Chapter 32: Colonial Day — Part 1
The Cloud Nine was the most beautiful ship in the fleet, and the most dishonest.
A luxury liner from before the war, her biodome housed an artificial sky over manicured gardens and swimming pools that had been repurposed as agricultural plots. The dome itself was a marvel of engineering — transparent composite panels that filtered starlight into something approximating a planetary afternoon, complete with simulated cloud formations and a temperature gradient that made the interior feel like a warm spring day on Caprica.
Walking through the entrance corridor from the docking bay was like stepping through a portal into a lie. The gardens said everything is fine. The swimming pools said civilization continues. The artificial sky said you are not running from genocide in a fleet of tin cans. And forty-nine thousand people who hadn't seen real sunlight in eighty-two days wanted desperately to believe it.
I adjusted the modified dress uniform Marsh had procured from the Demetrius spare inventory. It fit. Mostly. The shoulders were wide — Dunn had been right — giving me the silhouette of someone who belonged in the political arena rather than a cargo bay. The Gemenon advisory delegation credential hung from my lapel, courtesy of Yari Demos.
"Stop fidgeting." Dunn's voice through the earpiece. She was monitoring from the Cybele — too recognizable on the Cloud Nine as a cargo master to attend without questions. "You look fine."
"I look like a logistics officer wearing someone else's uniform at a party I wasn't invited to."
"Welcome to politics."
The Colonial Day reception occupied the Cloud Nine's main ballroom — a space that had once hosted corporate galas and Colonial Fleet retirement ceremonies and now served as the fleet's only venue large enough for political theater. Delegates from every colony's Quorum representation mingled with military officers, civilian administrators, and press representatives who'd traded their refugee-section data pads for borrowed suits and camera equipment.
The passive scan activated the moment I entered the room. Forty-plus contacts within range, each one a data point: name, emotional state, threat level. Politicians radiated controlled anxiety. Military officers radiated controlled boredom. The press radiated poorly controlled excitement. And in the center of it all, President Laura Roslin stood in a cream-colored suit and projected an authority that had nothing to do with her title and everything to do with the woman wearing it.
I circulated. Not randomly — the way Yari Demos had coached me during yesterday's briefing. "Move with purpose. Stop at specific people. Don't linger. A man who circles a room once looks confident. A man who circles twice looks lost. A man who stands in one place looks like he's waiting for someone. Be the first type."
The system tracked targets as I moved. Quorum delegates scanned at passive level — emotional states, general disposition. A Picon representative radiating boredom. A Leonis delegate whispering urgently to a Sagittaron colleague. A woman from the Aerilon delegation eating canapés with the single-minded focus of someone who hadn't had real food in weeks.
Then I spotted him.
Billy Keikeya stood near the service entrance, three data pads in his arms, a comm unit pressed between his shoulder and his ear, simultaneously coordinating the President's schedule, directing catering staff, and trying to eat a sandwich that was losing structural integrity faster than he could consume it.
[ACTIVE SCAN: KEIKEYA, WILLIAM "BILLY"]
[SE COST: 10 — REMAINING: 72/100]
[AGE: 23 — ORIGIN: CAPRICA]
[COMMAND: 42/100 | COGNITION: 71/100 | CONSTITUTION: 49/100]
[CHARISMA: 68/100 | CUNNING: 35/100 | CONVICTION: 85/100]
[TOP SKILLS: POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION 7/10, SCHEDULING 7/10, COMMUNICATION 6/10, DIPLOMACY 6/10, CRISIS MANAGEMENT 5/10]
[COMPATIBILITY: 72%]
[CYLON PROBABILITY: 0.8% (±30%) — LOW]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE: IDEALISTIC — HIGH CONVICTION, LOW CUNNING]
[NOTE: SUBJECT OPERATES ON MORAL FRAMEWORK THAT PRIORITIZES ETHICS OVER STRATEGY]
Conviction at eighty-five. The highest I'd scanned in the fleet — higher than Dunn, higher than Gaeta, higher than anyone except possibly Adama himself. Billy Keikeya believed in things the way other people believed in gravity: as fundamental forces that didn't require proof.
His cunning score — thirty-five — was the mirror image. A young man in a den of wolves without the instinct to recognize teeth. In the show, his naivety had gotten him killed during the Cloud Nine hostage crisis, dying in a gunfight he should never have been near, protecting a woman he loved in a situation politics had manufactured.
Not this time either.
The sandwich lost its battle with gravity. Half of it hit the deck. Billy stared at the remains with the expression of a man who'd been managing twelve crises simultaneously and the sandwich was the one that finally broke him.
I picked up the intact half and handed it back.
"Rough day?"
Billy looked at me. Young face, tired eyes, the particular exhaustion of someone who cared too much and slept too little.
"You have no idea. The caterers mixed up the Gemenon delegation's dietary requirements with the Sagittaron group. The Gemenons are vegetarian. The Sagittarons are — emphatically — not." He took the sandwich half. "Who are you?"
"Lieutenant Cole. Gemenon advisory delegation."
"You're the efficiency guy. From the Cybele."
My reputation precedes me. That's either very useful or very dangerous.
"Guilty."
"Your logistics program saved the catering schedule last month. The manifest standardization — it fixed a formatting issue that was costing Colonial One four hours a week in supply reconciliation."
The manifest protocol. Built for Gaeta, but the standardization rippled through every fleet institution that processed supply data. Including the President's office.
"Happy to help. Looks like the catering situation could use similar treatment."
Billy's eyes sharpened. Behind the exhaustion and the sandwich crisis, a capable mind was calculating opportunity.
"The Gemenon meals are staged in the wrong service corridor. If we swap them with the Sagittaron trays before the delegates sit down, nobody notices the mistake."
"Which corridor?"
"3-B. The trays are labeled, but the labels are in Colonial standard — the kitchen staff reads Caprican."
"I can read Colonial standard."
"Then follow me."
The swap took twelve minutes. Billy directed, I carried — four trays of Gemenon-compliant meals exchanged with their Sagittaron counterparts before the delegates reached the dining tables. Nobody noticed. Nobody complained. The kind of invisible crisis resolution that kept civilization functioning and never made the news.
"Thank you." Billy leaned against the service corridor wall, the comm unit temporarily silent, the data pads set on a cart. For three seconds, he looked his age — twenty-three, carrying the weight of a government on shoulders that hadn't finished broadening. "Seriously. Thank you."
"It was twelve minutes and some heavy trays."
"It was twelve minutes I didn't have. That's worth a lot right now." He picked up the data pads. The comm unit buzzed — back to crisis management, back to the President's schedule, back to the thousand small fires that Billy Keikeya spent his life extinguishing.
He paused at the corridor junction.
"Lieutenant Cole. The logistics program — if you ever need anything from the President's office, coordination, authorization, access — let me know. I owe you."
"Twice, apparently."
He blinked. Then understood — the catering, plus the manifest standardization. The shadow of a smile crossed his face, there and gone, swallowed by the next crisis buzzing through his comm unit.
"Twice. Right."
He disappeared into the reception. I stood in the service corridor surrounded by correctly routed catering trays and felt the particular satisfaction of a seed well planted.
Billy Keikeya. The President's gatekeeper. Conviction eighty-five, cunning thirty-five. A good man in a bad world, running on idealism and sandwich fragments.
He needs protection. He needs someone who sees the threats he doesn't. And in return, he offers something nobody else in this fleet can give: direct access to Laura Roslin's inner circle.
The reception hummed beyond the service door. I adjusted my borrowed uniform and walked back into the party.
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