HunTrib Chpt 8

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=Hunted Tribes=
==Chapter 8==
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“The Ha’la’tha Crime Syndicate managed to get established soon after the bulk of the Colonial population had settled on New Circe and after a while they felt confident enough to try and expand operations to the other side of the border. This was a short lived enterprise however once it became established that despite us having a fairly liberal court system the sentences meted out by Wolverine Judges once a guilty verdict was reached can be a touch draconian... in the sense that people from the Draconis Combine would consider them a little harsh at times. The first Tauron gangster to be told he was going to be serving twenty-five years for trying to set up a minor smuggling operation fainted in court when he found out that meant hard labour in a germanium mine on an airless moon and New Circe didn’t have parole.”Captain Marcus Thorpe, SLDF Intelligence – 3048CE
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===Tour of the City of Gods===
City of the Gods – Kobol – 3045CE
Admiral Adama looked up as one of the VSTOL aircraft their companions called a “Ripper” howled overhead, going probably a little too fast and definitely a little too low before it headed off north, just barely clearing the treetops as it disappeared. The two hulking dropships which had landed on a flat area of relatively solid ground two kilometers from the dig site had unloaded eight of the light aerial transports and these were being used to carry small survey and scout teams around the region, greatly spreading up the process of mapping and exploration. ‘Fusion powerplants?’ he asked Commander Thorpe who was walking beside him as they headed towards the makeshift camp which had been established near the ruins.
‘Yes’ Thorpe confirmed, ‘plenty of range and good performance’ he said. ‘They're usually intended to drop off an Infantry squad behind enemy lines so the pilots train to fly in low and fast under the Radar.’
‘No DRADIS to worry about here’ Adama pointed out.
‘I'm sure if you asked the Army Pilots flying those things they would say they're keeping it up for practice and its got nothing at all to do with it being the most fun they can justify having with their girlfriend or boyfriend over a thousand light-years away.’ Thorpe replied. ‘If I was twenty years younger and a better pilot I'd be doing it’ he admitted as Adama smiled.
The Kobol System had been empty when they arrived, Raptors jumping ahead of the fleet had confirmed no Cylon presence before Galactica and then the civilian ships were brought into orbit. Even then the civilian archaeological and survey personnel weren't landed until Vipers had made a series of high and low-level reconnaissance runs right across the planet and Marines had checked out the chosen landing site to verify the situation on the ground.
A pair of large eight-wheeled armored-vehicles watched over the scientists and historians digging up the remains of what had once been a sprawling metropolis, and dozens of Colonial Marines and SLDF Infantry stood ready for action, but so far the only excitement had been coming from the people who were excavating the ruins. Cries of joy could be heard as another interesting relic was unearthed, Sundquist and his people were clearly having the time of their lives.
The historian himself was some kilometers away examining the Tomb of Athena. It had of course been one of the first sites to be investigated and once the Arrow of Apollo had been placed in the statue of Sagittaron once more the hologram had once again been activated showing the supposed location of Earth relative to twelve constellations. Sundquist had looked at the stars and after a few seconds had announced “They're wrong” noting that although the patterns were similar to the ones that could be seen from Earth they had been drawn in the sky from different stars and besides which over time constellations move. The Colonials had been intrigued to learn, though many still denied it because it conflicted with their scriptures, that the Zodiac dated to civilizations that existed on Earth long before the Thirteenth Tribe supposedly left Kobol to settle there.
As they neared the camp Adama spotted a man and a woman slowly pulling a large flat box on wheels over the ground by ropes, he turned to Thorpe and gave him a quizzical look. ‘Ground penetrating Radar’ Thorpe explained. ‘It can look metres down into the soil to see what’s underneath’ he said. ‘If they find something good they call over a crew to dig it up, otherwise they're just mapping the foundations of the old city’ he told him. ‘According to someone I talked to earlier so far it's looking like that illustration from the Scrolls of Pythia is pretty accurate.’
‘The City of the Gods’ Adama said, looking around. ‘I'm surprised the Cylons didn't dig it up’ he remarked.
‘Not their Gods, or really their history as they see it I guess?’ Thorpe suggested.
‘You don't think its your history either but you people are interested’ Adama noted.
‘We know for a fact that there were civilizations on Terra long before the dates given in your Holy Books and that humanity evolved there’ Thorpe replied. ‘It's what, supposedly less than four thousand years since the Thirteenth Tribe left here to go to Earth?’ he continued, ‘Well there's a town there called Jericho which has been more or less continually inhabited for twelve thousand so it's hard to square that circle’ he said.
Adama stopped walking. ‘Our scholars are having a hard time accepting that’ he replied. ‘And not just the religious ones’ he added.
‘We were careful to not spring it on you too quickly but you had to be told eventually’ Thorpe replied apologetically. ‘Your languages and cultures indicate that somehow you originally came from Earth around four and a half thousand years ago’ he said. ‘Both Caprican and the Tauron dialect in particular clearly evolved from the Ancient Greek spoken at around the time of the Trojan Wars, and there are other interesting holdovers from other contemporary Terran cultures such as the Proto-Italic influences to be found on Colonies like Aerilon where the names are Latin’ he continued. ‘Some of your worlds also had a few Roman and Egyptian deities as well as the Greek Gods in their respective pantheons and there's even a few Hebrew traces’ he noted. ‘Having taken Ancient Terran History as my major at College I think it's all fascinating.’
‘We're going to take a lot of convincing of all this you know’ Adama told him as they continued on their way.
