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A Shadow on the Pattern, part 8
A BSG/B5 Crossover Epic of DOOOOOOOOM.
And evil. And romance. And prophecy and aliens and war. Y'know. The usual.
Start at Part One
Previous Part
Note: So this is the part that gets its own name in my head, The Night Passes. This is the point in the screenplay we'd call the First Turn. So Yeah.
This is also the place where I warn you again that my Cylon history is quite a bit different. Hope you enjoy it!
Their first day of the visit was done and Sinclair was ready to get some sleep. This ship's clock was about two hours off the station's and it was late for him. Though the drinking at Joe's probably hadn't helped.
Unfastening his tunic, he asked, "So? What do you think?"
"Other than the fact that they know full well what attacked them and it's still somewhere on their tail?" Garibaldi answered dryly. "Because I am thrilled with the idea of enemies who destroy whole planets, let me tell you."
"That's bad enough," Sinclair agreed. But he'd started to get the idea that it was much worse than that. Ever since the Admiral's quarters and seeing those artifacts, he'd come to some rather terrible conclusions.
Garibaldi waved for him to get on with it and headed for the sink to wash his face. "You think there's something worse? Worse than a race as powerful as the Centauri, if not the Minbari, and we know nothing about them?"
"I don't know if it's worse, and maybe I drank too much of that awful moonshine they pass off as alcohol, but ... " he stopped speaking, uncertain whether he wanted to put words to it or not. It felt as if that would make it real somehow; if he kept it in his head, it would remain only a possibility.
Garibaldi looked back over his shoulder. "Jeff, spit it out."
He hung the tunic on the back of his chair and sat on the edge of the cot. "Vorlons brought all those people from Earth into their territory. They hid them there and yet they didn't do a damn thing to help them. I find that very... disturbing."
Garibaldi snorted and dried his face and hands on the small towel. "Course not. They don't even go to Council meetings; why would they want to stop billions of humans from getting killed? They don't interfere." He rolled his eyes. "Except when we want to be immortal and then it's all "you're too young" and boom." He slapped his hands together, smashing an imaginary ship like a mosquito, and wiped his hands on his trousers.
Sinclair couldn't help a chuckle because Michael was right of course, but then he shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Of course, I don't like that part, but -- these people are their pet project. I doubt anything happens in Vorlon space, especially nothing this big, that they don't have a hand in."
Garibaldi sat across from him on the other bunk, his eyes a little wide in surprise. "You think they did it themselves?"
"Not directly. I'm sure Sam or one of them would've mentioned if they'd seen Vorlon vessels before, but...think about it: the admiral had artifacts in his quarters that must have come from Earth. I could believe some parallel development, but a Japanese samurai helmet that looks like it came from Catherine's family home? No. They influenced the Colonists to be as similar to us as possible. Which means..." He trailed off and Garibaldi nodded slowly, putting it together in the same way.
"They must've intended for them to come back eventually."
"Right. Kosh told me, when I went to see him, 'the children come home'. Which I took as confirmation that they were human. But what if that's what the Vorlons wanted, and they set it up?"
"But why?"
"I don't know. But you don't write off a billion people as collateral damage to your plan unless that plan is pretty damn important." He remembered what else Kosh had told him was coming: 'Into fire. Storm. Darkness. Death.' He felt a chill slide across his skin. If that was his future, what the hell were these people bringing with them?
For a moment the small room was silent, as both sat deep in their own thoughts. "Vorlons are annoying and secretive," Garibaldi said slowly, "no doubt about that. And I don't doubt you're right that they've been interfering in the Colonies for a thousand years, but... I don't know, they don't seem interested enough in us lesser folk to bother." Then he made a disgusted face and shook his head. "I bet they heard about the attack, shrugged and continued doing whatever the hell Vorlons do when they're not being cryptic. We don't know anything about them, and they want it that way. We keep on doing what we were doing -- which is hoping they help out, but not being surprised when they don't."
Sinclair nodded and let out a breath, bending down to pull off his boots. Trust Michael to get at the heart of the matter. There was no way to understand the Vorlons because the Vorlons didn't want to be understood, so he would probably never know their motives for taking humans from Earth and then allowing them to mostly die, millennia later.
In the darkness after the lights were out, Michael's voice floated to him from the opposite rack. "Don't think I haven't noticed your obsession with getting into their Viper. And the answer is no, hell no, and over my dead body."
Sinclair laughed. "Get some sleep, Michael."
"Oh, damn it, that means you're gonna do it anyway," he groused.
Sinclair was still smiling as he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, breathing deeply to settle himself to sleep.
Not far away from the two visitors, Sam stared at the underside of Easy's rack above Kara's and slid the tag on its cord through his fingers, running his thumb over her name.
