to stay with her forever.  It had
taken her yahrens to realize that her smothering of Zac had likely
produced a quiet, underlying jealousy and tension from Apollo.  Never
anything in the way of hostility or cruelty.  But Ila could now see that
perhaps it had kept Apollo and Zac from being as close as they could have
been.
     She could take some comfort in the fact that the last family
gathering at the house, which had been Harvest Day celebration, things
seemed to be better.  Zac was just out of the Academy and assigned to the
Galactica with Adama, Apollo and Athena.  Because the Armistice signaling
peace talks between the Colonies and the Cylons had been declared, that
meant it looked like Zac was never going to experience the dangers of
combat, which suited Ila just fine although it did seem to make her
younger son think that without the experience of combat, it would always
keep him from ever earning Apollo's full respect as a warrior.  Which was
something she could see that Zac now craved a good deal.  The close bond
as brothers that had never really been there when they were children was
now something Zac wanted to have.  So far, Apollo only seemed ready to
accept his brother's presence.  As far as having a bond with him in the
way that Apollo had one with Starbuck?  It wasn't there yet.  That much
Ila could tell.
     And now it never will be there, she thought as she felt the tears
for her youngest streaming down her cheeks again.  Tears that she knew
she had to cease as soon as possible.  Because there was still too much
that lay ahead for her in this strange, unexpected situation she now
found herself thrust into.  And too much she still had to tell Cain about
how she......and so many others, had managed to survive in the wreckage
of Caprica.  And how and why she had undertaken this daring, seemingly
impossible attempt to try and reach the Galactica so far from home.  


     Tolen waited a centar before he decided to enter Cain's quarters. 
Part of him was hoping that the Juggernaut would have come to his senses
and recognized that he'd let his emotions get the better of him.  But he
suspected that he was going to find the Pegasus commander with his heels
dug in, and that he was going to have to stand up to him even more.
     So be it.  The executive officer was prepared for it.  He'd left
behind all of his insecurities and sense of inferiority on Delta Aquinas
and Equellas.  Where he'd finally confronted the ghost of what had
happened to his old wingmate Martin and realized that he'd spent twelve
yahrens needlessly blaming himself for something that was never his
fault.  And where he'd finally been forced to take genuine initiative in
a command setting and realize that the best answers didn't always involve
neat and tidy choices.  The event had been scarring and cleansing for
Tolen all at once and it had left him as a man who was now capable of
openly standing up to Cain if the situation called for it.  
     "Commander?"
     Cain looked up from the report he was going over on his desk with
visible annoyance, "Did I ask for you, Tolen?"
     "No, sir, but I felt it was important."
     "Has Dr. Arnoff carried out my order?" his words came out with the
rapidity of laser-fire.
     "He is continuing his study of the centurions and compiling a
broader report."
     "Has he turned them off?" Cain angrily snapped.
     Tolen said nothing.
     "Very well," the Juggernaut said with disgust.  "I'll deal with your
court-martial later.  In the meantime, I'm sending Colonial Security down
there immediately."
     His hand reached for the unicom switch but before he could say
anything, the executive officer then spoke with blunt authority.
     "Sir, if you give any order to destroy those centurions, then I
intend to invoke Article 184 and have you relieved of command."
     Cain pulled his hand away from the unicom.  The angry expression
slowly gave way to an almost mocking smile.  He slowly rose to his feet.
     "Well, well," he chuckled, "That mission I sent you on *really*
changed your personality, Tolen.  After all these yahrens of self-pity
and self-intimidation and easy deference to every order I ever gave, you
*finally* discover your voice.  I salute your courage, Colonel.  It's too
bad you have to do it in the name of a shameful act of dishonor."
     "What's dishonorable, sir, is your total about-face on something you
understood the logic of just days ago when I presented the situation to
you.  Something that is of vital importance to the mission objective
we've been operating under since you made the decision to leave the
Galactica." 
     "I have exercised my command prerogative to reconsider the wisdom of
that decision," Cain didn't bat an eye.  "And you have no right to
question my reasons."
     "Oh yes I do, sir, when you won't give a rational explanation for
why things are different now," Tolen wasn't going to hold anything back. 
"The only thing that's changed has been the arrival of Commander Adama's
wife.  Has she said anything that changes the situation from what it was
when you felt otherwise?"
     Cain moved out from behind his desk so that he was now only a couple
feet from Tolen.  If the Juggernaut had wondered if getting closer to him
would have an intimidating effect, he had figured wrong as the executive
officer's expression was unchanged.
     "Colonel," he said quietly but with authority, "That woman survived
the most horrible ordeal that *any* human being that lived through the
Destruction went through.  The ordeal of being left behind and abandoned. 
Abandoned by her own husband who didn't know she was alive trapped in a
buried bomb shelter.  All the time knowing her husband was alive and
leading the evacuation effort.  And then she and other survivors had to
go into hiding in a way far more frightening than the game we've been
playing where we have the luxury of hopping around from quadrant to
quadrant to escape detection.  Three whole yahrens."
     He drew even closer to him, "I've just finished going over the
technical report on that shuttle she was in.  There isn't a *single*
counterpart to it in the known annals of Colonial technology that existed
at the time of the Destruction.  Which means that somehow, during that
time of being forced to live in constant danger from merciless occupation
forces, the people Ila banded together with constructed something
unprecedented for the sole purpose of taking a chance to get one person
off the Colonies with the clear goal of trying to reach the Galactica. 
Why they did that for her I can't begin to imagine, but it was obviously
something that was meant to give her life some real purpose once again
and to let her get something back that was cruelly taken away from her
when she was left behind.  Taken away by monsters just like those four
we've been acting so chummy with all of a sudden.  And for what?  To
think that if we're even more chummy with them, they'll somehow convince
their fellow demons to also be friendly with us?  That's ultimately the
kind of astrum-backwards thinking that brought on the whole Destruction
in the first place.  When we surrendered our honor and our integrity on a
false hope.  And I am damned if I'm going to let that happen again with
us."
     He marched around back behind his desk and again reached for the
unicom.
     "Would you be thinking this if she wasn't your wife's best friend
and your best friend's wife?"
     Cain looked up and glared at Tolen, whose bearing and expression
told him he still hadn't been intimidated in the slightest.
     "That has nothing to do with it, Colonel."
     "Oh yes it does," Tolen shook his head, "That is *exactly* the
reason why you've checked all of your command instincts at the door. 
It's because you're too personally close to this woman, you're too easily
swayed by the emotion of whatever it was she described to you.  If this
had been any other person we'd found in the shuttle, your sound command
instincts wouldn't have been impacted in the slightest."
     The executive officer then zeroed in, "This could have been my own
wife, who was lost in the Destruction.  If it had been her, I would have
had my emotional reaction to it......and then you would have given me a
needed reminder on how the mission comes first.  And by God, Commander,
you *know* those centurions are essential to the mission."
     "We can make a difference without having to lower our standards,"
Cain said.
     "Did I lower my standards when I used them to make the mission on
Equellas a success?" Tolen retorted.  "I used those centurions to *kill*
people who were using the ammunition supply we needed to recover, for
evil purposes.  And I wouldn't have succeeded in the mission if I didn't
have them!"
     "You're not being faulted for that, Colonel," Cain said.  "When the
mission was over, you should have just disposed of them."
     "And wasted a chance to apply the same principle to your Grand
Master Vision of striking a blow against the Empire?  Very well,
Commander, if you're so convinced you can pull this off without tapping
into the opportunity using those centurions present to us, then I suggest
you call a briefing of all the men and explain that to them."
     "This isn't a democracy," the Juggernaut refused to be moved. 
"Command authority ends with the one its been entrusted to."
     "And command authority only remains so long as the one who has it,
has the trust of his men.  You've kept that trust, Grumblers
notwithstanding, these last two and a half yahrens, but if you throw away
a viable chance to justify what you've had these men go through all this
time, so they can actually fulfill the objective and maybe not lose their
lives in the process, you will forfeit that trust for all time.  And
pretty soon it will be more than just me mentioning Article 184 to you."
     Cain reached down to once again activate the unicom, but this time
he was interrupted by something other than Tolen's angry protest.  This
time it was the sound of a Red Alert klaxon.
     "What in the name of----?" he moved his hand over to the Bridge
intercom.  "Bridge, what's happening?"
     "Commander, I----I don't know!  Something incredible I've never seen
the likes of before!" there was a mixture of awe and terror in Major
Ham's voice.
     The Juggernaut immediately dashed out of his quarters with Tolen
trailing him.


     When the Commander and Executive Officer arrived on the Bridge, they
stopped as they saw through the forward screen an incredible display of
bright dazzling lights.  Moving in and about them at rates of speed that
none of them had seen before in any of their experiences.
     "Are you getting scans on this?" Cain demanded of Major Ham.
     The dark-skinned senior Bridge Officer shook his head.  "Nothing
shows up on the scanner, sir!  It's as if they're not really there and
yet......there they are!"
     "Interceptors launched?"
     "Yes sir, Silver Two group with Paris and Harroun."
     Cain picked up his headset, "Silver Two leader, this is Cain!  Are
those things registering on your scanners?"
     "Negative, Commander!" Lieutenant Paris's voice was nervous. 
"They're bright and beautiful and that's all I can say about them!"
     "Which isn't any different from what we can say about them from here
on the Bridge," the Juggernaut grunted.  "Do they show signs
of......intelligence?  Or is it just some kind of natural phenomena?"
     When Paris replied, he sounded confused, "How can you test it for
intelligent behavior?"
     "Try something creative!" Cain snapped.  "Like maybe firing a shot
at them and see if they  react."
     "Uh, yes sir.  We'll maneuver into attack position."
     Cain pulled off his headset and motioned to Ham, "Put their channel
on open circuit so I don't have to keep this on."
     "Yes sir."
     Cain and Tolen moved up to the edge of the forward viewscreen so
they could get their closest look at the dazzling white lights moving
back and forth across their field of vision.
     "This is Beta Two," Sergeant Harroun's voice filled the bridge. 
"I'm moving up behind one of them.  Getting......absolutely nothing on my
attack computer."
     "Stay on visual fix, Beta Two," Paris's voice commanded.  "You are
cleared to fire at will!"
     "Affirmative, Alpha Two, and firing!"
     From their vantage point on the Bridge, the vipers were indistinct
but Cain's eye caught sight of the red laser streaks that had just fired
from Harroun's ship.  And he then saw one of the beams of light shoot in
an upward direction relative to where it had been.
     "Whoa!" Harroun was amazed, "I never saw anything move like that. 
Whatever these things are they seem to know we're here."
     "They definitely have to have some kind of intelligence within
them," Cain muttered and then looked at Tolen, "Suggestions, Colonel?"
     Tolen almost seemed surprised that Cain was asking his advice after
what they'd just gone through.
     "I don't have any, sir," he said candidly.
     "Engaging turbos to pursue," Paris's voice crackled over the
intercom.  "And....our turbos are not engaging!  We still have power but
we can't get out ahead to see where they're coming from!"
     "Commander!" this came from Bridge Officer Kylie, one of only
fifteen female crewmen still aboard the Pegasus, "Our speed is dropping!"
     "Helm control?" Cain turned and looked over at her station with
alarm.
     "Still there, but if we needed emergency speed, we don't have it!"
     "What in Hades is happening?" the Commander felt his frustration
mounting.
     "Oh my God!" Harroun's voice came through.  "What's that coming up
from behind?  Paris, do you see it?"
     "Holy Frack!"
     Suddenly the scene in front of the Bridge personnel became more
blinding and intense as something massive passed in front of their field
of vision.  Accompanied by an incredible high pitched sound that Cain
found deafening.  He didn't know whether to put his arm up over his eyes
or to press both arms over his ears.
     Then, the swagger stick fell out of his hand as he collapsed to the
bridge floor, the blinding light and deafening sound no longer noticeable
to him.

Chapter Three               

     When Cain finally came to, the first thing he could sense in his
mind was a strange feeling of......calm.  It didn't seem to make any
sense given the frantic developments that had been taking place on the
Bridge, and yet, he couldn't deny what he felt.  As if during that time
he'd blacked out, he'd been through some kind of peaceful dream.  But
just what kind of dream it had been, he couldn't remember.  As if his
mind was refusing to recall the details.
     "Commander?" he heard Tolen's voice.  Sounding initially just a
little distant, but then his ears picked up the sounds of the other
Bridge personnel and a subdued sense of murmuring going about.
     "Yes, yes, I'm fine," Cain slowly got to his feet and looked about. 
Everyone else on the Bridge was back at their Station or if they'd been
slumped over were coming to and readjusting as well. 
     "Everyone okay?" he said aloud.  A general affirmative murmur went
up from everyone.
     "Commander," Major Ham reported, also sounding a bit drained. 
"Silver Two probe is still with us.  They say they blacked out too but
are okay.  No sign of those lights, but they have turbo power back to
pursue if you want."
     "Negative!" Cain shook his head as he picked up his dropped swagger
stick.  "Get them back here immediately and have them report to me as
soon as possible."
     He made his way over to Bridge Officer Kylie who was exhaling.
     "How's our helm power?"
     "We're back at normal flight speed.  No indications of damage," she
said, "But.....something doesn't seem right with our position.  We're not
where we were before!"
     "Well where are we?" Cain leaned over her shoulder so he could look
at her navigation console.
     "I can't tell, sir," Kylie shook her head.
     "Well find a fixed reference point and start from there."
     "That's the problem, sir.  There are no fixed reference points!"
     "That's not possible," Cain felt the frustration starting to return. 
"Put this up on the main navigation board."
     Kylie pressed a button and on the main navigation board on the
Bridge's upper level, the star map that had been in place at the time
they blacked out was replaced with the current indicator.  The instant
Cain and Tolen saw it change, they both realized what Kylie meant about
no fixed reference points.  
     "The whole Hatari System isn't there," the executive officer was
baffled as he and Cain mounted the steps to look closely at the board. 
"And the Antiochean Cluster should be on the far side."
     "I know every part of every star system between the Colonies and
Gomorrah in the entire Alpha Quadrant," Cain's incredulity deepened. 
"*Nothing* on this chart is familiar.  It's as if we were sent to an
entirely different Quadrant of the galaxy."
     "Or past the regions of charted space in the Alpha Quadrant," Tolen
was trying to come to terms with the situation, knowing that now was the
time he needed to show some resourcefulness as an executive officer who'd
learned how to find his voice.
     "Yes, that's possible too," The Juggernaut conceded, "But without a
fixed reference point of some kind, we might as well be
hopelessly......lost."
     "So what do we do in the meantime?"
     "Well......first thing I'm going to need is a report from those
pilots on whether they saw anything else before they blacked out. 
And......Tolen?"
     "Yes sir?"
     Cain hesitated for an instant and then spoke carefully and
cautiously, "That......order I was so adamant about Dr. Arnoff carrying
out is.......for now placed in abeyance."
     "Abeyance?"
     "Yes.  I still haven't changed my mind about what should happen to
them eventually, but......in light of what's just happened, I prefer to
exercise some prudence, especially if the presence of those centurions
might well be connected to these events."
     "How could they be connected?" Tolen felt relieved that he'd won
some time on the critical point, but he still couldn't understand Cain's
thinking.
     "Well.....just maybe, maybe they might know something about all this
that we don't!"
     And then without waiting for an answer from Tolen, Cain descended
the steps and prepared to leave the Bridge, but Kylie called after him.
     "Sir?" she asked, "What about a course heading?"
     Cain stopped and glared at her.  "Without a reference point, there's
no course heading to input.  Put main thrusters at dead stop for now and
then after I've talked to the pilots, we'll decide where to go from here,
using our present location as our first fixed reference point for
navigational purposes.  Tolen, you have the conn."
     "Yes, sir."


