Word Count: 5,039
Date: 02/13/05
Series: One
Rating: K+
Category: Character
Pairing/Focus: Sharon
Warnings:
Summary: Summary: Needless to say, I don't own the characters. I love Boomer though,
she's my favorite character, so that's why I went soft on her. This takes
place just after the end of Episode 13.
Spoilers/Disclaimers: This story contains references to the ending of Season 1. DO
NOT READ another word if you don't want it spoiled for you. You have been
warned.
“Mutiny aside, Lee, I need you worse than I need to send your ass to a brig cell,” Colonel Tigh said to his CAG, Captain Lee Adama. “Now, do I have your support, or do I need to send you to the prison barge?”
“I’ll obey any orders you give, sir. An apology won’t fix what happened on Colonial One.”
“Good. I’ve ordered whatever that is that shot your father taken to the secondary brig. Get on a uniform and take the bridge. I’m going down there to talk to it.”
“Yes, sir. Don’t kill it, sir.”
“Excuse me, Captain?”
“I said don’t kill it,” Lee said strongly. “I’ll do that myself.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Tigh said as he patted Lee on the shoulder.
Tigh left the bridge and walked through Galactica’s corridors to a small room, no bigger than 4 meters square. The secondary brig was the real jail cell on the massive ship. Main brig wasn’t designed for serious criminals with its cell walls consisting only of bars. Drunks got to sleep in main brig, working off a binge on shore leave.
Lieutenant Sharon Valerii sat on the single cot in her cell. Her head rested squarely in her hands. Instinctively, she snapped to attention when the senior officer entered the room.
“Colonel, sir.”
“Sit down, whatever the hell you are! What are you anyway?”
“Cylon Model 8, Colonel. That’s what I am. Programmed to infiltrate the Colonial Service. Mission accomplished.”
“And you shot Commander Adama…”
“Sir, I can explain what I did…”
“You’ll explain it to our cyberneticists when they take you apart…”
“I’m sorry for what I did,” Sharon yelled. “Colonel, I’m a machine at heart, a machine that can do everything you humans can do. But I was programmed to be one of you, and at the same time, I was programmed to carry out secret missions, get in the way, cause havoc. Can you program a computer to do two things at the same time?”
“They did it to you, didn’t they?”
“And they screwed up. You can’t trust me, Colonel. I know that. But I can tell you a couple things that will make you at least listen to me. Commander Adama told me to go blow up a base ship, the one over Kobol. You know what? I did it. Not the Cylon in me, Sharon did it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m flawed. My peers would say I spent too much time around humans. The programming that allowed me to act and be human, it beat out the other side. Why do you think I shot myself? I did it because I didn’t want to be the instrument of your destruction.”
“Bullshit, you shot the Commander…”
“And if I could trade places with him, I would now. That was the Cylon’s last act. You can’t ever believe that, and I don’t expect you to. But I killed a lot of Cylons when I detonated that nuke in the base ship. Let me ask you something, Colonel, if you had an agent among the Cylons, would they go blow up a battlestar just to prove their loyalty to the Cylons? I doubt it.”
“They probably wouldn’t…”
“I’ll tell you something else, and maybe, just maybe you’ll believe me…”
“Tell me how the Cylons tracked us after we first fled the colonies.”
“They had a raider on the hull of the Olympic Carrier. You jump, it recorded the jump and jumped out in the chaos of the fleet reforming. The whole thing with the timing, that was just to get under your skin. The base stars doing the chasing could have been on you in a few moments. They like the thrill of the hunt, Colonel. You had time to make it interesting.”
“And the people on the ship?”
“I don’t know. Colonel, I will tell you that you have a much bigger problem in your midst.”
“Go on.” Tigh thought through the raider theory, and it did make sense. Dradis was off line for a few seconds after the jump, and in that time, the spy raider could have left the jump zone undetected.
“Do you remember when your wife showed up? Commander Adama had her tested.”
“I do. He was right to do so.” Tigh didn’t believe that statement for a second. He knew Ellen wasn’t a Cylon.
