| Weight of Ages |
| Summary: | Cidra and Megan encounter one another in the ancient ship and speak of homes long lost. |
| Date: | 25 Apr 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Nastygram and other Gemenon/Ark logs are vaguely referenced. |
| Players: |
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| Ancient Ship - Midship - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Stored in the Starboard Hangar deck is a transport vessel - smaller than a craft like the Elpis but clearly designed for long-term travel. It takes up a good portion of the hangar by itself, and its entry is under guard 24/7 by Marine personnel. It's oddly shaped - seemingly built along more curves and gentle lines than standard ship design, and has a decidedly 'alien' quality to it. Neither much like any comparable human ship, or anything the Cylons traffic in. It's shape calls to mind a whale more than anything else, a curved 'tail' at one end and round 'head' at the other, elongated body with a fat 'belly' of a mid-section. There's an entrance of sorts in the 'tail' section with a walk-way rigged to make going in easy enough. From its size, it was originally made for small ships such as shuttles - not people - to walk through. The room one enters into is more a 'foyer,' or some other communal gathering place, than a traditional hangar. The ceiling is domed and rounded over head. The curve of the 'whale's' 'tail.' A large entry foyer, or common area. The 'floor' is bare, though there are openings in the walls. Alcoves. Thirteen of them. While there is an arched doorway at the opposite end of the room, this one made for people, but it's likewise guarded and those without clearance aren't allowed to pass. The walls are covered in thirteen large mural-like paintings. Almost more akin to cave paintings than anything else. Each positioned over the thirteen small alcoves with benches where one could sit. Twelve of those might be familiar to those learned in Colonial scripture, or just the lore of their own colony. A thirteenth, however, would not be a thing any of them have encountered before in any recognizable way. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #423 |
There is never precisely a crowd in the Ark of Kobol - as it's come to be called among some of the crew - but there are generally a few off-duty personnel scattered around the foyer area. And even a few civilians. Sitting in the alcoves, looking at the symbols and strange writing on the walls. The atmosphere is generally a quiet one. And into it strides Cidra Hahn. Clad in her off-duties, she idly runs her fingers through her long, somewhat mussed dark hair as she takes a long gaze around the entryway. As if she's looking for something.
Carrying what is, in her newly renovated opinion, a rather carefully reconstructed field kit in one hand and a pen light in the other, Megan makes her way into the 'foyer' of the ships hangar. If 'foyer' is the correct word, and while she is OCD about many things, getting the right name or proper designation for something in a mode of address is important to her little twitches of necessity when it comes to orderlieness. The field kit she's carrying holds a rather extensive collection of the items that she intends to use to scour the ship and working from the orders of the captain to do this search and sweep of the ship, she's practically bright eyed and bushy tailed with the task at hand. She spots a dark haired woman as well in the area and offers a quick nod of greeting along with a smile to accompany the gesture while doing her usual mental sweep of images to try to put to name.
Cidra's head turns when Megan passes her, returning the nod with a slight inclination of her own head. "Doctor." The greeting is polite if generic. As Megan is obviously one of those. Though her cloudy blue gaze sharpens ever so slightly on the woman. "A curious place, is it not? I come here often. At first I thought I would somehow find answers here. Now I just…come."
Megan's analytical mind puts enough of the clues together by the time she's ready to reply and she does so with another nod of respect that prefances, "I think there's something written about knowing the question before you can begin to seek the answer, Sir," is said in a thoughtful tone of voice. She looks slowly around, actually Looking instead of doing a visual assessment of the space and draws a slow - cautious - deep breath before adding: "Places that speak to us of countless years, the actual weight of the ages - for lack of a better term - have a way of doing that. Of drawing in, of .. hmm, I suppose calling to us. Even if we don't understand the how or the why or any part of it at all, it's true all the same."
"Weight of the ages…" Cidra turns that over in her head. "Perhaps that is the way of it. They do say they believe this ship came from Kobol. Our ancestors ship. Or those that would have been our ancestors, had their journey not ended. What work are you about here today, Doctor?"
"Captain DeMaratus asked me to go over the ship and take biological samples to determine if there's any chance that the sickness that's been plaguing the crew could possibly have come from this ship," Megan explains with a sober expression upon her face. "Possible is a word that I don't really deal with, but probabilities? That's a more reasonable approach. Now," and she tucks the penlight into one of her pockets and slowly looks around, "the probability of gathering unaltered biosamples is statistically low. If the ship itself had been sealed air tight this entire time then I could easily have taken samples from any of the available surfaces, from the ventilation system, from any number of locations. Which I still intend to do. But the more people that have been in and out, through and around, this ship the more challenging it will be to differentiate between a viable sample that may have survived the ages to something that naturally occurred within the existing environment. We are, by and large, a rather germ ridden race."