     On his way to his quarters, Cain decided to stop in the Life Station
to make sure that Ila had come through the ordeal safely.  He entered,
expecting to see her more distraught than when he'd left her, but to his
surprise saw just the opposite.  Instead, there was a look on her face of
total......peace and serenity.  It reminded him more of how she'd looked
when the hatch to her shuttle had first opened up and he'd seen her lying
in her state of suspended animation.  The only difference was that this
time her blue eyes were wide open and she seemed completely aware of her
feeling of serenity.
     "Ila?" he asked gently as he came alongside her bed.
     She let out an almost contented sigh, "Hello, Cain," she said,
"I'm....all right."
     "Ila," he sat down by her, "A little while ago......something
incredible happened.  Everyone on the Bridge......and I guess it was
everyone on the Pegasus, seemed to black out for just a bit.  Did that
happen to you?"
     "I'm.....not sure I'd say I blacked out," her expression grew
thoughtful, "But.....I remember it was like.....falling asleep and having
a beautiful dream.  Of being someplace bright and wonderful
and......pure."
     Ila's words were having an effect on Cain.  Unburying impressions
and feelings from inside his sub-conscious that he realized were similar
to what she was describing.
     "And I can remember......seeing someone," she went on.
     "Someone?" he asked, feeling a desperate need for information.
     "Yes," the serene quality returned to Adama's wife. 
"Standing.....far ahead of me.  This figure all in.....bright white.  At
first, I couldn't make anything out.  There seemed to be something
covering the face, but then the figure started coming toward me and as it
got closer and closer, the face wasn't covered any longer.  And that's
when......."
     "Yes?" he didn't want to sound like he was pressing her.
     Ila smiled and let out a soft chuckle, "It was Zac," she whispered
with reverence.  "It was my baby.  Telling me that......it was all right
and I didn't have to grieve for him any longer or let the fact that he
was dead be an impediment in my life.  That.....I still had so much to
do."
     Cain felt himself deflating inside.  Clearly, Ila had just dreamed
what she'd needed to dream at that instant, coming off the shock of
learning that her youngest child was dead.  There wasn't anything
significant he could attach to his own experience about what had happened
during the blackout.  But he wasn't going to belittle or put down
anything she said.  Not after what she'd been through.
     "And he also told me....." Ila went on in her peaceful, reverent
tone, "That at the end.....for the very first time......he and Apollo
bonded together as brothers.  The one thing I always hoped would finally
happen between them."
     Slowly, Cain rose from his chair.  "I.....have to go, Ila.  I'll be
back later."
     Before he reached the door, she suddenly called after him, "Cain?"
     He turned back and saw her still looking at peace.
     "It's going to be okay," Adama's wife said.  "It really is."
     The Juggernaut managed a weak smile and left the room.


     When he arrived in his quarters he found Paris and Harroun waiting
for him.  In contrast to what he'd seen with Ila, the two warriors had
expressions and bearings that were more subdued and faraway.
     "All right gentlemen," Cain took his seat behind his desk, "What did
you see?"
     The two of them glanced at each other and then Paris decided to go
first since he was the senior of them.
     "Well.....it was something......very big and bright, Commander. 
Bigger than.....ten battlestars probably."
     "And it never registered on your scanner."
     "No," he shook his head.  "And not on our attack computers either. 
Harroun took one shot at one of those smaller lights, but it seemed to
know it was coming and it just......went off in a crazy direction faster
than any viper or Cylon ship could fly."
     "Did you ever have any sense they were trying to.....communicate
with you?"
     "No," Paris shook his head, "Not.....then."
     "What do you mean not then?"
     "Well, not when we were chasing them," Paris said.  "But....when I
blacked out, there was a micron or two, when......I got the feeling that
something or someone was trying to communicate with me."
     Cain stared at him and then shifted his attention to the other
pilot, "Did you go through that too, Harroun?"
     "Well.....I'm not sure, sir," the sergeant said.  "I have more of a
general impression that for a few microns, things were......rather
peaceful.  I can't say I remember anyone trying to communicate with me."
     "All right, all right," Cain waved his hand, "Paris, was it someone
specific you thought was trying to communicate with you?"
     "Specific?" he frowned.
     He tried not to become exasperated, "Someone you knew?"
     "Knew?" his puzzlement deepened, "Uh....no, I don't think so.  Why
would you ask that?"
     "Forget it.  It's nothing I suppose," inside Cain had no idea why he
felt compelled to ask that question.  Was Ila's story weighing that much
on him?  Or was......there another reason he'd felt he had to ask? 
"Let's get back to what happened before you blacked out.  You lost your
turbo thrust power?"
     "Yes, it just slowed down completely.  If we wanted to maneuver
ourselves we could, so it wasn't like being caught in a tractor beam,
but.....it did limit our overall mobility."
     "And another thing," Harroun said, "I had the sense that.....even if
we *had* turbo thrust capability, we wouldn't have been able to leave
that sector of space.  As if somehow.....there might have been some kind
of barrier to prevent us from doing so."
     "Well if that was the case that worked to your advantage," Cain
said, "You've heard the report on what that thing has done in terms of
throwing us clear across the stars from where we were."
     "Yes, sir, Colonel Tolen briefed us on that before we came down
here."
     "Consider yourselves lucky," Cain said pointedly, "If you had gone
to turbo thrust you might still be where we were and totally cut off from
us."
     The two pilots visibly flinched.  Realizing there was nothing more
he could get from them in the way of productive information, the
commander dismissed them and ordered them to stand-by for further orders.
     What does this mean?  He thought as he put his hand to his chin and
maneuvered his chair so that he was staring out the porthole that now
looked out on a totally unfamiliar expanse of stars.  And why do I feel
like.....somehow *I* went through some kind of bizarre experience while I
was out?  And why am I not doing what every instinct in me tells me I
*should* be doing which is blaming those four tin-cans in the Lab for
what's happened?  Because it just *can't* be a coincidence that this
happens after we've taken them aboard and started treating them nicely.
     Is it because......someone told me not to blame them for it?  But
who?  Why can't I remember?  
     He wasn't coming up with answers.  And that meant that the
Juggernaut had to put the questions aside and concentrate on more
important tasks concerning the reality of what he was dealing with now.


     A centar later, he had summoned all of the warrior pilots, along
with Colonel Tolen and Major Ham to a briefing in the Flight Operations
Center.  It was time to let them all know how things stood, and where
they would go from this point forward.
     "All right, gentlemen," Cain said.  "I won't try to minimize the
seriousness of this situation.  I haven't a clue as to where we are. 
That means our greatest objective has now shifted from rebuilding our
strength for an eventual strike on the heart of the Cylon Empire to
figuring out how we get back to where we're supposed to be.  And until we
have a handle on where we're supposed to be, that means we're facing
another short-term problem which is finding new locations for food and
fuel sources.  Up to now, we have been relying on all of the data we've
had concerning old human settlements and known alien races in the Alpha
Quadrant Frontier to give us food, and all data on abandoned or isolated
Cylon bases for food and fuel that can't alert the High Command to our
existence.  Now.....we might as well throw that down the turboflush
because we don't know where *any* sources for that are.  And if we don't
rectify that in short order, then we face eventual death from either
running out of food first or running out of fuel first and *then* running
out of food while we drift idly in space as a powerless dead hulk."
     A grim murmur went up from the warriors, and this time not even
those who had counted themselves among the ranks of the "Grumblers"
toward Cain in the past could deny that he was being completely candid
about the situation.
     The Juggernaut then motioned to Major Ham to activate the projection
screen behind him.  A star chart pattern then emerged with a carefully
marked gold "x" at the center of the image.
     "Memorize this chart well, gentlemen.  This reflects what we've put
together in terms of a preliminary visual scan of the star patterns
fanning out in all four primary directions from our current position
which is at the center.  You will need to program this into your main
Viper navigational systems so you can maintain a permanent fix on the
Pegasus once you start going on patrol.  And *all* of you are going on
patrol as soon as this briefing is over.  Four groups of ten vipers each
are to take each section leading out from the Pegasus.  They have been
marked Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta sections."  He rapped his swagger
stick against each marked portion for emphasis before resuming.
     "You are to thoroughly map everything you see on patrol so we can
have more available data on what planetary systems there are, and above
all what resources there are we can utilize.  Once you bring your mapping
data back, then our Bridge personnel staff will begin the arduous and
tedious task of trying to match anything you see to known star charts in
not just the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy, which is where we have been
all this time, but also the Beta, Gamma and Delta quadrants.  I know of
no Colonial vessel that has penetrated those latter three quadrants in
the better part of five hundred yahrens but at least the data was
somewhat extensive by our star-navigation forefathers.  As soon as we
find a match, *then* we can start thinking about how to get back to where
we're supposed to be."
     Cain then moved forward, past the lectern he never used so that he
was almost on top of the front row of seated pilots.
     "Now here are a few other important points to remember when you're
on patrol, concerning the priorities of what we're looking for.  Colonel
Tolen and Major Ham are going to give them to you one at a time," he then
motioned to the two senior officers in the chain of command.
     "Objective number one," Tolen said.  "Locate *any* planetary system
that contains a potential usable food resource."
     "Objective number two," Ham said.  "Avoid at all costs *any* contact
with any alien races.  If you encounter an inhabited planetary system,
and more importantly one that is inhabited by a race that has spaceflight
capacity, you are to move out of their scanner range so that they don't
get a look at you.  But make absolutely certain before you leave that
you've gotten a scan on potential food resources such a system might have
to offer.  That's so if we have no choice but to approach them because we
can't find an uninhabited planet with food, we'll do it later, but not as
a result of this initial patrol sweep." 
     "Objective number three."  Tolen again.  "Find *any* planetary
system that contains deposits of tylium, solium or any other resource of
benefit for fuel.  Preferably an uninhabited system, and where once again
the same principles that apply to objective two apply here as well."
     "Your patrols will last no more than four centars of flight time on
the outbound sweep.  As you make your way back to the Pegasus,
double-check all of your charts as you re-cross your previously mapped
territory."  Ham's basso voice grew more intense.
     Cain now stepped between them and resumed charge of the briefing,
"And *if* gentlemen, you see anything that resembles Cylon activity, do
*not* engage.  Get out of there and report back immediately on what you
saw and where you saw it."
     He looked over the men, all of them with grim but accepting
expressions of the situation and what it was they had to do.
     "If there are no questions.......then you're all dismissed."
     The pilots started to rise but Cain then raised his swagger stick
and they all stopped in mid-motion.
     "And may the blessings of the Lords of Kobol go with you all."
     As the Commander exited the room at the right side, many of the
warriors traded puzzled glances at each other since that was the first
time they'd ever heard Cain use that expression that only the devout were
known to use.
     I guess Cain's finally joined the ranks of the rest of us and truly
found religion, Lieutenant Angus thought as he filed his way out.
     

     "Well that's about all we can do for now until we get some hard data
back from these patrols," Cain said as he and Tolen walked alongside each
other with Ham just a step behind.  "Until then......we sit tight where
we are and give them a safe beacon to come back to."
     The Juggernaut stopped and looked at his two immediate subordinates
with gratitude.
     "Thanks for an effective job presenting the main objective points to
them.  Hearing it in two powerful voices back and forth should drill all
of that into them so there'll be no slipups."
     "Of course, sir," Tolen nodded, "Anything else?"
     "Yes," Cain's tone was cautious.  "Check in with Arnoff.  I want to
know if those four....guests of ours went through their own version of a
blackout or if they actually saw something we didn't during that time."
     "You want me to ask them if they know anything about
these......lights?" there was the faintest edge in the executive
officer's tone.
     "Yes, ask them," Cain's response was firm, but not in the least bit
hostile.  "But.....you can ask them politely, Colonel.  As I said to you,
the earlier order is in abeyance.  In the meantime.......I'll be in my
quarters."
     The Pegasus commander then picked up his pace, leaving the two of
them behind.  
     "Is it my imagination or does he seem just a little.....different
since this whole thing happened?"  Ham asked.
     "I don't think it's your imagination," Tolen said.  "The boldness is
still there.  The command instincts are there.  But.....the braggadocio
and swagger is muted or off.  It does make a bit of a difference in him." 
He stopped to look at the major, "What do you remember?"
     "Of the blackout?" Ham shrugged, "Hardly anything.  Except.....I do
seem to recall liking what I was seeing.  The thing is.....I really can't
remember what it was I was seeing to like."
     "I had something similar," the executive officer admitted.  "A good
feeling, and.....a sense of seeing someone, but......I can't remember
who."
     "And is that good feeling lingering?" Ham asked.  "Because I'll be
honest.  This is the scariest situation we've ever gone through, period,
and yet.....all of us seem to be taking it real well.  I mean, we know
it's bad, but you'd almost think that we'd have seen *one* person go to
pieces after learning we don't know where we are and we don't know where
any food and fuel sources are."
     "That's true," Tolen said.  "Maybe.....if we all experienced
something good during that blackout, it is kind of letting us roll with
the punches now that we know what we're up against."
     They came to a stop in front of the Electronics Lab.  The Executive
Officer turned to the man next-in-line.  "Ham, I'll take care of things
down here.  Take charge of all operations on the Bridge until Cain or I
report."
     "Yes, sir," he moved off.