‘Which is why we want to radiocarbon date our finds here, dig for any signs of inhabitation more than five thousand years ago and take ice-cores at the poles to examine the atmospheric composition back even further’ Thorpe replied. ‘The plant and animal life here like the examples you had with the fleet are all Earth species, although selective breeding of things like food crops in particular mean your cereals for example have diverged more than a little from ours.’
‘I'm never going to get used to the taste of your bread’ Adama stated as they arrived at the camp and found tables had been set out with dishes of food being laid out for lunch on them. ‘And a sandwich is supposed to have a filling between two slices of the stuff’ he commented, looking down at a plate of rye bread smörgås open-faced sandwiches with salmon on them.
‘That's more of a New Circe Scandinavian-inherited thing’ Thorpe told him as he looked over the Smörgåsbord buffet appreciatively. ‘The Wolverines didn't really have anything remotely like a cuisine of our own so we adopted the one that the Richmond prisoners had’ he said. ‘They were mostly from the Rasalhague worlds which is why New Circe has the best Palt Dumplings rimward of there’ he said proudly.
‘Palt?’ Adama queried.
‘Those things’ Thorpe explained pointing to a bowl of them. ‘Grab a plate, try some of this’ he advised, handing the Admiral one plus a fork and taking one for himself as the SLDF cooks who had been preparing the meal announced it was ready, calling it out in both English and badly accented Caprican.
It was a pleasant enough day, sunny and much warmer and drier than New Circe tended to be Adama decided and he found a crate to sit on as he ate his meal. The Wolverine Infantry assigned to help the survey teams dig or hump equipment around had long abandoned their body-armour for khaki t-shirts although they kept both weapons and armour nearby and they were sweating in the unaccustomed heat as they started to arrive along with the New Circe scientists and Colonial military personnel.
Thorpe went to see Colonel McEvedy leaving Adama on his own for a short time before Racetrack wandered over to him wearing her flight-suit unzipped to the waist, the top half tied around her. ‘Nice day Admiral’ she greeted him.
‘Nice to be out in the open air without freezing your butt off Lieutenant’ Adama agreed. ‘Not eating?’ he asked.
‘I've got someone getting me a plate together’ Racetrack told him.
‘You're not supposed to use your ECO as a servant’ Adama chided.
‘Oh it's not Skulls, he’s getting his own’ Racetrack replied, ‘I've got a Wolvie Tank Commander putting it together for me’ she said with a grin. ‘I made out I had no idea what half of it was and he was the most senior of the guys that jumped up to help’ she explained. If you were female, decent to look at (ideally not blond) and were much under a hundred and seventy centimetres you could pretty much get them to do anything you wanted she had soon found. It worked the other way of course, plenty of Colonials were to be found trying to score with the tall and athletic New Circers. A Corporal in the Colonial Marines who liked hitting the free-weights in the gym had supposedly persuaded an SLDF APC Driver into his bunk despite the language difficulties, though the mechanics of how they would both fit in there let alone manage to do much was an ongoing mystery.
‘You've got the polar mission later, don't get your ship stuck in a snowdrift or I might leave you there for a while as punishment’ Adama told her trying some meatballs, spearing one with a fork before taking a bite. Not too bad he decided as he chewed.
‘Ah you wouldn't leave the civvies there Sir’ Racetrack responded knowingly.
Adama swallowed. ‘Oh I'd have them rescued straight away, and maybe get one of those dropships to pull your Raptor out of the snow’ he continued, ‘I'll just leave you there on the ice until its time for the Galactica to head out’ he said.
Racetrack thought he was kidding but you could never be completely certain. ‘I'll make sure the spot I choose to land on is a good one’ she promised as a Lieutenant in SLDF Uniform, the unit insignia on his left shoulder indicating he was from an armoured formation, handed her a plate of food earning a beaming smile in response which he returned before walking back to his colleagues wishing he spoke her language. ‘I should have told them I'm not keen on the pickled herring’ she said, ignoring it and starting with a piece of crisp bread. ‘See you later Sir’ she told him, leaving the Adama to his own meal and his thoughts.
The Admiral turned on his improvised chair so he was looking back towards the ruins. He was glad he had decided to come down here, it was certainly more relaxed than his previous visit to Kobol, thanks to a lack of Cylons and homicidal supporters of Tom Zarek, and it was reassuring to watch his people and the Wolverines working together smoothly.
‘Lords of Kobol!’ someone exclaimed loudly and Adama looked around to see one of his Marines staring off into the distance. Adama stood up to get a better look and saw that one of the dropships had unloaded a pair of the huge piloted robots the Thirteenth called “Battlemechs” and they were heading towards the ruins at walking pace, their ten-metre tall frames making up the ground fast with long strides. As he watched one of them increased its pace and then broke into what amounted to a run hitting close to two-hundred kilometres an hour as it pounded along the ground for a few hundred yards before slowing again.
‘MASC gear’ Commander Thorpe said, appearing beside Adama with Colonel McEvedy. ‘It allows a Battlemech to sprint for a short distance’ he explained, ‘most aren’t fitted with it, only light mechs used for scouting, reconnaissance or hit and run’ he said.
‘How “Light” is that thing?’ Adama asked, staring at the machines.
‘Only thirty tons’ Thorpe replied. ‘The other mechs we've got with us, the Rifleman II's, they weigh in at eighty but they don't have hands so they can't be used to help out with the work like the Mercury III's there can’ he said.
‘Mercury, like the class of Battlestars the Pegasus comes from’ Adama noted. ‘On some of the Colonies it's what they call the God Hermes’ he said.
