*happy dances* No more "Flight of the Phoenix"! Free at last, free at last... Felix and Dee have SO many fewer scenes in "Pegasus"! *twirls*

Ahem. Yes.

Fandom: BSG
Pairing: Baltar/Six, Gaeta/Dualla
Warning: Violence, some language (no more than the actual show)
Word Count: 2652
AN: Part of Arc One. The previous installments can be found here. Takes place during "Flight of the Phoenix", although the timeline's a little wonky.


Patrick's Rune
At Tara in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place
By God’s almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness.

--Madeleine L'Engle


I.

The Commander has told them what’s coming, what to expect, but even so, Dee finds her palms are damp and cold. She blots them on her pants and tries to make the motion subtle. At least she’s not alone; she can’t remember the CIC ever being so quiet.

The marines bring her—it gotta remember ‘it’—in.

It looks so much like Sharon.

And yet it doesn’t.

It looks around the CIC. It has none of Sharon’s shy affability; Dee sees nothing familiar in the Cylon’s face. Only a kind of impassive awareness. It was easier to think of Helo loving this thing when she was only an abstract, a Sharon look-alike. Helo’s been in Sharon’s wake for longer than she can remember. But this…

“We need to work quickly. We're on borrowed time.” She—it—shifts uneasily from foot to foot, a Sharon gesture, and holds up her cuffed hands in supplication.

“Let her go.” Adama’s voice, so prosaic, breaks a little of the Cylon’s spell. The Marine’s come forward and undo the shackles and take the control rod off the neck collar.

Freed, the Sharon-Cylon turns around and looks right at her. “Dee—“ She feels her eyes widen at hearing her name come from the Cylon’s lips, even in spite of everything the Old Man’s told them. It looks like Sharon, but is so obviously not. She didn’t expect familiarity. “Do you still carry your father's pocket knife?”

Dee’s back stiffens and she looks over at the Commander, incredulous.

Adama nods. “Give it to her.”

Dee’s lips thin and anger spurts fiery in her chest, but she digs it out of her back pocket, never taking her eyes off the Commander. She hands it over, careful not to touch the Cylon’s fingers. She suddenly feels a greater sympathy for Cally and thinks it’s very fortunate the knife is the only weapon she has. This isn’t Sharon. This is an abomination. The Cylon looks at her several moments longer than necessary, as if she knows what Dee’s thinking, and then turns away and walks to the other side of the CIC.

She looks at Felix. She doesn’t mean to; it’s just sort of a reflex action, but she kicks herself for it. He’s already looking her way, frozen mid-motion, his expression unhappy.

Unhappy? Why unhappy?

When he catches her looking, he looks away and the I’m stressed out muscle in his jaw tightens into prominence.

II.

“Mr. Gaeta, can you set me up with a fiber-optic com link? I need broadcast to all frequencies and direct link to the mainframe.”

At the sound of his name from her mouth—it’s mouth—Felix snaps back to attention. It walks over to the war table; Dr. Baltar backs away from it, his expression torn between fascinated and revolted. Felix understands how he feels. He looks to Adama for confirmation, wanting to be seen taking orders from a Cylon as little as he wants to be taking orders from one.

“Do it.”

“Sir.” He disconnects the cable from its spool and feeds it out across the distance to her. “Right here, Sharon.”

Now that she’s here, in front of him, he wonders how much she remembers, how much she knows. Does she know what’s been done to him? Does she remember him handing off the gun? When he looks into her dark and human-seeming eyes, what will he see? Recognition? Pleasure?

He doesn’t know. He’s afraid to find out. All it will take is one word from her, one careless moment, one injudicious word, and he’ll be sucking vacuum before he can say ‘Lords of Kobol’.

He’s sweating. He wonders if anyone else can tell.

At the last second, he jerks his gaze up to hers. It takes everything in him not to recoil, not to flinch away. His last memories of her are blood-stained and terrifying. But he sees nothing in her face. Nothing at all. “Thanks,” she murmurs, and turns half away.

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

She opens Dee’s folding knife and strips the adapter off the fiber-optic. Blue light bleeds over onto her fingers.

The dradis beeps, the klaxons sound and he steps away from her to go to the console. “Dradis! Here they come. Multiple targets. Bearing 371, carom 552. Cylon raiders.” The dradis lights up like a Midwinter tree, more raiders than they’ve seen since Ragnar. Lords save them.

“Bastards tracked us, all right.” Tigh sounds satisfied.

“Launch vipers,” Adama answers, as dispassionate as Tigh is not.

He looks back over his shoulder to see Dee wrest away the headset from Alana King, taking over the comm. He would smile if things were a little less dire. A fast glance tells him everyone else is moving to their action stations just as quickly. He feels a momentary surge of pride at that; his people.

