Chapter 24: Flesh and Bone — Part 2
Montoya's assessment arrived at 0700 on Day Sixty-Four, handwritten on paper because some intelligence was too sensitive for digital transmission.
"Three data points." He sat in the cargo office — unusual for Montoya, who preferred to deliver reports standing and leave quickly. The schoolteacher's posture was gone; in its place was the rigid attention of a man who'd spent decades navigating Quorum politics and recognized danger when he saw it. "First: Roslin's medical appointments have increased in frequency. She's seeing Doc Cottle twice weekly instead of biweekly. The cancer is progressing."
"Source?"
"Yari Demos on the Rising Star. Her contact chain includes a medical supply coordinator who tracks pharmaceutical allocations. The drugs Roslin is receiving are consistent with advancing breast cancer treatment."
I filed the data. Roslin's mortality had a timeline I knew from the show — years, not months, thanks to eventual Cylon-derived treatments. But the psychological effect of a terminal diagnosis on a political leader's decision-making was immediate and powerful.
"Second: Billy Keikeya, Roslin's aide, has been reaching out to religious figures in the fleet. Priests, ministers, followers of the Scrolls of Pythia. He's doing it on Roslin's behalf."
"She's looking for religious validation."
"She's looking for the Arrow of Apollo. Metaphorically, at least — she wants confirmation that the Pythian prophecies apply to her specifically. The dying leader who leads humanity to Earth."
The Arrow of Apollo. In the show, Roslin sent Starbuck to Caprica to retrieve it. That was still weeks away — but the groundwork was being laid in Roslin's mind right now.
"And third?"
Montoya folded his hands. "Yari Demos wants a meeting. With you. In person."
The office went quiet. Dunn, who'd been working at her station with studied nonchalance, stopped typing.
"Why?"
"She's been watching the organization from a distance — through me, through the logistics program results, through fleet coordination reports. She's concluded that you're building something significant, and she wants to understand its scope before deciding how to engage."
Yari Demos. Former Quorum senior policy aide. A political operator who'd survived the Colonial bureaucracy for decades and was now sitting on the Rising Star watching me build a shadow network with the calm analytical interest of someone deciding whether to invest.
"She could be useful," Dunn said. "Or she could be a threat. Political operators have loyalties that shift with the wind."
"Her loyalty is to Gemenon," Montoya said. "Always was. Gemenon's delegation was pragmatic — they survived by being useful to whoever held power. Demos is the same. She'll work with us if she sees value. She'll work against us if she doesn't."
"Set it up," I said. "Neutral ground — not Cybele, not the Rising Star. The Demetrius. Orlov's territory, which means we have some control. I'll meet her alone."
"That's a risk," Dunn said.
"She's a sixty-year-old retired teacher. I think I'll survive."
"She's a sixty-year-old retired teacher who ran the Gemenon trade committee and probably knows where more bodies are buried than the coroner's office." Dunn crossed her arms. "Take Marsh. Have him wait outside. Just in case."
Just in case. Dunn's operational philosophy in three words. Prepare for everything, trust nothing, and always have an engineer within shouting distance.
"Fine. Marsh on standby. But the meeting is one-on-one."
[Cybele Cargo Office — Day 65, 2000]
Gaeta's transcript arrived two days later. Twenty-three pages of interrogation, filtered through his analytical process, stripped of classified military details but preserving the psychological methodology.
I read it in Cole's quarters with the door locked and the lights low. Not for security — for concentration. Leoben's words demanded full attention.
The Cylon had opened with disorientation — statements designed to make Roslin question the nature of reality. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." Not original to Leoben — the phrase was scripture, embedded in Colonial religious texts. But spoken by a machine that shouldn't have access to scripture, it landed differently. It suggested knowledge that machines weren't supposed to have.
Then the personal targeting began. References to Roslin's childhood — details that were either extrapolated from publicly available records or drawn from intelligence sources no human could access. The effect was designed to create intimacy, a false sense of connection between interrogator and subject.