His whole body was numb and his mind pleasantly buzzed from the fake ambrosia at Joe's, but still he resisted sleeping, not drunk enough to pass out as he'd wanted. The memory of that thing blocking out the stars, unseen yet there, kept passing through his mind, circling like a vulture in his thoughts, waiting for him to sleep.
After Costanza and Racetrack clanged their way back into their racks and the room went quiet, his eyes shut of their own accord.
Only a second seemed to pass before he opened his eyes again and found himself back in the middle of homecourt in Caprica City. The bright lights bathed him from above, but all around, the dim hulking shapes of the seats rising upward to the high ceiling were silhouetted against a violet glow. For the first time, he felt as if the court was at the bottom of a hole in the ground.
He felt eyes watching him from somewhere, like a breath on the back of his neck, and spun, peering into the dark. "Who's there?" he called. "Come out and show yourself!"
No one was there.
A scuffling sound behind him made him whirl again, finding his knife in his hand. But there was nothing but fingers of shadow stretched along the floor at the base of the front row of seats.
He glanced up, but there was nothing that could be casting the shadows.
The shadow was growing, like a black ink spreading across the wooden floor toward him. But it was a darkness that had no reflection, no shine, nothingness. He stepped back, knowing he couldn't let it touch him. He retreated, and still the darkness flowed nearer.
A chill at his back warned him in time to turn and see it was on the floor behind him, oozing in from every direction, drowning the light all around him.
He threw his knife, but it fell into the dark and was gone without a sound.
He was trapped. His heart lurched into pounding and he looked frantically for a way out.
Another bright light caught his eyes upward. Kara was standing on the upper balcony, her bright hair glimmering golden as light shone on her from above as well. She was looking down at him, but with no expression on her face that he could see. He saw the same darkness flowing toward her along the wall, and soon she too would be surrounded.
"Kara! Run!" he yelled. "Get out! Get away, they're here!"
He stepped toward her, wanting to go to her, but his foot went into ... nothing. There was no floor, and suddenly he was falling into an endless void, no stars, only intense cold that wrapped around him like something alive.
It froze his bones, intense pain deep inside, but worse was the feeling of ice needles in his head, first one and then another, and another, without pause. Each pain piercing him was sharp on its own, and together unbearable.
"No!" He tried to scream, but there was something pressing his throat, like a rope around his neck, and he couldn't breathe. No matter how he thrashed, he couldn't get it off.
He had to get free...
His head struck the bottom of Easy's rack before he realized he was awake. "Ow! Frak!" He held his head, panting, then, desperate for air, he yanked back the curtain and swung his legs out to sit up.
Costanza peered down at him. "You okay?"
Sam combed through his hair and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Fine. Just a dream."
At least he hoped it was. He remembered every detail of it, and touched his throat. It hurt to swallow, and his skin felt bruised and throbbing. As if something more than a dream had tried to strangle him.
He held Kara's dogtag and prayed silently for it to be a dream, because if she was in danger there was nothing he could do to help.
After dinner at Ivanova's, the lieutenant commander brought her 'hostages' to the casino, which was exactly Kara's kind of place. The games of pure chance didn't interest her but it didn't take long to learn poker, which was very similar to triad, and by midnight she'd won a stack of credits, enough to return Ivanova's stake.
But Ivanova and Barolay had wandered off and Kara didn't feel like searching for them. So she went to the bar instead and started trying drinks.
A deep voice, with an odd accent said beside her, "You are from the lost human colony, I believe?"
Kara turned and flinched at the sight of the red eyes and spotted skull. Aliens. She was never getting used to the aliens, especially the ones who looked like enormous Tauron dracon lizards walking around and talking. It was the talking intelligently -- politely -- that seemed the most astonishing. After she'd taken a breath, she answered, "I am. Captain Thrace."
He brought both fists to his chest and nodded his head in a respectful greeting. "I am Ambassador G'Kar of the Narn Regime."
"Ambassador." She held in a sigh, silently cursing Sam again for leaving her with all this crap. "I need to tell you I have no authority to negotiate, sorry. You'll have to wait for our ambassador to come back."
"I see." He gestured to the bartender to bring him a drink, and then he turned to her again. "You seem alone. Perhaps we could merely be drinking companions and talk for a little while?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "Why not?"
His drink was a bright purple and gave off a whiff of gun cleaning fluid. Kara wrinkled her nose and decided she wouldn't be trying that one.
"Do you know much about my people?" he asked.
"Nope," she answered. "Not a thing."
"We were farmers," he answered. "Simple people. Until the Centauri conquered us, in their expansionism. I don't know if you can imagine this, but we lived in misery for generations - enslaved to Centauri whim." The biting hatred in his voice made a chill slip down her back, and it found its echo in her, remembering New Caprica. How the Cylons had taken her and stripped her away layer by layer, until sometimes it seemed there was nothing left but anger.
