AWD #020: But Wait, There's More
But Wait, There's More
Summary: Petra asks Rozzen to meet in the Ward Room in order to get her a little more up to speed on what has been going on
Date: 26/01/2013 (OOC Date)
Related Logs: A Little Help Here
Petra Rozzen 
Ward Room
The Ward Room's centerpiece is a finely crafted oak table built into a rectangle with sweeping curves towards each corner, matching chairs lining it like a ring. The far end of the room are the flags of each of the Twelve Colonies, the Colonial flag at the left end and the Fleet's flag at the right to flank. At the other end is a countertop built into the wall that has fresh coffee brewed in a pot, and another for ice water, when Command Staff is present.
AWD #20

So after sending Rozzen a copy of the million or so things he mailed out the last couple of days, on top of the stack was a small handwritten note, "You know, maybe we should talk. Come over to the Ward room at (insert current time here) and I'll have the coffee fresh. Petra."

So at the moment, Petra has claimed one of the ward room seats. A stack of papers and folders is off to his left, and a huge mug of what smells like extremely strong coffee is sitting to his right. He still looks a little pale, but not as bad as he has at Watch the last couple of days…maybe he finally got some sleep.

There really have been about a million things. Moira seems to have a good chunk of them enclosed in a folder caught between wrist and hip as she moves down the corridor towards the Ward Room. She slows as she crosses the threshold to inhale deeply the scent of coffee. It sets a quietly content smile upon her lips. "That smells wonderful, sir," she says as she turns to take in Petra's arrangement at the table.

Petra perks his head up and looks around when the hatch opens, waiting until she comments before offering a faint smile, "Captain. Pots over there in the corner. I, ah, made it a little strong, if you want some. It's been a very long week." He gestures to the chairs next to his, "Have a seat after you grab a mug, if you want. I have to be back on Watch in a couple hours, but I'll see what I can cover before that."

"Thank you, sir." The turn of her head lets her smile linger a moment as she shifts towards the pot. "Strong sounds perfect." She sets her folder down a moment in order to pour and then scoops it back up in the fold of her arm as she angles back to the table to join Petra. Sipping quietly along the way. "Where do we start?" she'll wonder as she settles herself beside him, crossing one knee over the other and setting out papers and mug neatly.

Petra takes in a slow, deep breath and considers his stack of papers when the question is asked. He looks thoughtful for a long moment, then finally looks over at her and offers a wan smile, "Well. I suppose I should ask. Do you know about the letters I got, and have you read the files about what happened with the Roland Reese?"

Rozzen stills in her own movements to wait out his thought. In answer she dips a little nod of her chin, dropping her eyes briefly from his gaze to help her fingers find the tab amongst her notes. The folder flips open to them, her fingers splaying lightly over the page. "The chemical weapon," her voice is a controlled neutral. "I've read over what you've sent. You've brought Captain Lin in on the issue, as well as a civilian Geologist. The initial report pointed to a compound adapted from a previously used recreational substance." She pauses there with her summary, dark eyes slanted attentively towards Petra. In the absence of the rattle of facts, her jaw tightens against the images they conjure.

Petra mmms and nods slowly, "I tell you what…I'll run through the timeline of things quickly, and then if you have questions on the details, I can point you to the reports as well. Fair enough?" His gaze lingers for a moment, registering her reaction and sighing softly, "Its a loot worse than you think it is, trust me. I haven't been able to sleep well for a week and you're about to understand why. I should also add, that what talk about here, doesn't get discussed again outside of yourself, me, Lt. Wake, Major Shepard, Major Beckett, or Mom and the Old Man. Some of this will start a panic among the crew and/or the civvies, and considering the rescue ops we are about to start, we don't need the hit to morale."

"Sounds good, sir," Moira answers that first question levelly with a small enough nod that it doesn't break the gaze he sets upon her. As Petra goes on, her lips thin a little with tension added to that which is already tight in her jaw. Dark eyes stray a little at the confirmation of the lack of sleep that's kept him so pale, but her attention is right back with him to be sure she has his list of need-to-knows clear. "Understood, Lt. Colonel." That promised, she pulls her hands into a fold upon her lap and prepares herself with a breath for the morale endangering details.

Petra sighs and nods, taking a moment to drain a good portion of his mug, then sets it down, and reaches up to rub his face lightly, "So I was here through the whole first trip, and not a peep. Smooth as a baby's butt. But then once we're back, we get called out of Anchorage early. Flak Frigate Roland Reese out on the Armistice line had stopped responding, so we had to go check her out. I ended up being on the Raptor that went to check it out…we found, well, what's in that report. Uniforms lying around like the people wearing them had just vaporized, and they fell right there, with nametags, pins, everything. Someone had completely destroyed all the tape drives in SecHub, so we couldn't even pull the computer files of what had happened…BUT..I found a single security terminal that was still on. The mainframe had locked up and the screen had frozen, but it was showing CIC on the Reese, and there was a big, red dot on DRADIS, directly over them, at that moment."

