Chapter 23: Flesh and Bone — Part 1
Leoben Conoy was a weapon that looked like a man.
I knew this the way I knew the water tanks would blow and the Olympic Carrier would return — from a couch in another universe, watching actors perform scenes that were now happening in real time to real people. But Leoben was different from the other Cylon threats I'd tracked. Doral had been a bomb. Boomer was a sleeper. The Sixes operated through seduction and manipulation.
Leoben operated through truth.
Not facts — truth. The kind that crawled under your skin and nested there, whispering things you'd spent years trying not to hear. He would tell Roslin about her cancer. About destiny. About a future written in scripture. And she would listen, because the part of her that believed — the part that was becoming the dying leader of prophecy — couldn't resist the possibility that a machine might know something about God.
"Status?" Dunn's voice through the earpiece, sharp and present.
"Monitoring. Gaeta confirms: Leoben model captured during a patrol sweep. Transferred to Galactica's brig. Roslin is en route from Colonial One."
"The President is personally interrogating a Cylon prisoner?"
"She has questions only a Cylon can answer."
"That sounds like a terrible idea."
"Most of Roslin's ideas sound terrible and work anyway. That's what makes her dangerous."
I sat in the cargo office with three data pads running parallel feeds — fleet wireless, Gaeta's encrypted channel, and Montoya's political chain. The intelligence picture assembled itself in fragments: Roslin boarding Galactica, marine escort to the brig, CIC on heightened alert.
Through Gaeta, the military layer:
ROSLIN IN BRIG. INTERROGATION ACTIVE — NO AUDIO FEED TO CIC. MARINE GUARD DOUBLED. COMMANDER ADAMA NOT PRESENT — DELIBERATE SEPARATION. TENSION BETWEEN CIVILIAN AND MILITARY AUTHORITY VISIBLE.
Through Montoya, the political layer:
ROSLIN'S STAFF ON COLONIAL ONE ANXIOUS. BILLY KEIKEYA (AIDE) PACING OUTSIDE COMMS. NO OFFICIAL STATEMENT PREPARED. THIS WAS NOT PLANNED — SHE DECIDED ON APPROACH.
I cross-referenced the feeds. Roslin had acted impulsively — not like the calculating president who'd navigated the Zarek crisis and survived Litmus. Something about Leoben's capture had triggered a personal response. The cancer. The prophecy. The growing weight of a destiny she hadn't asked for.
She's vulnerable right now. Not politically — personally. And Leoben knows exactly how to exploit personal vulnerability.
"Dunn, get me everything Montoya can pull on Roslin's recent decisions. Anything that suggests she's leaning more heavily on religious interpretation than rational analysis."
"What are you looking for?"
"Pattern shift. If Roslin is starting to make decisions based on faith rather than politics, the organization needs to account for that. A president who acts on prophecy is unpredictable in ways that a president who acts on polling is not."
"Since when are we profiling the President?"
"Since she decided to personally interrogate a Cylon prisoner because he might know something about the Gods."
Dunn's silence carried the weight of someone recalculating assumptions about the world they lived in.
"I'll have Montoya's assessment by morning."
[Galactica — Supply Corridor, Day 63]
The scheduled logistics coordination meeting gave me cover for a Galactica visit forty hours after Roslin's interrogation.
The ship felt different. Not in any physical way — the corridors were the same worn metal, the same recycled air, the same ambient noise of a warship in constant operation. But the crew carried a tension that the passive scan registered as a fleet-wide elevation in stress markers. A Cylon prisoner on board affected morale the way a virus affected a body — invisibly, pervasively, making everything feel slightly wrong.
Gaeta met me in the corridor outside CIC. He looked tired — more tired than usual, which for Gaeta meant the circles under his eyes had upgraded from bruise-purple to corpse-grey.
"The interrogation recordings exist," he said, without preamble. Gaeta had abandoned pleasantries somewhere around our third joint project, replacing them with the efficient information exchange of two professionals who valued each other's time. "Archived in the brig security system. Classified at Commander's discretion."
"Can you access them?"
"I have tactical clearance that includes brig security feeds. Whether I should access them for a civilian logistics officer is a different question." He leaned against the corridor wall. "What do you want them for?"
Because Leoben's manipulation techniques are a masterclass in psychological warfare, and understanding how Cylons exploit human psychology is the most valuable intelligence I can acquire for the organization.
"Understanding Cylon communication patterns. If the fleet encounters more prisoners, having a baseline for how they manipulate human interrogators would improve our response protocols."
"That's not a logistics concern."
"Everything that affects fleet decision-making is a logistics concern. If a Cylon prisoner can destabilize the President's judgment during an interrogation, that affects every supply allocation, every resource priority, every political decision that flows downhill."