‘The Roman and Greek pantheons were almost interchangeable, the latter influenced the former quite a lot’ Thorpe observed. ‘Zeus and Jupiter, Hera and Juno...’
‘Ares and Mars, Enyo and Bellona’ Adama interjected with the Gods and Goddesses of war, always close to the heart of a military man. ‘Same deities, different names’ he said. ‘It caused a lot of theological debate when Caprica became the first colony to regain spaceflight and contacted the others to find out some had different religions but when it was decided it was mostly just a naming issue things calmed down’ he said.
McEvedy said something to Thorpe. ‘The Colonel asks if you're enjoying your lunch’ he translated for Adama.
‘Thank the Colonel and his troops for offering to feed our people as well as his own and say that the Colonial Fleet will return the favour tomorrow’ he said hoping a sampling of traditional Caprican, Tauron and Geminon cuisine would be well received. He had more personnel from those worlds than any others and he had a few decent cooks on Galactica’s crew.
Thorpe translated and the Colonel smiled and nodded his acknowledgement to the Admiral. You had to make gestures like these, it was sometimes the little things like sharing a meal together that might make you hang together if things turned nasty, identifying with someone made all the difference. During the First Cylon War, when the Colonies were still far from united, Adama still recalled flying low over Leonis with a Picon Viper pilot as his new wingman. As the sun had risen ahead of them they had both watched the dawn out of their cockpits, the pilots flying alongside each other, not really knowing each other too well because you didn’t socialise a great deal with people from other Colonies as a rule back then. Then the Picon pilot, who had been quiet until then, had said simply, “This is one of our worlds and the frakking Cylons can't have it” and right there Adama had felt like a human not a Caprican of Tauron descent. You had to hang together or the Toasters would surely hang you separately.
They ended up spending two weeks on Kobol, the City of the Gods yielded up less answers than Professor Sundquist had been hoping for but as the fleet packed up and set out again towards the Twelve Colonies the results of the analysis of what they had found started to cause some concern amongst the Colonials. This was not least because when they checked what the Thirteenth were saying as best they could with their own equipment it verified an uncomfortable truth.
Before five thousand years ago there was no record of any industrialisation on Kobol present in the ice cores, nor was there any evidence of any of the currently indigenous plant or animal life to be found when you dug down very far at all, certainly not the millions of years worth of fossils there should have been. Human remains were located in several places but again none seemed to be more than five thousand years old and every attempt at using carbon-dating to verify the numbers confirmed the same result.
Humanity was not from Kobol, in fact it looked like it had been terraformed five millennia ago much like the Twelve Colonies had been three thousand years later by people fleeing the catastrophe which had destroyed the City of the Gods. Those in the fleet who believed in the literal truth of the Sacred Scrolls refused to believe the findings, and many were heard to say that the Thirteenth must have faked everything in order to support their heretical view that humanity came from Earth, but the majority soon began to accept that Kobol was not their homeworld. This all raised a new major question though of course, which the people of New Circe had been trying to answer for a while themselves already with no luck. Since the “Thirteenth Tribe”, who were apparently nothing of the sort, could provide a mass of documentary evidence that Earth was still in the Bronze Age back when humanity came to Kobol, with iron about to become the great technological breakthrough of the era, how the hell did people travel well over three thousand light-years to another planet and terraform it?
It was fervently hoped that the relics taken from Kobol to the Colonies still to be found in Museums back there might hold some of the answers once they were examined by historians far more familiar with Earth history. Commander Thorpe for one was still pushing the idea of people from Atlantis being responsible and was gaining support for his hypothesis simply because other than the marginalized UFO nuts who thought it must have been aliens nobody else had any suggestions at all.
As Galactica and its fleet jumped away from Kobol a single Cylon Raider which had been lurking almost completely powered-down and inert far from the planet amongst some asteroidal debris waited until the Raptor they had left behind to check they weren’t being followed finally departed as well and then the autonomous self-aware fighter powered up its systems and span up its FTL Drive. Not being all that curious by nature the Raider didn't wonder why the Colonials might have returned to Kobol it simply jumped towards the nearest Basestar to report they had, along with the news that the Galactica and a handful of smaller vessels seemed to be travelling separate from the main fleet that was presumably still being guarded by the more capable Pegasus.
The Cylons had wondered if the refugees might send an expedition back to check whether they had really vacated the Twelve Colonies, and it was considered possible for them to take a route back that included another stop-off at Kobol so it wasn't all that big a surprise to their leadership when Galactica turned up as it did. After failing to locate the fleet after a sweep of nearby star-systems they estimated how long it would take the humans to get to Cyrannus and formulated a strategy on how to handle them when they got there. With the famous Caprica Six and Boomer Eight steering public opinion they wouldn't attack the Colonials of course, this was the new “Caring, sharing, cloyingly saccharin to the point of being vomit-inducing” Cylon Regime as a One had wryly called it after all, but there was a school of thought that said perhaps God wanted them to protect and nurture the humans and so they should, regardless of the Colonials own feelings on the matter.
As machines given all the variables the Cylons were very good at calculation, unfortunately for them they were ignorant of several new factors now in play. These included the fact that the Galactica was now travelling on average six times as far per jump as it had before, meaning it would be arriving back at the Colonies far, far earlier than might have been expected otherwise. They also of course had no reason to suspect that the simultaneous appearance of several basestars worth of Raiders wasn't quite as intimidating as it used to be.
