ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

PART TEN

“Interesting,” Adama commented, leaning back in the chair behind his desk in his quarters aboard the Galactica. “Hector was a good man, but I wonder if he would have had the courage to do what Aeneas did. That’s going to make him very unpopular in certain parts of Sagitara. It also might someday make him President of the Council of Twelve.”
“I was impressed,” admitted Apollo. “He’s a good officer.”
“One of the best. Thank the Lords we have a few left like that.”
“And the treaty?”
“Ready to be signed,” said Adama.
“Father, what do you think about it?”
Adama gathered his thoughts. This is my son, he reminded himself. “I will be honest with you, Apollo. I think it is a terrible mistake.”
“What if it’s true?”
Adama smiled, sadly. “You have the optimism of youth, my son. I wish I shared it. I would love for the treaty to be real…but I believe it is a trick.” Shuffling a few loose papers about his desk, Adama continued, “Was there anything else about the mission you needed to tell me, Apollo?”
Apollo shifted nervously, still frantically trying to come up with some neutral way to tell his father what had happened. When he ventured to glance up and saw Adama smiling, he realized he already knew.
Producing a small holocrystal from inside his desk, Adama tossed it across at Apollo, who fielded it automatically. Within the depths of the crystal, his green-eyed daughter looked up at him again.
“Diomedes sent me that,” Adama said, “along with a note that we have, as he put it, ‘something in common.’�
“I’m afraid you do,” Apollo admitted.
“It’s a little…out of the ordinary, but I am not displeased.”
“Father, I could never…there is not going to be a sealing.”
“I know that.” He smiled. “I remember, when you were at the Command Academy and your mother and I came to visit you. It was obvious then that there was something between the two of you.”
“Uh, yes, there was,” said Apollo.
“And just as obvious that you and Miriam are opposites. You have your way to go, she has hers.”
“Father, it disturbs me….”
“What?”
“That my daughter is…going to grow up Sagitaran. They….”
“They are some of the best warriors in the Colonies,” Adama said. “And some of the best people. I know where this is going. Aeneas told me about the duel.” Apollo nodded and Adama went on, “Every one of our cultures is different. We should take pride in that. The Sagitarans are people of honor. Sometimes they take it to what seem to us extremes, but there is no one I’d rather have at my back than Aeneas. Or Hector. Or Diomedes. Or your friend Miriam. Most Sagitarans never fight a duel in their lives, Apollo. And I’m sure she’ll have the best swordmasters cubits can buy.”
“That’s not very reassuring, Father.”
“It’s all the reassurance you’ll get. To the world in general she is Aleksandros’ daughter, not yours-and that is how she will be brought up.”

Aeneas adjusted his uniform cape slightly, looked sharply up and down the double row of warriors drawn up waiting for their Council member’s shuttle. His own preference would have been to greet Aleksandros with no ceremony at all, but he knew his duty.
The shuttle, a sleek civilian model, eased through the entry port with a slight popping noise as it penetrated the transparent forcefield that kept Columbia’s atmosphere in while permitting solid objects to pass. Setting down precisely on the marks painted on the deck, its engines ran down to silence and its hatch opened. The honor guard snapped to and presented arms as Aleksandros stepped down off the shuttle.
Aeneas stepped forward. “Welcome aboard Columbia, sir,” Aeneas said. As a younger son, Aleksandros’ social status was inferior to Aeneas’ so there was no need for him to use the honorific ’my lord,’ though it might have been more polite to do so.
“Very nice, Commander,” Aleksandros in his own turn avoided Aeneas’ title. “You may show me to my quarters now.”
“I was thinking perhaps you’d like a tour of the ship. The crew….”
“Not necessary. It’s a short trip. I presume you have quarters prepared for my staff also.”
“Of course, sir. My executive officer has seen to that.”
“Fine. When do we arrive at the rendezvous with the Cylon emissaries?”
“Tomorrow, just past 1700 centares ship time.”
“We have a luncheon meeting aboard the flagship before that. And, as I may need to confer with the President or other Council members at any time, be certain my shuttle is kept ready. Now, if you will lead the way, Commander?”
“Right this way, sir.”