“I was the one who saved Baltar back on Caprica. I didn’t know who he was, but Helo gave up his seat for the man. I went to Baltar’s lab, I heard scuttlebut that he was working on a way to detect Cylons, and at the time, I didn’t know that I was one. I went to him and blackmailed him into testing me. He claimed I was clean, that I wasn’t a Cylon. We both know that…”
“You’re lying…”
“Colonel Tigh, I am not lying. Check it out. Your man Baltar is trouble. Top defense scientist escapes from Caprica, and from all accounts I’ve heard, he’s not exactly the most mentally stable person in the fleet. He looked at the results, got scared, and started playing with the keyboard like a man possessed. He pronounced me clean. That is incorrect.”
Tigh didn’t care much for Baltar anyway. The Colonel hated scientists, especially ones who truly believed they knew it all. And now, Baltar made Vice President. Was Tom Zarek such a bad choice? Tigh didn’t think so.
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m not lying to you. Why should I lie about it? I’m dead anyway, you’re not going to trust me, and it’s not like I can run off to the nearest base ship and expect them to take me back. They know I’m broken now.”
“Is Baltar a Cylon?”
Boomer looked at the Colonel. “No. But he’s under the influence of one. I sensed a presence around him when I saw him in his lab.”
“I require descriptions of all the human-appearing Cylons,” Tigh said.
“There are 12. Give me a pad and I’ll draw them for you.”
“Remember, we know some of them, so we’ll be able to check you.”
“You ask, I’ll give.”
Tigh ordered one of the Marines at the door to go get paper and pencil for Sharon. He seethed as he watched Sharon carefully draw the faces of each Cylon model. An hour passed without words between the two before Sharon handed 12 pieces of paper back to Colonel Tigh.
“I even drew myself. Sorry if the quality isn’t all that good, art wasn’t something I developed a skill for.”
“Are you sure about this one?” Tigh said as he held a picture of Six to the bars for Sharon to see. He remembered Six as being Shelly Godfrey, assistant to some other damn scientist with some far-flung accusation about Baltar.
“Six. A persuasive being. Good at getting to human males. Most of those models have a dislike for my model.”
“Really?” Tigh asked.
“They find me to be weak. We have our differences.”
Tigh blinked when he reached the 11th page. He glared at Sharon in complete disbelief.
“I see you found Eleven. The male version of Six, only designed to look older and more mature. When you think about it, does he really surprise you though? He’s a troublemaker who can seduce a woman.”
“I’m not surprised by anything now,” Tigh said. “If you need food, tell the guards, they’ll get you whatever you need to keep you alive.”
“Thank you, sir. I trust you’ll be getting to work now.”
“After I check out Baltar. You’re sure he tested you?”
“I’m positive. And he told me I was not a Cylon.”
“I’ll never trust you, but thank you for telling me this. It won’t go unremembered,” Tigh said sincerely. If she was right about Baltar, getting Gaeta to figure out how the Cylon detector was rigged shouldn’t be all that hard. Then Tigh could go after the big fish, that Number Eleven.
Colonel Saul Tigh had the fleet in his hand. Bill Adama was in sick bay fighting for his life, and a mutineer was running the bridge. This wasn’t the way he wanted to get his first command, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Tigh walked out of the secondary brig, faced by four Marines assigned as guards.
“If it tries to escape,” Tigh said. He paused. “If it tries to escape, shoot to subdue. Don’t kill it. If it wants anything to eat or drink, see that whatever is brought down here.”
“Sir?” the lead Marine asked.
“You heard me,” Tigh shouted. “Don’t kill Lieutenant Valerii unless necessary.”
Tigh went to CIC and found the whole place eerily calm. Lee had that effect on people. He knew how to say the right thing, and for that, Tigh was grateful. The XO couldn’t say the right things, it wasn’t in his job description.
“Captain, walk with me,” Tigh said after entering the compartment. He and Lee headed for the walkway overlooking the pit and the central Dradis console.
“What did it tell you?” Lee asked Tigh quietly, doing his best not to be heard by anyone in the command center.
