Karl Agathon

Lieutenant Karl C. "Helo" Agathon was an officer of the Colonial Fleet who served aboard the Battlestar Galactica. Trained as a Raptor Electronic Countermeasures Officer, he was left behind on Caprica during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies and survived six weeks among the Cylon occupation. There he formed a relationship with a Number Eight Humanoid Cylon, Sharon Valerii, whom he would later marry, and he became the only successful father of a human-Cylon hybrid child, Hera. Personnel shortages after the attacks saw him take on a succession of duties over the following years, rising to executive officer and finally Commander, Air Group.

The Fall of the Twelve Colonies#

The Cylon strike on the colonies coincided with the planned decommissioning of Galactica. A squadron of the ship's Vipers had been flown outbound for reassignment to another battlestar, escorted by a single Raptor crewed by Agathon and his pilot, Lieutenant Sharon "Boomer" Valerii. During the flight an unencrypted transmission alerted them to the assault, and Cylon Raiders closed on the squadron. Agathon worked through the Cylon DRADIS jamming to warn the Vipers of the size of the opposing force, but the Raiders remotely disabled the Vipers through the CNP exploit and destroyed them. The Raptor was damaged in the attack and Agathon's leg was injured by debris.

On Valerii's recommendation, the Raptor put down in the countryside outside Delphi to be repaired. A convoy of refugees fleeing the wealthy suburbs descended on the craft, and Agathon threatened to shoot any who tried to board. He and Valerii nevertheless agreed to take the children aboard and hold a lottery for the remaining seats. Recognising Dr. Gaius Baltar in the crowd, Agathon gave up his own seat to him and held off the boarders as the Raptor departed. Stranded on Caprica, he fled into the mountains.

Stranding on Caprica#

Agathon survived in the wilderness using anti-radiation injections and the contents of his survival kit while eluding Cylon forces. After being captured by a Number Six, he was rescued by a figure he believed to be Valerii, in fact another copy of the Number Eight model. Her true purpose was a Cylon experiment to produce a viable human-Cylon hybrid: the Cylons engineered situations meant to foster affection between the two, and the experiment resulted in a successful pregnancy, with the unintended effect that the Eight genuinely fell in love with Agathon.

He discovered her Cylon nature after spotting another identical copy while attempting to infiltrate the Delphi military base, and fled, believing himself led into a trap. She caught up to him and revealed the pregnancy. Though he shot her in the shoulder, he found he could not kill her, and at her urging took her to the Delphi Museum. There he was reunited with Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, who was on a mission to recover the Arrow of Apollo. With the Arrow in hand, Agathon, Thrace and Valerii left Caprica for Kobol to rejoin the fleet.

Return to the fleet#

Aboard the Astral Queen, Agathon drew his weapon on Lee Adama to stop him shooting Valerii, whom Adama blamed for an earlier attempt on his father's life by another copy. Searching for the Tomb of Athena on Kobol, Agathon told her he still loved and trusted her.

His homecoming aboard Galactica, nearly three months after being presumed dead, was bittersweet. Many former friends turned away from him for his love of a Cylon, but he found support from Thrace and from Chief Galen Tyrol. He won wider acceptance after recommending that the experimental Blackbird stealth ship be clad in carbon composite to evade DRADIS.

After the arrival of the Battlestar Pegasus, Agathon and Tyrol intervened to stop the Cylon interrogator Lieutenant Alastair Thorne from raping the pregnant Sharon, and in the struggle killed him. Admiral Helena Cain sentenced both men to death in a summary trial, bringing Galactica and Pegasus to the brink of open conflict. The sentence was never carried out; the two were eventually released and the charges dropped.

When President Laura Roslin moved to force an abortion to remove the perceived threat of the hybrid child, Agathon begged Admiral William Adama to let him and Sharon leave the fleet. Roslin rescinded the order after Baltar used blood from the unborn child to cure her cancer, but later had the newborn daughter taken from the hospital and her death faked, giving Agathon what were said to be her ashes, which he and Tyrol released into space.

Rising rank#

After the settlement of New Caprica, Agathon remained with Galactica's skeleton crew, was promoted to Captain, and served as executive officer in place of Colonel Saul Tigh. He married his Sharon, who was commissioned a Lieutenant under the callsign "Athena". When Galactica attempted to spread a virus to destroy the Cylon race, Agathon disobeyed orders and sabotaged the plan, judging the act to be genocide.

When Tigh returned to the post of XO, Agathon went back to the flight line and piloted one of the Raptors that guided the fleet through a hazardous radioactive star cluster, becoming one of the fleet's most senior surviving pilots. He took over as Commander, Air Group from Lee Adama, and briefly stood in again as XO when Tigh faltered. During the mission to find Earth he served as second in command aboard the Demetrius, and in the assault on the Resurrection Hub he rescued the Number Three, D'Anna.

The Colony and after#

During the mutiny led by Felix Gaeta and Tom Zarek, Agathon was beaten unconscious and imprisoned with his wife and daughter. After order was restored, the family's life resumed until Boomer impersonated Athena, seduced Agathon, and abducted Hera, taking her to the Colony where John Cavil intended to dissect her.

When Adama obtained the Colony's location, Agathon and Athena volunteered for the rescue. He devised the plan of using Raptors as boarding craft to insert Marine teams into the Colony, a mission made perilous by the dense asteroid field and gravitational distortion around the black hole the Colony orbited. He and Athena were the only Raptor crew to survive the entire operation and, with the help of a repentant Boomer, recovered their daughter. When Galactica was boarded, Agathon was shot in the thigh, and though facing death from blood loss demanded that Sharon protect Hera rather than tend to him. He survived, and on the new Earth was last seen alive, walking with a stick but in good spirits.