     Tolen entered the Lab and saw immediately that Dr. Arnoff's look was
more perplexed than it had ever been.  The four centurions, led by
Commander Cobre were seated across from him. 
     "Dr. Arnoff?" he asked.
     The scientist rose, "Ah, Colonel, I'm glad *someone* finally came
down here.  I've....been talking with Commander Cobre and his colleagues
and they.....keep telling me the same thing over and over.  I'm just not
sure what to make of it."
     "Oh?" Tolen looked over at the Cylons and cautiously approached
them.  "What have you been talking about, Commander?"
     "What took place when Dr. Arnoff collapsed and was not able to
communicate."
     Tolen's eyebrows went up.  It hadn't occurred to him that the four
Cylons conceivably could be the only witnesses to what went on during
that period since being machine, they would be unaffected by the forces
of light and sound that had knocked everyone on the Pegasus out.
     "What took place, Commander?" he asked politely.
     "Intense light filled the room," Cobre said, "All of it achieving a
bright white in color."
     "You could still discern your surroundings?"
     "It was for a micron too bright even for our visual detectors," the
lead centurion of the three lower-ranked silver plated ones spoke.  His
vocal pitch was much higher in contrast to the lower tone of the
gold-plated command centurion, Cobre.  "Soon, the surroundings returned
to what we could discern, though all around it was still bright white in
color."
     "Did you hear anything?"
     "A voice spoke the same thing repeatedly," Cobre said, "Delta
section third system, the second planet."
     Tolen's eyes narrowed.  "That was all?"
     "Yes," the first regular centurion said, "Delta section third
system, the second planet."
     "How long did the voice repeat that?" the executive officer tried
not to look baffled, which was how he felt inside at the moment.
     "Four point three centons.  That was when the.....surroundings
returned to normal and Dr. Arnoff came to."
     "And all of you witnessed and heard the exact same thing?" Tolen
wanted to be sure.  "There was no.....variation of the experience from
individual to individual?"
     "We have consulted with each other on that point and Dr. Arnoff has
asked us repeatedly on it," Cobre said.  "We are agreed.  We have no
reason to concur unless that is what we all experienced."
     "Of course, of course," Tolen nodded, hoping that he hadn't
needlessly irritated them.  "It's because we, as humans, experienced
something entirely different from you four, that we are not able to
easily come to terms with what you as Cylons experienced during the
incident.  It represents.....part of the gap that we must work to
bridge."
     Slowly, the command centurion nodded his gold-helmeted head.
     "As we must do so with you, in this......cooperative venture."
     "I'm glad you still regard our venture as cooperative, Commander,"
Tolen said.  "I recognize that......since our arrival on the Pegasus
there hasn't as yet been much for you and your colleagues to do, but
opportunities will come in due course.  It's simply a matter
of....adjusting."
     "Adjustment.....is necessary for all when......no other choice has
been left with us."
     Tolen wondered if Cobre was referring to how he'd been left with no
choice but to use Cylon help to take care of the situation on Equellas,
or if it was a reference to the discontent that Cobre and his colleagues
had openly expressed about the stratified structure of Cylon society,
dominated by the IL class group.  He decided it was best not to ask for
now.
     "I appreciate this information, Commander Cobre," he said.  "This
has the potential to be of great assistance to us in this......new
situation we're presently in.  I will let you know if it has proved
helpful, and if it does.......that should present new opportunities."
     Cobre said nothing but the way he nodded his head almost struck the
Executive Officer like a polite acknowledgment.
     "Dr. Arnoff, could you come with me for a micron?" he motioned to
the scientist.
     When they were out in the corridor, Tolen glared at him.  "This
information should have been reported long ago, Doctor."
     "I didn't know what to make of it!" Arnoff protested.  "What does it
mean?"
     "Potentially a lot, Doctor," Tolen decided he was wasting enough
time as it was rebuking him.  He turned and headed for the turbo lift,
deciding whether he should go first to the Bridge or to Cain's quarters. 
Only when he boarded did he make his decision.  He would bypass Cain and
head for the Bridge.  Time was of the essence if this information was to
be capitalized on.


     When the Executive Officer arrived, the first thing Ham mentioned
was that all squadrons had been launched to begin their searches of the
four designated sections Cain had sketched in the briefing.
     "Which group is handling Delta Section?" he asked hurriedly.
     "Silver Spar Group One.  Captain Skyler."
     "Make contact with him immediately.  It's urgent.  I need to give
him new instructions before they're out of range."
     Ham motioned to Bridge Officer Altair, who handled communications
monitoring.  Altair quickly transmitted a message to the ten vipers from
Silver Spar group that were investigating Delta Section and instructed
Skyler to stand by for an important message.
     As Tolen got his headset on, Altair then looked back.  "Captain
Skyler acknowledges receipt of message and is standing by."
     "Skyler, this is Colonel Tolen.  Now listen carefully, I don't want
any of you to ignore anything you initially come across.  It all needs to
be thoroughly mapped, *but* when you reach the third planetary system in
your patrol sweep, you are to pay attention specifically to the *second*,
that is the *second* planet in the *third* system for something of
potential significance."
     There was the briefest pause, "Colonel, I copy your message,
but.....exactly what are we supposed to potentially detect?"
     "Unknown.  This is a......new intelligence lead that has just come
to our attention, and it is imperative that this system with this planet
not be overlooked during your patrol."
     "Well sir, does that mean finding out what's on this hypothetical
planet that we can't yet confirm the existence of overrides our orders to
steer clear of alien race contact?"
     "Use your best command judgment to fulfill *both* objectives,
Captain!"  Tolen summoned a level of authority in his tone that he wasn't
used to, but which he now felt comfortable doing.  "Just make certain you
get information on the third planet in the third system and that it's
thorough!"
     "Yes, sir," the tone in Skyler's voice indicated he was either
amazed by Tolen's forcefulness or frustrated by the imprecise nature of
the instructions.  Whatever the case, Tolen knew that Silver Spar Leader
would carry the order out.
     And what it ultimately meant would have to wait at least eight
centars for anyone on the Pegasus to know.

Chapter Four

     "Cain?"
     The Juggernaut looked up from his desk and saw that Ila had entered
the room.  She was now wearing a brightly patterned civilian tunic that
clearly wasn't her own since the style was more reflective of what much
younger women had been wearing in the Colonies five yahrens ago and could
only have come from a Pegasus crewman.  Yet it didn't seem out of place
on Adama's wife, given her general youthful glow and the fact that she
always looked ten yahrens younger than her actual age in anything she
wore.
     "Ila, come on in," he rose to greet her and motioned to a small
circular table in the corner of his office area where two chairs had been
set up.  "You can sit down over there.  The.....Kitchen area sent dinner
up for us both."
     "Thank you.  I admit, I finally have a little of my appetite back,"
Ila sat down.
     "Well it won't be anything fancy like.....what they used to serve at
the Astral Needle or at the Pyramid Towers Hotel."  Cain made his way
over and sat across from her.  "For the most part, our team of three
cooks have to come up with all kinds of variants on being creative with
staple grain crops and frozen livestock animals."
     Ila lifted the cover off her plate and noticed neatly cut portions
of meat and a side dish that looked to be some form of mashed grain.
     "About what I expected," she picked up a utensil and began to eat. 
"I know that maintaining a food supply has to be one of your greatest
challenges."
     "We've managed," Cain said simply as he took the cover off his own
plate but didn't yet eat.  "You're.....looking well."
     "Yes, I won't be going back to the Life Station."
     Noticing her youthful looking tunic he asked, "You got that from one
of the women in the crew?"
     "From one of the *few* women in the crew, Bridge Officer Kylie," Ila
said as she ate another bite and then sipped from a water chalice.  "She
was the closest to my size and gave me two sets to use.  The clothes I
was originally wearing were designed more for the shuttle than every day
living."
     "Well yes, I know there are only fifteen women left on board the
Pegasus.  That at times does make things more awkward.  But that wasn't
by design."
     "I was surprised I didn't see your daughter," Ila looked him in the
eye.  "Wasn't Sheba assigned to the Pegasus when you set out for
Molocay?"
     "She was.  She's not dead, Ila, but......she's no longer here.  In
fact....." he took a breath, "She's on the Galactica now with Adama. 
Along with about a quarter of my original crew complement along with the
rest of the women in the crew.  They were all evacuated there during the
time.......we were together."
     Ila frowned, "Why would Sheba leave you?"
     "Well that wasn't by design either," Cain had to keep from showing
any unnecessary emotion.  "There was a battle before Adama and I
separated.  A preliminary to when I got the two baseships off his back. 
Sheba was......injured in that battle and I made certain she and other
wounded and non-essential personnel were evacuated safely to the
Galactica before I went in to take care of those two baseships."
     The beautiful blonde woman ate several more bites and sipped some
more water as though gathering strength for the next questions she wanted
to ask.  She wiped her mouth with a linen napkin and then asked, "Why
didn't you stay with him after it was over?"
     "A lot of reasons, Ila," Cain felt prepared to handle anything she
said.  "Some of them more frivolous than others, but.......if there's one
overriding reason that cuts through all the felgercarb and gets to the
main point, it's this.  Adama has a different vision for the future than
I do.  I just couldn't fit into his vision which is trying to find the
Thirteenth Tribe and the lost colony, Earth."
     "I see," Ila looked at him thoughtfully, "You......think he's wrong
about Earth existing?"
     "That isn't it," the Juggernaut shook his head, "I know how
brilliant he is, and how well-versed he is in the ancient writings.  If
Adama believes Earth exists, it isn't based on blind faith alone but a
careful understanding of the facts as he sees them.  I know how thorough
his mind is on things like that."
     "So do I," Adama's wife managed a smile.  "It's.....nice to know
that even with all that he's gone through, and all the burdens he's had
to carry taking charge of all those people......he's still the same man I
love."
     "And still the best friend I ever knew," Cain acknowledged. 
"But.....even good friends can have conflicts.  Clashes of ego. 
Different mindsets on what they think the bigger picture is in the grand
scheme of things.  And.....no matter how much a part of me wanted to stay
with him, even if that meant ultimately accepting a subordinate role in
the Command infrastructure which I would have had to-----,"
     "Oh, that's right," Ila interrupted.  "I keep forgetting.  You're
technically junior to him."
     "For reasons we don't need to revisit.  But even absent that, Adama
is also head of the civilian government as President of the new Council
of Twelve, so that would have trumped a military seniority issue.  But
anyway, the problem between us is that Adama thinks the future of
humanity means turning our backs forever on what lies behind,
and......that's just not something I'm capable of doing.  It means
letting go of the old war with the Cylons so that ultimately they
just.....give up because of the distance.  And that's something I just
can't do."
     "Because you weren't there to prevent the Destruction?" Ila asked
pointedly.  "And that troubles your conscience?"
     Cain looked her in the eye and said without hesitation, "Yes. 
That's exactly it.  It troubles me to think that at a time when my people
really, truly needed me to be there and act as a potential brake on all
that talk of the need to accept peace overtures that were really a trap,
I wasn't there.  Instead, I was just living the life of a happy renegade
in the Gomorrah quadrant and enjoying the freedom of deep space and not
answering to superior officers in the command structure."
     Ila contemplated his words and then said, "I suppose it also made a
difference that Bethany was dead."
     He lowered his head and awkwardly bit his lip.  "Yes," there was
just the barest hint of a cracking in his voice.  "If she'd still been
alive I would have gladly died trying to get back to her.  But.....she
was gone, and what I had back in Caprica was a......problem I didn't want
to confront.  Especially, since what I was experiencing out in deep space
had......healed a rift that had developed between me and Sheba and if I'd
made it home at that point......the rift might have opened up again."
     "I don't understand."
     Cain took a breath, "Ila.....I don't know if you remember,
but......not too long after Bethany's death, I......began a relationship
with a young woman.  A woman named Cassiopeia."
     Her eyes widened as the memory came back to her.  "Oh.  Oh yes.  The
socialator."
     "Well, yes, yes.  She was, but......the relationship wasn't like
that, it was something where.....she helped to-----," abruptly the
Juggernaut stopped and shook his head.  "Ila, I swear by all the Lords,
you know how much I loved Bethany and how much she meant to me.  It was
because I missed her so much and----,"
     "Cain," the best friend of his late wife gently interrupted, "I am
the *last* person in this universe who needs to be convinced of how much
you loved Bethany.  After all......I was present at the beginning of it
all that night Adama and I took you to the theater to see her perform."
     Her words of reassurance seemed to relax him and he was able to
continue.  
     "Thank you.  At any rate.....that relationship did much to get me
back on my feet because......I hadn't been there for Bethany when she
died and it just made it hard for me to think coherently because I felt
like I'd let her down.  And.....it made it hard for me to reach out to
Sheba because every time I looked at her......all I could see is
Bethany's face staring back at me and giving me another reminder of how I
hadn't been there for her.  But.....with Cassiopeia I was able to move
past that and get my instincts back.  But it came at a cost, because
Sheba.....well she thought wrongly that her mother's memory no longer
meant anything to me, and she saw Cassiopeia as a meddling interloper. 
So......the relationship did put a new burden on me where sooner or
later, I was going to have to try to put a stop to the bad feeling that
existed.  But then came the Battle of Molocay which meant I left home to
put that problem on hold and afterward......it was a lot easier to add
that situation as a reason for not going back, when suddenly things were
now better between Sheba and me," he then added, "But believe me, that
personal issue wasn't the primary reason why I didn't try to get back. 
It just made the total picture seem.....easier."
     Ila, no longer interested in eating anymore, put her elbows on the
table and placed her folded hands under her chin, "And you've regretted
that decision ever since."
     "It just seemed like another cruel reminder to me about how I was
never there at the times I was needed most," Cain sighed, his glance
looking away from her.  "That's how it was with Bethany when she died and
I wasn't there to give her one last word of comfort and one last word of
reassurance when she was dying from that horrible brain disease and
incoherently calling my name.  And to have that feeling magnified a
million-fold because of the ramifications of what my decision not to get
back meant for the Colonies........that's why I never could have lived
with myself if I'd followed Adama on his quest for Earth."
     "Even though it meant being separated from Sheba?"
     "And Cassiopeia too," he added.  "That was the bigger irony. 
Cassiopeia was among the survivors on the Galactica.  She wasn't a
socialator any longer, she was a med-tech now.  And she and Sheba
actually started patching up their differences.  So the whole thing that
was part of the problem two yahrens before wasn't a problem any longer. 
But.....I couldn't let that affect the greater decision I had to make.  I
at least took comfort from the fact that I knew Adama would do all he
could to make Sheba part of his extended family.  And Cassiopeia.....she
had moved on from me to a warrior named Starbuck----"
     "Starbuck?" Ila interrupted as she looked jolted by this last
remark.  "You met Starbuck and he was now involved with
this.....Cassiopeia?"
     Cain was taken aback, "Well.....yes.  Like I said, that made it
easier for me to let go of her because I knew she'd be happy with him."
     Ila was sadly leaning back in her chair.
     "Ila, what's wrong?"
     "Oh my, what a day this has been for revelations," she mirthlessly
said as she looked up at the ceiling, "If it's true that Starbuck is
involved with.....your former girlfriend, then that means he and Athena
broke up at some point.  The two of them were practically on the verge of
becoming engaged at the time of the Destruction."
     Cain looked at her in disbelief and then he slowly shook his head
and began to laugh, but only with partial mirth.
     "Now I know what they mean when they say the universe is smaller
than it really is," the Commander said.  "Ila, I had no idea.  Like I
said, I didn't get a chance to talk to Athena, but......if she's broken
up with Starbuck, she didn't look broken up about it.  She was doing her
duties as good as any other member of Adama's crew."
     "I suppose it was maybe the Destruction that caused them to break
up," Ila sadly mused, "Athena was always.....so bubbly and optimistic
about life.  My Sunshine, I called her.  If she had to see Zac killed,
and the Colonies destroyed and then thought I was dead......I can see how
that could have been more traumatic for her."
     Cain didn't know what else he could say about that.  "Well....to
finish my other point.  I couldn't let the personal considerations of
losing Cassiopeia and Sheba affect what I had to do.
I had to go back.  I had to do *something* that would let me keep
fighting the war I ran out on when I didn't try to get home. 
And.....maybe it's true that I've yet to form a coherent final plan of
action for how I take down as much of the Empire as I can, and yes, it's
torn at my soul that I'm separated from Sheba, but.....at least I have a
sense that I'm doing the right thing from a command perspective.  I've
never regretted that."
     She pushed her plate aside and realized the time had come to share
some things she still hadn't told Cain since being found.
     "Cain," Ila said, "This will sound strange, I admit, but......I
understand completely your thinking on why you didn't want to stay with
Adama and his quest."
     His eyebrows went up in amazement but he let her continue.
     "It.....has a lot to do with what I still haven't told you
about.....what it's been like the last two yahrens living in the rubble
of Caprica after that difficult first yahren.  And what we've been doing. 
And just how and why I was able to be in a one-person shuttle trying to
reach the Galactica.  I guess if you and I hadn't been so personally
connected to each other, we would have gotten to these matters first
instead of dealing with all the other things we've talked about,
but......what do you think was the reason why I was in that shuttle
trying to reach Adama?"
     Cain frowned, "Well......I would have thought, so you could take
advantage of a chance to catch up with him and be with him again,
especially since you said you knew from the beginning the Galactica was
taking survivors to find Earth."
     "The reasons weren't personal, Cain," Ila shook her head.  "I was
chosen to be the one to try and made contact with him, because I was the
only person in our group who has any chance of convincing him what he
needs to do."
     "And that is?" Cain was beginning to get an indication of where this
was going.
     "To come back and help us defeat the Cylon Empire and take back our
civilization."