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===Visions of the future===
Colonial City-State – New Circe – 3045CE
Getting off the shuttle onto the recently laid concrete landing-pad Julia Brynn struggled to carry her daughter and the three bags which were all they owned in the world between them. Along with the other people who had been on the small craft they were directed by uniformed Colonial Marines towards a large prefabricated building that had a sign over the double-doors leading inside saying “Reception and Processing” and they were jostled by a few other faster-moving people as they went nearly causing Julia to stumble and fall before a female Marine stepped in and offered a helping hand, carrying two of her bags into the building and depositing them by the chairs set up for the arrivals to wait on until they were called to one of the desks lined up in rows for processing and an assignment of somewhere to live.
‘Julia Brynn’ someone eventually called out loudly, after a fifteen minute wait, and getting up off the chair she gathered her bags and headed to the man on the reception desk who had called for her.
‘I'm Julia Brynn’ she told the man who was wearing civilian clothes but with a badge pinned to his chest that said he was working for the Colonial Government. ‘This is my daughter Kacey’ she added, dropping her bags again and sitting down on the seat provided in front of his desk.
The man was reading the paperwork in front of him. ‘It's just you and the girl?’ he checked.
‘Yes’ Julia confirmed.
‘Given that there are two of you and the child is an infant you will be assigned Class B accommodation’ he said.
‘Is that good?’ Julia asked.
‘It's better than Class C’ the man replied. ‘It's only a timber and canvas hut really but it's all yours’ he told her. ‘It says here that you worked in a government office back in the Colonies’ he noted.
‘I was a file clerk for a while before I got pregnant’ Julia replied.
‘Can you type?’ the man asked.
‘Yes’ Julia told him.
‘Given your lack of other skills and the child it's likely you’ll be assigned a government job for a while’ he told her. ‘If it wasn't for Kacey there you would have likely been placed on a work-crew doing unskilled manual labour instead.’
‘We don't get to choose what jobs we do?’ Julia queried.
‘Executive Order from the President and counter-signed by the Quorum’ the man replied. ‘Once we have all the basic infrastructure in place needed to function properly as a society people will be free to choose their careers but until then I'm afraid it’s a case of do as you're told’ he said. ‘I used to be a Bank Manager and I'm planning to go back to that when we actually have banks’ he told her. ‘Some people are already setting up a few private businesses, stores, bars, food outlets and the like and if you can prove you have another job to go to you can quit the one we assign you but we all have to work’ he said with finality.
‘I don't mind working if they pay me but who will look after Kacey?’ Julia wanted to know.
‘Schools and Day-Care Centres are already in place as are Clinics and Hospitals’ the man replied handing her a sheet of paper. ‘This is a map showing their locations’ he said, ‘your new home is also marked’ he continued. ‘A truck waiting outside will drop you off there after you’ve both had a medical check-up in the next building’ he told her. ‘It will likely be a week or so until your employment assignment is issued so you'll have an opportunity to meet your neighbours and look around before then. In the meantime until you are earning a salary you can collect meals from government relief centres, the food is much the same as on the ships I'm afraid.’
‘It's not too bad’ Julia opined, it had certainly been a lot worse before they reached New Circe and the Thirteenth started sending regular shipments to the fleet. It still tended to be bland but at least it was nourishing, in good quantity and sometimes there were treats like fresh meat, fish or vegetables.
The man produced another piece of paper which he wrote her name on, stamped and signed himself. ‘If you show the people running the relief center this then they'll issue you a special ration for your daughter’ he said. ‘Extra milk and vitamin supplements for example’ he explained, handing it to her. ‘You might also want to go see one of the volunteer centres the locals have set up, lots of the Thirteenth have been donating things like children’s toys and clothes’ he advised. ‘You'll probably want to make sure to get a warmer jacket for yourself as well as Kacey there, this is a warm day on New Circe.’
Julia folded up the sheets of paper and put them in a pocket. ‘It must get cold at night’ she replied.
‘Your home will be warm enough though, they've all got electric heaters as well as a small stove’ the man informed her. ‘The locals gave us a fusion reactor to power them and engineers from the fleet wired up a power-grid that feeds the city’ he said. ‘Okay, now I just need you to fill out some forms for our records and you can move onto your check-up’ he said, passing her a pen. ‘Oh and here is a pocket Caprican to English Dictionary and Phrasebook’ he remembered, taking one from a box of them resting next to his chair and passing it over. ‘It's a horrible language but it's all written out phonetically and most people can manage to say the words well enough to be understood’ he told her with a smile.
An hour later after being poked and prodded by a doctor Julia Brynn finally arrived at her new home and found that its description as a wood and canvas hut was fairly accurate. It was one of thousands of identical huts laid out in a grid pattern with gravel roads dividing the whole area into blocks. The truck that had dropped her off was a military vehicle marked with the oddly asymmetrical star symbol that the people of New Circe used as their flag, although the driver was a Colonial Marine from Tauron who had explained on the way that the truck ran on diesel fuel which the Thirteenth here supposedly made from genetically-engineered algae grown in huge tanks of seawater.
Inside it was about as nice as she might have expected. The abundant forests of New Circe had provided plenty of timber to enable the mass-production of plain, utilitarian, wooden furniture as well as the promised electric heater and stove so at least she had a table and a couple of chairs plus a wardrobe she could lock not that she thought it was sturdy enough to deter a determined thief. Fortunately she neither had much worth stealing nor looked like she did so hopefully people would leave her alone.