Miriam had never been certain whether to be amused or irritated by her husband’s exaggerated sense of self-importance. She watched as he dispatched his aides on a variety of largely trivial errands, treating them with something of the disdainful air of a master ordering his slaves. It was a very un-Sagitaran attitude; perhaps, she thought, he had some illegitimate Scorpian blood in him.
Once all the aides had scurried away from her quarters, Aleksandros finally had a centon to spare for her. He inquired, “And how you been, my lady?”
“Well enough. Busy. And you?”
“When the peace treaty is finally signed I will be well indeed. I feel as if I will have justified my existence.”
Wonderful, Miriam thought. He’s making a speech, right here…. “And when I kill the last Cylon, I will have justified mine,” she replied evenly.
“Miriam, you and your father and Aeneas are three of a kind. I see peace, you see treachery.”
“That’s because we’ve been fighting them,” she said. The unspoken sequel to that comment was, and where the hell have you been?
“Time will prove me right,” said Aleksandros.
“I sincerely hope it does, Aleksandros. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Would you like to see Amala now?”
“Later, later. I have things to attend to right now. I will be back in a few centons.”
Miriam watched him go, then remarked to the empty air, “Warm and personable as ever.”

Aleksandros returned to the hangar, for he had left some documents aboard his shuttle and didn’t want to wait for his aides to return from their tasks to send one of them. He inquired of a ground crewman as to where it had been parked, and the woman directed him towards the bow end of the battlestar’s alpha bay.
After he’d retrieved the papers, he came out of the shuttle, closed its hatch behind him, and started to make for the nearest bank of turbolifts, but halted when noise and light from farther down the mostly darkened hangar bay caught his eye. Pausing at the edge of a pool of light cast by a few lamps, he watched as an arming crew made the final tests on a pair of nuclear-tipped attack missiles mounted on the belly weapons door of a strike fighter. Once they were certain of their work, the crewmen stepped back, the crew chief pressed a button in the side of the striker, and the door rotated, concealing the missiles in the striker’s weapons bay. Aleksandros saw nine more strikers behind it, all being similarly worked on.
Colonel Akamas was in charge of the bridge when Aleksandros arrived. Obviously having a few problems with his elegantly draped robes on the stairs, the Council member made his way to the command level and confronted Columbia’s exec. “Where is Commander Aeneas?”
“Commander Aeneas is on rest period, sir,” Akamas replied
“Get him up here,” Aleksandros replied, in tones that indicated he was quite used to getting his way.
“Very well.” Akamas told the Flight Officer, “Call the Commander to the bridge, if you please.”
“By your leave, sir,” he said, and did so.
In a few centons, Commander Aeneas arrived on the bridge. “What is it?” he asked shortly as he strode up the stairs to the command level.
“Might I ask, Commander, why your ground crews are currently arming ten strike fighters in alpha bay?” Aleksandros inquired.
“You called me up here to ask that?” Aeneas demanded in weary disbelief. “We have a live missile firing exercise scheduled next secton.”
“So why not wait until then to arm the ships?”
“Part of the exercise is to determine how well the missiles hold up to being powered-up for long periods. Would you like to read the orders?”
Aleksandros said, “No, I don’t believe that will be necessary. I’m sure they are in order.” One way or another, he thought. “I’m sorry I disturbed your rest, Commander. I was merely making certain that no one was planning to permit their emotions to stand in the way of reason tomorrow when we meet the Cylon ambassadors.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, sir,” replied Aeneas. Especially since the Council lost sight of reason a good while ago, he appended silently. Fracking idiots.
Aeneas and his exec watched their Council member leave the bridge, then Akamas sighed. “Frack,” Aeneas said.
“You and me both, my lord,” Akamas agreed.

