Word Count: in progress
Date: 12/27/04
Series: Mini
Rating: T
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: L/K, L/C, T/Mel
Warnings:
Summary: Continuation of Reach for the Stars
Spoilers/Disclaimers:
Chapter 1
Commander Adama gave a sigh and leaned back in his chair, his hands coming up to rub at eyes that ached from fatigue. He had been up for far too long he knew, but right now pure unadulterated exhaustion was the only way he was going to get any sleep. He had already tried to fall asleep twice now, but thoughts he could not seem to damp down were always running through his mind.
It was not just the discovery of the Olympia and the fuel supplies at the brown dwarf that had been almost affectionately been dubbed Sunco, after one of the larger fuel companies that had supplied the Colonies. Nor was it strictly the finding of the probe and the possible implications that it held, or the still uncaught Cylon agent. Those factored into it, but more importantly he was worried about the people who were supposed to be leading his warriors under him.
Bill knew it was impossible to expect people to act like mindless automatons, not that he wanted them to anyways, but he had hardly expected the actions of either Lee, Saul and even more so Kara, after Judgment. He knew things were hard, hell he was having trouble himself, and was leaning on Kylen far more than he wanted to be. She was a pillar of normalcy in a world otherwise gone awry.
Bill had felt he could depend on Saul after Ragnar, once the man had faced the fact that he could either be useful and be pushed aside. They did not have time for weakness, did not have the lives that would be lost to hesitation, but now he knew he underestimated just how deep the reserves of strength his XO had. Bill had not exactly approved of the relationship with Lieutenant Schmidt, but he understood that his long time friend had needed a pillar much like he had found with Kylen. Now though, Saul was all but falling apart again, and worse he had retreated into a shell that Bill was not sure he could breach before it was too late. Saul had battled demons he had never spoke about for as long as Bill had known him, and now these personal problems they appeared to be the last straw.
Lee and Kara, those two were another surprise. Bill had always thought that they were more alike than they wanted to admit, and had even thought that for a short time before entering the academy that they might be a couple. Which was why Bill had been so surprised Zak's announcement of his engagement to Kara. Kara and Zak, out of every couple he had ever met were the most unsuited pair he had ever seen. There had been no regulating factor in that pair, they were far too alike, both given to wild mood swings that just fed, and fed off the other. After his death, well to say that Kara had not taken it, and Lee's condemnation of Bill's actions in Zak's death had not helped matters any at all. Bill knew that she blamed herself for everything, perhaps even still today. Bill was even more confused about what was going on between Lee and Kara, because it did not look healthy. He had a sinking suspicion that neither was being honest to the other or themselves in what was happening between them. He knew that they should know better, should act better than that.
If it was not an external threat that finally destroyed the fleet, it would probably be an internal threat. Bill already had fifteen crew in psychological counseling on the Lenna Dell, and an unspecified number of people seeing the Priest for much the same reasons. People were giving way to despair, and he needed something to counteract that. The defeat, if one could really call it that, of the Cylons at the refueling station had worked for a while, but the constant series of attacks from within the Galactica had long since eroded away that boost, and then some. He needed something to lift their spirits, to give them hope, and right now he still wanted to keep the probe information secret.
Bill frowned as he continued to rub his brow, trying to figure out what to do. If it was only as simple as they had made it sound in command school. `A good officer welcomes multiple problems, because often they present solutions to each other.' What a load of daggit crap. Multiple problems just meant that one had to find multiple solutions, and that meant more work. Give out medals, Bill kept coming back to that idea. People liked getting medals, and after the past few months he had more than a small stack of recommendations that he had been pressing his officers for months about.
"Well," he mused softly to himself, "no better time than now to give them out, and we might as well get the Olympia into the open as well, I'm hardly going to able to keep the acquisition mission secret on that."
*****
Mel was not having fun in quarters, and she decided after a moment of thought that even that was an understatement. She hated being back in quarters right now. Mel had thought she had understood why Saul had taken the same apparent step back that she had, but now she knew differently. The word was all over the ship, and more importantly it was all over the pilots quarters. The hushed words she could deal with, those she was used to, at least in type if not in content. The looks though, those were getting more and more difficult to ignore.