After introducing herself to the friendly family from Picon that she found lived to one side, and the miserable, surly Libran couple and their obnoxious son on the other, Julia took her map and her daughter for a walk around. She knew from the fleet wireless that this was all only temporary, and that permanent housing made of brick and concrete was slowly starting to be constructed around what would eventually become a real city, but for now it was still so much better than life had been on the overcrowded ships she quickly decided. Reaching an intersection Julia found that there were road-signs written in both Caprican and the language the Thirteenth called English, one indicated a Volunteer Center but another pointed the way towards the area designated for Temples and after a few seconds Julia decided it would be better to go thank the Lords of Kobol for sending deliverance in the form of the Thirteenth Tribe before trying to see if the latter had anything for her little girl.
A number of temples in various states of construction surrounded a large square teeming with people. Julia immediately spotted the largest and grandest of these to be that of Zeus but she was intrigued by a simple shrine in the middle of the square where an oracle sat on a blanket beside a stone statue perhaps a meter high at most, both raised on a small rough-cut wooden platform the same height. A couple of dozen people were kneeling and praying to the statue in a semi-circle as the oracle placed some chamalla on her palm and then licked it off, clearing grimacing at the bitterness. As one person finished their prayer and stood up another soon replaced them, some donated a few coins to the oracle and others left a small offering of food or some flowers on the platform for the statue.
‘What Goddess is that?’ Julia asked a man passing-by, indicating the one on the platform.
‘Circe’ the man replied. ‘That's supposed to be the largest statue of her that was carried in the fleet’ he told the woman and child. ‘The Oracle sitting beside her is Dodona Selloi and says that we should make sure to thank the patron Goddess of our new home and to most of us I guess it only seems right to do so’ he explained. ‘After I've offered a prayer to Zeus in his Temple I'll make sure to offer Circe my thanks afterwards too’ he said.
Julia nodded and smiled. ‘I just arrived here so I'll pray to Circe first’ she decided, the man smiling back as he resumed heading for the grandest temple, that dedicated to Zeus of course.
The oracle had picked up a scroll and began reading a section aloud which was related to Helios, the Sun-God and father of Circe. As she did so she rocked from side to side as the chamalla took effect, the mildly hallucinogenic effects of the powder starting to work on her mind. Sometimes this would cause what believers considered a prophetic vision but others of a less spiritual outlook regarded it as a woman getting stoned and seeing things that weren't there.
A woman who had been kneeling almost directly in front of the statue finished her prayer and left, Julia taking her place and putting Kacey down beside her. The oracle finished the passage she had been reading and as she rolled up the scroll again she smiled down at the little girl who was staring at her strange clothes. ‘Circe please watch over this little one’ the oracle said, turning to the statue. ‘Guard her well as you have guarded those of all the Tribes who came to your world fleeing those who would persecute them’ she requested.
Julia finished her own quick prayer. ‘Thank you’ she said to the oracle. ‘I'm afraid I have no offering to make’ she apologised.
‘As long as Circe knows that you would if you could that's enough’ the oracle replied. ‘At least it's not raining today’ she said randomly, looking up at the unusually clear skies. ‘I think Circe doesn't mind it wet because her mother was Perse making her the granddaughter of Oceanis, God of the oceans and Tethys, Goddess of seas and rivers’ the oracle observed, ‘but it's still hard on me when it pours and I get drenched to the skin out here’ she complained to the statue humourously.
Julia laughed, unlike typical priests oracles could often be a little irreverent. It was thought that the Gods gave them dispensation because of both the chamalla they took and the fact that the Lords of Kobol were not entirely humourless themselves either. ‘Are they going to build a proper temple to Circe?’ she asked the oracle.
‘I'm sure they will eventually but the priesthoods of the Senior Gods are far more numerous and wealthy’ the oracle replied. ‘Until then I will sit by her side and try to speak for her’ she said. ‘May the Lords of Kobol watch over you and your child’ she said, hands raised openly in prayer as Julia got back up.
As Julia bent down to pick up Kacey the oracle looked at them both her eyes now unfocused as the chamalla was now taking its full effect. ‘On this world by a different name, this place yet another, your daughter was taken from you to be used in a game of deceit’ she said slowly and rhythmically, almost chanting the words somehow. ‘This land was not of Circe then, her children not here to shield and protect you’ she declared, ‘rejoice Julia for the sons and daughters of the Goddess hold back the night, the shining star vanquishes the darkness.’
Julia and all the other worshippers stared at the oracle. ‘Was that a vision?’ one asked in wonderment.
‘Maybe’ another replied.
‘Too much, chamalla, they say the President went strange on that stuff’ someone else commented.
Julia hugged Kacey. ‘I've never met her before and I didn't tell her that was my name’ she said quietly to herself turning and walking away, pledging to return with an offering later even if it meant selling some of the few possessions she had.
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===Rendering with Cylons===
Scorpia Orbit - Cyrannus System – 3045CE
Although much of the wreckage of the Colonial Shipyards had been knocked into a quickly decaying orbit after being struck by nuclear warheads during the fall of the Twelve Colonies, the sheer mass of the structure meant that millions of tons of metal scaffolding and the shattered remains of the Battlestars and smaller craft continued to orbit the world below. Periodically a chunk of debris large enough to survive re-entry plummeted to the ground leaving a trail of fire right across the sky before it impacted with the surface, blowing yet another crater in Scorpia although as yet none had made quite such an impression as the salvo of fifty-megaton warheads which had rained over the Colony shortly after the shipyards were destroyed.
