Part 1 Battlestar Galactica: Back To The Colonies: Of Droughts And Grudges

Chapter 11

XI

Athena, Hera, and Samuel were in the family quarters, waiting to hear something from Karl in his Admiral's office. They were trying to keep the atmosphere as light as they could, which under the circumstances, wasn't very effective. Karl had taken Athena aside and updated her on what was going on and the request he had made to Hoshi.

Suddenly, all three of them heard Helo scream at the top of his lungs. "GAGE YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!"

The other three Agathon's jumped in their seats. Hearing the name "Gage", had instantly brought that thug's face into her mind; when he had beaten Karl and Galen on Pegasus; when he had again beaten Karl during the coup attempt. The second she heard the name, she raced into Karl's office.

"Gage? That perverted bastard?" Athena was almost as pale as her husband was. She almost never cursed in front of her children, but the mention of that maniac had shaken her. "Why are you screaming his name like that!",

He filled her in on the request he had made to Hoshi, and how the DNA match had turned up the information on Emil Gage.

"Karl", Athena said with some urgency. "Hera can't go back to Offutt tonight, you know that?"

Hera had watched her parents go back and forth as if watching a tennis match and couldn't take it anymore. "What are you two talking about?", she said with more than a little fear in her voice.

They filled her in on Gage's sordid history. Hera began having a really bad feeling about of this.

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10:00 PM, Downtown Sioux City

Tomas Sands was driving a truck in downtown Sioux City at around 10 pm. He had finagled a fake ID under an alias and had landed this job with a trucking delivery company a few weeks before. A friend of his had been working for the company for years and was easily able to get him the job.

His friend, who was going by the name Josiah Fleming these days was the Assistant Manager at the trucking company. He had been with the company since 2031 and had an impeccable record with his employer. He was also a former Marine from Galactica who had been imprisoned for joining the uprising against Bill Adama and like Xander and Tera, had changed his name upon being released.

They were delivering some additional floodlights to The Tyson Events Center, which were to be affixed to the rafters of the facility, just forward of the stage that had been constructed. TV Crews from New Caprican and American news outlets had done a stage check about 5 pm and had advised security that they would need more lighting. Not many people realized how bright TV lights were, even in this day and age, and the experts had determined that there wasn't enough lighting forward of the stage, so the call had gone out for more flood lights.

They arrived shortly after 10 pm, and the New Caprican Home Guard inspected their vehicle from front to back, under the entire chassis and every area where explosives might be found. The security guards had asked them to turn on the dome light in the storage compartment of the vehicle, but it didn't work. Tomas even offered to have the security person try it himself. It definitely was burnt out. Nothing was found except floodlights in the back of the box truck and a pair of Pepsi's in the cab. They passed into the receiving dock with the lights and the necessary equipment that went with them.

They were able to drive directly out to the floor of the arena. With the call for more lighting, the fifteen rows of folding chairs had been pushed out of the way to accommodate the work that needed to be done. The truck was backed to within about 10 feet of the stage where a set of pulleys had been rigged to lift the lighting to the rafters to be fitted into place.

The boxes for the lights weren't necessarily heavy, but they were bulky, so one man stayed in the truck to move the boxes to the rear edge of the vehicle, where another man would then take the box, unpack the light, then attach the fixture to the pulley system where a worker above would set the lights into the appropriate places.

It was harder with the dome light in the back out, but the man inside the truck didn't mind. In fact, it was a dome light but had been disconnected weeks ago. The fixture could be removed with simply a twist, and there were handles that had been installed from the dome light area to either end of the vehicle. A simple pull brought the ceiling of the vehicle down. In the top of the vehicle, in that false ceiling contraption, was eighty pounds of Semtex, each of them in four-pound pound blocks. Twenty floodlights had been ordered, so one block of Semtex was put in each of the boxes that contained the floodlights. Once on the floor, the worker assigned to that area would take the light out of the box, affix it to the pulley and away it would go.

He would move each box directly in front of the center of the stage. At the bottom of the stage was a 10 by 6 ventilator grill, on of twelve such grills that had been constructed in the stage so the structure wouldn't overheat. The box would be tilted on its side, open-side toward the grill.

Xander Ukith had entered the arena earlier that day with the help of his friend Josiah. He had carefully made his way that afternoon to the rear of the stage. The men and women who had constructed the stage had put swinging openings in six spots in the back, where they would deposit boxes and other leftovers from the construction, to be safely out of the way, and easily cleaned up after the rally had concluded.

He could remove the grill with a simple tug, and he did so when the first box was laid in front of him. He would pull the block of Semtex out, lay it behind him, and put the grill back in place. His accomplice outside by the truck would then slide that box away after the light had been sent aloft, and they would repeat the process twenty times. After all of the lights had been hoisted, Xander had stayed underneath, where he attached each block of explosives to a pre-planned position under the stage. From there he would attach blasting caps to each block of the plastique, and hooked up a sensor that was itself wired into a remote detonator. It took him about forty minutes to accomplish that task.

The rest of the crew had remained near the stage for that amount of time. Xander lightly tapped on the wood stage which was the signal that he was done. Another plant of his was stationed by the back of the stage and they were able to make their way innocuously around toward the truck when the vehicle was ready to depart.

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10:15 PM, Offutt Air Force Base

Within minutes of Hoshi's call, things began to move in and around the Air Base.

Admiral Hoshi filled in The Bureau about Hera's story and requested that they investigate the possible use of more than one SUV by Morilio. With even the slightest possibility of a connection to terrorist activity, and on the eve of Justin Bond's visit to Sioux City, the Bureau moved swiftly. They had the MP's at Offutt quietly go out to the SUV in question and get the VIN number from under the front windshield. The FBI would then run that VIN and see who the vehicle belonged to.

It didn't take long for the VIN to turn up results: the SUV was registered to a Tomas Sands in Sioux City. Records on Mr. Sands indicate that he had pretty much vanished off the grid about a year before after losing his job due to the drought. He had two credit cards that had been used regularly, but activity had suddenly stopped about the time he became unemployed. No other information was available.

They had also roused the owner of the Toyota dealer and escorted him to his place of work to determine if Tia Morilio had bought a similar SUV there.

She had. But it wasn't the one she had been driving that evening.

The Bureau couldn't arrest the Lieutenant for any crime: for all they knew none had been committed, but the fact that the possibility of more than one black Toyota Creseda was being driven by the subject, and the fact that it had been positively concluded that her father had been a known conspirator in Felix Gaeta's coup attempt aboard Galactica and had been executed for his crimes, had sent alarm bells ringing.

At about 11:30 pm, the Bureau asked General Pembers if his MP's could detain Lieutenant Morilio on the base until the FBI Field Office Director could gather the information he had and head to Offutt. They were ordered that if she resisted to NOT use lethal force if at all possible.