Chapter 22: Six Degrees — Part 2
The debrief happened at 0600, three bodies crammed into the cargo office with cold coffee and the particular gravity of people who'd watched a chess game they couldn't participate in.
"Baltar is untouchable." I drew the diagram on a scrap of paper — not coded, just thinking out loud. "Godfrey frames him with fabricated evidence. The evidence collapses. Godfrey disappears. The collapse proves the accusation was false, and the disappearance proves the accuser was a Cylon. Anyone who accuses Baltar of anything from this point forward is recycling a debunked Cylon conspiracy."
Dunn leaned against the filing cabinet, arms crossed. Marsh sat in the chair, glasses off, polishing them with the deliberation of a man processing complex information.
"Elegant," Dunn said. The word contained no admiration. "So the Cylons planted a bomb to protect the man who helped them destroy the Colonies."
"They planted a failed accusation to protect him. The bomb was Doral on Galactica — different operation, different objective. This is information warfare, not kinetics." I tapped the diagram. "The Cylons don't need Baltar convicted. They need him free, functional, and in a position to continue being useful. The frame was designed to inoculate him."
Marsh put his glasses back on. "Can we counter it?"
"Not directly. Not without evidence that would require explaining how we obtained it. We document. We track patterns. We wait for an opportunity where Cylon manipulation intersects with something we can actually influence."
"That feels like a lot of waiting," Marsh said.
"Welcome to intelligence work. It's ninety percent patience, nine percent analysis, and one percent action that changes everything."
Dunn's mouth pressed thin. She'd heard variations of that speech before — from me, from the operational realities of running a shadow network in a fleet where every action carried disproportionate risk. She accepted it the same way she accepted bad weather: with controlled displeasure and immediate adaptation.
"Moving on. Galactica supply run is scheduled for 1400. The logistics program has two pending deliverables — nav checkpoint synchronization update and the revised emergency distribution template. You're presenting?"
"I'm presenting."
"Don't spend the entire visit scanning people. You came back last time with your system energy in the basement."
She used the word system carefully — acknowledging its existence without probing its nature. The boundary we'd negotiated in silence over weeks of partnership: she knew I had capabilities beyond normal analysis, she didn't ask specifics, and I didn't offer them.
"Noted."
[Galactica — Hangar Deck, Day 59, 1430]
The supply run put me on Galactica's hangar deck during a shift change.
Pilots and deck crew flowed through the space in organized chaos — Vipers being towed to maintenance bays, Raptors cycling through pre-flight checks, the industrial ballet of a carrier operation running on muscle memory and caffeine. The noise was extraordinary. Impact wrenches, thruster tests, the metal-on-metal screech of landing gear being serviced. Under it all, the bass vibration of Galactica's reactors — the heartbeat of a ship that refused to die.
I walked the perimeter toward the briefing room, data pads under my arm, letting the passive scan run at standard efficiency. Crew members registered as flickers of data — names, emotional states, threat levels. Standard backgrounds. Nothing remarkable.
Until she crossed my path.
A pilot in a flight suit, striding from the ready room toward the Viper launch tubes with the coiled aggression of someone who treated every corridor as a runway. Short dark hair. Sharp features. A body that moved with the particular economy of a fighter pilot — no wasted motion, every step a calculated expenditure of energy.
The system fired:
[PERSONNEL SCAN: KATRAINE, LOUANNE "KAT"]
[SE COST: 10 — REMAINING: 68/100]
[AGE: 25 — ORIGIN: RECORD SEALED]
[COMMAND: 44/100 | COGNITION: 58/100 | CONSTITUTION: 72/100]
[CHARISMA: 51/100 | CUNNING: 63/100 | CONVICTION: 38/100]
[TOP SKILLS: VIPER PILOTING 8/10, COMBAT REFLEXES 7/10, EVASION 7/10, WEAPONS SYSTEMS 6/10, DECEPTION 6/10]
[COMPATIBILITY: 67%]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL FLAG: SELF-DESTRUCTION TENDENCY — HIGH]
[STRESS LEVEL: CRITICAL]
[CONVICTION: 38/100 — WARNING: BELOW THRESHOLD FOR SUSTAINED COMMITMENT]
[CYLON PROBABILITY: 2.1% (±30%) — LOW]
The self-destruction flag pulsed amber in my peripheral vision. Conviction at thirty-eight — dangerously low for a pilot carrying combat responsibilities. Stress at critical. Deception at six out of ten, unusually high for a military officer, which aligned with what I knew from the show: Kat was living under a false identity, carrying guilt about a past she'd buried.