"I can imagine," she answered flatly, and emptied her glass.
G'Kar's red eyes settled on her and he nodded once in understanding. "Did you rise up and fight your oppressors as well?" G'Kar asked. "That is what we did. Every Narn from childhood was taught to fight, to be free, and take back what belonged to us. And in the end, we won our freedom."
She nodded slowly, imagining New Caprica having lasted years. She imagined little Nicky Tyrol growing up under the Cylons "guidance" -- Chief and Cally would have taught him to keep up the fight. Roslin and Tory would've ensured Hera grew up that way, too, unless the Cylons had found out her true identity. She tried to imagine Sam -- would he have found someone else eventually and had a kid to raise into resistance, too? But the picture wouldn't come together for her; she couldn't believe he would have lived long enough. But none of it had happened, because the Old Man and Lee had come, and they'd escaped out to space.
"We didn't win our freedom; we ran away," she said. "That's why we're here."
"Interesting that the Vorlon permitted such a thing," he said and lifted his hand at the bartender to get another drink. "They prize their secrecy, and yet here you are, capable of telling tales about their territory."
She shrugged. "We didn't even know they existed before we came here. We have nothing to tell."
"Still. I would be cautious," he advised. "They are too powerful to be truly benevolent."
"I'll keep that in mind." Then she turned to him, trying to smile. "So I should watch out for the Centauri and the Vorlons -- what's everyone else going to warn me about, when it comes to the Narn?"
He chuckled and lifted his glass to her in appreciation for turning it back on him. "They will say that we are aggressive and think only of revenge. Some have accused us of being mercenaries."
"Nothing wrong with fighting," Kara said.
"No, there is not," he agreed. "We are a strong, young race, looking for our rightful place, made strong by all we have endured."
"And you, Ambassador?" Kara asked. "What are people going to tell us about you?"
He hesitated and then leaned forward toward her to murmur, "Some will spread scandalous rumors about how I spend my nights with human females."
Her eyes widened in shock, "With you?"
"I have learned a lot I would show you, Captain Thrace," he offered.
She stared, not sure if she had just heard that. "I -- are you really asking me to ... to sleep with you?" she demanded incredulously. "To hook up? To... to frak? Seriously?"
"If you are interested, I am interested, and it would be a good thing to bond our peoples," he said, cheerfully, then he leaned a little closer and confided with what could only be a wicked gleam in his eye, "I have found some Human females are very pleasantly adventurous."
She let out a giggling snort, unable to believe what she was hearing. "I'm very adventurous," she smiled a little flirtatiously. Then, with a touch of true regret, not because she wanted to frak someone who looked like a lizard, but because he seemed fun, she added, "I'm also very married. Sorry."
"Ah, well," he inclined his head to her, in a rather courtly fashion, not too upset by the refusal. "It is my loss, and your mate's gain. Do you think your red-headed companion would be interested instead?"
Kara spluttered her drink back into the glass. "Barolay?" Then, remembering how Jean had glared at her over Sam, Kara smiled at G'Kar. "Maybe she would be. Why don't you go talk to her? But be more subtle. She takes a little while to warm up."
"Thank you for your advice."
Choking back a laugh, Kara saluted him with her glass. "No problem. Have fun."
She watched him walk away, eager to find Jean, and grinned into her glass. She couldn't wait to see Barolay's reaction.
She turned back to her martini with the fruity essence. It smelled good, but it wasn't right. Somewhere in all those bottles had to be the Earther version of ambrosia, whatever they called it.
"Good evening," a voice said at her elbow. Kara rolled her eyes to herself, wishing they'd leave her in peace.
She took a deep breath and turned, not hiding her annoyed expression. "What?" she asked.
"Captain Thrace, isn't it?" the black haired man wasn't someone she'd yet met. He seemed human, with dark hair and eyes, and a charming smile that immediately put her back up.
She took a swallow of her drink. "That's right. And you are?"
"Morden," he answered, still with that smile. "I represent a group very interested in what your people have to offer."
"You and everybody else," she responded, rolling her eyes.
"I assure you what you have to offer us is not limited to technology," he told her.
"Oh, really," she answered, flatly. "Well, sorry to tell you, you've wasted your time. I'm here waiting as a hostage for the commander, and I don't have the authority. You'll have to wait until Secretary of State Anders comes back. Sorry." She didn't bother moderating her tone to something actually sorry. He should consider himself lucky she wasn't punching people in the face.
"He was the tall one?" Morden asked.
She smirked at that description and nodded. "Yeah, the tall one. He'll be back tomorrow or maybe the next day. You can negotiate with him."
"We'll be sure to speak to him, too," Morden promised, seeming remarkably un-affected by her brush-off. "But indulge me for a moment. I'll buy you a drink," he offered and signaled the bartender to pour her another glass, as he perched on the stool beside her.