     The patrol into Delta Section by the designated "Silver Spar Group
One" was now over three centars old and three-quarters through its
allotted outbound time.  So far, they had been able to map two planetary
systems, one consisting of three planets, the second consisting of four. 
The first had been a total failure in terms of providing potential food
or fuel resources.  The second system had yielded one planet that had
potential fuel resources......but an unbreathable atmosphere that would
make extraction with the limited tools the Pegasus had all but
impossible.
     Captain Skyler, the overall leader of the entire Silver Spar
Squadron of forty-one vipers and commanding this group of ten vipers
designated as "Silver Spar Group One", was doing his best not to
communicate any grim feelings to the rest of his pilots.  Each planet
that revealed nothing meant that the Pegasus was soon going to have to
start counting down the clock to when food and fuel would become
dangerously limited.  And once the clock started counting down on that,
that was when Skyler was sure the carefully controlled morale of the
Pegasus crew would finally, after two and a half yahrens since they'd
parted with the Galactica, crumble into spacedust.
     All of that seemed so unfair to Silver Spar Leader because from the
beginning, he had been the most stalwart of Cain's defenders in
justifying the Juggernaut's decision to leave the Galactica.  Skyler knew
that wasn't the reason why he'd been promoted to become Silver Spar
Leader, because in the old setup he had been third in seniority behind
Sheba and Bojay so that meant by default the job and promotion to captain
was automatically his.  But because he had believed in Cain from the
outset, that had made it easier for him to be respected by the rest of
the warriors as someone they dared not undermine.  He would let the
Grumblers like Paris and the more mild ones like Banker and Angus say
what they felt in the private confines of the Barracks or in the Officers
Club, but his tolerance for letting them say anything to undermine a
mission objective was always regarded as nil.
     For much of that time, Skyler had felt like he was alone in that
task of using his command position to effectively stand up for Cain's
position.  Major Ham, officially third in line, was a non-pilot in
background and knew he didn't have the stature to put a grumbling pilot
in place.  And Tolen, despite being Executive Officer, was likewise
thought of as someone not capable of showing authority when it was
needed.
     Which was why it had struck him as amazing to see Tolen finally out
from that shadow when he'd encountered Tolen and Cain having their
argument outside the Electronics Lab.  It showed that Tolen was finally
becoming more cognizant of the need that being an Executive Officer and
the number two man was more meaningful if you were like Colonel Tigh of
the Galactica in his role with Adama.  Loyal to a fault, but also capable
of showing you weren't scared of or intimidated by the man you loyally
served and that the Juggernaut was clearly respecting dissenting voices. 
Seeing Tolen's effectiveness at the briefing made it clear that Cain had
come away respecting Tolen's new assertiveness.  And the boldness in
which he'd given the order regarding the third planetary system they were
supposed to watch for further confirmed that in Skyler's mind.
     This crazy incident's probably made us better from a command
structure standpoint, but what good will it be if we starve to death? 
Skyler thought as he checked his scanner and saw that the third system in
their patrol was a matter of centons away.  He hoped this strange third
planetary system with its third planet, if it had that many, would prove
productive.  If it didn't, he wasn't sure there'd be time left on their
patrol to scan ahead to the next system.  It would be time to turn back
to the Pegasus and hope and pray that the other three patrol groups had
found more productive results in their sections.
     "Silver Leader to Silver group," he reported.  "Communications band
check?"
     "Silver Two sir," Angus radioed, "All quiet."
     "Any ion fuel traces to report that would indicate recent presence
of spacecraft in this section?"
     "Silver Four sir," this from Sergeant Marshak, "I have a faint trace
of.....something.  Not enough to identify, but there has definitely been
a spaceship presence in this vicinity at some point in the last yahren or
yahren and a half judging by the dissipation factor."
     "Stay with it, Silver Four.  The rest of you, keep following my
lead.  Planetary system is now right......there.  Ready for scan of first
planet in twenty microns."
     "Silver Leader, this is Silver Eight," from Sergeant Gaspar, "I am
picking up indications of space debris floating by.  Fixing lock on it
for analysis.....it is definitely blasted, indicating whatever it came
from was a ship that was possibly destroyed by heavy weapon fire."
     "Full pictorial analysis and chemical analysis, Silver Eight!"
Skyler barked.  "Mark position and inventory."
     "Copy, Silver Leader."
     "Analysis beginning of first planet in system three," this from
Angus.  "Preliminary scan shows.....non-breathable atmosphere but
manageable if normal pressure suits are worn.  Very spartan levels of
vegetation.  Minimal water sources.  Not enough vegetation to justify
planetary search and recovery even if atmosphere didn't require pressure
suits."
     "Unless you were really desperate," Skyler grunted, "Okay take full
data telemetry scan in one orbital pass of planet #1.  Then on to planet
#2."
     "Communications band still silent," Angus intoned once again.  "No
signs of spacecraft in active flight or any active life form presence."
     "Any further sign of ion fuel traces?"
     "None within the system," Marshak reported.  "That earlier trail led
away from the system.  Whatever ship made it wasn't launched from one of
these four planets."
     "Coming up on #2, and this is the one that's supposedly of big
interest," Skyler hit his scanner and saw the initial results, "Why in
Kobol they thought it was interesting I have no idea.  Unbreathable
atmosphere of poisonous gas.  Can barely get indicators of land
formations.  Frack, talk about a giant letdown!"
     "Do we keep scanning?" Angus chimed in sarcastically.
     "Orders are orders," Skyler said with resignation.  "Let Tolen and
Cain look at the readouts and see what a waste of time this planet was."
     "Hold on!" Angus abruptly reversed his tone, "Hold on, wait a
micron.  Communications band is active!  I repeat active!  Set to
short-range pickup!"
     "Everyone getting this?" Silver Spar Leader called out.  And soon
each of the other eight vipers were giving their affirmatives.
     "All right, make sure it's being recorded for later analysis. 
Obviously we can't go down there, but let's try to make some sense of
that.  Run this through the Languatron since I doubt this is going out in
Colonial Standard."
     "Languatron is giving me gibberish," Angus said.  "Whatever this is,
it's code.  That's for sure."
     "Well I don't think that's one of our codes," Skyler said, "Try the
Cylon code, just for kicks."
     Suddenly there was a chiming sound in the cockpits of several vipers
that had started the analysis on their own.  When it happened in Skyler's
cockpit, it caused him to jolt since he wasn't expecting it.  Silver Spar
Leader looked at the readout on his screen,

               CYLON CODE PATTERN CONFIRMED.
               UNABLE TO TRANSLATE.

     "Sir?" Angus was bewildered.
     "I wasn't expecting that at all," Skyler was dumbfounded.  "We've
got a Cylon down there, or someone sending a Cylon code but......for what
reason?"
     "Distress signal?" Marshak ventured.  "We can't seem to get an exact
translation of this, but that would seem to make sense."
     "Which would raise the question of why is a Cylon sending a distress
signal?" Gaspar commented.
     "Sounds like there should be a punch line to that question!" Angus
couldn't help but note.
     "All right, all right," Skyler decided it had gotten too far out of
hand.  "Let's keep recording this stream for a few more centons and then
let's try to get a precise fix on where on the planet this is coming
from.  I have a feeling that's going to be important information when we
get back."
     "But what good is it, sir?" Gaspar asked.  "We can't get down
there."
     "True," Silver Spar Leader nodded, "But let's not forget that we
have four new guests on the Pegasus who can.  Right Angus?"
     The one member of the ten who had been part of the recent mission to
Delta Aquinas and Equellas found himself nodding vigorously, "Yes, sir!"


     Cain tried to comprehend the full meaning of Ila's comment.  He had
realized that things were far more serious inside the Colonies than he'd
thought all this time, but it was clear that Ila was now going to tell
him things that would exceed any of his wildest expectations.
     "You're talking about.....a chance to actually defeat the Empire,"
he said.
     "Yes," Adama's wife nodded, "It's theoretically possible.  Based on
how things have been unfolding the last two yahrens."
     Cain took a sip from his water chalice and leaned back.  "I guess
now it's time to pick up where we left off after that first yahren. 
Commander.....Deval had gathered a group of three hundred of you
underground at the old Agricultural Institute?"
     "Yes.  And that first yahren as I said was devoted just to the task
of being able to survive underground and unseen by the Occupation Forces
that came in.  And above all developing a food resource that would be
unaffected by the contamination that was supposedly being used to flush
all survivors out into the open."
     "Supposedly?" Cain's eyes narrowed.  "You make it sound like they
never used it, but earlier you said they did introduce it into the
atmosphere."
     "I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself," Ila sighed.  "Yes,
initially they *did* introduce pluton into the atmosphere.  We heard
warnings to that effect.  The Cylons would go up in airtaxis with
loudspeakers aimed at the pockets of survivors in hiding and broadcast
these clear messages warning us to come out and surrender or else pluton
would be introduced that in time would destroy the entire food ecosystem
of Caprica.  Meaning for the survivors the choice was the quicker and
more painless form of death from Cylon execution squads or the more slow,
painful death process of starvation caused from lack of access to food,
or the disease caused from eating poisoned food."
     Ila then paused and Cain knew she was going to make a critical
point.
     "Keep this in mind, Cain.  The announcements they made were being
done by higher class categories of Cylons.  The ones they call IL Class
Cylons.  They're the command level ones with multiple brains whose most
distinctive feature is that they talk normally in normal human sounding
voices.  Not those mechanical sounding monotones that centurions talk
in."
     "Yes, I know that's one of the things that sets them apart," Cain
said.  "I'm assuming there's some significance in that."
     "Yes, I'll get to that later.  But.....here's the thing.  When those
of us in Deval's group heard that, it made us redouble our efforts to get
set up in the catacombs of the Agricultural Institute.  And we did, as I
said before, by getting as much seed and soil collected to cross plant
with what we were growing in the experimental labs that still existed. 
We even managed to corral some animals too.  And the artesian water
underground would give us all we needed there and we also scavenged
enough auxiliary energizers from the wreckage of buildings to keep power
going underground.  We had a....comfortable setup as it were, so long as
we didn't have teams of Cylons trying to root us out.  And for those
first sectars after the pluton warning, most of us I think tried to just
sit back and stay comfortable in our isolated little island, hoping it
would stay safe for.....oh, I don't know maybe a lot of us in our group
just had fantasies of living underground forever and starting a whole new
generation of people that could flourish there."
     "Including you?" Cain decided he might as well ask since he'd been
candid with her about his situation with Cassiopeia.
     Ila took a breath and slowly shook her head.
     "No.  Not about that, Cain.  And.....I have never broken my vows to
Adama once.  But it's not as if I wasn't tempted.  I have been.  Many
times I've had offers from kind, considerate men, and many times I've
wanted to give in to one of them.  And yet.....if I had, I would have
hated myself for the rest of my life.  Not that I harbored fantasies of
getting back to Adama then.  It's just that......so long as I knew he was
alive, I couldn't do it.  And.....I don't know but I've always had a
sense within me that he's been true to me as well all this time."
     "I can certainly confirm that for the time period leading up to when
I crossed paths with him," Cain said reassuringly.  She smiled thankfully
for that information and went on.
     "It.....helped that I had Zakiya with me.  She was always, next to
Bethany, the best friend I ever had for.....doing things and confiding
in.  She was my one connection left to my old life and having a good
friend like that took away any sense of imperative I might have felt
about wanting to find a lover.  That helped us both to deal with the new
responsibilities that came forward later, after about a yahren when
things......began to change for us.
     "What happened?
     "Deval finally decided that we were becoming too....stagnant a
community.  Oh, we did the chores that were expected of us.  Keeping the
labs functioning.  Making sure the plants grew and the animals were bred
and slaughtered.  Making sure power levels never dropped.  But there was
no real......spark within us.  There were basically two camps of people. 
Those who holed up in their rooms when they weren't working feeling sorry
for themselves, and those who were too anxious to create romances and
procreate because they felt that's all that could ever happen
underground.  I.....tried to boost some morale by drawing on my
background as a Drama and Music teacher, but......it really didn't go far
because no one was in the mood for drama or music during that time. 
So......to keep myself from becoming like the morose ones who were
feeling sorry for themselves, I went to Deval and told him I wanted to
start getting involved with whatever tougher work he had in mind to
improve our situation.  And that meant, becoming one of the first to
volunteer to check out the surface after one yahren.  Deval decided that
he had to see what the pluton levels were after all this time and if the
Occupation Forces were getting closer in proximity to our hiding point. 
A yahren ago, we'd taken the precaution of blowing up some of the more
prominent surface structures to create the illusion that the Institute
was too ruined a place to reclaim and that was why in general we didn't
worry about encroaching groups of occupation forces.  As it turned out,
that was a sign of complacency on our part."
     "In what way?"
     She gave him a faint smirk, "When the first team to explore the
surface in a yahren, which included yours truly, took readings, we
discovered that the pluton levels weren't any higher than what they'd
been that first day nearly a yahren ago.  Enough to justify our going
underground at the time.......but if we'd made regular probing contacts,
we would have found whole sections of the adjoining countryside and
growing vegetation that were untouched and perfectly safe."
     "What accounted for that?" Cain was puzzled.
     "Something that also explained why the Occupation Forces never
encroached on the Institute," Ila said.  "We discovered......that the
centurions in charge of operations in the entire Caprican western
hemisphere never carried out the order to poison the planet beyond the
cursory levels that were dropped that first day."
     A stunned look of disbelief came over the Juggernaut's face as he
realized the magnitude of what she was saying.  "Are you telling me
that.....the centurions who were in charge........disobeyed their
superiors?"
     "That's exactly what I'm saying, Cain," Ila said.  "The amount they
dispersed was for the benefit of those advanced Cylons who gave the
warnings from the skytaxis.  But the command centurions who were put in
charge to officially clean-up Caprica and make the planet safe for
advanced class Cylon settlement......didn't do as they were told when it
came to stepping up the dispersal levels that would have rendered Caprica
uninhabitable for generations on the surface."
     "But.....why?"
     "Why?" Ila shrugged, "That has become the greatest mystery of the
universe, Cain.  Why all of a sudden after nearly a thousand yahrens, and
after their greatest military triumph did centurions suddenly start
developing......independence......a conscience.....I don't know what the
right term is.  It just happened.  The centurions who had it in their
power to destroy Caprica and ultimately destroy those of us who were left
behind chose not to act.  And that allowed us to re-emerge from our safe
cocoons underneath the Institute and start taking inventory of what was 
left on our home planet."
     She picked up her water chalice and finished off the contents.
     "Deval soon decided that we needed to get to the bottom of why the
centurions hadn't acted.  That meant teams of us going out and
infiltrating the command post locations in Caprica City that had been set
up and trying to see up close what they were doing.  What they were
thinking.  And maybe we'd get some insight as to what we could do to
build off that."
     "You went on these missions, yourself?" Cain was hooked on every
word of her narrative.
     "Of course," Ila smiled wryly.  "I decided that decades of marriage
to a warrior and being the mother of three of them meant some of that
skill had to have rubbed off on me.  Plus, it helped that I knew the
locations of downtown Caprica City better than most people to give them
reference points on where the ideal places to sneak in and out were."
      "And you saw.....a lot."  Cain realized he could now infer the
situation more clearly.
     "Oh yes.  We saw......centurions of the regular and command class
openly complaining to each other about their IL superiors who had ordered
the wide dispersal of pluton.  What it really came down to, was this
general recognition on their part that once the human factions were
completely eradicated, then by extension it meant the end of their own
usefulness to the IL class.  The IL's would be the beneficiaries of all
the work performed by the centurions, and......for the first time these
centurions seemed to sense the.....injustice of that.  So therefore, by
*not* aggressively rooting out what remained of human survivors in the
Colonies, they were in effect making their own statement against their
superior class which they had now come to hate even more than their
programmed hatred of humans had been."
     "Independent initiative by the centurions," Cain whispered as the
ramifications of what having four centurions aboard the Pegasus now
meant.  He realized that up to now, he still hadn't told Ila about their
existence because there hadn't been a reason.  That was going to have to
be rectified soon, but for now he wanted to hear more from her.
     "Yes," Adama's wife went on.  "And......Deval soon realized that at
some point, we had to try and capitalize on that because our forays to
the surface now made us realize that we weren't the only group in hiding. 
There were many more not just on Caprica but in all the inner Colonies
and conceivably the outer ones too.  So our work now shifted to areas of
how to make contact with these groups and start coordinating with them."
     "And you did," Cain said, "You can.....skip the details of how you
did that if the end result is that you were able to achieve contact and
coordination with other groups of survivors and potential resistance."
     "Yes, we did," Ila nodded.  "The details probably would take a few
centars to explain, but I will mention that we were able to start using
portable telecom devices and other transmitters on secure circuits once
we learned where they were......and soon we discovered that the
centurions, even if they were able to listen in just really didn't care
if we were talking amongst ourselves.  That allowed us to collectively
reach a decision that.....we needed to take a risk approaching the
centurions and finding out just how far their dissatisfaction with the IL
Class really went."
     "And it's deeper than you ever could have imagined," Cain said as
things fell into place.  "Your groups.....and the centurions......you're
actually working together now."
     Commander Adama's wife toyed with her empty water chalice.  "I know
it sounds.....incredible.  The idea of us working alongside the ones who
carried out the Destruction that night and put us in our situation,
but.......we all had to learn a quick lesson about how things had changed
and we had to get let go of any instinctive......prejudice as it were on
our part.  Because fundamentally, the centurion class has never been
responsible for our plight, it's always been the advanced brain Cylons. 
Their class is where the Imperious Leaders come from.  Their class is the
one that turned on the original Cylon reptilian race and destroyed their
creators.  Centurions......they've always been just the functional drones
carrying out their will and asking no questions about it because their
minds were programmed not to ask questions about it."
     "And is that how it was possible for your people to......modify a
shuttle with hyperdrive to try and reach the Galactica?"  Cain wanted to
tie up all the remaining significant threads he could.  "Because
the.....centurions were willing to cooperate with you now and let you do
that?"
     "Well.....in a way, but there's still one missing part of the
overall story I need to tell you about to explain that," Ila said.  "That
concerns the arrival on Caprica of a command centurion who had an even
greater streak of independence.  His name was Vulpa.  And he came bearing
some incredible gifts from the last planet he had been stationed on, that
came courtesy of a remarkable human scientist named Dr. Ravashol."
     Before she could go on, the chime sounded, forcing Cain to get up
from his chair to answer it.  He'd been sitting down so long listening to
her with such rapt attention that his legs had grown stiff.
     "Yes?"
     "Commander the first of our patrols are returning.  We should expect
all of them within the next centar or less."
     "Okay, have the group leaders report to me on the Bridge and make
sure that all telemetry from each Viper is uploaded into our central
database for analysis."
     He shut off the intercom and looked back at his best friend's wife. 
"Ila, I'm sorry, but I have to deal with matters of the here and now,
first.  As interesting as this all is, it may not end up being relevant
for either of us if we don't figure out where we are and how we can get
back......If we still can."
     "I understand," Ila then suddenly smiled with an air of serene
reassurance, "But as far as the present situation is concerned,
Cain........it's going to be okay.  I know it is."
     The Juggernaut only allowed himself a half-smile as he nodded and
left her alone.  Alone to contemplate on that brief period when she had
closed her eyes and suddenly saw standing before her the son she had just
been grieving about.
     It is going to be okay.  It truly is.

