"Now, after letting Bill Adama drift around in space for a while, wondering how he could off his older son, the Colonial military decided to reward his long years of faithful service by decommissioning his ship and forcibly retiring him - again. You know, the old thing about ’if at first you don’t succeed . . .’ This is what militaries do, you see, with those people they don’t know what else to do with. Anyway, Bill was so moved by this show of affection for him that he blew up all of his on-board supplies of ammunition, thereby showing the Colonial Admiralty just how much he admired them, too, and sticking it to the Colonial taxpayer because nobody else, of course, might have been able to use that ammunition. Seems to me that the only people who might have come out ahead in this deal were the folks who held the munitions contracts, but that’s just crying over more spilt milk, and who’s to say Bill was wrong anyway? Why, if he had actually been fiscally responsible and given all that ammunition to someone else in the Colonial fleet, those bullets might have been used to hurt someone, and we can’t have that. I mean, a military actually shooting at someone? Whoever heard of such an idea? No, far better for Bill to have blown the stuff up, thereby allowing his crew to see the pretty light show and go "Ooo!’ and ’Aaaah!’ and think of sparklers.
"The Admiralty, of course, wasn’t quite done with their surprises yet, and thought it would be a nice idea to send Laura Roslin out to preside over the decommissioning ceremony, since they were going to turn the ship, Galactica, into a museum anyway, so who better to send than the Secretary of Education. Just because Galactica was one of the first capital ships built by the Colonials in the war with the Cylons and was something of a national icon, why would you send anyone other than the last in the line-of-succession to the Presidency? Besides which, it was the perfect opportunity to get Laura out of town for a few days, what with the President’s wife starting to get suspicious and the news that Laura’s breasts were multiplying cancer cells like rabbits in heat. After all, President Adar was a busy man, and didn’t have time to deal with minor problems like that, especially since he was getting ready to amuse himself by using Marines to break up a teacher’s strike. Could you just imagine the earful he’d have gotten from Laura if she were around for that? No, I didn’t think so.
"The Admiralty also thought it would be a nice idea to send Lee out to participate in the ceremony, thus proving that the Admiral’s had a sense of humour and that they were also tired of hearing Lee whine about what a rotten man his father was and how he never shared any of his pudding with him. Bill was so moved by this last gesture that he took to phoning the Admirals every night at dinnertime, asking them if they wanted any magazine subscriptions or telling them about the joys and conveniences of aluminum siding.
"Anyway, Laura took Billy, her cancer and most of the Colonial press corps and hopped on a government transport to Galactica, and Lee took his sooper-dooper Viper Mk. VII fighter, complete with cup holders, and made the same trip. Meanwhile, on Galactica, Kara Thrace had gotten herself thrown in the brig for punching Saul Tigh because, well, that’s what she does, and Galen Tyrol was busy schtupping Sharon Valerii because, well, that’s what he does. In other words, everything was running normally under Bill Adama’s command.
"When Laura Roslin arrived aboard the ship, she quickly found out that Bill Adama didn’t like her much, undoubtedly because every sentence he addressed to her was prefaced with the word ’No.’ It only took her a day or so to figure out that Bill had some problems in the interpersonal relationships department and realized just why it was that every Admiral in the fleet just kind of groaned when the words ’Bill’ and ’Adama’ were used in the same sentence. Oh, and Billy got lost soon after they boarded the ship and, wandering aimlessly into a crew’s head, proved just how much of a virgin he was by instantly falling in love with the first half-naked female crewman he clapped eyes on. Yes, nothing quite says ’Love’ like watching a woman shave her armpits. Except, perhaps, for a nice, chocolatey eclair with lots of tasty, creamy filling. In a world of pudding, a man with an eclair can be king.
"Lee arrived at Galactica soon after Laura, and was a bit miffed when he found out that the automatic landing system had been permanently turned off, as that meant he would actually have to do some work for once in his miserable life. Once he was aboard, he set about proving to everyone what a rotten human being his father was by being unnecessarily rude to Chief Tyrol, who for once wasn’t hidden away in a supply closet somewhere, playing hide-the-socket-wrench with Sharon Valerii.