She shrugged. "Okay. Your choice."
"My associates are curious about what you want."
"What I want?" she repeated, confused by the question. "You mean, me personally?"
"You. If you could have anything the universe, my associates can give it to you, in exchange for your... support of our aims. Anything at all. So, what do you want?"
A trickle of unease passed down her spine. 'Anything in the universe' was a lot to promise in return for very little, and she knew triad too well to be pulled in by such a sucker bet. There was a catch in there, someplace, and she had no interest in getting hooked into his scheme.
She shrugged and grinned, "I want to drink real booze and eat real food. Learn to fly one of those Starfuries. And have sex with my husband. Not necessarily in that order," she added, acting deliberately saucy, while she watched his face.
But he was only mildly put off by her words. He curled a hand around his glass but didn't pick it up. "Is that all? Nothing... grander?" he asked. "What do you really want, Kara Thrace?"
Their eyes met, and a chill slipped down her back and the hairs on her arms stood up. His eyes seemed so flat and black and ... empty. Something inside her clenched up and warned her not to talk to him any more. "I want," she said, softly, leaning closer to him as if she was going to whisper a secret. He leaned in to listen, and there was an eager feel to him that made her feel as if hostile eyes were on the back of her neck. "I want you to frak off and let me enjoy my drink in peace."
Then she sat back and picked up her drink again.
He straightened and looked disappointed. "Such small wants," he chided.
She shrugged. "I'm a simple girl."
He stood. "I'm sorry to hear that." He walked away, and Kara turned on the stool to watch him leave.
As soon as he disappeared through the door, she let out a breath and realized her hand was clutching the tumbler so tightly her fingers were aching.
Then she realized the bastard had stuck her with his untouched drink. "Son of a bitch!"
So she drank that one, too, and decided she'd better go find Ivanova and Barolay and stop letting herself get cornered at the bar by annoying alien ambassadors.
Doctor Franklin hummed to himself as he worked. He checked on the Markab in post-op and she was doing well, so he went to his office to take a break and maybe grab a bite in the mess.
There was a patiently blinking light on his terminal that reminded him his analyses were finished on the humans from the lost distant colony.
He sat down and punched up the results. They were human, as he had expected. But not quite modern - there had been some drift, as he had expected. Feeling curious, he sent for some anthropological results for comparison, but he was fairly sure that they had been isolated from Earth's genetic shifts for at least ten thousand years, which wasn't exactly a shock, but certainly interesting. A long lost colony indeed.
There was, however, a notation that one of the samples had been rejected from the average because of contamination. He pulled it up to look at in more detail.
What the hell? How had silicates got into the sample?
Intrigued he continued to work - testing and experimenting. The lure of scientific discovery kept him going all night, running more and more experiments and the results continued to pour in.
The blood sample gave a perfect O-Neg, but an hour later, molecular analysis confirmed it was bogus. Electron microscopy and nuclear staining took a few more hours, but the results were even more astonishing. By morning, he sat at his computer and stared, knowing the answer. He needed more samples to prove it, but he knew it was true.
Four of the new arrivals were as human as Stephen himself, if a bit drifted sideways. But the fifth was not. He mimicked them almost perfectly, but the readouts were certain: at the molecular level, Samuel T. Anders was made of the same stuff as a Vorlon ship.
He was Vorlon technology walking around. It was a nearly perfect imitation of human, including damage from a lung infection. He would age over time, and Stephen suspected he had grown. Even his genes seemed human, right down to the DNA, but they weren't functional for cellular division. Instead, there were some kind of complex silicate nanobots taking the place of mitochondria and replication in his cells. It was a scientific bonanza.
Stephen's hands were shaking as he lifted his link to contact the commander, and then put his hand down. Sinclair wasn't on station, and Stephen didn't want to tell anyone else. Ivanova might feel duty-bound to tell Earthdome. Sinclair, might too, but Stephen knew he would think very hard about it first.
Because Sinclair knew as well as Franklin did, if not even more so, that there were parts of Earth Force and Earth Gov, who would do anything to study this technology. Some might not care that it was housed in a sentient being, who seemed to believe he was human.
Which was bad enough to think about, except the last time the Vorlons had thought the lesser races might be getting technology too advanced for them, they had destroyed an entire space ship and killed everyone aboard. The Vorlons might not let this information get out. They might not want their creation to know the truth either.
It was all too big for Stephen to handle on his own.
He encoded his files, and then password locked them to his eyes only. When he took a nap, it was full of nightmares of horrifying medical experiments, but the victims changed from moment to moment. But the one performing the experiments was always himself.
(Part 9 will be... um, not so prompt, I'm afraid, since I have a ficathon gift due soonish, but asap, I promise. :) )
A BSG/B5 Crossover Epic of DOOOOOOOOM.