"Probabilities. Ah. That is a cold way to look at it. Do you truly believe that sickness might have come from this ship?" Cidra ventures further in, for her part, undaunted by the idea. "We found many bodies here. Skeletons of children laying among their parents. All tucked away. Gone to sleep. Strange, for a sickness, would that not be? If it was plague that had taken the crew and passengers who once flew upon this vessel."
Megan is stopped cold by the words spoken by the Lt Commander, "There were skeletons? Were there, among the bodies that is, were there still fragments of clothing? material? Anything of that nature?" is asked in a voice that is carefully neutral in her line of inquiry.
"There were, I am sure. I am unsure what Medical did with them all, precisely. There were hundreds. It would have been…impractical to bring them all out. Besides…it would disturb their resting place." This last seems to matter more to Cidra than the former. "There were small…cells on the lower level of the ships. Like dormitories. For the passengers, I suppose. Some are probably still undisturbed if you are looking for fresh…well. Whatever you are looking for."
Megan remains very still, though it's a stillness of body instead of stillness of mind, "May I inquire? how long between when this ship was aired out and put to public access before the sickness started plaguing the crew?"
"We retrieved this ship from the nowhere lands of space on…February the Ninth. I flew out on the initial mission to examine its interior myself. The sickness began…well, you would know better than I, but my pilots began taking ill in very late March. So…a little less than two months later, perhaps? Give or take." A pause and the woman adds, "I am Cidra Hahn, by the way. I apologize if I do not know your face. I attempt to spend as little time in Medical as possible, I hope it shall not offend you to hear me say."
Megan nods subtly, her expression deeply pensive even as she's dividing her attention to the extent of offering one hand toward Cidra Hahn as she says, "Megan Amosi, newly assigned to the Cerberus," and finds a quiet laugh of amusement escaping her as she nods again, though more firmly this time. "I find that the avoidance of sick bay is a common trait, or the preference to avoid it, that is. No one wants to be sick, and when they are, they want it over and done with as quickly as possible. And no, I'm not offended. I'm having a devil of a time keeping up with the names and the ranks and remembering what each means and what it applies too."
"Amosi." The name is repeated. And there is recognition of it from Cidra. "I was born Cidra Nevarrine. Of the city of Shirkirsei in the low valleys of Dryope Province." Gemenon, that would be. "Gunnery Sergeant Constin did mention a Doctor Amosi to me, during his…I can only call it a scavenger hunt on the subject of Brother Solon." The hand is taken, but it's clasped and held rather than shaken. Eyes going to meet Megan's, as if trying to get a read on the doctor.
Megan's eyes brighten in answer, "You're of Gemenon too," is said in a voice that conveys the sudden surge of relief and remote kinship, and she has to take a moment to let the wave of unexpected emotion pour through her until it settles enough that her voice is mostly level. "It is.. it does me good to know that there are more of us alive," she admits with a nod to accompany her words. "Scavenger hunt is more akin to driven interrogation, but I gather that there's a reason behind it all, so I was happy to help. If confused by the line of inquiry," she admits.
"Have you not heard the reports of the latest reconnaissance from Gemenon?" Cidra asks. "It is…much fearful strange news. And I gather this Brother Solon individual is wrapped up with it in ways we do not quite yet understand." Cidra drops Megan's hand, inclining her head in an affirmative. "Yes, I am. Or born there, I was. Though I have been many years gone from that world. The Master at Arms told me your father was once a teacher of Theology at the Colleges."
Megan nods as well, though to the latter as she explains, "My father, yes, he's a professor in the Theology department. My mother is one as well, though Economics. Religion and Money," she says with a quirk of a smile, "trust me, the debates at the dinner table were the sort to have sold tickets." The hope in her eyes is carefully banked but it's there all the same, "I haven't heard the reports entirely, no. I mean, rumors are rumors and skuttlebut is skuttlebut but I'm a doctor and a scientist, if it can't be expressed in numbers it's fact - not opinion."
"Religion and money. My mother was a priestess. She kept a temple to Hera in Shinkersei. She always felt the two went well together." There is a touch of bitterness in Cidra's voice, though she seems to regret it as soon as she speaks it. "Well. That was long ago. The name is vaguely familiar to me, though I did not study under him myself. I was a student of Theology during my time at the Colleges. I was studying to be a priestess of Athena at that time. But, clearly, my life has taken another path." A faint "Ah" at the reply about the Gemenon footage. "I had thought all had heard what was found there by now. It is all most odd, the official reports no less than the rumors."