“A lot,” Tigh answered, handing Lee the 12 drawings provided by Sharon. “She drew those.”
Lee flipped through the pages. “Seen him, seen her… that was the assistant that accused Dr. Baltar of being a traitor, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tigh muttered. “Go on.”
“Seen him,” Lee said as he found the page with Leoben Conroy. “More than I care to.”
“Go on.”
Lee hit page 11 and nearly dropped the papers all over the bridge. “Holy frack!”
“I want him tested, but if I find out he’s a Cylon, I swear to the Lords of Kobol, I will personally rip that sonofabitch from limb to limb.”
Lee stared at the paper. He noticed the short-cropped, dark hair. The older features struck Lee as odd, but the slightly rounded face left no doubt who the 11th Cylon was. It was a face Lee once admired, but after seeing the drawing, that admiration turned to Hell-fired hatred.
“I’ll need Mr. Gaeta. Apparently, Dr. Baltar wasn’t as honest with us as he could have been.”
“Does that surprise you, sir?”
“No. Valerii says that he has been faking the test results. She said he tested her, and she came back clean. I want Gaeta to tear into that machine and see if he can figure out what tests have been forged and if he can run a clean test. We do have a subject that will show Cylon now, guaranteed, and as for now, she’s cooperating.”
“She should, we’ll kill her otherwise.” Lee stared at Tigh for a moment. The Colonel was surveying the CIC below him, watching how the people moved quickly and quietly about their jobs. “Colonel? What did she tell you down there? You can’t seriously trust a Cylon!”
“I don’t trust her. Not now. Probably not ever. But for now, she gave me good information, and I have to investigate it.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I want a Raptor and two Vipers on standby. Gaeta doesn’t sleep until he fixes that Cylon detector. Once it’s fixed, I want Doc Cottle on board, and we’ll go get a blood sample to be the second to check.”
“Understood. He’s on Colonial One right now. Sir, did she blow up the base ship?”
“Racetrack confirmed it. She did the job we asked her to do.”
“We can’t trust her…”
“Captain, if you were an agent on a base star, and they gave you a job, to go blow up Galactica, would you do it to prove your loyalty as a Cylon?”
“Of course I wouldn’t…”
“She did. Like it or not, that’s a point in her favor. Your father would agree, and you know it.”
Lee sighed and handed Tigh the 12 crucial pieces of paper. “Yeah, and that’s why I’m not him. I don’t have to trust her, I don’t have to even question her motives.”
“Our survival depends on information. We have a Cylon in our brig spewing information. If we find that it is correct, we will act on it. That’s our job.”
“Does Gaeta have a jump plotted outta here in case a base ship shows up?”
“Yes, sir, he does.”
“Send him to the lab with two Marines. I want reports every hour on his progress, and I want reports on your father at the same intervals. In the meanwhile, make sure that Raptor and the Vipers are ready to go. We have a date with Mr. Thomas Zarek once the detector is up and running.”
Tigh headed back to the secondary brig. He wanted desperately to go to Sick Bay and see Bill, see how the man who gave him a second (and a third and a fourth) chance was doing after being shot twice in CIC. The walk gave Tigh a chance to think about the shooting, think about how he should have reacted. He did the best he could possibly do. And now, he had to do his best for Galactica.
The Colonel wondered what a drink would be like. How the alcohol would lovingly burn as it trailed through his throat and into his stomach, how the compound would affect his thoughts, would calm his nerves – all that ran through his mind. Almost as quickly as the walk began, it ended at the heavily secured room known to all as the “real jail cell.”
Sharon was seated on her cot, eating a meal of standard rations. She noticed the Colonel, who indicated by a wave of the hand that she need not stand.
“I appreciate the food, sir. We do need to eat.”
“I thought you did.”
“We’re working on the Cylon detector. Do you have any information that would help?”
“No. I don’t know anything about it. Maybe if I looked at it, I could see something that your people couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about the Raider tracking our jumps or any of these other revelations?”