Then the prophecy. Leoben spoke of the dying leader, of Earth, of streams of time that converged on specific individuals. He identified Roslin as the leader of the Pythian texts and told her the cancer would kill her before they reached their destination.
He told a dying woman that her death was prophesied. And she believed him enough to be shaken, but not enough to spare him.
The final pages documented Roslin's decision. She'd ordered him spaced — not in anger, not in revenge. In cold, calculated assessment that the information Leoben offered was too dangerous to leave alive. She'd extracted what she wanted and disposed of the source.
Roslin isn't becoming a prophet. She's becoming a politician who uses prophecy as a tool. There's a difference, and it's the difference between a believer and a weaponizer.
I closed the transcript and sat in the dark.
The water recycler Marsh had built during the crisis — the one that had started everything, that first proof of competence that turned a cargo bay into an organization — hummed through the bulkhead. A distant sound, constant, reliable. Clean water flowing through pipes that had been jury-rigged from dehumidifier parts by an engineer nobody had believed in.
That was forty days ago. Forty days from a recycler in a corridor to transcripts of presidential interrogations in a locked cabin. The distance between those two points is everything I've built.
[Cybele Cargo Office — Day 66, 0800]
Monthly assessment. Dunn ran the numbers while Marsh handled the technical inventory.
"Personnel: seven core members. Kira's refugee network adds three active volunteers, bringing operational headcount to ten." Dunn scrolled through her data pad. "Contacts: eight individuals across six ships, including Gaeta on Galactica, Demos on the Rising Star mess hall chain, Orlov on Demetrius, and Davi on the Greenleaf. Plus Yari Demos — political contact, pending meeting."
"Ships in network?"
"Three active — Cybele, Demetrius, Greenleaf. Three with data access — Adriatic, Rising Star, two unnamed freighters through Kira's family reunification database. That gives us passive intelligence coverage across roughly thirty percent of the civilian fleet."
Thirty percent. From zero to thirty percent coverage in sixty-six days. The number should have felt like progress. Instead, it felt like a fraction of what we needed.
"Trade network?"
Marsh took over. "Maintenance partnerships active with Demetrius and Greenleaf. Orlov has requested expansion to include the Kimba Huta — the water tanker. Their purification system needs work we can provide."
"The Kimba Huta." The water tanker I'd watched repositioning during the crisis, the ship I'd identified as the fleet's most valuable asset during rationing. "That's strategic. Water supply access through a maintenance partnership."
"Exactly what I was thinking." Marsh adjusted his glasses. "But the Kimba Huta's captain is paranoid — burned during the rationing when someone tried to skim from her tanks. She doesn't trust civilians."
"Can you reach her through Orlov?"
"Orlov can make an introduction. The rest is our track record." Marsh paused. "Which, for the record, is excellent. Every ship we've worked with has reported improved performance metrics. The Demetrius's purification system hasn't failed once since my overhaul."
Pride. The word surfaced in my mind — not the abstract concept, but the specific, earned satisfaction of a man who'd been the fleet's scapegoat and was now its most reliable engineer. Marsh had grown into his role with a quiet competence that reminded me why I'd defended him during the loader mob, fifty-three days and a lifetime ago.
"Outstanding work, Marsh. Both of you."
Dunn's eyebrow rose. Compliments from me were rare enough to be notable.
"Problems?" I redirected.
Dunn's expression shifted. "Two. First: pilot access. We still have zero contacts in Galactica's pilot corps. Gaeta gives us CIC, Dualla gives us communications, but the pilots are a closed community. They don't trust outsiders, they don't socialize outside their own, and they don't share information with anyone who hasn't flown a Viper."
"That's the Kat problem."
"That's the Kat problem. She's your identified entry point, and she's currently unreachable without a reason to interact."
"Second problem?"