And evil. And romance. And prophecy and aliens and war. Y'know. The usual.
Start at Part One
Previous Part
Note: So this is the part that gets its own name in my head, The Night Passes. This is the point in the screenplay we'd call the First Turn. So Yeah.
This is also the place where I warn you again that my Cylon history is quite a bit different. Hope you enjoy it!
Their first day of the visit was done and Sinclair was ready to get some sleep. This ship's clock was about two hours off the station's and it was late for him. Though the drinking at Joe's probably hadn't helped.
Unfastening his tunic, he asked, "So? What do you think?"
"Other than the fact that they know full well what attacked them and it's still somewhere on their tail?" Garibaldi answered dryly. "Because I am thrilled with the idea of enemies who destroy whole planets, let me tell you."
"That's bad enough," Sinclair agreed. But he'd started to get the idea that it was much worse than that. Ever since the Admiral's quarters and seeing those artifacts, he'd come to some rather terrible conclusions.
Garibaldi waved for him to get on with it and headed for the sink to wash his face. "You think there's something worse? Worse than a race as powerful as the Centauri, if not the Minbari, and we know nothing about them?"
"I don't know if it's worse, and maybe I drank too much of that awful moonshine they pass off as alcohol, but ... " he stopped speaking, uncertain whether he wanted to put words to it or not. It felt as if that would make it real somehow; if he kept it in his head, it would remain only a possibility.
Garibaldi looked back over his shoulder. "Jeff, spit it out."
He hung the tunic on the back of his chair and sat on the edge of the cot. "Vorlons brought all those people from Earth into their territory. They hid them there and yet they didn't do a damn thing to help them. I find that very... disturbing."
Garibaldi snorted and dried his face and hands on the small towel. "Course not. They don't even go to Council meetings; why would they want to stop billions of humans from getting killed? They don't interfere." He rolled his eyes. "Except when we want to be immortal and then it's all "you're too young" and boom." He slapped his hands together, smashing an imaginary ship like a mosquito, and wiped his hands on his trousers.
Sinclair couldn't help a chuckle because Michael was right of course, but then he shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Of course, I don't like that part, but -- these people are their pet project. I doubt anything happens in Vorlon space, especially nothing this big, that they don't have a hand in."
Garibaldi sat across from him on the other bunk, his eyes a little wide in surprise. "You think they did it themselves?"
"Not directly. I'm sure Sam or one of them would've mentioned if they'd seen Vorlon vessels before, but...think about it: the admiral had artifacts in his quarters that must have come from Earth. I could believe some parallel development, but a Japanese samurai helmet that looks like it came from Catherine's family home? No. They influenced the Colonists to be as similar to us as possible. Which means..." He trailed off and Garibaldi nodded slowly, putting it together in the same way.
"They must've intended for them to come back eventually."
"Right. Kosh told me, when I went to see him, 'the children come home'. Which I took as confirmation that they were human. But what if that's what the Vorlons wanted, and they set it up?"
"But why?"
"I don't know. But you don't write off a billion people as collateral damage to your plan unless that plan is pretty damn important." He remembered what else Kosh had told him was coming: 'Into fire. Storm. Darkness. Death.' He felt a chill slide across his skin. If that was his future, what the hell were these people bringing with them?
For a moment the small room was silent, as both sat deep in their own thoughts. "Vorlons are annoying and secretive," Garibaldi said slowly, "no doubt about that. And I don't doubt you're right that they've been interfering in the Colonies for a thousand years, but... I don't know, they don't seem interested enough in us lesser folk to bother." Then he made a disgusted face and shook his head. "I bet they heard about the attack, shrugged and continued doing whatever the hell Vorlons do when they're not being cryptic. We don't know anything about them, and they want it that way. We keep on doing what we were doing -- which is hoping they help out, but not being surprised when they don't."
Sinclair nodded and let out a breath, bending down to pull off his boots. Trust Michael to get at the heart of the matter. There was no way to understand the Vorlons because the Vorlons didn't want to be understood, so he would probably never know their motives for taking humans from Earth and then allowing them to mostly die, millennia later.
In the darkness after the lights were out, Michael's voice floated to him from the opposite rack. "Don't think I haven't noticed your obsession with getting into their Viper. And the answer is no, hell no, and over my dead body."
Sinclair laughed. "Get some sleep, Michael."
"Oh, damn it, that means you're gonna do it anyway," he groused.
Sinclair was still smiling as he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, breathing deeply to settle himself to sleep.
* * *
Not far away from the two visitors, Sam stared at the underside of Easy's rack above Kara's and slid the tag on its cord through his fingers, running his thumb over her name.
His whole body was numb and his mind pleasantly buzzed from the fake ambrosia at Joe's, but still he resisted sleeping, not drunk enough to pass out as he'd wanted. The memory of that thing blocking out the stars, unseen yet there, kept passing through his mind, circling like a vulture in his thoughts, waiting for him to sleep.