“Vipers are launching, sir,” Dee calls out. He catches her gaze flick his way again. Or maybe she’s just keeping an eye on Sharon—the Cylon.

“Mr. Gaeta, have the other ships begin their jumps. If this doesn’t work, I don’t want them left as sitting ducks.”

“Aye sir.” Felix gestures to McKenzie, and they start broadcasting the transmit codes, while he keeps one nervous eye on Sharon. She’s just standing in the middle of all the chaos, the cable held between the fingers of one hand, and Dee’s knife fisted in the other. Her breath seems to come faster, as if she’s nervous, and he watches her square her shoulders a little bit; a gesture he’s seen Sharon—the other Sharon—make a hundred times. It gives him a weird sense of vertigo, as if the deck could go from beneath his feet at any second. He shakes himself once, and throws himself back into the task at hand.

Dee throws the Viper comms up on the CIC broadcast speakers. Sharon the Cylon looks down at her hand and uses Dee’s knife to slice open the skin of her palm.

Hotdog’s voice blares out over the comm. “Apollo, the raiders are holding.”

”Galactica, Apollo. Raiders are holding formation. Repeat, raiders are holding formation.”

“What the hell?” From satisfaction, Tigh now sounds confused. All heads turn to the Cylon, except Dr. Baltar, who’s put his hands over his ears and turned from the display screen as if the imminent violence turns him sick. Given what he knows about Baltar, perhaps that isn’t too far off the truth.

And more raiders just keep on coming.

Blood, shocking and crimson, wells from the gash on her hand, puddling in her palm and trickling in thick dribbles to the floor. “Okay, this is how it's going to work.” Sharon’s voice is thick and stressed. She’s half bent, as if something deep inside her aches and throbs. Is it even possible that she feels pain? That would seem to be a major design flaw, any way you look at it. “The raiders are going to send a signal to activate the virus. It could take a few seconds. On my mark, initiate the computer wipe. Miss the window...”

Felix already understands. “The virus takes over every system in the ship.” He stops gawping at the screen and goes for his work station, cursing himself for getting distracted, even for a second.

“Yeah. Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six. Right, commander?” Sharon takes the live end of the cable and shoves it under the skin of her palm, up towards the wrist. “Ugh…” The pain in her voice sounds real as she works it deeper, fingers flexing.

“What the hell is she doing?” Tight wonders, openmouthed in wonder and—for once—speaking for all of them. Sharon whimpers, soft, birdlike noises, and sways on her feet. Felix can hardly look away, wondering if there’s something like this hidden away in his body, in his self, something that he’ll have to eventually bleed for as well.

“They've made contact, sir.”

Felix drags his eyes away and goes back to his console. The virus flickers in and out of the code as if it’s laughing at him. Faster now, nested deeper than before. Lords, this better work. “It's moving too fast; I can't follow it.”

“We gotta stop this,” Tigh says, and oh, gods, if only they could. But there’s only one way out of this now.

“Stand by to execute computer wipe on my command.”

“Systems ready, sir.”

“Wipe the hard drives now.”

“Do it.” But Adama doesn’t have to say it this time; Felix is already on the button. He watches the activity bar fill, tumbling numbers as fast as it can, but still entirely too slow. He wonders if this is how it’s all going to end, then.

Hermes, Lord of all Portals, he who watches over travelers, watch over us now. Apollo, Lord of the Unconquered Sun, lift your children into the palm of your hand and watch over us now, Lady Artemis, Queen of the Hunt and of Wisdom, let your all-seeing eye find us and have mercy…

It amazes him, how much he still remembers; how much of it comes back to him at moments like this, even when he’s not sure how much he believes. His mother spent damn near every day of her life on her knees in temple, and look how much good it did her. But the prayers still come back, like ghosts of the dead.

”My gods what are they doing?” Starbuck murmurs the comm, as if to herself. He looks over from his readings to the dradis and sees the raiders haven’t moved, still holding in eerily geometric positions.

“Weapons are still offline,” Tigh says, like Felix doesn’t frakking know it. “No dradis. Systems down. We're looking at a godsdamned bloodbath. We're defenseless.”

Yes, yes, I know, you drunk old sot; shut up and let me work, will you?

III.

Voices. Too many voices.

”Apollo, Hotdog. Here they come!

“All right, copy, Hotdog.”

”Gods, there must be hundreds of them.”

“Cylons are still moving in. She set us up!”

His wrist feels crushed, where she’s been holding on, too tight. “Gaius, I want to go,” she insists again. She looks ill, her wrist held to her lips. “I can’t…”

“I can’t believe this is how I’m going to die.”

She glares at him, sidelong. “Is there ever a moment where you think of someone beyond yourself, Gaius?”

“Give me your sidearm.”

“Yessir.”