Gaeta studied me. The analytical engine behind his eyes processed the argument, weighed it against regulations, measured the risk against the value.
"I can get you a transcript. Not a recording — that's too traceable. A transcript of the interrogation, sanitized of classified military details, focused on the prisoner's communication methodology."
"That works."
"It'll take three days. And Cole?" His voice dropped. "If anyone asks where you got it, I don't exist."
"Understood."
We parted at the CIC junction. I continued to my meeting with Dualla's staff, delivering the nav checkpoint update while a portion of my brain catalogued the intelligence Gaeta had just agreed to provide.
The Leoben transcript. Not the full recording — that was too much to ask this early. But a transcript of his manipulation techniques, filtered through Gaeta's analytical mind, was intelligence gold.
A junior officer passed me in the corridor — young, nervous, carrying a tray of food toward the brig. The system's passive scan registered:
[JUNIOR OFFICER — SURFACE READ]
[EMOTIONAL STATE: FEARFUL / DISGUSTED]
[CONTEXT: ASSIGNED TO PRISONER MEAL DELIVERY]
The kid was terrified of the thing in the cell. Everyone was. A machine that looked human, spoke human, understood human psychology with the cold precision of something that had studied its prey for forty years. The fleet could shoot Cylon raiders and destroy basestars, but a single Leoben in a cell made the entire ship flinch.
Information warfare. Not guns. Not bombs. Words.
I filed the observation and kept walking.
[Cybele Cargo Office — Day 63, 2100]
The fleet wireless delivered the verdict at 2100:
"Presidential authority exercised. Cylon prisoner Leoben Conoy executed by spacing. No further comment from the President's office."
She spaced him.
I set down my coffee. The wireless continued with standard fleet updates, but the words had stopped registering. Roslin — the schoolteacher, the cancer patient, the reluctant prophet — had ordered a prisoner thrown out an airlock.
Not in combat. Not in self-defense. A deliberate execution, authorized by a civilian president exercising military jurisdiction over a prisoner of war.
Steel underneath silk. I knew that from the show. But knowing it and watching it happen are different animals.
Gaeta's message arrived ten minutes later:
LEOBEN SPACED. NO TRIAL, NO TRIBUNAL, NO LEGAL PROCESS. ROSLIN AUTHORIZED DIRECTLY. COMMANDER ADAMA DID NOT OBJECT.
COLE — I'VE SEEN THIS FLEET DO THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE. THIS IS ANOTHER ONE.
TRANSCRIPT WILL BE READY IN 48 HOURS. RECOMMEND YOU STUDY IT CAREFULLY. LEOBEN SAID THINGS TO ROSLIN THAT CHANGED HER. I DON'T KNOW INTO WHAT.
I read the message twice. The frustration between Gaeta's careful sentences was familiar — the same frustration that had drawn me to him in the first place. A man watching institutional authority operate without institutional accountability, filing complaints that nobody read and analyses that nobody acted on.
He's mine now. Whether he knows it or not, whether he's formally recruited or not, Felix Gaeta has chosen to share classified intelligence with a civilian logistics officer because the official channels have failed him.
I composed my response in the coded shorthand we'd developed:
RECEIVED. AGREED — ROSLIN'S DECISION PATTERN IS SHIFTING. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
THE TRANSCRIPT WILL BE VALUABLE. NOT JUST FOR THE CONTENT — FOR UNDERSTANDING HOW ROSLIN PROCESSES CYLON INFORMATION. THAT'S THE REAL INTELLIGENCE.
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, FELIX. CIC NEEDS YOU FUNCTIONAL.
The last line was genuine. Not strategic, not manipulative. The concern of one professional for another in a fleet where burnout killed as surely as bullets.
The channel went quiet. I marked "LEOBEN RECORDING LOCATION" on my coded planning notes — the archive location Gaeta had mentioned. Not accessible now, but filed for future leverage. Every piece of intelligence was a brick in the wall I was building, and someday that wall would be strong enough to matter.
The system flickered:
[POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE: UPDATED]
[ROSLIN DECISION PROFILE: RECALIBRATED]
[— WILLINGNESS TO USE EXTRA-LEGAL FORCE: HIGH]
[— RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE ON DECISION-MAKING: INCREASING]
[— THREAT TO ORGANIZATION IF FOCUSED ON US: SEVERE]
Don't attract Roslin's attention. Not yet. Not until the organization is strong enough to withstand scrutiny from a woman who spaces Cylon prisoners without blinking.
I closed the system display and reached for my coffee. Cold again. Always cold.
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