After Costanza and Racetrack clanged their way back into their racks and the room went quiet, his eyes shut of their own accord.
Only a second seemed to pass before he opened his eyes again and found himself back in the middle of homecourt in Caprica City. The bright lights bathed him from above, but all around, the dim hulking shapes of the seats rising upward to the high ceiling were silhouetted against a violet glow. For the first time, he felt as if the court was at the bottom of a hole in the ground.
He felt eyes watching him from somewhere, like a breath on the back of his neck, and spun, peering into the dark. "Who's there?" he called. "Come out and show yourself!"
No one was there.
A scuffling sound behind him made him whirl again, finding his knife in his hand. But there was nothing but fingers of shadow stretched along the floor at the base of the front row of seats.
He glanced up, but there was nothing that could be casting the shadows.
The shadow was growing, like a black ink spreading across the wooden floor toward him. But it was a darkness that had no reflection, no shine, nothingness. He stepped back, knowing he couldn't let it touch him. He retreated, and still the darkness flowed nearer.
A chill at his back warned him in time to turn and see it was on the floor behind him, oozing in from every direction, drowning the light all around him.
He threw his knife, but it fell into the dark and was gone without a sound.
He was trapped. His heart lurched into pounding and he looked frantically for a way out.
Another bright light caught his eyes upward. Kara was standing on the upper balcony, her bright hair glimmering golden as light shone on her from above as well. She was looking down at him, but with no expression on her face that he could see. He saw the same darkness flowing toward her along the wall, and soon she too would be surrounded.
"Kara! Run!" he yelled. "Get out! Get away, they're here!"
He stepped toward her, wanting to go to her, but his foot went into ... nothing. There was no floor, and suddenly he was falling into an endless void, no stars, only intense cold that wrapped around him like something alive.
It froze his bones, intense pain deep inside, but worse was the feeling of ice needles in his head, first one and then another, and another, without pause. Each pain piercing him was sharp on its own, and together unbearable.
"No!" He tried to scream, but there was something pressing his throat, like a rope around his neck, and he couldn't breathe. No matter how he thrashed, he couldn't get it off.
He had to get free...
His head struck the bottom of Easy's rack before he realized he was awake. "Ow! Frak!" He held his head, panting, then, desperate for air, he yanked back the curtain and swung his legs out to sit up.
Costanza peered down at him. "You okay?"
Sam combed through his hair and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Fine. Just a dream."
At least he hoped it was. He remembered every detail of it, and touched his throat. It hurt to swallow, and his skin felt bruised and throbbing. As if something more than a dream had tried to strangle him.
He held Kara's dogtag and prayed silently for it to be a dream, because if she was in danger there was nothing he could do to help.
* * *
After dinner at Ivanova's, the lieutenant commander brought her 'hostages' to the casino, which was exactly Kara's kind of place. The games of pure chance didn't interest her but it didn't take long to learn poker, which was very similar to triad, and by midnight she'd won a stack of credits, enough to return Ivanova's stake.
But Ivanova and Barolay had wandered off and Kara didn't feel like searching for them. So she went to the bar instead and started trying drinks.
A deep voice, with an odd accent said beside her, "You are from the lost human colony, I believe?"
Kara turned and flinched at the sight of the red eyes and spotted skull. Aliens. She was never getting used to the aliens, especially the ones who looked like enormous Tauron dracon lizards walking around and talking. It was the talking intelligently -- politely -- that seemed the most astonishing. After she'd taken a breath, she answered, "I am. Captain Thrace."
He brought both fists to his chest and nodded his head in a respectful greeting. "I am Ambassador G'Kar of the Narn Regime."
"Ambassador." She held in a sigh, silently cursing Sam again for leaving her with all this crap. "I need to tell you I have no authority to negotiate, sorry. You'll have to wait for our ambassador to come back."
"I see." He gestured to the bartender to bring him a drink, and then he turned to her again. "You seem alone. Perhaps we could merely be drinking companions and talk for a little while?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "Why not?"
His drink was a bright purple and gave off a whiff of gun cleaning fluid. Kara wrinkled her nose and decided she wouldn't be trying that one.
"Do you know much about my people?" he asked.
"Nope," she answered. "Not a thing."
"We were farmers," he answered. "Simple people. Until the Centauri conquered us, in their expansionism. I don't know if you can imagine this, but we lived in misery for generations - enslaved to Centauri whim." The biting hatred in his voice made a chill slip down her back, and it found its echo in her, remembering New Caprica. How the Cylons had taken her and stripped her away layer by layer, until sometimes it seemed there was nothing left but anger.
"I can imagine," she answered flatly, and emptied her glass.