Rozzen sits ramrod straight as she listens, only the smallest of twitches pulling at her features in reaction. With the standing collar and long sleeves of her blues, it's not like the way the story prickles along her flesh is visible. "One of their Basestars," she postulates in that same carefully contained tone. Her lips roll a fraction, as if her mouth's gone dry. "Why do you think they just left the Reese like that, for us to find?" she wonders.

Petra sucks on a tooth for a moment, "The entire time we were out by the Reese, there was this big red dot on DRADIS, waaaaay on the far side of the Cylon's side of the Armistice Line. Just sitting there, like they were watching us. We nuked the Reese, because it was going to drift over the line before Fleet could get to it, and we left. Doctor Phareem researched the residue we found, and came up with that report you saw. Why they left it? I think it was a test. A test to see if their new creation worked." He pauses for a moment, then continues on, "After we get back to Piraeus, I get a letter. Someone put it in an envelope and addressed it to me, and dropped it in the stairwell for me to find." He pulls a paper out of the stack and slides it over to her, "That's your copy."

Rozzen shakes her head a fraction, her hummed reaction to the lurking Cylons more a catch of breath than an audible sound. Petra's theory of a test leave her brows drawn slightly together in a shift that's only exaggerated as she follows his hands. "In which stairwell?" is Moira's first question as she lifts her hands from their fold in her lap to draw the paper straight with a light press of fingertips. Chestnut hair shifts over her shoulder as she bends to read it, eyes scanning quickly over the lines. Her index finger is left lightly beside the number at the bottom as her gaze startles quickly back up to the Lt. Colonel. "Do you know who this… is, sir?" The sentence breaks over the word that starts to form a purse upon her lips before being omitted.

Petra mms, "Aft. And…Yes, but I'll get to that. So that letter, combined with what we found on the Reese, and the fact that how all the letter was doing was urging us to be on alert…I talked to Jameson, and we sent a warning back to Fleet. As it turns out, Fleet had their own suspicions, and our little warning basically made up their minds for them. They went on alert, and they put all the Union Bay class battleships in hiding somewhere. And then…the war started." He pauses there to look down at the table edge, chewing on the corner of his mouth, "And despite the warning, Fleet has been mostly wiped out. We've gotten reports that the battleships are still alive, but everything in orbit around any colony has been completely destroyed. We've confirmed that five Battlestars, including the Valkyrie, have been lost with all hands, and the rest are missing, assumed down. And you've seen my Situation Report about the status of all the colonies, right?"

Perhaps here Moira shows a crack in composure, looking again to the letter even as Petra promises to come back to it. Her fingertips drift to find its edge, smoothing along the page before lifting the document to settle with the rest. When he speaks of the Union Bays her gaze returns to the Lt. Colonel, thus watching as his own eyes drop. And mention of the loss of the Valkyrie still has her swallowing hard. "I have," she confirms about seeing the Situation Report. "Do we have any leads on how to contact the hiding ships?" is what the Captain chooses to wonder about.

Petra takes a moment to attack his coffee mug, sucking down a goodly portion of it before setting it back down and nodding once, "So some of the folks we talked to on Picon have said that, when the battleships were there last, they left information with some of the raptor crews on Picon, with a way to get a hold of them. So we're trying to get everyone off of Picon we have, in the hopes of finding one of those folks. Picon is…not savable. The planet is lost, and those that are there are fighting a losing battle and they know it, so we want to get everyone we can off of it and back here, so they can help us out where we can have a better outcome. But…" He pauses there and holds up a finger, "And now we're going to get into the stuff that is going to keep you awake tonight. So some of the Aerilon folks we rescued, said that they had sent scouts to Virgon, to check out the southern continent, Hibernia. They said their raptors caught video of everything looking normal…except no people. Cars were left running, lights on, its just like all the people disappeared. Pets were roaming around untouched, but there seemed to be this film over everything, and there were clothes strewn about the place." He stops and points at the chemical weapons report, "The Reese was a test run, so they could use that on a planetary-wide scale. Now, that begs the question: Why would the Cylons develop a weapon that will neatly kill us, and leave absolutely everything else untouched. They're machines, right? Nuke the planet into glass and be done with it…the most efficient thing to do."

Rozzen's brows nudge upwards at the news of the raptors who may have information. Not that an air of optimism has a chance of lasting long when he proclaims the planet doomed. It's hardly a surprise, but it still serves to dim the brief brightening of her eyes. They shift to focus on his lifted finger, like it serves as an effective anchor to keep her thoughts from running off too far on the topic of Picon. As he goes on, her hand starts to lift to rub at the skin crawling along her arm at the news. Catching herself, she wraps her fingers around her neglected coffee mug instead as her jaw sets grimly. "Right," she echoes vaguely. But that's not all. Her gaze flicks again to the copy of the found letter as her fingers bridge lightly over it. "But then there's this," she reasons. "It was in a stairway, not displayed on the screen of some rogue terminal. What, who, wrote this?"