She passed within three meters. Close enough that the scan captured micro-expressions I wouldn't have caught with naked eyes — the tension in her jaw, the restless movement of her fingers against her thigh, the way her gaze swept the corridor with the hypervigilance of someone expecting attack from every direction.
Louanne Katraine. Kat. In the show, she burned bright and died young — radiation poisoning from a rescue mission, surrounded by the pilots she'd pushed away, given Adama's call sign as a final honor.
Not this time.
I filed the scan data and kept walking. Kat disappeared around the corner toward the launch tubes, and I carried her profile into the briefing room like a weight in my pocket.
[Cole's Quarters — Day 60, 2200]
I pulled Kat's service record through Gaeta's CIC access that evening.
The official file was sparse — commissioned after the attack, accelerated through pilot training, multiple combat sorties. Aggressive flying style cited in three reprimand notices. Two incidents of insubordination. One formal warning from the CAG about reckless engagement during a Cylon intercept.
The sealed records were the real story. Pre-war, Katraine's file hit a wall — civilian background, employment history, everything before her military commission locked behind a classification marker that suggested either intelligence connections or criminal history.
Criminal history. I know what's in there, because I watched the episode. Former drug runner, fake identity, the kind of past that would get her thrown out of the service if anyone looked too hard.
The system offered a contextual note:
[KATRAINE, LOUANNE — PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT]
[SELF-DESTRUCTION PATTERN: CONSISTENT WITH GUILT-DRIVEN BEHAVIOR]
[SEALED RECORDS: CONTENTS UNKNOWN TO SYSTEM — INSUFFICIENT DATA]
[RECRUITMENT APPROACH: REQUIRES DIFFERENT METHODOLOGY THAN GAETA]
[— GAETA: RECRUITED THROUGH COMPETENCE AND PROFESSIONAL RESPECT]
[— KATRAINE: REQUIRES PERSONAL CONNECTION AND PURPOSE PROVISION]
[NOTE: TARGET IS HIGH-RISK — SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES MAY COMPLICATE INTEGRATION]
Different methodology. Gaeta had been a professional courtship — solutions, efficiency, mutual benefit. Kat would need something else. Not a logistics protocol or a manifest conversion. Something human. Something that reached past the defensive wall of aggression and touched the person underneath who was trying to die without admitting it.
I recognize her. The thought surfaced unbidden. Not from the show. From the mirror. The first week after transmigration — throwing myself into work with a body that was barely alive, pushing past injuries because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant drowning.
I survived because the work turned into purpose. Someone gave me a reason to keep going that was bigger than the pain.
She needs the same thing.
I added Kat to the organizational priorities list — not as a recruitment target, not yet. As an observation. A rescue project. The approach would be slow, indirect, and entirely different from anything I'd built before.
The data pad showed her reprimand reports. I read them in the dim light of Cole's quarters, looking for the person underneath the service record — the woman who flew like she was daring the void to take her, who pushed other pilots away because getting close to people was a risk she couldn't calculate, who carried a secret identity the way I carried mine: with the constant, grinding awareness that one wrong word could end everything.
We're not that different, Kat. The difference is that I have a system keeping me functional, and you have nothing but anger and a cockpit.
The data pad dimmed as the ship cycled to night lighting. I closed the file and stared at the grey ceiling.
Somewhere on Galactica, a pilot was probably still awake, burning energy she couldn't afford to burn, running from a past she couldn't outrun.
I'll find a way in. But not through logistics.
The fleet wireless crackled with a priority military alert that pushed Kat's file to the back of my mind:
"All ships — Galactica reports Cylon prisoner in custody. Model identified. Presidential authority invoked for interrogation. All ships maintain standard operations."
Leoben. The mystic. The manipulator.
And Roslin is going to interrogate him personally.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building