Chapter 33: Colonial Day — Part 2
Tom Zarek entered the Cloud Nine ballroom at 1900 and rearranged the room's power dynamics without saying a word.
I stood near the port-side observation windows — the position Yari Demos had designated as optimal for surveillance without engagement. "The windows give you a reflective surface. You can watch the room without turning your head. Politicians have been using this trick since the invention of glass." — and tracked Zarek through his reflection as he crossed the floor.
The system fired a passive read before I could decide whether to spend energy on an active scan:
[ZAREK, TOM — SURFACE READ]
[EMOTIONAL STATE: CONTROLLED / PROJECTING CONFIDENCE]
[HEALTH: ADEQUATE]
[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE (POLITICAL — NOT PHYSICAL)]
He moved through the crowd the way a knife moves through water — displacing people from his path not through force but through the subtle physics of charisma. Delegates who'd been mid-conversation turned to track him. Military officers who'd been relaxed straightened. Press representatives who'd been nursing drinks reached for recording equipment.
Active scan. Cost the energy. This one matters.
[ACTIVE SCAN: ZAREK, TOM]
[SE COST: 10 — REMAINING: 62/100]
[AGE: 52 — ORIGIN: SAGITTARON]
[COMMAND: 78/100 | COGNITION: 73/100 | CONSTITUTION: 66/100]
[CHARISMA: 84/100 | CUNNING: 79/100 | CONVICTION: 91/100]
[TOP SKILLS: POLITICAL STRATEGY 9/10, PUBLIC SPEAKING 8/10, INSURGENCY 8/10, NEGOTIATION 8/10, MANIPULATION 7/10]
[COMPATIBILITY: 44%]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: HIGH — POLITICAL OPERATOR WITH INSURGENT BACKGROUND]
[CYLON PROBABILITY: 1.4% (±30%) — LOW]
Charisma eighty-four. Conviction ninety-one — the highest I'd ever recorded, beating Billy's eighty-five by a margin that felt like a canyon. A man who believed in his cause with the absolute certainty of a zealot and possessed the strategic intelligence to weaponize that belief.
The compatibility score — forty-four percent — told a different story. Zarek and I were fundamentally misaligned. His goals were power and systemic change through confrontation. Mine were stability and institutional development through infiltration. We occupied the same political space but moved in opposite directions.
Not an enemy. Not yet. But not an ally either. Something more complicated — a variable that could tip toward either pole depending on circumstances I couldn't fully predict.
Zarek worked the room with professional precision. A handshake here. A quiet word there. The Sagittaron delegation gravitated toward him like planets toward a sun. Two Quorum members from swing colonies — Picon and Leonis — leaned in when he spoke. Even the Gemenon representatives, who'd historically opposed Sagittaron populism, watched with the cautious attention of people evaluating a rising force.
Yari Demos materialized at my elbow.
"Impressive, isn't he?"
"Dangerous."
"Those two words describe the same man." She held a glass of something that might have been wine — Colonial Day had produced luxury items from pre-war reserves that nobody had expected to see again. "Zarek has three things that Roslin fears: genuine popular support, a legitimate democratic mandate, and the ability to speak to people's anger without sounding angry. He validates their rage while packaging his own as reason."
"Can he win the election?"
"Not today. But in six months? Seven?" Demos sipped. "If something goes wrong — another crisis, a military failure, a perception that Roslin's leadership isn't working — Zarek becomes the alternative. And people who are afraid prefer alternatives to incumbents."
In the show, Zarek doesn't win the election. Baltar does — with Zarek as his running mate. But that timeline includes New Caprica, which is still months away. The political landscape between now and then is fluid enough that my meta-knowledge is a rough map, not a GPS.
"What does he want right now?"
"What every politician wants at a party: to be seen talking to the right people and to make the wrong people nervous. He's succeeding at both." Demos angled her glass toward the room. "Watch Roslin."
I shifted my gaze. The President stood near the podium, flanked by Billy and a security detail, projecting the calm authority that was her signature. But the calm was thinner than usual. Her eyes tracked Zarek's movements the way a pilot tracks a missile — constant, precise, assessing vectors and closure rates.