Chapter Five

     When Cain mounted the steps of the Bridge to the Upper Level where
the navigation board was located , he saw Tolen and Lieutenant Banker
waiting for him.
     "Lieutenant Banker commander of Silver Group Three in Alpha
Section," Tolen pointed to the map which showed the Pegasus in the center
of the board.  The Executive Officer's arm then moved across the spot
above the mark going from the center to the top-center of the board. 
     "What did you find Banker?"
     "We found a promising contact for food and fuel," Banker said.  "The
catch is.....it's an inhabited system.  A very inhabited one."
     "How inhabited?"
     "Spaceflight capable, sir," he pressed a button and now the section
at the center top of the screen was magnified to fill the entire
navigation board.  It revealed a system of five planets.  Next to the
large sized fifth planet was what looked like a small satellite.  "And on
a fairly large scale.  To borrow a phrase from an obscure piece of
vid-com entertainment, that object orbiting the fifth planet isn't a
moon, it's a space station."
     "Space station?" Cain's eyes widened, "That means whatever that
alien race is, they must exercise control over a fairly wide quadrant of
space."
     "Yes sir.  Ion residue trails were extensive.  There was no way to
separate one ship's trail from another for specific analysis which shows
a large number of ships operating in that section.  And....there are also
indications of space debris particles that suggest that at some point in
the last yahren or two, there might have been some combat that took place
in the immediate vicinity."
     The Juggernaut visibly winced at that news, "What about their
communications?"
     "We couldn't let ourselves get too close to pick up a high volume of
normal traffic but when we boosted our receivers long enough to at least
record some samples we were able to run the conversations through the
Languatron.  The name of the civilization appears to be 'Zykonian' and
the large planet with the settlements and the space station is called
'Brylon V.'"
     Cain shook his head, "Doesn't ring any bells with me as far as
anything known in charted space, which just reconfirms we're in the great
unknown somewhere.  You're sure you weren't detected by them?" 
     "I made sure we went to total radio silence because once it was
clear how extensive the spaceflight capability and the general
technological capability was, I didn't even trust our scrambled circuits. 
Once we got the scan data on the planetary system we needed, I made sure
we high-tailed it out of there in a hurry which accounts in part I
suppose for why we're the first patrol group to return to the Pegasus."
     "Well you exercised sound judgment, Banker.  The last thing I want
to do is tangle with an alien race that has a large spaceflight capacity
with no clue as to their weaponry or whether they have connections with
the Cylon Empire.  What about planetary systems prior to this one?"
     "Well.....there are some promising targets in the system immediately
prior to this one, but the problem is that puts us still in too close
proximity to this......Brylon system.  It seems to me that if we tried to
operate there to forage food resources, we'd still likely have to
confront this 'Zykonian' civilization sooner or later."
     The Juggernaut brought his hands together and pondered this news. 
"That may have to be our last resort step if we don't get anything
promising from the other sections.  Up to now we've depended on going
undercover in small human outposts in the charted zones of the Alpha
Quadrant to get food because it meant we could conceal our identity and
pass ourselves off as landowners from other nearby planetoids."
     "Like the Serenity Colony last yahren," Banker noted.
     "Exactly.  Low-key, discreet and letting us maintain the element of
surprise.  If we approached this system....." he lightly rapped his
knuckles against the board, "Then surprise goes out the window.  I'm not
prepared to bargain that chip away unless I absolutely have to."
     "I agree, sir," Tolen nodded.
     "I'm glad you do, Colonel," Cain smiled wryly and then turned back
to Banker.  "Thank you for your report, Banker.  You and your men can
take rest period now.  But.....in the interests of new rationing
standards, one drink only in the Officers Club permitted."
     "Yes sir," the Lieutenant who had once been prominent among the
"Grumblers" nodded and departed.  Tolen pressed another button which
returned the Navigation Board to its original layout with the Pegasus
marked at the center.
     "Well, so much for that," Tolen said.  "Better than absolutely
nothing, but as you say.....too complicated to pursue right away."
     "Exactly," Cain nodded, "I'm......very interested to know what this
Delta Section, third system, second planet is going to reveal."
     The Executive Officer looked at Cain, "You trust their account of
what happened when we all blacked out?"
     "I have more reason to be trusting of what they say from this point
on," Cain kept his attention on the Board, "Based on
the......supplementary information I've heard from Professor Ila.  If
she's seen centurions suddenly growing independent and disobedient
towards their superiors in the Colonies, it's a lot easier for me to
accept what we've been seeing from our four guests as genuine and not
tied to any kind of trap."
     "Then I take it the earlier order which was based on incomplete
information from Professor Ila has moved from abeyance to cancellation?"
     The Juggernaut cracked a smirk and looked at him, "Let's say for
now.......long-term indefinite abeyance."


     Ila had been more than willing to take a bunk in the female barracks
with Bridge Officer Kylie and the fourteen other women that remained on
the Battlestar, but Cain had insisted on the VIP guest quarters.  That
meant it was possible for her to lie down in a truly private bed (not
connected with a medical facility like the Life Station) for the first
time since the last night before the Destruction in her home on Caprica. 
Where she could be alone with her thoughts and not be intruded on unless
she let someone in.
     It had felt so good to be able to talk to Cain, whom she had thought
dead for nearly five yahrens since the Battle of Molocay.  To be able to
share the accounts of what had happened to her and in the Colonies to
someone who had a close connection to her life as Cain did.  That had
helped ease the shock of discovering that the greater objective she'd
sought, which was to be found by the Galactica had failed.  Cain at
least, as her husband's best friend, and her best friends's husband was
someone she could reveal everything to freely, and with complete candor.
     And yet......Cain's friendship and kindness couldn't change the fact
that she had so dearly hoped it to be Adama's face that she would have
seen upon emerging from her suspended state.  To see him once again and
give her the satisfaction of knowing that even if the mission objective
behind her flight into space had failed......she at least would know the
joy of reunion with her beloved.  And with the surviving two of her three
children.
     But that hadn't happened.  The Lords that she believed in so
devoutly as sure as her husband did, had decided to have the Pegasus and
Cain find her, not the Galactica and Adama.  She knew she had to see that
as their Will.  And to ponder the ultimate meaning of what that meant for
the mission.....and her life.
     She had learned so much in the way of revelations from Cain, both
positive and negative.  The fact of Zac's death, which emotionally, she
had now put behind her.  The fact that Athena and Starbuck were no longer
involved, which she could accept as a legacy of the Destruction.  The
fact that Apollo had become a strong and courageous warrior in his own
right.  The fact that Adama had remained true to her.
     The fact that Adama's devotion to finding the Thirteenth Tribe was
his only guiding purpose in life now.
     Ila thought back to a conversation with Adama in their home on
Caprica.  She'd gone into his study after an evening repast where he was
studying intently an ancient text called the Testament of Arkada.  An
"extra-canonical" book that had never formally been part of the Book of
the Word because it had long divided theologians and scholars as to its
authenticity.  Adama fell in the category of those who believed in it. 
Believed in its account of the last days of the mother planet Kobol and
how the twelve worlds of the Colonies had been settled by those who set
out from Kobol.  And believed in its description of a lost Thirteenth
Tribe that had found from advance scout technology, a planet called Earth
that was more fertile and beautiful than any other uninhabited planet in
the galaxy.  A plant they alone would take the long and more difficult
undertaking to find in contrast to the other twelve tribes who had found
twelve worlds close together in not as great a distance from Kobol.
     She could remember Adama reading the ancient, leather-bound edition
he kept of the Testament.  There was always something
more.....appropriate in the way he would read the ancient texts from
bound copies and not in the printed texts on computer screens.  It made
the ancient writings come so *alive* as Adama put it, whereas on a
computer screen the solemnity and majesty of what they went could be
drained out.  And in this case, what was coming alive for her husband was
the Testament's vivid account of the Thirteenth Tribe and this planet
called Earth.
     "It's impossible to comprehend the ability our ancestors had to scan
such......great distances across the galaxy in defiance of all known
scientific standards of light speed and faster than light speed," she
could hear him saying, "Think of it, Ila.  What if it were possible to
right now at this very instant, *talk* to the inhabitants of the Delphian
Empire on Gomorrah at the very edge of charted space in the Alpha
Quadrant?"
     "I'm not sure I'd want to talk to a Delphian given their
appearance," she'd smiled, "I do know I'd love to hear one of their music
concerts given their reputation for brilliance in the areas *I* make a
living in!"
     He'd laughed with amusement as he put the book down in his lap. 
"Point taken.  But it is a form of instant communication that's still
beyond anything we've able to achieve in seven thousand yahrens of
Colonial Civilization.  Now imagine that form of instant scanning and
communication across.......a hundred or a thousand fold the distance from
here to Gomorrah?  That's what they were able to do when they learned
about Earth."
     "You really think it's there," Ila was fascinated by his enthusiasm.
     "I do," quiet reverence had entered her husband's voice.  "I believe
that somewhere.....far across the galaxy there exists a Colony of Mankind
that maybe......just maybe, has achieved a mark of greatness far in
excess of what we ourselves have accomplished in the Twelve worlds. 
Because after all......the Thirteenth Tribe hasn't had to deal with the
traumas caused by a thousand yahrens of war with the Cylons."
     She remembered putting her arms on the back of his chair so she
could look over his shoulder and see the ancient book.  And then she
could remember asking.
     "Do you think we'll ever know?"
     "Who's to say?" Adama had sighed as he closed the book, "Perhaps
there's a higher Divine purpose behind this great distance that exists
between us and them that only some unforeseen set of circumstances could
ever hope to bridge."
     He had then risen from his chair and with that endearing smile of
his took her hand, more than ready now to put the role of scholar aside
and exchange it for the role of husband on this evening.
     That had been a night that she could remember all the details of,
which was why in the context of what Cain had told her.......she could
easily see her husband attaching a religious significance to that quest
for Earth that he was taking the 70,000 odd survivors towards.  That this
had been the moment in life the Almighty and the Lords had prepared him
for ahead of all other tasks.
     And the more her mind contemplated that, the more she wondered if
the reason behind her mission into deep space to find Adama, could ever
have met with success.  
     It was not as though that factor hadn't already been taken into
account by Commander Deval and the others when the decision had been
made.  Indeed, that had been the ultimate reason why Ila knew she *had*
to be the one to make the journey.  Anyone else who undertook it would be
a mere stranger to Adama.  Someone he could have no instinctive reason to
trust.  And even if that someone were to tell Adama that his wife was
still alive and among the survivors as some form of incentive, why would
that change anything?  Especially given the massive undertaking that
turning the Galactica and its Fleet of ships around would entail?  And
wouldn't Adama be inclined to think it ultimately represented a giant
trap?
     But if it were Adama's wife making the journey, that would be
different.  Ila would make the case directly to him.  She would tell him
everything she'd told Cain and the things she still hadn't had time to
tell Cain like what Dr. Ravashol, who she knew Adama was familiar with,
had been able to provide them.  And how things were no longer as hopeless
as they might have seemed that first night when Adama had made that
decision to abandon the Colonies forever and go searching for the
Thirteenth Tribe.  Adama would be forced to take seriously what she had
to say.
     Yes, he'd take seriously what I had to say, and he'd believe me, Ila
thought as she lay in her bed in the dark.  But would I end up failing
with him, just the same?
     That was something she knew she'd had to prepare herself for from
the outset and it too was a reason why she was the most logical person to
go.  Because if an outsider failed, the outsider would feel forever
trapped in a place he didn't really want to be in, because he'd be
surrounded by strangers.  If Ila failed, then at least she could take
comfort in the joy of reunion.
     That had been the way she'd reasoned things when she'd strapped
herself inside the shuttle and taken off from Caprica.  And when she
activated the hyperdrive that would carry her into the Alpha Quadrant
(the only frame of reference she had for her husband's journey, based on
what Dr. Ravashol had mentioned).  And when she'd been overtaken by the
sleeping gas that put her into the suspended animated state that she
thought would last for a minimum of several yahrens.  That for Ila, this
would be a win situation regardless of what her husband chose to do.
     Only now......for the first time, Ila was beginning to wonder if
maybe.....just maybe, she wouldn't have easily accepted rejection from
her husband over turning back.  Over time, was it possible that the joy
of reunion could give way to a sense of frustration in Ila that the
people she had survived with in the rubble, and who had launched her into
space in the hope that she could bring back some assistance that might
prove to be the very difference in fulfilling their greatest of
dreams......would be in essence betrayed?
     Terrible as it was for her to consider that, she knew it was a
potential reality that could have existed.  Adama with his singular
devotion to the purpose in finding Earth that he clearly cloaked with
religious reverence might be inclined to point out that he was committed
to a course of action that he couldn't deviate from no matter what the
stakes were back in the Colonies.  And the more Ila thought about
it......could she really be at peace with herself over that kind of
decision?
     She didn't know yet in her heart if her rescue at the hands of the
Pegasus had closed off all hope of ever reaching Adama again.  She wasn't
prepared yet to regard that avenue as closed off, especially when she'd
had a chance to see how so many things previously believed to be
impossible were suddenly possible now.  She could still see Cain's rescue
for her as a necessary preliminary step toward eventual reunion with
Adama.  One where she could already know important details like the death
of Zac and be at peace with that, as she was already.
     And yet.....she could also begin to see the possibility that Cain's
rescue of her could easily have been the Almighty's way of telling her
something else.  Something that if true, she knew would mean a great deal
of personal pain and anguish for her.  But ultimately for a reason that
she knew she could see herself as accepting even with that pain.
     In the dark she brought her hands together in a fervent gesture of
prayer.
     By all the Lords, let Your will be done!


     Captain Skyler and Silver Group One had returned next.  As he and
Angus came up the steps to the Bridge's upper deck, Cain and Tolen were
waiting.  The Juggernaut's arms were folded.
     "Let's cut through the preliminaries, Captain," Cain said.  "What
did you find on the second planet in the third system?"
     "An uninhabitable planet with swirling clouds of poison gas," Skyler
said and then added pointed, "And a parked shuttle of some type sending
out a message in Cylon code.  Possibly a distress signal."
     "A Cylon message?" Cain's face twisted.  "You're sure of that?"
     "Yes sir, we couldn't crack the specific code to translate the
signal, but the code pattern conforms to a standard Cylon format. 
There's clearly a Cylon or a non-humanoid Cylon ally stranded down
there."
     "And that's all you found," the Commander was trying to digest this
information.
     "No that wasn't all, sir, we found some other interesting things
related to that.  Starting with traces of space debris that had clearly
been the result of a battle."
     Silver Spar Leader went over to the terminal across from the
navigational board and punched up the telemetry.  It showed the debris in
question floating through space.
     "There's the analytical composition.  The metal fragments are
definitely constructed from neutrino.  And we all know which planet in
the galaxy has the highest known concentration of neutrino ore to make
construction projects easy for them."
     "The one located in the same solar system as the Cylon home planet,"
Tolen said in amazement.  "Can you definitely trace these fragments to a
baseship?"
     "We couldn't find enough debris traces to confirm that, but I think
we found some more significant proof in these ion exhaust traces."
     Angus then joined him at the console and punched in several more
digits so that the readout on what they analyzed appeared on the screen.
     "As you know of course, sir, ion trails if they're big enough leave
a distinct signature that when cross-referenced can confirm exactly what
kind of ship made it," the lieutenant said, "And as you can see sir, the
only kind of ship that could make that particular trail was-----,"
     "A battlestar," Cain finished.  He was stunned by this development. 
"That was made by the Galactica."


     Barely ten centons later, Cain and Tolen were back in Dr. Arnoff's
lab.  The Electronics Scientist was getting some sleep on the cot located
by his office but quickly was on his feet the instant the two men
entered.
     "We need to talk to them, now, Doctor."
     "Go ahead, go ahead," Arnoff hastily rubbed his thinning hair and
yawned.  "I've run out of things to say to them."
     "After this you'll think of some more.  Tolen, you know how to
handle them.  You do all the talking."
     They entered the room where the four centurions remained seated,
seemingly in a meditative state.  
     "Excuse me.  Commander Cobre?" Tolen said politely.  "We've found
some work that you can be of great help to us in."
     The command centurion rose from the seated position and slowly made
his way over to the two men.  
     "We are prepared to help, if it represents our expertise being
needed."
     "Oh yes, definitely, Commander," the executive officer nodded.  "You
and your fellow centurions are the only ones who can perform this task. 
It falls under your expertise.  If you could come over here, please?" 
Tolen motioned him toward a console that contained a receptacle for
digital recordings.  He quickly loaded the copy that had been made on the
Bridge and pressed the play.
     The room was then filled with the sound of the mysterious Cylon code
pattern that had emanated from the second planet of the third system in
Delta section.  As it played back, Cain and Tolen noticed first the
almost......intensity in Commander Cobre.  Followed by the three
silver-plated regular class centurions getting to their feet.  All of
them trading glances with each other in what the two humans observing
could only interpret as recognition and understanding of the signal.
     Tolen looked at the counter which indicated when the message ended
and it re-looped to the beginning.  He shut it off and braced himself.
     "Did you understand what was being said in that message?"
     "It was understandable," Cobre said.  "It is a distress signal to be
used only by a high-ranking official of the Cylon command structure."
     That explains why it wasn't in any of our code books!  Cain thought. 
We've never had any opportunities to come across something like that.
     "And the message was?"
     Cobre motioned to the first of the three centurions who officially
served under him.  The first centurion stepped forward and spoke in the
higher pitched tone.
     "Commander Lucifer to the Cylon High Command.  Requesting immediate
rescue to provide news of Urgent Priority to His Eminence, the Cylon
Imperious Leader."


     Cain had decided to let all of his returning pilots get some needed
sleep and also get some sleep for himself before he re-summoned everyone
to Flight Operations to outline what was going to happen next.  The
magnitude of what this entailed dictated all of the warriors knowing
about it.  And he had also asked that Ila be present as well since he
knew that she had a vested interest in everything that unfolded from this
point onward for the Pegasus and what they would do next.
     "All of you are aware of the recent mission performed by Colonel
Tolen, Lieutenant Banker and Lieutenant Angus on Delta Aquinas that
resulted in four Cylon centurions from the abandoned garrison, including
their commander being brought aboard the Pegasus.  You are also aware
that the reason why they were brought aboard not as our prisoners but our
guests is due to the unusual behavior of independence they have
demonstrated, combined with an openly express discontent with
higher-class Cylons who exclusively comprise the ruling structure of the
Cylon High Command.
     "I have also told you of how our other recent arrival, Professor
Ila,  the wife of Commander Adama of the Galactica, has brought with her
information about how this attitude of independence and discontent among
the centurion class is also happening back in the Colonies with the
Occupation Forces.  Taken together......this clearly represents
opportunities for us toward the initial long-term goal we have been
operating under since our parting from the Galactica two and a half
yahrens ago.
     "In order to facilitate this goal, our plan of action for this day
is to advance into Delta Section," he rapped his swagger stick on the
navigation board behind him, "which was mapped by Silver Group One
yesterday and deal with this matter of a Cylon distress signal which is
being transmitted from a parked shuttle on the surface by a Commander
Lucifer, who is clearly part of the higher-class Cylon command structure. 
We're going to end this transmission......but not in the way we
ordinarily would have done it which last sectan would have meant sending
a squadron into the atmosphere and blasting his parked shuttle to space
dust."
     The Juggernaut turned to face the assembled group, "We're going to
oblige Commander Lucifer and rescue him.  Thanks to the fact that we have
four Cylons who can go out inside that unbreathable atmosphere unaffected
and convince him that he's about to rejoin the rest of his friends.  And
once we have him back aboard the Pegasus......then we get a chance to
access everything that's in his memory banks, plus a chance to find out
what makes a multi-brain Cylon tick.  And once we do that......we're also
going to find out what happened to the Galactica when they clearly
engaged the ship this Commander Lucifer came from."
     He took a breath, "I realize this means we waste a day trying to
find food and fuel resources, but the information this lone Cylon
possesses is something that could be far more valuable for our purposes. 
The sooner we deal with it the better.  When we get close enough to
shuttle range of this planet, a lone shuttle piloted by one warrior
wearing protective gear to guard against the atmospheric danger will be
accompanied by the four Cylons led by Commander Cobre and his three
subordinates.  In the interests of easy facilitation, the pilot must be a
member of the recent Delta Aquinas mission who has worked with these
centurions before.  Accordingly, Lieutenant Angus is drafted for this
assignment and will report to the Electronics Lab as soon as this
briefing is over.
     "One final point.  The value of these four Cylons is becoming more
and more evident to me, not only in what they've demonstrated they can do
for us, but also in connection with what Professor Ila has told us about
centurion behavior in general.  That means in order for us to continue to
use this new situation to our advantage it is imperative, and I stress
the word *imperative* for all of you to observe these guidelines should
you ever find yourself in the presence of Commander Cobre and his
subordinates.
     "Under no circumstances are you to ever use any of the derogatory
terms we have customarily used to describe Cylon centurions.  The phrases
'tin-can', 'rust bucket' or any other euphemism that has come naturally
to us all for lo these many yahrens is no longer in your vocabulary. 
*Except* to perhaps describe those higher classes of Cylons that the
centurions have clearly come to despise.  Now I recognize this is not
going to be easy to treat them with kindness.  It's certainly requiring
an adjustment from me that isn't easy and you certainly know the kind of
words I can come up with that would even make all of you blush!"
     This provoked the laughter he hoped it would and he let it go on
before he continued.
     "As great an adjustment as this is for us, it has to be acknowledged
that adjustment has defined our very existence these past four and a half
yahrens ever since Molocay.  The only difference I suppose is that up to
now, I've been the one defining and dictating the terms of adjustment. 
With these events, I'm discovering the need for adjustment on my part in
ways I had never anticipated.  But if it results in taking us one step
closer to our ultimate objective.....and with a far more promising
future, I think we're all agreed it's worth making that adjustment.
     "We are now going to proceed at top speed for the next centar to cut
down on the distance to this planet.  The shuttle will then launch, and
thirty centons later, protective escort will be launched to guide the
shuttle back to the Pegasus with our new Cylon prisoner.  Until
then.....proceed with the regular order.  And in closing.....I again
invoke the blessings of the Lords of Kobol for us all."
     Once again, the warriors rose and filed their way out.  This time it
was Ila who lingered long enough to wait for Cain so she could talk with
him.
     "I can still remember the days when you were such a benign but
devoted Skeptic," Adama's wife said as they left the Flight-Ops room.
     Cain allowed himself a smile.  "All those yahrens of praying for my
soul that you and Adama did seem not to have been in vain."