Petra holds up a finger, "Someone on this ship. A Cylon. A Cylon that looks exactly like us." He pauses for a moment and watches her face, "That's the first thing: The Cylons have a new model. One that passes medical exams. Looks like us, acts like us, and it appears, in some cases, actually thinks they ARE us until their programming 'wakes up'. But let me take you one step further. The Cylons are current killing everyone that fights back. They aren't accepting surrender…armed forces and civilians that fight back when they are invaded? Are killed. But civilians who don't? Are being taken to internment camps. Why would Cylons mercilessly kill some, but save others, especially after nuking some colonies into oblivion? They are saving the weak-willed. Next, they used this chemical of theirs to scour some colonies clean of people and leave everything else intact. Next, consider Acquaria, where the spaceport has been destroyed, and there is a basestar in orbit, and yet raptors that flew recon said that the cities appear to be life as normal, with no cylon presence. And now Hibernia has been purged of human life, but left intact otherwise." He pauses one more time, "I think the Cylons have had 40 years to figure out how to use the human brain as a computer. And I think they've figured out how to download a Cylon sentience into a weak-willed human body. One that wouldn't fight the intellectual invasion. I think the Cylons have returned to perform a 'system upgrade', and take over, and 'do human' better than us. They mean not to wipe us out, but take us over, and take our place."

There is indeed something to watch during that first pause. For as composed as Moira is, she can't help herself from twisting an unsettled look at what Petra is proposing. It's a look that may quiet a fraction after that initial reaction, but that's only to nestle in as a deeper worry cast over her tensely held gaze. As she listens her breath catches softly here and there in subtle tells of what may have been objections and outbursts if they weren't swallowed so completely before they were formed. Because she is listening, letting the steady march of evidence that the TACCO sets forth seep in. In the end she's left quiet and horrified, wide eyes both fixed on the man before her and far distant with the implications of what he's said. It takes her a long moment to blink, and longer still to lift shaken fingers to neaten the tuck on her bangs behind her ear and linger a press at her temple. "They download. Into humans. There's a downloaded Cylon, in a human, on this ship." It is the sort of thing that's a bit hard to accept.

Petra seems, oddly enough, to relax as he sees that expression settle in across her face, "The one we have on this ship professes to have always been the way they are. They don't know anything about this downloading idea, but they aren't saying its not possible either. I don't have any evidence to support my claim of this, but it neatly explains all of the Cylon's 'erratic' behavior so far. And yes, its horrifying. The Cylons are setting up these…holding pens for humans, across Leonis and Scorpia, I think it was, and they are using captured Colonial liners to shuttle people to these holding pens. I think the Cylons have chosen which colonies they want to keep, have nuked the rest, and are now trying to settle into the ones they want to keep. I think they've already done this on Aquaria, and I think they're going to START doing this on Virgon, on the Hibernian continent." With that said, he takes in a deep, heavy breath and lets it go, eyeing his empty mug for a moment, before he continues, "This…letter writer, I refer to as a defector, because by giving us that warning, they saved more people than I can calculate and might be the reason we succeed in the end, if we do. The crew has not been informed, and I haven't spread the word around, because I'm pretty certain with, as distraught as most people are over the destruction of the colonies? We'd have a lynch mob in seconds, and I am not going to let that happen on my watch."

Two fingers remain kneading absently at her temple, warping the line of her brow as Moira continues to stare half unseeingly at Petra. Mention of Virgon brings a further ripple as her eyes drop briefly closed and her brows peak. His glance afterward to his drained coffee is a reminder she's hardly touched hers and she shifts to bring it to her lips. Hands wrapped tight around the mug's smooth sides after, she gazes over its rim as the Lt. Colonel speaks further of the letter writer. "Of course," she has to agree with his assertion, though she perhaps does so with less conviction. "But it… they? Are contained." She assumes, her mug lowering as her thoughts trip loose. "Quarantined from our systems. Can they interface with our computers?" And, shifting gears abruptly with another train of thought realization, "the internment colonies must be a first priority."

Petra shakes his head, "Our computers aren't networked, and if they were going to screw us? We'd be screwed by now, and very very dead. I'm not worried that this individual is going to suddenly decide NOW that we all need to die. It makes no sense, and that's at least one thing you can count on Cylons to do, is be logical. As for the internment camps…perhaps, but right now we have a lot of people dying on Picon and Aerilon, and our scientists don't have a counteragent figured out yet for the chemical weapon. The internment camps are VERY well protected. So right now, I'm working on plans with Shepard for various rescue operations, using what resources we have. Unfortunately…we cant save everyone all at once, which means I have to make the distasteful choice of…who can we save, first?"

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