"She's worried."
"She should be. Zarek's Quorum position gives him a platform, the election timeline gives him a goal, and Colonial Day gives him an audience." Demos finished her drink. "You're not here for the wine, Lieutenant. What are you watching?"
"Everything. Everyone." I paused. "You?"
"I'm watching you watch everything. It's instructive." She set the empty glass on a passing tray with the precision of a woman who'd attended a thousand political functions and knew exactly when to stop drinking. "Billy Keikeya. You helped him with the catering."
"I helped the Gemenon delegation eat the right food."
"You helped the President's aide with a crisis he couldn't manage alone. In politics, that's not a favor — it's an investment." Her eyes were sharp. Calculating. The same expression she'd worn during our meeting on the Demetrius, when she'd laid my organizational architecture bare in three sentences. "Keikeya is Roslin's gatekeeper, scheduler, and conscience. He's also her most vulnerable point. Young, idealistic, overworked, under-protected. Anyone who cultivates him gets indirect access to the President."
"I'm not cultivating him."
"You're cultivating everyone, Lieutenant. That's what you do. The difference is that some cultivation is gardening and some is farming. With Keikeya, I'd recommend gardening. He'll wilt under anything that feels transactional."
She's right. Billy operates on conviction, not calculation. Any approach that smells like strategy will trigger his instincts and push him away. He needs genuine help, offered genuinely, with no visible strings.
"Noted."
"Also noted: you've been standing at this window for twenty minutes and you've watched every person in the room at least once. You drink coffee, not wine. You don't touch the food. And your borrowed uniform has Tauron tailoring, which means your engineer procured it from the Demetrius." She turned to face me directly. "You're operating at a level that would impress people with decades more experience. Don't let it make you careless."
She walked away. The political advisor returning to the political battlefield, leaving me at the window with my reflection and the uncomfortable awareness that Yari Demos saw more than anyone I'd met — including, possibly, Gaeta.
[Cloud Nine — Ballroom, Day 85, 2100]
The reception moved through its phases: speeches, toasts, the careful choreography of politicians being photographed with the right people. Roslin spoke about unity and survival. Zarek spoke about democracy and justice. The Quorum delegates applauded both and committed to neither.
I spent the evening in motion. Circulating through the service areas, the corridors, the peripheral spaces where conversations happened away from cameras and recordings. The system scanned opportunistically — conserving energy, targeting high-value individuals, building a map of Colonial Day's political terrain.
Ellen Tigh appeared at 2000, draped in something that had probably been expensive before the Colonies burned, with Colonel Tigh in dress uniform at her side. The resonance pulsed — distant, manageable at the ballroom's scale — but I kept my distance, staying beyond the fifty-meter threshold while tracking her through the crowd.
She's networking. Building relationships with Quorum delegates, military wives, political operators. The court she's constructing on Galactica is extending tentacles into the fleet's political class.
Is that programming? Strategy? Instinct? The system can't tell me, and I can't scan her to find out.
Billy crossed my path at 2130. He was carrying two data pads, a jacket that wasn't his, and the dazed expression of someone who'd been running for fourteen hours on adrenaline and canapés.
"Still here?"
"Still working." He managed a tired grin. "The President's making one more circuit, then we leave. The security detail is getting nervous about the crowd size."
"Need anything?"
"A week of sleep and a time machine." He paused. Looked at me with the particular focus of someone who'd been trained to evaluate strangers by a woman who evaluated everyone. "You know, Lieutenant, the President asked about you."
My pulse jumped. Controlled it.
"About me specifically?"
"About the logistics coordination program. She read the Admiral's efficiency report. Your methodology document was cited." Billy shifted the jacket to his other arm. "She said, 'Someone in the civilian fleet is running an operation that's better than our official coordination. Find out who.'"
Roslin is asking about me. Not Vasquez, not the Cybele — me. The methodology document was designed to showcase competence, and it succeeded. But Roslin's interest isn't professional admiration. It's the instinct of a political animal identifying a variable she hasn't accounted for.