Aleksandros returned to Miriam’s quarters and laid his papers aside, asked Miriam casually, “Do you have anything in particular coming up next secton?”
“We have a live fire exercise next secton. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, my lady. I was hoping to see more of you. Perhaps you could get Amala now.”
“Certainly,” Miriam said, and did so. She passed her daughter over to Aleksandros, who held her and bounced her gently in his arms while she giggled and beamed up at him happily. He’s impossible, Miriam thought, but if he took the time he might not be such a bad father. Or bad person. Not my type, though. She recalled what her father had said to her just before she had left to return to the Columbia. They had been standing together on the battlements of the fortress, looking out across the bay at the twilight, and Diomedes had said simply, “I regret arranging your sealing, daughter.”
“It’s all right, Father. It’s done. You couldn’t have known. Your sealing was arranged, and it’s a good one.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I love your mother. She has her centons, but I love her. But you…hades. The entire practice is ridiculous. A survival from the days when we made marriages to seal alliances. We are too much a captive to our traditions, I think. People should make their own decisions about such matters.”
“It’s all right, Father,” she said again, and hugged him. Her relationship with her father had had many rough times, but she could never recall feeling closer to him than at that moment.
She came back to the current reality reluctantly. “Aleksandros,” she said, “I think we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Our sealing, for one.”
“I have been very neglectful, I know. After the peace treaty, things will be different.”
“I would like out of it,” she said flatly.
“I can’t do that.”
“You’ve achieved what you wanted. You succeeded my father as Sagitara’s Council member. You don’t need the alliance anymore.”
“Do you hate me so much?”
Miriam hesitated, thought about that. “No, I don’t hate you…never that. You and I are not alike, not at all. If we had a few things in common, then maybe…but I think things would be better, for both of us, if we called it off. I am more than willing to take all the blame. You can say about me whatever you will; likely most of it will be true.”
There was a silence, then Aleksandros said, “I am not as blind as perhaps you think, Miriam. I knew about your friend the navigator. It didn’t bother me, really. I suspected…no, I knew…that you loved one another. What ever happened, anyway?”
“She couldn’t stand waiting for the inevitable fatal accident,” Miriam replied. “She thought I should give up flying.”
Aleksandros scoffed, “You might as well give up breathing. Hades, even I know that…like I said, it didn’t bother me. I never had time for you. I am not possessive. I am not particularly…physical. But this Caprican….” He looked down at Amala, who was blissfully unaware of her unhappy origins. “That you might have spared me.”
“I was fully aware the entire time that it was completely and totally despicable,” Miriam said.
“No, not that…Miriam, I understand some things about you. You’re a warrior, a predator, an aristocrat. You are fire.” Miriam was startled at the passion in his voice. “If you knew how much I admired you…if you knew how much I envied you….” Aleksandros stopped, finished sadly, “I wish you understood me.”
“I’m sorry, Aleksandros. I never did. I still don’t.”
“Could you try?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“We will discuss this further after the peace conference is over. I have to think,” Aleksandros concluded.

Aboard the battlestar Atlantia, as she closed on the meeting point with the Cylon envoys, President Adar raised an elegantly chased silver chalice, filled with the finest vignon from Taura, and with it saluted the members of the Council of Twelve seated around the table in the battlestar’s formal meeting chamber, the dishes of their feast now cleared away. “Noble delegates,” he said, his voice calm but with a tinge of barely-repressed emotion, “I realize that you are all anxious to get back to your ships before our rendezvous with the Cylons, but I think it appropriate to toast the most significant event in the history of mankind. I would like to raise my chalice to you. Not merely as the Quorum of Twelve representing the Twelve Colonies of Man, but as my friends. The greatest leaders ever assembled. As we approach the seventh millennium of time, the human race will at last find peace, thanks to you.”
The other men returned his salute. “Peace,” they chorused solemnly. Only to Commander Adama did the word sound hollow.

Aeneas turned to Akamas, the two men standing together on the top level of the Columbia’s bridge, and asked, “When is the Galactica scheduled to launch their patrol?”
Referring to his belt computron, Akamas replied, “In about five centons, my lord.”
“Good. Tap into their telemetry, if you can.”
“I’ll get Communications right on it,” Akamas said, and went to do so.