Sharon sighed as she sat her food aside. “I didn’t know for sure. It’s like there were two beings in here, each one fighting for control. I didn’t know who I was until I landed on the base ship. The nuke jammed on the rail, so I went out to knock it off, and when I did, I saw a bunch of, well, of me’s, sir. I got some information from them, they were trying to get me to come home. I saw the Raider jumping, I saw a lot of things that I’m still trying to figure out.”
“You blew up the water tanks, didn’t you?” Tigh quietly asked.
“Yes, I did. And I also found water. I suspected something was wrong with me then, it was like I couldn’t say the words over that ice planet. I fought that entity this whole time. But when I was on the base ship, it all came clear. I know so much now.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Tigh said.
“Sir, I don’t know which way is up. Half of me is Cylon, and that half right now is controlled. She’s not coming out. But at the same time, I’m scared. Everything I ever knew is gone. I’m not me, I’m something else, something that I don’t like. They programmed me good, sir. Too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m human. They wanted to make the perfect human, but they wanted to be able to turn her off when they needed to. It doesn’t work that way. The other two you’ve come across, the programmers got that right. They didn’t get me right. I was one of the first programmed to be like this.”
“So you’re saying that you’re the experiment?”
“I am. I can’t do this anymore…”
“Do you want to help us or help the Cylons?”
“I blew up a base star,” Sharon yelled. “What more do I have to do? Everything I’ve done to harm you, I’ve done something to counter it. The only thing I can’t fix is shooting the Commander!”
Tigh watched Sharon start crying. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, a Cylon showing emotions far beyond anything he expected possible. Sharon cried into the napkins provided with her meal for at least five precious minutes.
“Sharon,” Tigh said as calmly as he could, “I need you to get it together. Now, that drawing you gave me of Eleven. You know who that is, right?”
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw him on one of the telecasts of the Council meetings. The man who was one vote away from the Vice Presidency is one of us.”
“Did we elect a smarter choice?” Tigh said wryly.
“We could debate that point, sir. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
“I hate every politician. I hate ‘em, I frackin’ hate ‘em,” Tigh muttered.
“Do you hate them worse than Cylons?” Sharon asked.
Tigh chuckled. “At this point, they’re running neck and neck for the top of the list. Will the Cylons come after us?”
“Not for a while. From what I saw on the base ship and what information they sent me, they’re trying to figure out where they went wrong with me. You have a couple days maybe.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Let’s see,” Sharon said as she paced around her cell, “I’m going to live the rest of my life in a jail cell, as a circus freak, with everyone in the fleet coming by to see the evil Cylon that betrayed us and saved us at the same time. I was human, sir, I had a history, I had parents who died, I grew up. I had all that, and it was all snatched away from me in one day back on Caprica when the Cylons came home. So, no, sir, I doubt I’ll be okay. Colonel, you don’t have much time, go fix your detector and weed out all the Cylons who are in the fleet.”
“We went public once…”
“NO! Do not do that. I beg of you, Colonel, do not go public again! If you do, and there are more Cylons out there, they’ll go self-destructive and do more damage than you can possibly imagine. You have to go about this quietly. Take them down one at a time.”
“How can we keep them from telling all their brethren that we’ve captured one.”
Sharon handed Tigh a couple pieces of paper. “It’s a cage, of sorts, but it will interfere with the signals that the Cylons send to one another. If your engineer has questions, I’ll answer them. He can confirm that the cage will not amplify their signals.”
“I’ll get started on this right away,” Tigh said as he walked away. The Colonel paused at the door and spun around on his heels.
“Question, Colonel?”
“Tell me something… how are you not still receiving signals from the others?”
Sharon shivered as she put her hands on the bars. “When I got back from nuking the base ship, I knew my Cylon side had received orders, but I didn’t know what they were. Buried somewhere in that flood of information, I found out how to cut myself off.”
“What did you do?”
“My medulla oblongata looks and feels like yours. In reality, it’s a link between Cylons. When Cylons say their consciousness will go to another body, they aren’t kidding. I don’t know the biology of it, and you probably can’t figure out how, but when a Cylon has to cut itself off, because its personality is infected in some way, there’s a built-in way to do it. I did it. I shoved a needle into my brain, Colonel. They can’t tell me what to do anymore,” Sharon said through tears. “I win, not them, and not that other half of me.”