"The first thing that Lee did after arriving - that is, the first thing he did after demonstrating to Tyrol what a spoiled little brat he was - was have a nice little chat with Bill Adama that completely failed to clear the air between them. ’I don’t like you,’ Lee said. ’No skin of my ass,’ Bill said. ’You killed Zak,’ Lee said. ’No one ever proved that I went anywhere near that airplane,’ Bill replied. ’You put him in that cockpit,’ Lee said. ’Hey, I was on the other side of the solar system when the accident happened, how is that my fault?’ Bill asked. ’Details, details,’ Lee replied. ’I’m not interested in logic. Thinking makes my brain hurt.’ ’No kidding,’ Bill said. ’You’re a poopy-head,’ Lee said. ’You did not spring from my loins,’ Bill said. ’Yeah, well, you’re still a poopy-head,’ Lee said. So it went, you know, a pretty typical family reunion.
"Meanwhile, back on Caprica, Baltar was carrying on a torrid affair with a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman, as well as with anything else that was female and even vaguely had a pulse. The blond woman, of course, was a Cylon human-lookalike that had been born in a tub of goo somewhere, which was pretty obvious when you compared the two; after all, no woman that hot would have fallen for a troll like Baltar in the real world unless she had been blind drunk, been paid quite a lot of money, or both. Anyway, she had been sent to the Colonies specifically to hop his bones, so that she could then gain access to the computers controlling the Colonial military and sabotage them. In her spare time, she liked to talk about how much God loved everybody, and take strolls through public spaces, snapping the necks of newborn infants. Hey, we all have our little peccadillos, so quit being so judgemental.
"Now, elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the poor schmuck who had made a career out of going to Armistice Station every year to meet absolutely no one, had once again schlepped himself out there and was, as he did every year, sitting in a completely bare but robot-friendly room, staring at the walls and wondering why hair started to grow out of your ears as you got older. All of a sudden, the doors at the far end of the room opened, and two homocidal killer robots clanked in, looking for all the world like two homocidal killer robots, though I am sure that they were actually quite nice and that you’d probably really like them if you met them, in that second or two before they reached down your throat with their metal claws and ripped your lungs out. But they didn’t kill the officer and, to his surprise, they were followed in by a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman who, though he didn’t know it, looked exactly like the drop-dead gorgeous blond woman slutting it up with Baltar back on Caprica. Seems that the Cylons, when they were building human-looking robots in tubs of goo, were somewhat hampered in the imagination department.
"’Hi!’ said the woman. ’We’re back, and we brough cake. Want some?’ ’Why are you here after forty years?’ the surprised Colonial officer asked. ’Well, we’re certainly not here to exterminate you all in a thermonuclear holocaust after we disable your defence systems using robots who look just like you that we’ve infiltrated into your society,’ the woman said. ’You’re not?’ the Colonial officer asked. ’Well, no, actually, we are. I lied,’ the woman said. ’Are you sure you don’t want some cake?’ ’No, thank you, I like pudding,’ the Colonial officer said. ’What a pity,’ the woman said with a sigh. And then she blew up the entire station.
"Back on Galactica, they had already completed the decommissioning ceremony and, much to their mutual relief, Lee had left the ship to escort Laura’s transport back to Caprica. Curiously enough, they had already been warned that there seemed to be something wrong with Armistice Station but, being Colonials, they weren’t overly-concerned with the fact that it apparently wasn’t there any more. Let it never be said that any Colonial, any where, had ever let the blindingly obvious disturb them. On Caprica, meanwhile, the homocidal, God-loving, baby-killing robot sleeping with Baltar finally decided to tell him that Caprica and all the other Colonies were about to be turned into flash-fried radioactive toast, but he of course didn’t believe her, because the Cylons had promised all those years ago that they weren’t going to come back. So to prove her point, she stuck his head into her crotch just before a nuclear bomb exploded, at the very least allowing him to go out with a bang."
Next time: Run, baby, run . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment