Jump 115: Battlestar Galactica

Jump 115: Battlestar Galactica

Location: Gemenon
Age: 31
Identity: [-250] Cylon, Military
Drawbacks: [+400] Form Locked, All Of This Has Happened Before

[Free]      Soundtrack
[300/1150]  Final Five-Ish
[600/1150]  Flawless Interface
[700/1150]  A Mind That Burns Like A Fire!
[Free]      Fit To Fight
[800/1150]  MOS: Tactical, Strategic
[Free]      Origin Gear: Military
[1050/1150] Promotion Order: Flag Officer
[1150/1150] Jumper's TO&E: Special Duty/Detached

Gemenon was pretty much the ass-end of nowhere when it came to the Twelve Colonies, so that made it the perfect place to start rumors about the Cylons returning. After all, unlike any of the other of the Final Five (Final Six?), I had my memories intact and knew they'd be coming, even if all indications were that I was a Colonial admiral on indefinite leave. I left Gemenon to go to other colonies - duplication perks, so technically I went to ALL the other colonies at once - and started similar rumors in multiple places. All of this effort over the course of nearly a year came to precisely nothing; no matter what angle I attempted, the government would shut it down one way or another, while the media dismissed it as a bit of hysteria coming up on the 40th anniversary of the Colonial-Cylon war's armistice. Had they any real evidence that I was the one behind the rumors, they would probably have stripped me of my rank as well, but alas.

Since that didn't work, and I didn't have any local FTL resources - and the dyson shell that contained the Crucian Pentarchy was many, many lightyears distant - so I decided to pull rank and get assigned to the annual visit to the Armistice Station. It was expected to be a whole lot of nothing by the admiralty, of course. And so I arrived at the Armistice Station and waited. Fortunately, it was not long until a pair of Cylon Centurians entered, and shortly behind them, a Model Eight.

"Hot damn, I don't think that's Colonial fashion, but you are rocking that outfit," I said to the crimson-clad cylon, who walked over to me and regarded me curiously. "You know, I honestly had not figured things would go the way they did."

Her expression grew slightly confused, but remained curious. "Are you alive?" she asked me.

I waved a hand dismissively, standing up as I answered, "As alive as you are."

"Prove it," she said, and leaned in.

"Oh hell to the no." I shook my head and crossed my arms in a negating fashion, taking a few rapid paces backward. "Eight, that's like... incest. Do you and the other models run around bumping uglies against bulkheads? No, no. I'm here because I need to go talk to One and let him know he made his point. So would you kindly all go back to the basestar with me, before you nuke the station? I don't feel like having to deal with the resurrection tank today, thanks."

"I- you- what-" she stuttered, as I started walking toward the Centurions and the corridor behind them that led to their ship. I briefly waved to her impatiently, before she turned and followed at a rapid clip, as did the two machines. "You're not- who are you?"

"I am many things, but for the moment, obviously an infiltrating Cylon," I answered, briefly abusing a bit of long-distance technopathy to keep the basestar from detaching from the airlock. "Though One will laugh his head off when I tell him that I've been doing my level best to tell humanity that their children were coming home and got rebuffed at every turn, though. C'mon."

---

After something of a debrief with a bipolar Cavil who couldn't decide whether he wanted to scream or laugh, I suggested a new gambit: so far as the Admiralty knew, I was on assignment, and so I could infiltrate the fleet. Which worked out just fine... except I didn't get the position that was planned, but instead, Adama elected to keep control of the ship and ended up putting me in charge of the civilian fleet so far as logistics went. Which... it does kind of fit, having the admiral uninvolved in the day-to-day of a single battlestar, but still.

Of course, that also meant that when things went sour as they often did, I was the one cleaning it up. The one plus to that was that it meant I could do things my way - which meant cracking down on black market nonsense, putting down a riot on a prison ship (yes I'll arrange for a representative to negotiate and have your parole hearings but it can't be a terrorist, we've got to have SOME standards you freaks), smoothing relations between the newly sworn in President (a teacher), the nascent Quorum (opportunists turned politicians), and the military arm of the fleet (as embodied by Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh).

This not only derailed a number of what would have been B-plots for the heroes, but it left enough holes in the system that we could keep pulling rations out of thin air without anyone noticing, or basic necessities like toothpaste or cigarettes. Algae rations became a thing, but arranging hydroponics to be several times more productive than they should have been ensured that there was at least some flavor that could be added and thus they didn't taste like the third worst thing in the world.

Oh, and eventually we found the Battlestar Pegasus. Since I outranked Admiral Adama, I went over to the Pegasus to have a talk with Admiral Caine and kept a live mic broadcasting to a certain Cylon newscaster. We had a very frank discussion about the civilian fleet and her Cylon captive, I disagreed with Caine, she tried to shoot me in the head after I accused her of piracy, I moved out of the way of the bullet and slapped the gun out of her hand before throat-punching her and daring anyone else to even try and do what she couldn't. It was a whole thing. Eventually Adama put his son in charge of the Pegasus, which was asinine. I, on the other hand, chucked Helena Caine out the airlock.

Also there was a planet that the Colonials set up shop on, and the abused Cylon that was in Pegasus' brig was subsequently being hidden by some idiot scientist. So a little while after that happened, the Cylons showed up in force and took over the planet, which ended in an "I told you so" from me to them much later, since I stuck with Galactica instead of going down to the planet. Eventually, Pegasus was lost in evacuating the planet. How Lee Adama didn't go down with his ship, I don't know, because the rest of the crew died.

And, well, after that, there was the whole thing of finding Earth.

That did not go as predicted. Sure, the fleet appeared in orbit of Earth, but when they flashed in, they found that they were inside a dyson shell. And the entire inner surface, though it was very distant, looked to be habitable. As opposed to Earth which was a nuked-out shell. And so the Colonials decided that this would do just fine and settled on said inner surface. The local government, which were also humans, got in contact with them and passed on their greetings and explanation that they were from outside this universe, and that the shell moves along, but the voices of dissent were few and far between.

The voices of dissent, however, gathered in a seldom-used room on Galactica with the intention of figuring out a plan. I joined them.

Lee Adama was the first to speak up, and his objections were pretty much asinine; who knows who these people really are, this isn't Earth, we can't trust them, they could be Cylons, they might be planning to kill us, and so on. And so I punched Lee Adama in the throat. "No. You didn't even have the stones to go down with your ship, and you're still pining after your brother's girlfriend after she got him killed and she got married to another man. You're a disgrace to your family name."

That idiot scientist was the next, but mostly because he had a non-corporeal entity in his head telling him that this wasn't part of God's plan. Unfortunately for him, I could see her, and I'd had quite enough of all this nonsense. I did not punch Gaius Baltar in the throat, though. I put a hand on his shoulder and said, "The little angel on your shoulder makes some good points. Unfortunately, I have run out of patience with her idiocy, and she's not invited along."

I'm pretty sure she didn't expect to be run through with Ea. I'm pretty sure no one else expected me to pull Ea from the Gate of Babylon, nor did they expect her to become briefly visible before exploding into motes of light.

"Frak all of you. You cause any more problems, I'll kill you all myself. And by the way, you, you, you, and you are all Cylons but from this Earth and not the Colonies," I said as I pointed at the four of the Final Five that were here, because of course they had an imperative to keep going. "Contact the locals, they'll fix you, you're not the weirdest thing they've dealt with by far."

Pretty much the only thing to do after that point was to go grab Ellen from the Cylons and fuck off. Which was easy enough to do in a small ship, though it was made in Pentarchy style rather than Colonial or Cylon.

"Hello, John."
>"Hi, 'dad'. I don't suppose I could persuade you to help 'mother' here help recreate resurrection?"
"I'd be more inclined if you hadn't killed off the originals of your brothers and sisters, so, no."
>"I suppose you've got some trite nonsense about not fearing death, then."
"Well, you're the priest. Should we all be looking forward to the green Elysian fields, or the endless gray wastes of Tartarus?"
>"I prefer my immortality to be in this plane of existence, thank you."
"Mm. Bad news then, resurrection as you know it isn't going to work. Souls might reincarnate - I hear there's about twenty billion standing in line - but resurrection tech is kaput. It would require all six of us to be in one place, and that's not going to happen."
>"What? Why?"
"Because Ellen is dead."
>"... What?"
Bang. "I said, Ellen is dead."
>"What the frak?!"
"I never did like that bitch. She brought out all the worst in Saul."
>"Frak!" Bang.
"...oh, wow. He actually ragequit."
...
>"Where the frak am I?"
"Welcome to the endless gray wastes of Tartarus, John. Other philosophers would, perhaps, prefer Purgatory. The souls here atone, and in time can move on to Paradise, or reincarnate."
>"That... how are YOU here?"
"I am many things... but here? I am the final arbiter, he who sits upon the throne of Paradise. No mere Cylon."
>"You... still killed Ellen. What sort of a god kills an innocent woman?"
"The kind who has to explain that Cylons are very easily fooled by guns that shoot paintball squibs. She's got a bruise on her sternum and fell back in shock, you nitwit."
>"...Frak."