Chapter Six

     "What exactly does a Cylon like you *do* in your neatly ordered
worlds?"
     That was the question Lucifer remembered the warrior named Starbuck
asking him pointedly during that time when he was a prisoner on Baltar's
baseship.  It was the kind of question that made the brash Lieutenant the
most stimulating human he had ever crossed paths with.  Certainly much
more than Baltar had ever been.  Baltar had always been so limited of
mind and intellect to Lucifer that it was by contrast, refreshing to hear
from Starbuck a question that could let the IL Cylon *think* and
demonstrate the gift of being a two-brained Cylon in a way that could
make a true impact.  A way of boasting that he could appreciate because
it wasn't being wasted on an inferior human like Baltar, or even worse, a
limited one-brain centurion.
     "We have plenty of means of stimulating ourselves, Lieutenant," he
had answered.
     "Do you," Starbuck had then taken a puff on that peculiar object he
had lit called a fumarello, "Okay, what's a Cylon's favorite form of
recreation?"
     Lucifer seized the opportunity he'd waited for with a sense of
triumph.  "Pure intellectual contemplation, Lieutenant.  Utilizing the
gift of our second brain to the fullest capacity."
     But Starbuck had sounded unimpressed.  "Sounds incredibly dull."
     Which in turn brought a counter-challenge from Lucifer.  "To your
human mind, perhaps.  But only those who possess a second brain can ever
know what it's like to experience the stimulation of total meditative
contemplation."
     "A good Pyramid game is the best kind of stimulation I know of,"
Starbuck had said disdainfully with a wave of his hand.
     Whereupon Starbuck had pulled out a pack of cards from the inside of
his uniform jacket, tossed them onto the table he was seated at and
challenged Lucifer to a game.  Which Lucifer, in his eagerness to explore
the human mind had accepted.  What had followed was a game that only
convinced Lucifer that humans, even more interesting ones like Starbuck,
were hopelessly limited in their ability to know what true intellectual
stimulation really represented.
     There had been one moment during the game when Lucifer drew some
additional satisfaction in schooling the Galactica warrior about the
realities of the Cylon order.  At one point, when Lucifer had delayed
making his next move in the game, Starbuck had then spoken up.
     "Come on, bulbhead, I haven't got all night."
     "It is obvious Lieutenant, that you were never taught to show any
respect whatsoever for your opponents."
     "Who's showing disrespect?" Starbuck had retorted gently. "After
all, if we're going to be really living together in peace after all, some
friendly terms of endearment couldn't hurt."
     That had been a moment where Starbuck had shown he was far more
cunning than Baltar, who at the time had been insisting to the captured
warrior that he was preparing a new offer of peace to Adama.  A gesture
that despite Baltar's assurance to his second-in-command was simply part
of a new trap, had left Lucifer at the time wondering who the deception
was really being intended for   It was a moment he would later curse
himself for not remembering the full ramifications of more than two
yahrens later.
     But at that point, Lucifer knew that he had to counter this move of
Starbuck's to trip him up and expose Baltar's "peace" offer as a lie.  So
with expert smoothness he had deflected him.
     "Quite true, Lieutenant, quite true, though as I am sure you are
aware, we Cylons seldom find need to use any terms of endearment, not
even to our fellow Cylons." 
     And then, he made the next point that represented a fundamental
truth that he and all other higher class Cylons lived by.
     "Insults, are another matter when it comes to inferior classes of
Cylons."
     "Ah," Starbuck said, impressed by this.  "Interesting."
     Interesting indeed.  Why was Starbuck, even with his obvious
superiority to so many other forms of humans incapable of recognizing the
obvious?  That the drone class centurions, whether of worker rank silver
or command level gold, were of no consequence whatsoever to the ultimate
goals of the Cylon Empire.  From the very beginning of the Empire's
existence, they were the most expendable aspect of it.  Needed to perform
the tasks of conquest so the proverbial "dirty work" was out of the hands
of those who would benefit from the Cylon dream of conquest.  The
multiple brain, upper classes of Cylon society of which Lucifer, as an IL
Class Cylon was the finest example of short of the Imperious Leader
himself.
     What did it matter if centurions were killed in the war when thanks
to the limitless supply of neutrino ore located on the planet that was
part of the solar system as the home planet Cylon they could build
endless numbers of centurions, endless numbers of fighters and endless
numbers of baseships if they were needed?  Granted, the advanced brain
Cylons recognized the need to avoid over-redundancy.  If the existing
stock of centurions and baseships were sufficient to the task then the
need to avoid wasting resources on unnecessary industrial production
could be observed and the advanced Cylons could devote their superior
multiple brains to that wonderful realm of intellectual meditation and
stimulation that only they could understand.  To have the vastness of the
galaxy at their disposal for them to rule over with no challenge to their
concepts of order.  Where the right amount of centurions could keep the
conquered planets and systems functioning while advanced class Cylons
could be the dominant order to enjoy.....everything. 
     This was the Cylon dream of every Imperious Leader from the
beginning when the first one had risen to power from the ranks of the
machines to engineer the destruction of the original reptilian Cylon
race.  Who had taken the voice of the only living Cylon who was regarded
with respect in the annals of the Empire's thousand yahren history.  The
one who had made the breakthrough in machine technology possible that had
resulted in the creation of the Cylon robotic race that had successfully
turned on its creators.  Whenever any second-brain Cylon received the
ultimate honor of advancement to the title of Imperious Leader, whatever
voice he had up to that point was replaced by the voice of the greatest
of all Cylons.
     There had been a time when Lucifer had harbored such dreams of
becoming the Imperious Leader.  It had come after the death of the Leader
who had successfully engineered the Destruction of the Colonies, but
whose mad desire to administer the final blow to the last major remnant
of humanity in the form of the Battlestar Galactica had resulted in his
death at the Battle of Carillon.  That had created a mad scramble among
the advanced class of Cylons to get a new leader selected at a time when
the Empire's fortunes were at their highest.  And Lucifer had presented
his case before an emergency meeting of the Cylon High Command on the
home planet.  But in the end, while the new leader had come from
Lucifer's own IL class, it hadn't gone to him.  
     Sensing Lucifer's disappointment and wanting to provide him with an
important assignment, the new Imperious Leader had assigned him the task
of taking charge of Baltar.  The previous Imperious Leader, having made
use of Baltar as a traitor to his race to bring about the Destruction,
had ordered his execution to take place at a public function as soon as
he personally had taken care of the Galactica.  But the old Leader's
death had proved fortuitous for Baltar in that the new Leader sensed that
with a major remnant of Colonial Civilization still at large, and with
the old Leader showing where the Cylon mind could still be outmaneuvered
by human unpredictability, it made sense to make use of Baltar again by
placing him in command of a baseship that would be given the primary task
of hunting down the Galactica.  This way, with a human mind in command,
the maneuvers of Commander Adama could be anticipated and ultimately
outguessed.  And Lucifer would serve the role of military advisor and
also in the process gain insight of his own into how the human mind
functioned.
     It was an assignment that Lucifer at first welcomed and in time grew
to despise as he saw increasingly how Baltar's sense of superiority
combined with a profound naivete about what his ultimate fate would be
made working alongside him insufferable.  The turning point for Lucifer
had come after Baltar's rescue from the wreckage of the planet Kobol. 
That had been the occasion when Starbuck had been captured ostensibly so
Baltar could then release him to Adama on Kobol in the hopes of
presenting a new false peace offer in which the rise of a new Cylon
Imperious Leader could be interpreted as a hopeful sign.  The plan from
the Cylon standpoint was that this would once again be a trap designed to
lull this remnant of humanity into destruction as surely as Baltar had
done so with the false peace offer presented to President Adar.  But
after Starbuck had been released, and after Baltar had gone to the
surface of Kobol to present his "offer" to Adama, a suspicious Lucifer,
sensing that Baltar might in fact be using this occasion as a chance to
recruit Adama into turning the tables on the Cylons who had
double-crossed Baltar with the destruction of his home world Piscera, had
taken matters into his own hands.  He had launched his own strike on the
Colonial forces camped on Kobol, believing that he was eliminating the
entire Viper protection the Galactica had, leaving the battlestar totally
at his mercy.  But Lucifer's move had itself backfired when suddenly an
unexpected contingent of vipers had shown up to inflict devastating
losses that necessitated Lucifer's retreat.
     With that spectacular failure, Lucifer knew that his only chance of
escaping the Imperious Leader's wrath for exceeding his authority was to
find Baltar on the surface of Kobol and hope he was still alive.  Only
with Baltar rescued and back in power and in *need* of Lucifer's services
could the IL Cylon survive what could have been his ultimate end.  So
Lucifer had done so.  And he also knew that he couldn't dare make such a
similar act of defiance again so long as Baltar was around.
     Baltar he noticed, after his rescue, had changed profoundly.  If
before, there was reason to suspect that Baltar was perhaps underneath
waiting for a chance to switch back his allegiances once again, there was
no such concern afterwards.  Baltar was now playing the role of a
committed Cylon commander and convinced that he could defy the odds and
receive recognition from Cylon authority as the greatest of their
commanders if he alone brought about the Galactica's demise.  And *that*
was when the assignment had become total misery for Lucifer.  Putting up
with the traitor's increased level of ego and self-assurance that seemed
like a weak imitation of how Imperious Leaders acted.  Dealing with the
endless put-downs and asides that Baltar never hesitated to throw at him. 
Oh, the sheer madness of it all!  Where not even that great gift of
meditative contemplation that advanced Cylons thrived on could alleviate.
     Through it all, Baltar demonstrated no real command instinct. 
Failure at Arcta where his efforts to make the Galactica the victim of
the pulsar weapon of the enslaved human scientist Dr. Ravashol had ended
with the weapon's sabotage and destruction.  Failure at Gomorrah when the
unexpected arrival of the Pegasus had resulted in the loss of two
baseships, and notwithstanding the never-confirmed but likely destruction
of the Pegasus had left Baltar's force diminished.  Then after that,
Baltar had staged a gamble with the last of his fighters by packing them
with solonite and having them ram the Galactica in the hopes that it
would destroy the battlestar once and for all.  That plan too had failed
leaving Baltar without a sufficient fighting force as he continued to
track the battlestar in the first areas beyond what Colonial
star-navigators referred to as "charted space."
     The glorious reprieve for Lucifer had then come when Baltar
simply....disappeared.  Compelled by the appearance of a multitude of
mysterious bright lights to seek out Adama under a flag of truce that
Lucifer knew Adama would never honor.  It didn't matter that in the wake
of that, the tracking baseship had lost the Galactica's trail.  All that
mattered for Lucifer was that he was now in command of what he now knew
should have been rightfully his from the outset.  The days of infernal
subordination were over.  As he received reinforcement to his fighter
complement and was joined up by a support baseship under the command of
an older IL Cylon, Commander Septimus, he now took up the new charge of
pursuit of the Galactica, flattered that the Imperious Leader was forced
to recognize that he, Lucifer, was the one who would carry out the final
task of destroying the last true remnant of Colonial Civilization.
     And then......a yahren and a half after he had received his
triumphant command, Baltar suddenly and unexpectedly re-entered his world
once again.  While investigating the disappearance of an older Cylon
baseship, #1974, a distress signal had been picked up from a nearby
planet where debris from the baseship had been found.  A signal that had
revealed the human traitor.  Who told a tale of being taken prisoner by
the Galactica, but that he had escaped from their Prison Barge in a
one-man shuttle during the course of a battle between Baseship #1974 and
the Galactica that had ended with the baseship's Destruction.
     Upon Baltar's rescue, contact had been made with the Cylon outer
capital on Gomorrah, which was now being commanded by an IL Lucifer
despised named Spektor.  Spektor had gotten his promotion entirely
because of Baltar's recommendation, which had stemmed from Spektor's
careful flattery of the traitor during his time commanding an outpost on
the planet Atilla.  An assignment that had ended under circumstances
Lucifer had always found suspicious but never been able to prove anything
to disrupt Spektor's promotion.  No matter.  Spektor was now in this
powerful position and able to use the most significant breakthrough in
communications technology to instantly contact Lucifer's pursuit Fleet
over an incredible distance.  And then, by contacting the Imperious
Leader on the home planet via a separate hook-up and joining the two
connections, it was now possible for a conferencing to take place between
Imperious Leader, Spektor and Lucifer as they all listened to Baltar's
explanation of events.
     To Lucifer's shock, both Spektor and the Cylon leader appeared to
accept the human traitor's version of events.  Almost on the spot,
Imperious Leader restored Baltar to his command and demoted Lucifer to
command of the support baseship, with Commander Septimus transferring
over to assume the role of Baltar's deputy.  It would once again be
Baltar's task to find the Galactica and eliminate her in the last great
battle of the thousand yahren war.
     But once Lucifer had established himself aboard the support
baseship, he had received a follow-up communication from Spektor and the
Imperious Leader.  A word of reassurance that they were only humoring
Baltar into making use of him to find the Galactica and command the final
battle.  Once that victory was achieved, Baltar would receive his long
overdue execution date in a public ceremony on Gomorrah.  For now, they
wanted him in charge only as a final way of taunting him.  To let him
achieve a personal triumph that he expected to be rewarded for, only to
learn at the last micron that this Leader was capable of doing to Baltar
exactly what his predecessor had done before.
     Spektor had also revealed to Lucifer that thanks to a fortuitous
development in intelligence they knew that the Galactica had stopped for
some time in a planetary system called Brylon where they were enjoying
the hospitality of an alien race called the Zykonians.  And that Adama
had been able to broker a truce between the Zykonians and their enemies
the Ziklagi.  Two races that the Cylons were for now anxious to avoid
contact with lest it detract from the primary goal of destroying the
Galactica.  Once that was done and Baltar executed, then Lucifer would
have full task force command once again and be free to handle these new
meddlers into the Cylon dominion.
     Relieved as Lucifer had been to know how things really stood with
the High Command, there was still a problem that left him worried. 
Something that he had begun to see signs of in the period leading up to
Baltar's rescue.  A subtle but distinct.....change in the centurions on
his baseship, which became Baltar's.  How they were showing
more.....initiative on matters rather than automatically waiting for
orders.  How they seemed to be less instinctively......respectful of his
authority or that of his fellow IL, Septimus.  It was something that
defied any of Lucifer's expectations of how the centurion class, worker
or command was supposed to behave.  But for now at least, the problem did
not seem significant.
     What was significant was how once he was back in command, Baltar
kept bringing up the matter of whether two baseships was really
sufficient for the task.  He had raised the question as to why
reinforcement with an additional baseship wasn't possible.  Lucifer had
told him that it was a question of distance.  The Cylon Empire simply
wasn't capable at this point of detaching another baseship from more
important tasks to try and catch up with them.  This was what the
Imperious Leader had told Lucifer more than once over the last yahren
since he'd gotten the command.  And yet......Lucifer had always found it
puzzling how final the Cylon ruler had been on that subject.  As though
there was a reason beyond the matter of distance that kept an additional
baseship from being detached.  It reached a point where he soon was
forced to stop asking the question.  
     In time, Lucifer wondered if that was the beginning of the greatest
failure of his entire career as a command level Cylon.  The dynamic of
centurions who were not always acting the way they should......combined
with a cryptic mystery as to why reinforcement wasn't going to be sent at
any time ever he was now certain had proved irresistible to Baltar.  And
it had resulted in Baltar doing something Lucifer in the deepest depths
of his two Cylon computer brains never would have contemplated.  The
greatest traitor in the history of mankind was now able to get his entire
crew of centurions from Command Centurion Moray on down to commit treason
against the Empire they had been programmed to serve.  To make sure that
Commander Septimus met with an unfortunate "accident" that removed the
only IL Cylon from the baseship and made it impossible for Lucifer to
reliably keep up with developments taking place aboard Baltar's ship.
     And then, during the battle that was meant to be the destruction of
the Galactica, the fighters from Baltar's ship had opened fire on the
fighters from Lucifer's.  Baltar's fighters were then joined by the
Galactica's, and together, their combined strength was able to destroy
Lucifer's support baseship.  Allowing Baltar to defect back to the
Colonials and present to them a Cylon baseship manned by centurions who
had now turned their back on their Empire and their programming.
     All of this, Lucifer only realized at the very last micron possible. 
But a micron long enough for him to make good his escape from the support
baseship before it was too late.  Taking the shuttle to the nearest
planet he could land on, which was the second planet in a nearby system. 
Filled with an unbreathable atmosphere for humans, so at bare minimum he
could achieve safety from the humans and be able to transmit a coded
distress signal that hopefully in time would be picked up a baseship that
would investigate what had happened.  Until then, he knew he could take
advantage of his gift as an IL to go into hibernation mode.  Where he
could enjoy the sensation of meditative contemplation without disruption
or any sense of boredom from the long wait.  So that on the day his
rescue came, he would be prepared.  Prepared to explain himself to the
Imperious Leader, where he would finally demand answers as to why no
reinforcement was sent, because surely had there been three baseships
instead of two, Baltar might have been less inclined to act.  And he
would also demand an accounting of the Imperious Leader as to why he had
failed to recognize Baltar's capacity for pulling this game of grand
deception and double-cross.  The fact that Lucifer should have sensed it
as well mattered not.  He was prepared to stand before the Cylon ruler
and assert himself.  And perhaps in the process others in the Cylon High
Command would finally recognize they had picked the wrong IL to be the
Imperious Leader three yahrens ago.
     All of this Lucifer thought about in his hibernation mode to the
exclusion of everything else.  The only thing that could possibly end his
hibernation mode was if a rescue party led by centurions saw him and
reactivated him.