G'Kar's red eyes settled on her and he nodded once in understanding. "Did you rise up and fight your oppressors as well?" G'Kar asked. "That is what we did. Every Narn from childhood was taught to fight, to be free, and take back what belonged to us. And in the end, we won our freedom."
She nodded slowly, imagining New Caprica having lasted years. She imagined little Nicky Tyrol growing up under the Cylons "guidance" -- Chief and Cally would have taught him to keep up the fight. Roslin and Tory would've ensured Hera grew up that way, too, unless the Cylons had found out her true identity. She tried to imagine Sam -- would he have found someone else eventually and had a kid to raise into resistance, too? But the picture wouldn't come together for her; she couldn't believe he would have lived long enough. But none of it had happened, because the Old Man and Lee had come, and they'd escaped out to space.
"We didn't win our freedom; we ran away," she said. "That's why we're here."
"Interesting that the Vorlon permitted such a thing," he said and lifted his hand at the bartender to get another drink. "They prize their secrecy, and yet here you are, capable of telling tales about their territory."
She shrugged. "We didn't even know they existed before we came here. We have nothing to tell."
"Still. I would be cautious," he advised. "They are too powerful to be truly benevolent."
"I'll keep that in mind." Then she turned to him, trying to smile. "So I should watch out for the Centauri and the Vorlons -- what's everyone else going to warn me about, when it comes to the Narn?"
He chuckled and lifted his glass to her in appreciation for turning it back on him. "They will say that we are aggressive and think only of revenge. Some have accused us of being mercenaries."
"Nothing wrong with fighting," Kara said.
"No, there is not," he agreed. "We are a strong, young race, looking for our rightful place, made strong by all we have endured."
"And you, Ambassador?" Kara asked. "What are people going to tell us about you?"
He hesitated and then leaned forward toward her to murmur, "Some will spread scandalous rumors about how I spend my nights with human females."
Her eyes widened in shock, "With you?"
"I have learned a lot I would show you, Captain Thrace," he offered.
She stared, not sure if she had just heard that. "I -- are you really asking me to ... to sleep with you?" she demanded incredulously. "To hook up? To... to frak? Seriously?"
"If you are interested, I am interested, and it would be a good thing to bond our peoples," he said, cheerfully, then he leaned a little closer and confided with what could only be a wicked gleam in his eye, "I have found some Human females are very pleasantly adventurous."
She let out a giggling snort, unable to believe what she was hearing. "I'm very adventurous," she smiled a little flirtatiously. Then, with a touch of true regret, not because she wanted to frak someone who looked like a lizard, but because he seemed fun, she added, "I'm also very married. Sorry."
"Ah, well," he inclined his head to her, in a rather courtly fashion, not too upset by the refusal. "It is my loss, and your mate's gain. Do you think your red-headed companion would be interested instead?"
Kara spluttered her drink back into the glass. "Barolay?" Then, remembering how Jean had glared at her over Sam, Kara smiled at G'Kar. "Maybe she would be. Why don't you go talk to her? But be more subtle. She takes a little while to warm up."
"Thank you for your advice."
Choking back a laugh, Kara saluted him with her glass. "No problem. Have fun."
She watched him walk away, eager to find Jean, and grinned into her glass. She couldn't wait to see Barolay's reaction.
She turned back to her martini with the fruity essence. It smelled good, but it wasn't right. Somewhere in all those bottles had to be the Earther version of ambrosia, whatever they called it.
"Good evening," a voice said at her elbow. Kara rolled her eyes to herself, wishing they'd leave her in peace.
She took a deep breath and turned, not hiding her annoyed expression. "What?" she asked.
"Captain Thrace, isn't it?" the black haired man wasn't someone she'd yet met. He seemed human, with dark hair and eyes, and a charming smile that immediately put her back up.
She took a swallow of her drink. "That's right. And you are?"
"Morden," he answered, still with that smile. "I represent a group very interested in what your people have to offer."
"You and everybody else," she responded, rolling her eyes.
"I assure you what you have to offer us is not limited to technology," he told her.
"Oh, really," she answered, flatly. "Well, sorry to tell you, you've wasted your time. I'm here waiting as a hostage for the commander, and I don't have the authority. You'll have to wait until Secretary of State Anders comes back. Sorry." She didn't bother moderating her tone to something actually sorry. He should consider himself lucky she wasn't punching people in the face.
"He was the tall one?" Morden asked.
She smirked at that description and nodded. "Yeah, the tall one. He'll be back tomorrow or maybe the next day. You can negotiate with him."
"We'll be sure to speak to him, too," Morden promised, seeming remarkably un-affected by her brush-off. "But indulge me for a moment. I'll buy you a drink," he offered and signaled the bartender to pour her another glass, as he perched on the stool beside her.
She shrugged. "Okay. Your choice."