"Gaeta." Dunn set down her data pad. "The relationship is productive. He's sharing intelligence, solving problems with you, offering CIC access. But he hasn't committed. He's working with you, not for you. There's no formal recruitment, no organizational integration. If something changes — a new commanding officer, a shift in CIC politics, a personal crisis — he could walk away and take everything he's contributed with him."
She was right. Gaeta existed in a grey zone between ally and asset — providing extraordinary value without the commitment that would ensure continuity. Pushing him toward formal recruitment risked alienating him. But leaving him uncommitted meant building on a foundation that could shift at any time.
"I know," I said. "He's not ready. He still believes the system can work — he's frustrated with it, but he hasn't given up on it. Pushing him to commit to something outside the system would feel like a betrayal of the institution he serves."
"Then what?"
"Then we wait for the system to fail him again. Because it will. The fleet's leadership is held together with string and stubbornness, and eventually something will break that Gaeta can't fix from inside CIC. When that happens, he'll need an alternative. And we'll be it."
Dunn absorbed this. The cargo office hummed around us — the ventilation system Marsh had repaired, the comm relay hidden in the maintenance panel, the coded planning notes on the encrypted data pad. An organization built from salvage and trust, growing brick by brick in the shadow of a civilization trying to survive.
"I don't know if I'm building fast enough," I said.
The words came out before the filter caught them — raw, unprocessed, the kind of admission that Marcus Cole the logistics officer would never make but Wade Hargrove the transmigrator couldn't contain.
Dunn looked at me. Not with the analytical assessment I'd grown accustomed to. With something simpler. Warmer.
"You're building. That's more than most."
She gathered her data pads and stood. At the door, she paused.
"The Yari Demos meeting. Demetrius, day after tomorrow. I've coordinated with Orlov — he'll provide a private cargo office."
"Good."
"And Cole?"
"Yeah?"
"When you meet Demos, remember: she's spent thirty years reading people. Don't try to be clever. Be honest about what we are — a logistics network that helps people. That's true enough to hold."
She left. Marsh followed, tapping his glasses in the habitual rhythm that now signified thinking rather than nervousness. The cargo office settled into its familiar quiet.
You're building. That's more than most.
Dunn didn't give compliments. She gave assessments. And her assessment, stripped of its simplicity, was this: in sixty-six days, Wade Hargrove had gone from a dying stranger to the leader of an organization that spanned thirty percent of the civilian fleet, had intelligence access to Galactica's CIC, and was being courted by political operators from the old Colonial government.
It wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough until it could prevent the next disaster, save the next life, change the next outcome. But the foundation existed. The walls were going up. And the blueprint was getting longer every day.
I pulled out my coded planning notes and started the next section: Upcoming Events — Ellen Tigh Arrival.
Ellen Tigh. Final Five. Wife of Colonel Saul Tigh, Galactica's XO. Found on a derelict ship during a rescue mission — timing matches the show's timeline, which means any day now.
The system might react to her. She's Final Five — the same technology that created the CSS. Proximity to her could trigger recognition protocols I don't understand and can't predict.
And Saul Tigh will be destabilized. His wife's return will crack open every wound he's been holding shut with alcohol and duty. Galactica's XO becoming unreliable means the entire military command structure wobbles.
Prepare for it. Watch for it. And when it happens—
The fleet wireless crackled.
"All ships — distress signal received from derelict vessel, bearing two-seven-five. Survivors confirmed. Rescue shuttle launching."
Here we go.
I set down the data pad and keyed the encrypted channel.
"Dunn. Wireless alert — survivors found on a derelict. Can you get me the passenger manifest when the shuttle lands?"
"Working on it." A pause. Then: "Cole. One of the survivors — the manifest fragment coming through — Colonel Tigh's wife. Ellen Tigh."
I closed my eyes. The timeline was holding.
"Get me everything. Names, conditions, backgrounds. And flag anything that doesn't add up."
"Understood."
The wireless hummed. Somewhere in the void, a shuttle was bringing Ellen Tigh home to a husband who didn't know what she was.
And neither did she.
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