Sharon picked up the pad and pencils provided by the guards at Colonel Tigh’s order. She thought for a minute, trying to reflect on what the past 24 hours had involved for her: the discovery of her true nature, her betrayal of Commander Adama, and what one could argue was the ultimate sell-out, giving up her own people.
She sat her tray on the floor and pushed it to the cell door. The guards didn’t respond, and that was fine with her. Sharon knew her life was over. So, she started writing about it.
What did I do? Commander Adama had to call me right to the bridge, he didn’t give me enough time to take care of the problem. I stole one of the ultra-fine needles off one of the meds in the emergency kit on (what used to be) my Raptor. Fortunately, I had a place to keep it until I had time to sever the connection – my hair. I knew the Cylon had a mission on the bridge, and I had to go there.
So, then in the blink of an eye, I’m in the brig. The guards left me alone for just long enough so I could end this whole thing once and for all. The procedure was bloodless, thankfully. Shove it in, snap off the end, and press. All done, and I’m not a Cylon anymore. I figured Captain Adama would come down and just shoot me, but it was Tigh. I always respected the Colonel. Even though his loyalty to the Commander was intense, I knew the man would listen to me.
What else can I tell them? Information is going to buy my survival. I’ve told them who the Cylons are, I’ve told them how to cut them off once captured. Everything else is guess work. I don’t know how to fix a Raider. Starbuck did a good enough job of that anyway. I can’t imagine if I’d been the one to find it, they’d probably throw it out thinking I planted a bomb in it.
I don’t know what will happen to me. The Colonial Service will probably see to it that I’m executed. If I am, so be it. At least I died knowing that I’m more than my maker meant for me to be. Have I won or lost? Neither, I think I just puckered up and kissed my sister. Damn cliché. But that means I really lost, because the thought of doing that disgusts me so thoroughly that I’d probably not miss if I had a gun in my hand right now.
I need rest now. They think Cylons don’t, but they do. Just not as much as they do. So, what’s the term… “until next time, Dear Diary.” That’ll just have to do.
“Sir, I just can’t do this,” Lieutenant Gaeta reported to his temporary C.O., Colonel Tigh. “I don’t know what Baltar has done to this thing, but the code loop will report everyone as being human, no matter what I do”
Gaeta sat in front of the same keyboard Gaius Baltar used to validate humans as being human. He looked over the pair of twin monitors at his superior, Gaeta’s eyes tired and sleepy. It had been hours or days, the young man didn’t know which, since he’d been to his rack, or even the head for that matter.
Tigh stared at the young man, whose face pleaded for assistance. “Okay, you want Sharon up here to look at it?”
“What can she do?”
“She may not be able to write the program, but she may be able to tell you something about the biology.”
“Yes, sir, that could be helpful.”
Tigh walked to the door of the compartment and picked up the clunky old handset of a phone from its cradle. He called the secondary brig and ordered the Marines to escort Sharon to the lab. The soldiers were to clear each corridor before bringing her through so that no member of the crew would try to harm the most precious prisoner in Colonial history. Ten long minutes passed before Valerii, surrounded by four guards, entered the lab, the same lab where she was pronounced to be human.
“Sir, I don’t know much about these computers. I’ll try though,” Sharon told Tigh.
“Do the best you can. I’m going to go see the old man.”
“Yes, sir,” Sharon and Gaeta said at the same time.
Tigh ordered the guards to protect the room as if it was the brig and also ordered them to quietly activate the audio and video surveillance equipment installed after Baltar tried to destroy some computer equipment. Tigh left and walked through Galactica’s hallways to the main sick bay. 29 hours had passed since Bill Adama took two rounds to the midsection. Doc Cottle and his team managed to operate and stabilize the Commander, but not before he faced significant blood loss. The senior Adama would face another round of surgery, but his life would continue, so said the medical staff.
“Bill,” Tigh said apprehensively, scared a bit of the medical monitors surrounding Adama’s bed.
“How are we doing?”
