Part 1, Battlestar Galactica: Dawn

Chapter 6

VI

"Admiral on Deck!", bellowed Saul Tigh.

"What's our position, Saul?"

"Sir, we're about twenty-one hours from being able to put the old lady into a high orbit. There's still a lot of chatter on the planet. Seems this President of this United States is a popular guy this week. Every leader that we have been able to identify, has been talking to him almost nonstop for the past four days. Poor bastard probably hasn't slept a wink."

"Well, I can sympathize with the man, that's for sure." Adama hadn't slept much himself, so he felt a kinship with the man. "Very good. Until then, steady as she goes."

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The world leaders, along with their military attaches, and the Secretary General of the UN were digesting the text of the communique that had arrived from the main ship of the fleet that was within hours of orbiting Earth. Like Justin Bond, it had, as General Lawrence correctly surmised, hit them all like a Mack Truck. No one had, in their wildest dreams, expected to see people that looked like them, staring back at them.

"Is it really possible that they're human, just like us?" Said South Korea's President. He was there with representatives from both North Korea and South Korea. Even now, the two nations were still in a de-facto state of war and had been for eighty years. But even that was slowly giving way to the new reality "It has to be some kind of trick. This simply cannot be".

"Well, Mr. President", Justin Bond replied. "I'm sure we'll find out more once we get to meet with them. I imagine we'll have some protocol in place to let us do medical tests on them, and visa-versa. But as strange as it seems, they look a helluva lot like us."

"There eyes are set just slightly closer together", the Nigerian president said, almost to himself, studying the images of the two people who were their leaders, that everyone on Earth had now become all too familiar with. "They seem to be a little shorter than the average Human Being on Earth. But they're both wearing what is definitely eyeglasses".

"Adama. Roslin". The names of the leaders, as put forth in the communique from the ship, rolled off the tongue of Israeli Prime Minister Hefetz. "Galactica. A pretty elegant name for a ship." Like everyone else, he was staring at the photographs of the two apparent Humans in the pictures.

"Madam Secretary General", Russia's Anton Dytsav mused, "What do you make of their story about how they ended up here? It strikes me as fantastic."

"Anthony, I honestly don't have the first clue. Until we meet with them, and until and if they allow us to read and see what they've been through, we don't have any idea how they got here. I don't see any reason for them, on the surface of it, to lie to us. They say they came from twelve planets, part of a Colony of planets, and that about twenty-one billion of them were killed in this holocaust. Maybe they're just playing on our sympathies, but the story couldn't be written in Hollywood. No one would dare buy it. I have to think the story is genuine."

"Destroyed by a mechanical race." The Prime Minister of Sweden could barely get the words out of her mouth. "twenty-one billion souls killed. My God." She suddenly glanced up from the text she had been reading. "They didn't mention if those mechanical monsters were still following them, did they?"

"No, Ella, you're correct", said President Bond, "They didn't. And I think among the litany of questions that needs to be asked of them when we meet, that is at the top of the list. Where exactly are those mechanical bastards?"

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So, Bill, where are those mechanical bastards?". Saul Tigh, Cylon though he was would never have any love for the mechanical race that had destroyed The Colonies. "I notice you didn't say anything about that in your little love letter to our cousins down there?"