Apollo felt aggravated. The events of the past few months piled on top of one another were an irritating burden. He found he had a daughter by a woman who he was only occasionally on speaking terms with, he was caught between his father’s sense of gloom and his own optimism regarding the Cylon peace treaty, and now, to top it all, Starbuck had not turned up in the hangar bay at the appointed time. Probably off somewhere playing cards or getting laid, Apollo thought, irritated. Frack, I hope he never figures out how to combine the two….lucky for him he’s as endearing as irritating.
He looked around the bunkroom, heard voices from the locker room beyond, and went in. Starbuck was there, half-dressed, along with Zac. Apollo noticed they both looked more than a little guilty. Great, he thought, Zac just gets here and already Starbuck’s sucking him into his schemes…. “Hey Starbuck, what’re you doing, we’re going on patrol,” he snapped, irritated.
Visibly caught at a loss, Starbuck sputtered, “Uh...uh….”
Zac broke in and in perfectly level tones informed Apollo, “He can’t make it. Starbuck’s not feeling well.”
Apollo looked suspiciously over at Starbuck. He seemed perfectly healthy. “Oh?” he inquired.
“Yeah. Uh well, it’s uh…I don’t know…,” Starbuck shrugged off the query and reached for a fumarello.
Zac was stirring about restlessly, Starbuck still behaving suspiciously, and it occurred to Apollo that he was being set up. His upset fading, he decided to play along and see what the two pilots had cooked up. “Well, that’s kind of short notice,” Apollo commented thoughtfully. “I mean, with everyone not wanting to go on this patrol…everyone wants to celebrate the armistice. I wonder who I’m going to be able to find?” Apollo mused.
Zac cleared his throat. “Uh….”
“Yes, Zac, you have a suggestion?”
The young pilot looked from Starbuck to his brother, then he beseeched, “Come on, I’ve studied the coordinates from here to the Cylon capital, my ship’s ready to go!”
I should have known, Apollo thought. Feigning astonishment, he said to Starbuck, “Well, that’s lucky, isn’t it, Starbuck?”
“Yeah, that’s a real stroke of luck,” Starbuck agreed.
“Well,” Apollo informed his brother, “I guess you’re just gonna have to pull Starbuck’s patrol with me.”
Delighted with his good fortune, Zac let out an ear-splitting whoop of joy and strode happily out of the locker room, heading for the hangar. The two older warriors watched him go, bemused.
“Were we ever like that?” Apollo wondered.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember that far back,” Starbuck said. “Listen, maybe I ought to go along.”
“No, he’s going to be just fine. I mean, it’s not as if we’re at war, right?”

“Galactica just launched her patrol, my lord, about five centons late,” Akamas reported to Aeneas.
“Fine.”

After the toasts were done, the Council members lingered to talk and finish their wine. Adama was uncomfortably aware of the Sagitaran councilman’s eyes on him. He must have learned the true parentage of his daughter; he looked completely depressed. Adama felt sorry for him.
Setting aside his untouched glass, Adama stood by the viewport alone, waiting for his shuttle to be announced and gazing out as his beloved stars and the other warships, lying in formation in the distance. Adar, his old friend and in this his adversary, came up to him and said kindly, “I see the party isn’t a huge success with all my children.”
Baltar gloating, Aleksandros moping, me worrying…no it isn’t, Adama thought. “It’s what awaits us out there that troubles me,” he told Adar, wondering if he might achieve something even at this late centare.
“Surely you don’t cling to your suspicions about the Cylons,” Adar replied. “They asked for this armistice. They want peace.”
Adama studied Adar’s honest, open face for a centon. Adar had never been a warrior; he had spent his younger days as a student and instructor of the higher philosophies before entering politics on his homeworld of Aeries. He had not seen the things Adama had; he had no true understanding of what it was they faced, in spite of endless, carefully arranged military briefings. Adar loved peace, and thought everyone did. Adama loved peace too; he longed for peace as he had never longed for love or security or acceptance. He sometimes felt that peace was a lover just out of his reach. But he knew, as Adar did not, that peace with the Cylons could be purchased in only one coin; the blood of brave warriors. “Forgive me, Mr. President, but they hate us with every fiber of their existence. We love freedom, we love independence. To feel, to question. To them it’s an alien way of existing that they will never accept,” Adama told the President gravely.
“But they have,” Adar replied as it were self-evident, which Adama supposed to Adar it was. “Through Baltar. They have sued for peace.”
Adama forced a smile and said, “Yes. Of course. You’re right.”