“And what do you think he’s going to do with it, Gaius?” she murmurs tautly. “Are you really going to let him commit cold blooded murder, right here in front of you? Oh, but I forgot…” Her hands cradle his face in a mockery of affection. “You prefer to stand idly by.”

Adama cocks the gun and puts it to Lieutenant Valerii’s head. Her eyes were rolled up to the whites; as Adama levels it, they come back, dark and glittering with emotion Baltar can’t name. He shakes his head, but no one notices. “If they're coming for you, they're gonna be very disappointed.”

“Do it,” Tigh agrees, horrid war-mongering fossil that he is. Baltar wagers he’d be glad to see Lieutenant Valerii’s brains splattered all over the deck.

“And he’d probably want souvenirs,” she growls, stalking like an impatient lioness behind him.

“What are you waiting for?”

“This.” Her eyes roll back in her head again and her body arches. He turns aside and covers his ears again, hoping he can shut out CIC and his ever-present shadow both.

There is a stutter, jerk, and then the hum of electrons returning. Startled, his hands fall away and he turns in time to watch Valerii sag to her knees.

“You should help her, Gaius,” she plants her hands on his shoulders and gives him a shove. “You know, now that the danger is over .”

“What the hell?” Tigh seems confused. How utterly unsurprising.

“We just transmitted a signal,” Lieutenant Gaeta answers, sounding equally stunned. Not for the first time, Baltar wonders what criminal mischance drove the boy into the military. He’s got a half-decent mind on him. Stiff as a rail, of course, and nowhere near in Baltar’s league, but really, who is? It still seems criminal that he’s going to waste following the orders of a boor like Tigh.

Apollo—one of the few pilots he does recognize by voice—pipes in over the comm. “Uh, Galactica? They--they seem to have lost power. They're drifting out of control.”

“What the hell?” Tigh repeats.

“Cylons sent a computer virus. But we just sent one back.”

“Apollo, this is Galactica. Kill the bastards.”

“You see?” she asks, fingers tightening painfully on his shoulders. Tomorrow, he’ll have bruises that he’ll have no way to explain.

“Yeah! Come on, baby.”

“Roger that.” Even Apollo’s voice sounds oilily smug. “Vipers, weapons free. Engage. This--this is payback.”

“Look at them, Gaius.” Her strong fingers grab his chin and forcibly turn his face back to the display. “Look . You condemn my people for genocide? Well, what do you think this is? They’re…” her voice trembles, torn between anger and grief, “they’re helpless! But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because they’re only toasters , after all.” She lets him go, and he swings around to look at her. Tears turn her eyes to prisms of color and run down her cheeks. “I tell you one thing,” she says, her voice vicious and cold, “a Cylon would never laugh as they do their killing.”

He’s trembling. His stomach is sour and he’s shaking like a leaf. Not only because of the slaughter going on; not only because of those electronic blips, disappearing systematically one by one from the heads-up display or the joyous whoops of the pilots committing the wholesale murder of sentient beings…but because of their faces. All their faces, eager and yearning, excited to be part of it, to see it happen. It is…horrible. It’s monstrous, and it frightens him that he’s the only one to see it.

”Yeah! How do you like that?”

“You seeing this? Got this toaster padlocked. Come on!” The pilot laughs. I got another where that one came from!”

”Guys, clean 'em up! Come on; let's go.”

“This is what you stand for, Gaius,” she tells him, her whole body stiff and angry, every muscle taut—and not in a good way. “This is the side you chose.”

“I didn’t,” he avers weakly. "I didn't."

“Officers.” Adama’s gravel voice scrapes across his shattered nerves.

“Yes sir.”

He looks at Adama, and sees less emotion there than in the visage of the supposedly inhuman thing that bleeds and kneels on the floor. “Take this thing back to its cell.”

The Marines jerk her unceremoniously to her feet. Against his will, against everything Gaius Baltar’s ever stood for, he feels himself take a step forward. In protest. Surprisingly, she grabs him, arm and sleeve. “Don’t,” she whispers, insinuating her body against his, flooding his cold limbs with her warmth. “It’s over, and there’s nothing you can do that won’t make you the target of their hate next. I would not have our child live without a father.” Her arms slide through his and lock over his midriff. “She’ll need you. As do I.” A pause then, a hesitation only noticeable in its very artlessness. “As does Felix.”

He startles, but no one’s paying attention to him, cheering and whooping and clapping each other on the back. “Felix Gaeta?” he repeats.

“The ones talking to him are the same ones that sent the virus; the ones that would see you dead.”

“But you said it was…well, you. Your people. The Cylons.”

“The Cylons, yes,” she agrees. “But not my people, Gaius. I don’t know why this should surprise you; I thought it obvious. We are humanity’s children. Humanity has not yet learned to live united…and neither have we.”