A reasonably industrialized world with factories that supplied much of the needs of the Colonial Fleet most of the urban centers of Scorpia had been thoroughly flattened by the Cylon war-machine which then followed up with a number of deliberately dirty bombs that left behind plenty of long-lasting fallout. Of those that weren't killed instantly during the destruction of the cities tens of millions more died over the next few weeks and months from radiation poisoning, others falling to hunger and disease and then finally Centurions landed, tracking down and wiping out many groups of hardy survivors and in other cases taking the more healthy female prisoners for medical experimentation.
As on other colonies a few bands had still held out, especially in the mountains and jungles where they ambushed Cylon patrols and raided military installations for supplies and weapons. Many thousands of military personnel had been on Scorpia during the attack, often away from the cities on training exercises or else on leave seeking thrills climbing mountains, hiking or in many cases enjoying the paragliding the world was known for, and these marines and fleet personnel had formed the nucleus of the resistance. Over time their numbers had dwindled as month after month the Cylons, demonstrating a clear lack of interest in the quantity of their own casualties, continued to throw Centurions into the fray wearing the humans down.
Then suddenly one day the Cylons had all simply disappeared, all the Raider and Heavy Raiders on the planet taking off and heading skywards. At first the few remaining groups of survivors had suspected it was a trick but then weeks passed without any sign of the machines and the humans became increasingly bold, leaving the safety of the mountains to scavenge other places for supplies.
Anti-radiation drugs were at a premium but fortunately being the main base for the fleet there were plenty of supply depots on Scorpia and many had been both outside the cities and not valuable enough targets to be worth blasting on their own account. Enough were found to save lives that would have otherwise been lost although for reasons of necessity they couldn’t be wasted on those beyond saying and many who found their hair falling out took their leave of their comrades plus a pistol and walked away to end it all.
Eventually groups found each other and tried to work out what to do next. If they could find a few working ships then perhaps they could get to Aerilon? The poor agricultural colony with its minimal industry and a fairly low urban population would surely have been bathed less intensely in nuclear fire than Scorpia, Caprica, Picon or Tauron for example, why would the cylons waste atomic weapons on farms and villages?
Although all the airbases and spaceports were gone to the survivor’s joy they located an old freighter that had belonged to the Colonial Fleet in a scrapyard where it had been waiting to be broken up. With hundreds working together they searched for parts needed to fix it, working right around the clock for weeks on end until eventually near exhaustion the freighter was considered space-worthy again and Tylium was gathered for the voyage to Aerilon.
Thus it was when Raptor-3 of the Colonial Fleet piloted by Margaret “Racetrack” Edmondson landed on Scorpia seeking survivors the first thing that was said to her by an extremely irate engineer when she climbed out of her ship having found some was “Where the frak have you been and why the frak couldn’t you have gotten here before I nearly ruptured myself manhandling a new FTL drive into that wreck over there?”.
After the Raptors had reported the Cyrannus System free of Cylon ships Admiral Adama had jumped Galactica into orbit around Caprica and had begun a systematic search operation looking for any survivors that could be located. Unfortunately it seemed that the Cylons had been equally systematic and only a few hundred could be located, many of them women who had been captured for the failed Cylon “Baby Farm” project and had been either fortunate or unfortunate enough to survive depending on your point of view. Although it had proven a failure the Cylons had persisted in their experiments right up until Caprica Six and Boomer Eight managed to change policy and the Cylons had vacated the Twelve Colonies simply leaving any human left alive to their own devices.
Samuel Anders and his team had insisted on staying on Caprica to search for more people who might still be in hiding and with the help of a few squads of Colonial Marines and four Wolverine VSTOL aircraft he stayed there while Galactica jumped across the system to Tauron which had been the second most populous Colony.
As Raptors continued to survey more and more of the Colonies it became apparent that the Cylons had been very successful in their efforts. What had been a population of twenty billion spread across the woirlds of Cyrannus had been reduced to a few thousand, although even that number was more than Adama had hoped and it would be a crowded trip back to New Circe. As groups were located, eventually persuaded it wasn't just all a twisted cylon trick, treated for their radiation sickness and other complaints and taken aboard the liner Chrion the problems of dealing with increasing numbers of bewildered, traumatised civilians started to take up more and more of everyone's time.
Not knowing when or if the Cylons might show up, and certainly not convinced they had seen the error of their ways and wouldn't immediately attack, Adama was reluctantly forced to prioritise certain things above devoting all his assets towards rescue operations. They needed to locate FTL drives and ideally the means to produce them, they needed to salvage irreplaceable spare parts for other systems that were in short supply, he wanted to get hold of all the munitions he could and above all he desperately wanted to find some nuclear warheads.
Cylon intelligence thanks to their successful infiltration of the Colonial Government and Fleet had been very good. As the Raptor detailed for the search checked out site after site which had been known to contain part of the Colonies nuclear deterrent they found either a radioactive crater or the clear indications of a ground assault and an empty bunker. After coming up blank eighteen times the crew were starting to get weary of the mission but Adama refused to let them finish until every site which had been either in his own records or those of Admiral Cain had been investigated.
As the cargo ships and freighters of the fleet began to fill with salvage, the liner with survivors and the battlestars munitions holds with whatever could be found in intact military installations across the system the crews became restless. Many wanted to travel to their own homes and try to find their families hoping they somehow might still be hiding there, others wanted to retrieve items of sentimental value and more than a few were just plain homesick to the degree that even the possibility of incurring some mild radiation sickness might be worth it to stand on the surface of their homeworld again. Adama and Tigh found it increasingly hard to maintain the tight military discipline they required in the situation and eventually the Admiral relented slightly and allowed small groups to land as long as they helped out with the mission tasks. Tigh's suggestion of throwing one out of the airlock as an encouragement to the others to shut up and just do as they were damn well told was noted and kept as Plan B.