"I'm just a logistics officer doing his job."
"That's what I told her." Billy's tired grin returned. "She didn't believe it either."
He disappeared into the crowd, trailing data pads and borrowed jackets and the weight of a government balanced on the shoulders of a twenty-three-year-old idealist who believed that hard work and good intentions were enough.
They're not. But he'll learn that in his own time, and I'll try to make sure the lesson doesn't kill him.
I left the Cloud Nine at 2200. The shuttle back to the fleet hub felt longer than usual — the artificial gravity of the luxury liner giving way to the utilitarian pull of transport ships and cargo bays. The borrowed uniform came off in the shuttle's cramped changing area, replaced by Cole's standard-issue logistics kit. The transformation took three minutes: from political operative to cargo officer, from the glittering lie of the Cloud Nine to the honest grey of the Cybele.
Dunn met me at the landing bay with coffee and a debrief schedule.
"Results?"
"Billy Keikeya — first contact, positive. Two favors owed. He's Roslin's gatekeeper, idealistic, overworked, protection-worthy." I took the coffee. Hot. Real — Dunn's private reserve, the Gemenese blend she'd been hoarding since the attack. She'd made it for my return. The gesture hit harder than any political observation from the evening. "Zarek — scanned. Charisma eighty-four, conviction ninety-one. Dangerous but not irrational. The political landscape is more fluid than I expected."
"And Roslin?"
"She's asking about us. Billy told me directly — she read the methodology document and wants to know who's behind the logistics program."
Dunn's expression didn't change. But her grip on her own coffee cup tightened a fraction.
"How worried should we be?"
"Not worried. Prepared. Roslin is a politician — she doesn't investigate threats, she evaluates assets. If she concludes we're useful, she'll co-opt us rather than suppress us. If she concludes we're dangerous, she'll move to control us."
"And which are we?"
"Useful. For now." I drank the coffee. It was extraordinary — the same blend I'd tasted once before, when Dunn had shared it the morning of the water crisis, the morning she'd agreed to a partnership built on competence and partial truth. Seventy days between those two cups, and the distance traveled was measured in ships, contacts, crises survived, and alliances forged. "Keep the organization at current operational tempo. Security protocols active. Colonial One inquiry managed through Vasquez's office."
"And the three captain inquiries?"
"After the political attention fades. Two weeks minimum."
Dunn nodded. Set down her coffee. Picked up her data pad.
"Boomer," she said.
"What?"
"Fleet scuttlebutt, routed through Kira's refugee network. Lieutenant Valerii — 'Boomer' — has been acting erratically aboard Galactica. Requesting transfer off the ship. Mood swings, memory gaps, the kind of behavior that makes people whisper."
Boomer. Sharon Valerii. The sleeper agent whose programming is activating — who shot Adama in the show, who nearly destroyed the fleet from inside its most trusted crew. The time bomb ticking in Galactica's heart.
My grip on the coffee cup tightened.
"Source?"
"Demos — her mess hall contacts. Multiple crew members have noticed. Nothing official yet."
The timeline is advancing. Boomer's degradation means the shooting is approaching. The moment when everything changes — when Adama goes down, when the fleet splits, when the Kobol crisis begins.
I'm not ready. The organization isn't ready. But ready or not, it's coming.
"Monitor. Everything about Valerii — behavior patterns, duty assignments, contact with other crew. Route it through Gaeta if possible. And Petra?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't put this in writing. Not even coded. Memory only."
She held my gaze for two seconds. Then she nodded, once, and walked away.
I stood in the Cybele's landing bay with Dunn's coffee cooling in my hands and Boomer's name echoing in my skull. The fleet drifted past the viewport — sixty-three ships, forty-nine thousand people, all of them asleep or celebrating or grieving or surviving, none of them knowing that one of Galactica's most trusted pilots was a machine that was about to wake up.
Prepare. Watch. Position.
Because when Boomer pulls that trigger, the world breaks. And I need to be ready to catch the pieces.
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