***​

***​

***​

***​

“We have one injured civilian, one uninjured civilian,” Sandra said. “Skids up, no sign of detection.” She looked over at the pilot and ECO, the ECO grumbling something about how bad the local’s DRADIS was.“Raptor 5, this is Galactica Actual.”Sandra’s spine tried to snap to attention. Forget the general, thewas on the line.“Yes sir!” she snapped.“You’re assigned to the guests. They know you, so try to keep them from getting worried. We’ve got the books enroute and hopefully we’ll be able to talk to them soon, and get them back down not long after that.”“Yes sir.”“What about the girl?”Sandra looked over to the medic, who gave her a thumbs up.“Pulse is good. She’s still unconscious, but she took a nasty fall so it’s not entirely unreasonable. Sensor says no internal bleeding or obvious severe cranial damage.”Understood. Good job. Galactica Actual out.”“Phew,” the pilot said. “We’re not going to be chucked into the shit processors for this frak-up.”“The Fleet Admiral is, in general, pragmatic about such things.” Daven pointed out. The cylon, like every cylon was absolutely still in its chair. Sometimes Sandra envied them that ability to just stop moving without dealing with nose itches or having to take a piss.She was about to say something when the boy tried to rise, only to stop when a marine gestured at his fastened safety harness.Mike’s mind was gibbering.At first he wondered if they’d been picked up by some sort of special military unit.Then he wondered if they were Russians, but the writing on the ship’s panels didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen, and James had brought some stuff from the Russian embassy to school for a history project.But now he was looking at the curve of the earth.Thewith the sky rapidly turning black.Nothing could do that! The Space Shuttle wasn’t even built yet, and it was mostly fuel! How could these-the woman made a few gestures at him, miming going somewhere and then… handed him a bag and mimed…Oh yuck. Mimed puking into it.Maybe she was afraid of zero-once again Mike’s brain slithered to a halt. They should be in zero G and he wasn’t. And leaving so fast…he should have been nearly squashed and he hadn’t been…Whothese guys?He was about to open his mouth when there was a flash.“Here kid,” Sandra said. “Pilots really hate to clean out puke from their floor plates.”The kid took it, got a disgusted look on his face.“Coming up on jump,” the pilot said. “And he’dnot frakking puke on my ship…Jump!”Then they were at their destination.Mike refused to puke, especially since nobody else was looking upset. He gritted his teeth at the sensation and then looked out the front window…And lost all interest in his stomach.The moon was huge, and just over the moon there was a, huge ships, their gray forms cruising like sharks. Tiny motes darted around them and Mike felt himself turn pale when he realized the motes were ships like the one they were one and that meant those other ships were…They passed one closely and Mike saw the huge guns on it…And then another thought hit him. They had been on earth. They were now at the moon.They were at the moon. Mike remembered when his parents had taken him to NASA and they had shown the exhibit of the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment. The laser took over a second to get to the moon.Mike gulped.These weren’t Russians, or Japanese or Chinese people. They were from somewhere else.With that, he looked up as they approached one of the bigger ships, its yawning bays opening for the lander.“We’ll be sending over anything that looks math or science to your desk and anything of military or political interest once we get a decent translation running via the computers, Director Baltar.” The technician gestured. “You underst-”“I have a passing familiarity with how the network works,” Baltar said. “But thank you. Better safe than sorry.”Baltar looked at his screen and the other scientists, only a small percentage of those who would be working on it. The books would be scanned and distributed, with some copies put on the general Net.There hadn’t been any nets until there had been a showdown between Roslin and Adama, with Tomas and Zarak playing peacemakers, andelse running for cover. The ultimate compromise had been simple— military systems remained as denetworked as possible, while the civilian nets, those that handled everything from mail to teaching, were made up of thousands of redundant nodes— and things like lifesupport were isolated while also being designed to be mechanically impossible to subvert via a pure hacking attack. The inorganic cylons had added their own touches in security, making even the civilian net a very hard target to break into. Every civilian and soldier had their own physical data "key" that was also biometrically coded to them. The only way anyone could make use of anything other than the most basic, passive capabilities of the Fleet's civilian net was to insert their key,provide their own password. It wasn't perfect, but it was eventually... tolerable, even to Adama.And as much as Adama hadn’t wanted to admit it, their confrontations with the organic cylons showed they needed the nets, and the improved productivity they brought. The cylons might be progressing slower than they should in the sciences, but slower didn’t mean not progressing at all, and the fleet needed every last bit of productivity it could wring out of its human population in order to meet that challenge while still remaining a society, not a military camp.They had been surprised when Baltar had turned down the offer on the part of some individuals (Not Tomas or Adama) to give him the lead role in designing the net.It had taken Baltar years to admit it. But Six wasn’t a cylon. Not the one in his head. She was just him, spinning tales of God’s special plan for him, coming up with ideas that he might have thought of himself, that hethink of himself, all trying to convince him that their was some great plan…And that the Colonies hadn’t been destroyed because Gaius Baltar had decided to show off just howhe was to his newest conquest. Nothing more. Hells it almost would have been better if heknowingly betrayed the Colonies. In that case, at least there would have been a purpose, however obscene to it!But no. There had been no purpose. Just ego.He almost hadn’t survived that. But Baltar had never been one for suicide…and more importantly, hebrilliant. It would have been a fine ending to his story if he had killed himself and the Fleet had later been destroyed for the lack of his skills. And given that he could spend every moment of his remaining life just saying the names of all those who had died, and by his death of old age not gotten through a fraction of them… Suicide seemed like a rather insignificant gesture of atonement.And here he was again, as one of the only scientists in the fleet that had a wide ranging education, not the focused training that was so common now, being asked to play a role in the Fleet’s future that didn’t involve improving the output of the onboard farms by 20%. On the other hand, being able to ensure that people could eat fresh chicken, not algae bars or gunk (other wise known as vat produced meat products) wasn’t a small achievement, not by half.The screen emitted a subdued beep and Baltar leaned forward as the first page appeared, evidently a children’s counting book.