Nils Sundquist and his team of historians and other academics found greater success than the other groups in locating and retrieving their own objectives. The Cylons had been little interested in blowing museums and temples to rubble, or in taking possession of the ancient scrolls and artefacts within, and after clearing out the Delphi Museum of the Colonies on Caprica first Sundquist went on to gather everything he could from around that world and then others, aided by a number of Colonial guides and a couple of Priests who were willing to accept sacred artefacts being handled by those not of the faith if it meant they would be saved for posterity and perhaps from the Cylons.
Finally Galactica received the transmission Adama had been hoping for, the Raptor crew looking for warheads had found an intact and undiscovered facility which was hidden in a valley on Aquaria. It was sealed up tight and lacking the access codes would have to be broken into so the Admiral immediately dispatched a team to do so giving the simple order “Go find me some nukes Chief” as Tyrol and his engineers boarded one of the Wolverine dropships after Galactica jumped to the planet.
Standing outside the complex Chief Tyrol found himself looking at a four metre tall steel door that he estimated was likely at least thirty centimetres thick. ‘This is going to take a while’ he observed with a frown as he tried to work out how long it would take to put through that much metal with a plasma torch. The Triumph Class dropship had landed further down the valley and a tracked APC had carried them the rest of the way. Aquaria was a cold world which naturally seemed to bother the Thirteenth less than it did most of the Colonials, to the latter it was frigid whereas to the former it was merely a little chillier than they were used to.
‘You know Chief’ Cally interrupted his chain of thought, ‘my boyfriend's got something back in the boat that'll get through that door a bit quicker’ she told him.
Tyrol turned to Cally then back to the door. ‘I'm willing to give laser cannon a chance to shine’ he said after a moment’s consideration.
One of the two Mercury III battlemechs aboard the dropship was being unloaded when a Cylon Raider on a regularly scheduled recon mission jumped into Cyrannus and to its utter confusion found Galactica there several weeks ahead of schedule. It jumped back out as fast as it could and notified the Basestar it was flying out of that they needed assemble the fleet immediately or else the Colonials might get away.
Because the Cylon fleet had still been spread out either looking for Galactica many hundreds of light years away from where it was, or else they were searching for the Pegasus and the rest of the Colonials even further away, only a handful of capital ships could be collected and sent to Cyrannus in any kind of quick response. The Cylons had hoped for an overwhelming display of force, at least five or six basestars at minimum, to try and intimidate Adama into surrender, but as it was the three in range could still deploy over a thousand Raiders and Heavy Raiders between them. This should be more than enough to both overwhelm the old battlestars complement of vipers and be able to take the heavy losses her point-defence would likely inflict the Cylon's reasoned, after all the old battlestar wasn't exactly in pristine condition.
Galactica was still in orbit around Aquaria, Adama and Tigh on the bridge wondering how many nuclear devices they might have found, when Gaeta announced that a ship had suddenly appeared on the sensors. ‘Contact positively confirmed as Cylon Basestar’ he reported as the CIC became a hive of activity. ‘Correction we now have three DRADIS Contacts that are identified as Cylon basestars.’
‘All hands to Action Stations’ Adama ordered. ‘Signal the civilian ships and the Raptors to jump out to the pre-arranged co-ordinates immediately’ he added calmly.
‘Sir we have personnel down on Aquaria and four other worlds’ Tigh pointed out.
‘Which is why we're not going’ Adama replied. ‘Launch all vipers, get the main and point-defence batteries aimed and ready but do not fire until I give the order’ he continued. ‘Get Commander Thorpe on the wireless ready to make a broadcast to the Cylons, I think he's in his cabin... and tell Wing Commander Defoe that we might need her birds in the air any second.’
‘Four of the Kirghiz are packing a pair of nukes apiece Bill’ Tigh reminded him. ‘From what I can tell their rules of engagement are pretty free if the Cylons start shooting at them’ he said. ‘Let's hope the Toasters are feeling trigger-happy’ he said with a vicious smile.
‘Sir we're receiving a wireless signal from the closest basestar’ Dualla the Communications Officer reported. ‘Voice transmission... sounds like a Number One’ she said, listening to it.
‘Could be trying to send us another frakking virus’ Tigh noted.
‘We're not networked and we don't think they can hack the new Navigation Computer’ Adama replied. ‘Let's hear it on the speaker’ he told Dualla.
<<‘Attention Galactica this is the Cylon Fleet’ the basestar signalled. ‘Can I speak to whoever is in charge?’ a male voice requested.>>
Adama picked up a microphone. ‘This is Galactica Actual’ he replied.
<<‘Ah the great Adama himself’ the voice responded. ‘I'm honoured’ it continued sardonically. ‘We don't mean you any harm’ it claimed, ‘we just want to live in peace with humanity from now on, but we intend to do so on our terms’ it said.>>
‘And what are these terms?’ Adama queried.
‘You being demilitarized and under our guidance of course’ the Cylon replied.
Raising one eyebrow Adama looked to Tigh who snorted in derision at the machine’s words. ‘Not likely to happen’ the Admiral signalled back. ‘At least not without a fight’ he stated flatly.
<<‘You are totally outmatched’ the Cylon told him. ‘We're launching Raiders as I speak, more than you could handle even if they weren't backed up with three basestars’ it pointed out. ‘Surrender and I promise no harm will befall you or your crew’ it said.>>
‘Attack us and I promise considerable harm will befall you and yours’ Adama vowed in response.