“We’ve lost Galactica’s patrol, my lord,” the Columbia’s flight officer informed Aeneas.
“Out of range?”
The man frowned at the readings on his telescreen. “No, my lord. It’s…odd.”
“Jamming?” Akamas suggested.
“It could be, sir,” the flight officer agreed.
The exec drew Aeneas away slightly from the flight officer and said softly, “I do not like this, my lord.”
“Nor do I.” Aeneas hesitated, then he said, “Very quietly, have Alpha and Beta squadrons report to their vipers and stand by.”
“Aye, sir,” Akamas replied and gave the necessary orders.
“Sirs, the shuttle with our Council member is returning from the Atlantia,” the flight officer said.
“Thanks for the warning,” Aeneas commented dryly. There was a ripple of laughter around the bridge.
“Order the pilot to land in beta bay, flight officer,” Akamas said.
“Already done, sir, and the shuttle is on final, passing the outer marker now.”
Aeneas and Akamas waited tensely for more news, but none was forthcoming for some time. Then the fight officer said, “I’m starting to pick up signals from Galactica’s patrol, but there’s too much noise on the channel. I can’t understand any of it, even with maximum filtering.”
From the navigation post on the next level, Colonel Klymene reported, “Commander, Galactica’s patrol is inbound, very fast. Full turbos. One viper ahead of and considerably faster than the other.”
“Jamming behind them,” the scanner officer at the station next to hers added.
“Galactica has just gone to a low level of alert,” the flight officer said.
“What do you think?” Akamas asked the commander.
“We’d better wait. If we go red now, Aleksandros will go ballistic.”
At that very centon, Aleksandros arrived on the bridge, visibly upset. He came up the steps to the command level, his robes under somewhat better control this time, and said, “Commander, I demand to know why my shuttle was diverted to beta bay.”
“Deck maintenance in alpha,” Aeneas lied. “I regret any inconvenience that might have caused.” This is a perfectly horrible time to have this man on the bridge! he thought.
“Commander, Galactica is contacting the flagship on Fleet Comline Alpha,” the communications officer called out.
“What’s going on?” Aleksandros wanted to know.
“Galactica has a patrol out. They seem to have encountered some kind of difficulty,” Aeneas said.
“Who authorized that? Is someone attempting to provoke the Cylons?”
“It’s standard procedure, and the Cylons know that. Communications, can you pick up the ship-to-ship between Galactica and Atlantia?”
“Working on it, my lord.”
“That,” Aleksandros snapped, “seems very unethical.”
“Got the ship-to-ship, my lord. Coming up on screen now.” Two of the screens to the left of the flight officer’s console lit, the top one containing the red-lit face of Commander Adama, the other Adar, with Baltar hovering over his shoulder like an evil spirit. Adama was saying, “Sir, may I at least urge you to bring the fleet to a state of alert?”
“I will consider that,” Adar replied. “Thank you, Commander.”
“Hades,” whispered Akamas. “He’ll consider it?”
“Communications, put me through to the Galactica, Fleet Comline Beta,” Aeneas ordered.
“Absolutely not!” Aleksandros said. “You’ll wait for orders from the flagship.”
“The Galactica is the flagship of the Third Fleet, which we are part of,” Aeneas replied. “Do it,” he snapped at the communications officer, who was hesitating.
The flight officer reported, “My lord, the Galactica is now on launch standby.”
“Red alert; battlestations,” Aeneas ordered, “and don’t you dare contradict it or I’ll have you arrested,” he added, rounding angrily on Aleksandros.
“Commander,” Klymene reported, “we’re starting to burn through that jamming. I think we have a Cylon attack force incoming. Multiple phalanxes. They must have been hiding behind Cimtar.”
Aeneas asked Akamas, “How long to get the rest of our strikers armed up?”
“At least a centare.”
“Hades, we may not have that long!”
The two screens displaying the ship-to-ship link between the Galactica and the flagship lit up again. Adama reported tersely, “Mr. President, a wall of unidentified craft is closing on the fleet.”
“Possibly a Cylon welcoming committee,” Baltar suggested.
Aeneas felt the blood drain from his face. “Please launch,” he whispered to the image of Adama. “Please God launch.”
On the screen Adar was droning on, unconcerned. “We are on a peace mission. The first peace man has known in a thousand years.”
“My lord, they’re firing on the rear ship of Galactica’s patrol,” Klymene said.

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