"My associates are curious about what you want."
"What I want?" she repeated, confused by the question. "You mean, me personally?"
"You. If you could have anything the universe, my associates can give it to you, in exchange for your... support of our aims. Anything at all. So, what do you want?"
A trickle of unease passed down her spine. 'Anything in the universe' was a lot to promise in return for very little, and she knew triad too well to be pulled in by such a sucker bet. There was a catch in there, someplace, and she had no interest in getting hooked into his scheme.
She shrugged and grinned, "I want to drink real booze and eat real food. Learn to fly one of those Starfuries. And have sex with my husband. Not necessarily in that order," she added, acting deliberately saucy, while she watched his face.
But he was only mildly put off by her words. He curled a hand around his glass but didn't pick it up. "Is that all? Nothing... grander?" he asked. "What do you really want, Kara Thrace?"
Their eyes met, and a chill slipped down her back and the hairs on her arms stood up. His eyes seemed so flat and black and ... empty. Something inside her clenched up and warned her not to talk to him any more. "I want," she said, softly, leaning closer to him as if she was going to whisper a secret. He leaned in to listen, and there was an eager feel to him that made her feel as if hostile eyes were on the back of her neck. "I want you to frak off and let me enjoy my drink in peace."
Then she sat back and picked up her drink again.
He straightened and looked disappointed. "Such small wants," he chided.
She shrugged. "I'm a simple girl."
He stood. "I'm sorry to hear that." He walked away, and Kara turned on the stool to watch him leave.
As soon as he disappeared through the door, she let out a breath and realized her hand was clutching the tumbler so tightly her fingers were aching.
Then she realized the bastard had stuck her with his untouched drink. "Son of a bitch!"
So she drank that one, too, and decided she'd better go find Ivanova and Barolay and stop letting herself get cornered at the bar by annoying alien ambassadors.
* * *
Doctor Franklin hummed to himself as he worked. He checked on the Markab in post-op and she was doing well, so he went to his office to take a break and maybe grab a bite in the mess.
There was a patiently blinking light on his terminal that reminded him his analyses were finished on the humans from the lost distant colony.
He sat down and punched up the results. They were human, as he had expected. But not quite modern - there had been some drift, as he had expected. Feeling curious, he sent for some anthropological results for comparison, but he was fairly sure that they had been isolated from Earth's genetic shifts for at least ten thousand years, which wasn't exactly a shock, but certainly interesting. A long lost colony indeed.
There was, however, a notation that one of the samples had been rejected from the average because of contamination. He pulled it up to look at in more detail.
What the hell? How had silicates got into the sample?
Intrigued he continued to work - testing and experimenting. The lure of scientific discovery kept him going all night, running more and more experiments and the results continued to pour in.
The blood sample gave a perfect O-Neg, but an hour later, molecular analysis confirmed it was bogus. Electron microscopy and nuclear staining took a few more hours, but the results were even more astonishing. By morning, he sat at his computer and stared, knowing the answer. He needed more samples to prove it, but he knew it was true.
Four of the new arrivals were as human as Stephen himself, if a bit drifted sideways. But the fifth was not. He mimicked them almost perfectly, but the readouts were certain: at the molecular level, Samuel T. Anders was made of the same stuff as a Vorlon ship.
He was Vorlon technology walking around. It was a nearly perfect imitation of human, including damage from a lung infection. He would age over time, and Stephen suspected he had grown. Even his genes seemed human, right down to the DNA, but they weren't functional for cellular division. Instead, there were some kind of complex silicate nanobots taking the place of mitochondria and replication in his cells. It was a scientific bonanza.
Stephen's hands were shaking as he lifted his link to contact the commander, and then put his hand down. Sinclair wasn't on station, and Stephen didn't want to tell anyone else. Ivanova might feel duty-bound to tell Earthdome. Sinclair, might too, but Stephen knew he would think very hard about it first.
Because Sinclair knew as well as Franklin did, if not even more so, that there were parts of Earth Force and Earth Gov, who would do anything to study this technology. Some might not care that it was housed in a sentient being, who seemed to believe he was human.
Which was bad enough to think about, except the last time the Vorlons had thought the lesser races might be getting technology too advanced for them, they had destroyed an entire space ship and killed everyone aboard. The Vorlons might not let this information get out. They might not want their creation to know the truth either.
It was all too big for Stephen to handle on his own.
He encoded his files, and then password locked them to his eyes only. When he took a nap, it was full of nightmares of horrifying medical experiments, but the victims changed from moment to moment. But the one performing the experiments was always himself.
(Part 9 will be... um, not so prompt, I'm afraid, since I have a ficathon gift due soonish, but asap, I promise. :) )
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yes, there's more. now whether I'm up to rewriting all of B5 with a BSG twist... eh, probably not. But there's definitely more!