Laughter could be heard over the speaker. <<‘Now Admiral, don't be foolish’ it advised. ‘You stand about as much chance of winning this battle as you do of finding Earth and seeking refuge amongst the mythical Thirteenth Tribe’ it declared.>>
((‘Attention Cylon vessel, this is Commander Marcus Thorpe of the Star League Defense Forces’ another voice interjected over the same frequency. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Admiral’ it apologized.))
<<‘Who is this I'm now talking too?’ the cylon queried.>>
((‘I am a military officer of the Star League, the government established to rule over the colonies of the planet Terra, or as you call it Earth’ Thorpe replied from his quarters. ‘Admiral Adama and the survivors of the Twelve Colonies have already found the people they were looking for and we have offered them sanctuary’ he said. ‘Do not fire upon this vessel or you will find yourself in military conflict with a technologically far superior foe.’))
<<‘You don't really expect me to believe this garbage do you Admiral?’ the cylon asked. ‘The bad Caprican was a nice touch though I'll give you that.’>>
‘I'd like to hear you speak English’ Thorpe responded irately. He had put a great deal of effort into improving his Caprican over the last few months. ‘I'm being perfectly serious, I am from what you call the Thirteenth Tribe and we do have powerful weaponry of a type you've not encountered before’ he stated, getting back to the task in hand. ‘Don't provoke the wrath of the Star League, we're a lot better at war than you are, we've had a lot more practice at it to get it right’ he warned.
‘Cylon Raiders are massing’ Gaeta reported. ‘Some seem to be heading for the surface, they must have detected our people down there’ he told Adama.
Dualla answered a call on the intercom. ‘Sir Colonel McEvedy has been listening in via a translator’ she informed the Admiral. ‘All SLDF forces are now under your full control, Sir, he has informed Wing Commander Defoe who says that her aerospace fighters are manned and ready for launch.’
Gaeta watched the DRADIS screen. ‘Raiders are closing slowly, I think they're trying to scare us Sir’ he said. The basestars had jumped in hundreds of kilometres away probably to avoid triggering a battle immediately.
‘I'm quaking in my boots’ Adama responded flatly, causing a chuckle from Tigh. ‘Scramble the Wolverine birds’ he ordered. ‘Let's see how the Cylons react.’
As the twenty-four hundred-ton fighters launched from the two flight-pods they were immediately detected by the Cylons who had no idea what they were.
‘Raiders are moving into an attack pattern and are accelerating’ Gaeta announced, ‘we're being painted by targeting DRADIS from the basestar. I think we're about to start getting missiles thrown at us Admiral’ he offered his opinion based on what he could see on his screen.
‘We let those Raiders get much closer and we lose our ace-in-the-hole’ Tigh reminded Adama.
‘Missile launch from the closest basestar’ Gaeta exclaimed.
‘Weapons free, engage all enemy forces’ Adama responded immediately.
The One commanding the basestar had still thought it was all a bluff and had decided to call it with a single missile with a conventional warhead, not enough to actually damage Galactica but it would demonstrate that he knew all the talk of the Thirteenth Tribe was just nonsense. Those strange craft the battlestar had launched were obviously a ruse he reasoned.
When the first Raiders started exploding after being struck by an unknown weapon fired at both a relativistic velocity and a horrifyingly long range it all became much more convincing.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Chapter Note from the Author :The "revelations" regarding the origins of humanity in the last Season of nBSG really didn't make much sense culturally or genetically (and the Earth didn't look like it did in the show 150,000 years ago incidentally, it was in a severe Ice Age) so I'm fixing it. However I'm not going to simply ignore the last Season, I'm just going to explain it in a way that makes more sense and I'm even going to be using other Battlestar canon to do it. I can't see the Wolverines having a lot of non-military cultural traits so when it came to other things they've adopted an awful lot from the Scandinavian culture of the Richmond prisoners. You'll see Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish names plus a few political and social concepts. The universal conscription of New Circe is based on how Sweden operated for much of the Cold War, they were centre-left social democrats with a liberal mindset who nonetheless had the ability to quite quickly put 800,000 troops in the field if invaded (ten percent of the entire population and they only drafted the men, New Circe does much better proportionally as they don't let the female citizens off the hook).Kacey Brynn was the little girl taken from her mother Julia by the cylons to try and trick Kara Thrace into thinking she had a daughter. Dodona Selloi was a Colonial Oracle who Three visited on New Caprica, here she has set up on New Circe instead of course. Greek cities had patron Gods, they placed Zeus first but Athens for instance put more effort into worshipping Athena their own patron deity than other places would. Given that Circe was one of the Greek Pantheon (if not a major one) it's likely that the Colonials would regard her as the patron of a world named for her and would therefore give her considerably more attention than a minor goddess would normally warrant.The Cylons knew they had far better jump-drives so were in no hurry to assemble a large fleet before they estimated Galactica could reach the Cyrannus System where the Twelve Colonies were situated. They still do have better drives it's just that the Navigation Computer from New Circe closed up the gap a fair deal. I reasoned that since Scorpia was where the Colonial Shipyards were it was industrialised and had a fair number of military installations upon it. The Cylons blasted it heavily as a result, on Caprica we saw relatively intact cities such as Delphi (presumably the Cylons used neutron bombs to kill the people there and other places but keep the buildings intact for their own later use) but Scorpia wasn't so lucky. Radioactive fallout and months of Cylon occupation wiped out the vast majority of those that survived the initial holocaust but we know there were still survivors on Caprica so it's reasonable there were on the other Colonies too.
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