“Not bad. No word from Starbuck yet. Lee’s acting as X.O. for now. We’re just getting ready to get outta here if they show up.”
“Why?” Adama asked without definition.
“She’s a Cylon, and she’s also cooperating…”
“Don’t trust her…”
“I don’t have a choice, she blew up a base ship. She’s told me a lot, given us a lot of good information. We know what the 12 look like now, and you’d be surprised at who we found.”
“Who’s that?” Bill asked softly.
“Zarek. She told us about him.” Tigh went on to tell Commander Adama about the rigged Cylon detector and the results, which Tigh found to be as Sharon had explained. “She’s telling us everything.”
“Keep one eye on her. This isn’t over.”
“I am. But for now, she is useful.”
“Agreed,” Adama uttered grudgingly.
“Visiting hours are over,” Cottle said from behind Tigh. The doctor took a deep drag off his cigarette and practically exhaled into Tigh’s face.
“Go,” Adama said. “Keep my ship running like you always have.”
“Yes, sir,” Tigh said sharply, snapping to a crisp salute.
In the lab, the Marines grew tired of listening to Sharon detail things about Cylon biology to Gaeta, who searched through endless lines of computer code looking for the fractions of information Sharon could tell him. 90 minutes after starting their search, the second guard left the room.
The moment the guard stepped outside, Gaeta stopped typing and grabbed Sharon’s hand. Valerii had leaned down to watch the computer monitor but had not taken a seat on one of the high stools in the lab.
“You are a traitor to your God,” Gaeta said slowly and deliberately. “You will pay for this treachery. When I finish killing you, you will not find another body waiting on you. Your soul is gone.”
Before Sharon could scream, Gaeta’s other hand covered her mouth. He slammed Valerii onto a table, released her hand, and put his now free hand on her throat.
“Good bye, blasphemer,” Gaeta said evilly as he squeezed Sharon’s throat.
Mere seconds later, two rounds from a Marine’s sidearm penetrated the bridge officer’s forehead, splattering blood onto Sharon and the laboratory equipment. Sharon took a moment to recover as two of the guards helped her off the table. Tigh ran into the room just as the excitement ended.
“What happened?”
“It’s all on camera,” one of the guards said. “Gaeta grabbed her and started attacking. We came in and stopped him.”
“He was talking like a Cylon,” Sharon said. “He caught me by surprise.”
“You drew those 12…”
“Then there must be more,” Sharon said ominously. “There must be more that I don’t know about.”
“What now?” Tigh muttered to himself.
“Let me work on this machine, sir. I saw enough of what Gaeta was doing, I may be able to make it work. No promises, but I’ll try.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“I’ve been hurt worse.”
“Then carry on,” Tigh said. “I need a few minutes in my rack.”
“Yes, sir. Colonel, may I make a request?”
“Go on,” Tigh responded. “Quickly.”
“I’d like one of the guards to stay in the room with me at all times. If there are other Cylons that I don’t know about, then I’m not going to be very popular with them.”
“I’ll see to it,” one of the guards in the room said. “We went to the head, sir.”
“Dammit, you will not let that happen again!” Tigh yelled as he headed to his quarters.
Tigh thought to himself as he walked into his quarters. He was completely in Sharon’s corner, and that wasn’t a place he felt comfortable being. She was on Galactica’s side, everything she had done to that point after her discovery was fully and completely on the side of the old BSG75 and her crew. Nevertheless, the facts disturbed Tigh. Bill would have to be convinced.
Tigh couldn’t sleep immediately, he had things running through his mind that needed resolved. He found a copy of Starbuck’s report on the interrogation of the Leoben Conroy model. That damn President ordered him spaced, even after Kara basically promised him that he’d live. As much as Tigh hated the Cylons, some of the things that happened after the destruction of the Colonies lowered the humans to the level of the Cylons. Those images did not sit well with the acting Commander of the Galactica. He determined that he wouldn’t allow those feelings to impact what happened to Sharon. They couldn’t – or the humans would be no better than those galmogging Cylons. And that simply couldn’t be allowed to happen.