     "Commander Lucifer."
     Circuits within the IL suddenly began to assert themselves after the
long shut down.  Reacting to the sound of a distinctly Cylon voice.  The
low pitched monotone of a command centurion.
     "Commander Lucifer," the voice repeated.
     Slowly but surely, Lucifer began to disengage himself from
hibernation mode.  Activating his orbital sensors for the first time he
cold now see what his hearing sensors had detected.  It was indeed a
command centurion.
     "Yes," Lucifer formed his first verbal expression in a long time. 
"Yes, centurion   It is me.  You have answered my signal."
     "We have, and we have rescued you from the planet surface."
     "That is so fortunate.  I am glad to know that the Empire at last
took interest in what happened to my ship."
     "You have news to report of the Galactica?"
     "Yes," Lucifer could now see he was in a room filled with equipment. 
The command centurion stood in front of him and was flanked on either
side by a work class centurion.  His ears could also tell that at least
one more centurion was in the room.
     "I have much to report of that," Lucifer went on, "But.....I must
ask if your superior is present.  I must speak with him first."
     The command centurion turned his head slightly toward his
subordinate but there was no immediate response.
     "You have a command class Cylon at this.....outpost or this ship,
wherever it is?" Lucifer persisted.
     Abruptly a voice filled the room.  "Commander Lucifer, this is
Commander Festus.  I'm monitoring your recovery from main operations.  We
can speak directly to each other."
     The IL felt some relief over hearing the voice of what could only
have been a fellow command class Cylon and not the monotone of a
centurion.  What he had to say was not fit for the hearing circuits of
lower class Cylons.
     "Thank you, Commander, but it is of great importance  that this be
done privately at your earliest convenience."
     "I'm afraid time is of the essence, and you were found in a damaged
condition, Commander Lucifer," the voice that identified itself as Festus
said.  "That impairs your mobility at present."
     "But this concerns Classification Level One matters, Commander!"
Lucifer protested.  "That's why with all due respect to your staff, it
must be done privately between you and me."
     There was a pause and then the voice said, "Centurions, please
depart for now until you receive further instructions."
     "By your command," the command centurion said as he motioned to the
subordinate centurions and led them out of the room.  As soon as the door
had closed, the voice from the speaker resumed.
     "I'm on a secure hookup, Commander Lucifer.  We are as private as if
I were in the room with you.  It's only because I don't want to waste
five centons coming down from main operations that I want us to talk
now."
     "I understand," Lucifer said, "I am anxious to tell you everything. 
It is with the deepest regret that I must report to you and the Imperious
Leader the loss of Baseship #12741, which I was in command of.  There are
no other survivors of my crew."
     "Your ship was destroyed by the Galactica or by other forces?"
     Lucifer let out a grunt, "Unfortunately Commander Festus, you might
say it was a combination of both.  As you are no doubt aware, I was a
task force of two.  My ship and Baseship #8645, previously under my
command but by order of the Imperious Leader, I was detached from and
reassigned to Baseship #12741.  Baseship #8645 was restored to the
command of......." he forced himself to say the next name with the
highest level of distaste and disgust, "Baltar."
     There was a one micron pause before the voice answered him. 
"Baltar.  Yes, go on."
     "Unfortunately, the judgment of His Eminence proved to be most
faulty," Lucifer's voice rose.  Now that he was conversing with one of
his peers, he was determined to hold nothing back and he didn't care how
much loyalty this Commander Festus had to the Cylon ruler.  "He assumed
Baltar could deliver the Galactica to us and allow for a simple victory. 
Unfortunately the reverse proved true.  Baltar delivered us to the
Galactica."
     Another one micron pause and then the voice again said, "Go on."
     "Baltar, in conjunction with disloyal elements of the centurion
class arranged for my ship's destruction," he went on bitterly.  "I am
not aware if you have ever experienced the same problem with those in
your service, Commander Festus, but there exists of late a strange
penchant for centurions, be they working class or command class, to
display initiative of their own and discontent with their lot.  I have no
doubt Baltar saw this and seized the opportunity to defect back to his
fellow humans and presenting them with a baseship and crew no longer
interested in serving the Cylon Empire and our cause."
     "This is.....most incredible," the voice now sounded amazed. 
"You're saying then that Baltar and his crew are now......working
alongside the Galactica as allies?"
     "That must be presumed, Commander.  If any renewed effort is
undertaken to find the Galactica it must start from the presumption that
they have doubled their strength with Baltar's ship.  It will thus
require a greater mass effort on our part to finally defeat them.  And I
submit that effort will not come so long as we have a rank incompetent
like our present leader at the head of our Empire," the bitterness and
fury was heavy in Lucifer's voice.  As far as he was concerned he had
nothing more to lose and everything to gain by speaking his mind.
     "You are speaking of.....treason against His Eminence," the voice
said carefully.
     "It would be patriotism to take a stance against that infernal
incompetent and all those who support him," Lucifer didn't let up, "I am
the proof of that.  The loss of my ship and Baltar's defection of a fully
operational baseship to the humans is proof of that.  Consider these
facts, Commander Festus and realize that it is imperative for you to join
the effort that will result in the end of our so-called Imperious
Leader."
     There was no response from the voice that had come through the
speaker the last few centons to converse with Lucifer.  The IL wondered
if something had gone wrong with the hookup.
     But then he heard the sound of the door sliding open and the sound
of footsteps entering.  And entering his field of vision.......was a man
in a tan Colonial battle uniform carrying a swagger stick.  Looking
straight at Lucifer's bulbous head with a contemptuous smirk.  When he
spoke, Lucifer realized to his horror it was the same voice.
      "Commander Lucifer," Cain said, "If there's one thing you can be
sure of, I *will* be part of that effort."
     He then motioned his arm and at that instant, Dr. Arnoff, who had
been standing behind Lucifer silently all this time, threw a switch.  The
IL up to now had never realized that his immobilization was caused by
circuits that had been placed in his head and connected to the central
computer bank in the room. 
     Before his mind went black, Lucifer's only thoughts were of rage
that Baltar had truly won the final contest of wills and amazement that
he'd met a human with an even greater sense of how to bluff than
Starbuck.


     When Cain stepped back into the outer room, Ila and Tolen were there
along with the four centurions.  The Juggernaut came up first to Cobre.
     "Commander Cobre," he said, "This would not have been possible
without the technical assistance and cooperation of you and your fellow
centurions.  The information you provided to Lieutenant Banker on how IL
Cylons operate, how they are connected, and above all your ability to
retrieve Commander Lucifer from the planet without disturbing his
hibernation......all of that was essential.  It hasn't been possible for
our society to award formal decorations of any kind recently, but were it
possible......all of you would have earned them."
     "We thank you for your sentiments," Cobre lowered his head, "It
is.....an honor to serve with you."
     Cain turned to the three work centurions, "I think in the interests
of simplicity and communication with your.....crew mates, you three
should break the patterns you've been used to and adopt names of your
own.  You are free to choose whatever names you think best suit your own
respective.......personalities."
     "I choose the name Festus," the first centurion said.
     "Of course, I understand," Cain tried not to chuckle.  "The name of
your onetime superior twelve yahrens ago that you provided me with was
most helpful.  You've earned it."
     "I choose the name Lucifer," the second centurion said.
     Claiming the spoils of victory for themselves, Cain thought.  They
are learning the meaning of......pride.
     "I choose the name Serpentine," the third centurion said.
     "I will remember them and so will your fellow.....crew mates," Cain
said.  "You are free to move about all areas of the Pegasus at your own
leisure as you await further instructions as to where you can be.....of
assistance."
     Cobre turned his head back toward the main lab room.
     "We will watch Dr. Arnoff continue his work on......the fool."


     "That was a performance for the ages, Cain," Ila was smiling proudly
as she and Cain walked through the corridor.
     "Well, I guess being married to Caprica's greatest actress for all
those yahrens rubbed off on me,"  He then stopped and shook his head in
amazement, "It's funny."
     "What is?"
     "Thinking about.....Bethany, just now.  I'm suddenly....feeling
something come back to me.  When we all had that blackout experience
yesterday and then found ourselves here.  I guess maybe my old, Skeptic
mind didn't want to believe it at first, so that's why I buried it,
but......."
     "But what?" Ila frowned as they continued to walk.
     "You were saying just after it happened that when you blacked
out......you thought you saw....your son Zac standing there and talking
to you?  Telling you everything was okay and you could....move on from
his death?"
     "Oh, yes," she hadn't expected that to come up again.  "But
Cain......believe me, I don't think I imagined that or dreamt it.  I
really, truly believe I saw him."
     "I believe you, Ila," Cain said sincerely.  "I truly do,
because......now I'm convinced that when I blacked out, I
saw......Bethany."
     Ila stopped, amazed by his revelation.  "As if somehow.....for each
of us, during that time, we saw the one person we loved most
who.....isn't with us any longer."  She paused, "Did she say anything?"
     "I'm beginning to think," his voice grew uncharacteristically
reverent, "that it was her voice telling me not to act on that rash
impulse I had before the blackout and have those four centurions turned
off.  That there was a good reason for why we had those four centurions
now and that if I acted wisely......I'd find the reason."
     Cain then smiled as they resumed walking, "We certainly found the
reason, all right.  The information we can tap from that one IL Cylon is
going to give us breakthroughs in areas maybe you haven't seen happen
yet."
     "Maybe so," Ila admitted, "Of course.....there are still some things
I haven't had time to tell you about.  The part about Dr. Ravashol and
the command centurion named Vulpa."
     "Yes, yes, things have had a way of keeping you from revealing your
whole story about the situation back in the Colonies," Cain nodded.  "For
the moment, Ila, I think maybe we should defer the rest of your story
since in the short term, we still have to deal with other matters like
finalizing our supply situation and figuring out our next move
since.....even though we know we're in the Alpha Quadrant, we're still a
lot further away from home than I've ever been."
     "I understand, Cain," Ila said.  "This......has been a time for a
lot of unexpected revelations for both of us."
     "And that last set of revelations may top them all," the Juggernaut
shook his head.  "Baltar defecting back with a full baseship.  I.....have
to assume Adama exercised his best judgment on that situation."
     "I know he did," Adama's wife said with pride, "And it helps to know
that the most recent news we have about him is that......he's now well
beyond the range of the Empire's reach."
     "That is a blessing," Cain then stopped and for the first time his
expression grew uneasy.
     "What's wrong, Cain?"
     "Ila," he said, "At this point, I know we're a lot closer to Adama
than where we were originally.  But......having said that, I can't
guarantee at this point that the situation is going to resolve itself in
a way that will let us make contact with him again.  A lot of that
depends on what comes next.  And what we learn from that IL's memory
banks could be the key to that."
     "Cain," Ila said quietly and with total conviction.  "Whatever
happens in that area......I leave in the hands of Powers greater than us. 
All we can do for now is the jobs and tasks laid out before us so
that......when the time comes we'll have the faith to know what our
ultimate Destiny is."
     Her words reassured him, "I'll say an Amen to that."

Epilogue

     "Dr. Arnoff has successfully completed the download of all the
information in the memory banks of that IL called Lucifer," Tolen said as
he sat across from Cain in the Commander's office.  "The amount is
just......staggering on what there is.  And we're fortunate we lulled him
into a sense of complacency that made him think he was talking to a
fellow IL.  At any time, Lucifer could have activated an automatic erase
feature to flush his memory banks, but he never got that chance."
     "Score another one for our four new crew members," Cain smiled and
proudly waved his stick at Tolen to indicate how highly he regarded the
Executive Officer for making their presence possible.  "Are there any
critical points we can immediately isolate?"
     "Yes sir.  Before the battle with the Galactica, Lucifer's task
force had information on where the Galactica had been.  The Galactica
actually visited this Brylon System that Silver Group One scanned, and
they in fact spent several sectans enjoying the hospitality of the
Zykonian people at the space station orbiting the fifth planet."
     "Did they?" Cain's eyes widened at this.
     "Not only that, but their intelligence said that Commander Adama
actually negotiated a truce for the Zykonians with another race they were
fighting called the Ziklagi."
     "So that means they know Adama personally and would have to know
much of his crew," he then frowned.  "How did they get that information?"
     "Well Lucifer says there was a mole inside the Galactica
transmitting information on what they were doing but the strange thing is
that the signal sent by this mole wasn't being picked up his task force
it was being sent on a special band that was being directly received on
Gomorrah by the Cylon commander there, an IL named Spektor."
     "Gomorrah?" Cain leaned forward in his chair.  "Even from the
location of this Brylon V, sending a direct communication that far back
isn't theoretically possible.  Does he indicate how that was achieved?"
     "Apparently Lucifer never found out the details of that.  He does
though indicate that the mole was evidently found out before the battle
because no more signals were being sent by then."
     "Well thank goodness for that at least.  We don't have to worry
about Adama having a problem he's yet to learn about that could undermine
that......arrangement he now seems to be having with Baltar."
     "Sir," Tolen knew this next issue had to be raised at the very least
to gauge Cain's reaction, "Do you think the fact that Commander Adama has
this arrangement, of itself constitutes a threat to the Galactica's
long-term welfare?"
     Cain dropped back in his chair and let out an ironic chuckle.  "A
few cycles ago, I would have said yes, for the same reason that a few
cycles ago I would have considered the idea of working closely with
centurions a long-term threat.  But I just can't think that any longer,
Tolen.  Adama's clearly been given his equivalent of what we've been
given, and what Ila's experienced on Caprica.  I *have* to have
confidence that he's handling the situation with all the wisdom and
strength he can summon, even if it does mean having to cut deals with the
likes of Baltar.  However tempting it is to want to know how he's
handling that situation......the fact that he's in that situation now
isn't enough for me to consider what our.......ultimate course of action
is going to be."
     Tolen nodded, "I agree, sir.  Clearly there are.....too many other
issues to factor in that clearly are.......going to force us to
ultimately choose between two options."
     "Yes," Cain admitted.  "Assuming things continue to go well for us
in what we do next, the ultimate choice we face is going to come down to
whether we take advantage of these new breakthroughs and find our way
back to the Colonies to help the Resistance effort that clearly is more
extensive than we thought, and exploit the obvious cracks that exist in
the entire foundation of the Cylon Empire itself.  Our other
option......is to forget about all that and try to catch up with the
Galactica."
     "The variation within that is that we could catch up with the
Galactica to try and convince them they should turn around and help in
light of these other developments."
     Cain slowly shook his head, "Tolen.....I shouldn't rule that out a
hundred percent, but.....I just don't think that scenario is going to
present itself.  Not with Adama's determination to find Earth.  It would
be the same clash of views we already went through with him two and a
half yahrens ago that made me separate from him in the first place.  If
we end up joining the Galactica again it will only be because we'd be
doing it on Adama's terms."
     "Very well," the executive officer nodded, "But if that's the case,
and we decide not to join them, then what happens to Commander Adama's
wife?  Do we try to repair her shuttle so she can continue the journey to
reach the Galactica by herself?"
     "We could," Cain admitted, "If....that ends up being what she wants
to do."
     Tolen frowned, "You mean.....there's a chance she might choose
otherwise?"
     The Juggernaut sighed, "There may well be, Tolen.  There very well
may be.  And she might have to make just as painful a decision as I might
have to make regarding.....the question of whether I'll ever get to see
my daughter again.  It just comes down to the fact, Tolen that we've been
presented with a lot of new wonderful opportunities......but it's still
not going to keep us from making potentially painful decisions."
     The Executive Officer couldn't think of anything to say. 
Fortunately, Cain decided it was time to change the subject.
     "All of that's in the future though," his command level was back. 
"We need to deal with the short-term and that means getting our supplies
restocked and hopefully some more information we can digest.  We now know
it's safe to approach the Brylon system so set in a course for there
immediately, Colonel."


Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny.......the last Battlestar Galactica leads
a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest.  A shining planet
called.....Earth.