"I know that some sort of video clip was retrieved, that Solon must be a part of it - especially given the line of questions from the Sergeant.. um.. Gunnery Sergeant," Megan amends after a moment of thought. "Are we going to Gemenon?" is asked quietly, but again there's that hope in her tone of voice. "And is it true, that one of the Eleven's was in the video with Solon?" she asks, her fingertips twitching faintly at the memory of having dissected one a few short days ago.
"A video clip, yes. It was in a data package sent to the Raptor that did the fly-over. By the Cylons." Megan's question about the Eleven gets a short nod from Cidra. "Yes. Copies of the Model Eleven were in that video. We have reports that copies of the Model Two skinjob are upon Gemenon as well. With a…collective of humans in the community of Lampridis Falls. The video showed them living in seeming…coexistence." She does not sound as if she can quite believe it. "And Brother Solon was among them. He was acting as a…spokesman, of sorts. And he was speaking to us. A message to Cerberus. Asking us to come. Asking for our help."
"That's.." Megan chokes on the single word and actually draws a deep breath before exhaling slowly before continuing. "He wants this ship, this crew, this fleet, the survivors of humanity, to willingly walk into what could amount to be a trap. A trap of massive and potentially stupid in the line of mass genocide proportions. Why would.. this defies all reasonable logic. Humans living alongside Cylons, in peace coexistence? To what end?"
"We know not," Cidra replies. "All we know is that there are human survivors down on that planet, among the Cylons. Perhaps involved in some trick of theirs, or being used for it. Perhaps…well, the other options are too strange indeed for me to contemplate. But we know little yet. To answer your earlier question, yes, we are going back to Gemenon. Not the whole ship, of course. Our Marines are putting together a covert operations team. Small. Five or six men and women at most. To try and observe the activities down in that region in some secrecy. And, well. See what they shall see."
"I'm not a Marine, by any stretch of plausible imagination, and I've never been in the 'field' or assigned to accompany any actual ah.. team? No. Unit. That's the word. But I'm Gemanese," Megan says quietly, "and I have no way of knowing how many of the Marine's are. But in case you need I don't know, just in case? I'll volunteer."
"If you would volunteer, that is a matter taken up with the Marines," Cidra says. "I am not in charge of that aspect of the mission. For my part, I know it to be a rather intensive one, in terms of the ground training and field experience required." A pause and she adds, not without sympathy, "I would like to 'volunteer' myself. But I would be put in the way. I shall wait and see, and see if perhaps they find something that may allow us to help those people still down there somehow."
"Even after being stranded on Tauron for so long, I just can't quite really believe that it could possibly be that bad on Gemenon," Megan admits with a slow shake of her head. "I know it has to be. It really does. But there's a highly irrational part of my mind that just can't believe it. That can't really think of my home as a war zone or worse, a post-nuclear apocalyptic waste land. I want to think that I'd be useful, that'd I'd be helpful. I suppose, thought, that Marine's don't need a local guide, least of all someone who's never fired a weapon at anything other than a target dummy and who's entire survival experience could be summed up with the words 'raw terror' and the bleak realization that even raw terror can become something that the mind becomes benumbed to after long enough."
"They shall not be interacting with populace at all, if the mission goes as it is planned," Cidra says. "Merely going down, hiding in brush, and seeing if they can get a handle on what manner of games the Cylons are playing. It is stealth and observation. I pray the need for guides, for speaking with those left alive, may come later. I pray it, yet I cannot quite believe it." A pause. "I had held the opposite in my mind. It was easier to think of all there being dead. Like Aquaria. Like Caprica and Picon. When nothing is left, one can accept that. When one knows there are still those that remain…" She takes a shuddering breath, and does not finish that sentence. "I dare not hope any of my family live of course and yet…one cannot really help it…"
"We live in hope," Megan says in a voice that is oddly gentle, "that we may have hope to live. Hope is one of the elements that defies all logic, all parameters, all expectations. We hope that the sun will come up the next day. We hope that there will be a friendly smile sent our way. We hope that when we wake up that things may not be as bad as we'd feared. We hope that tomorrow will be better. We hope that our children will have better lives. We hope, because Hope is one of the things that make us human. Can a machine hope? Dream? Love? Create? Can it fail, learn, dream, and create anew? I don't know, but I hope.." and she smiles faintly, "I hope that the best part of what we are will survive. Somehow."
"Well. We remain, at least." Cidra does not sound like she entirely agrees on the 'hope' part. "I pray this might somehow come to a better end." She inhales long, and lets it out slow. "I am sorry to have taken up your time, Doctor Amosi. And this place…well, it is not easing my mind today such as it normally does. I will leave you to your work."