Mel had barely been able to get any sleep, and most of that had been the exhausted dreamless fitful slumber that came after far too long awake. She had woken to mostly alert feeling even more tired and drained than she had when she had first started to try and sleep. She needed to get out of quarters, do something even if she was not supposed to be on duty for the next two days. Enforced downtime Lee had called it, might as well called it punishment for giving the commanding officers something that they obviously did not want to talk about, let alone think about. Mel took no little amount of satisfaction knowing that Kara was facing it as well, but the damned woman had disappeared shortly after the debriefing, and Mel had no doubt as to where she disappeared to.
Not that Mel blamed her, she would have done the same, but things were different. Kara obviously had settled well into a relationship, and for the fact that she had been engaged to Zak, she had all but admitted to being in love with Lee first. It was frakked up, but then again everything now was. Especially since out of the blue it turned out that the Colonel's wife had survived Judgment. She did not blame him, not really, for wanting to turn away from a momentary fling, and get back together with a woman he had been married to, she was after all a bombshell, as the male pilots would say. Never mind that they had their problems, it did not really matter, as Kara had said often, it was the end of the world, things kinda paled in comparison when you realized everything was gone. Paled enough obviously to patch up old wounds and differences.
Get away, Mel decided, as she moved to gather up her legs, she could go down to the pod and see how the Valk was coming along, or head to the gym. The gym sounded good in a way that told Mel just how much she missed the self enforced punishment.
"What'sa matter hon, can't sleep in an empty bed? I'll be more than willing `ta share." Mel's eyes narrowed as she turned her attention to the man who had spoke. Bud `Buckwing' Wiels was perhaps the crudest of the pilots onboard the Galactica, and most definitely the crudest. He also carried a particular chip on his shoulder when Kara and Mel had not only rebuffed his advances, but had laughed in his face. This time though, Mel was far too ticked off at the universe at large to bother with laughing.
"Shut the frak up Butthinge, or I'm going to knock every tooth out of that sewer hole you call a mouth." Mel growled as she shoved herself to her feet. The so far short, and low level exchange had somehow garnered the attention of every pilot in the ready room and even as she was taking a step forwards, anticipating his reaction, others were moving to step in to break up what they knew as an impending fight.
"You got never speaking to me like that, cripple." Mel did not bother contemplating on the fact that the man was bigger than her, heavier than her, and unlike her had two whole legs to launch an attack from as he stood up. Rehabilitation training had seen to that last, and long years of growing up on Leonid improved on it.
Mel had not counted on it had not even thought of it, but Bud and most of the other pilots had gotten used to a certain hotheaded female pilot that came out swinging with a wicked right hook. Which was why Bud reacted only with a startled half choked yelp as pain exploded in his right knee as a leg that though it looked vaguely flesh and bone slammed into his kneecap with bruising force, followed by the weight of Mel's body crashed into his.
Mel knew she was disadvantaged in a stand up fight, or a fist match, had been even before she lost her legs. She had though grown up on a colony where wrestling was a pastime that more than just men enjoyed. In fact the biggest draw at the fairs were the near impromptu challenge matches that the women took just as seriously as men. Once she had an opponent on the ground, Mel knew her experience would even things out nicely.
Mel's arm transcribed a flat arc as they both tumbled to the ground as Bud tripped over the chair he had just begun to vacate. Once on the ground, instinct acted, and before she even knew what was truly happening, she was sitting up straight, one of his elbows locked in an arm bar between her side and her trapping arm.
"Give it up Bud, I'm not going to take any of your shit today." Mel half expected him to give it up without a word. She had him, had him good, and expected him to know that, unfortunately Bud did not seem to realize just how badly he was already beaten.
"Frak off bitch." Mel grunted as a fist with not inconsiderable strength behind it rabbit punched into her ribs, and before she could think about what was going to happen, her arms had flexed, and an elbow separated with a sickening crunch. She stared at him, oddly nauseated by what had just happened his throat putting forth not expletives now, but a drawn out, animalistic sound of pain. It was hardly a surprise that even when the guards arrived a minute later they had to repeat their orders twice.
Chapter 2
Lee was trying hard to simply not hit the pilot that was sitting in the chair in front of him. This was something that should not have happened period, that everyone should have known better. Lee turned on yet another circuit behind his desk, striding back across the small office. His hands reflexively clenched and released. Lee wished Kara had been here, but if there was anyone who was more pissed off than he was it was Kara. He had sent her away as soon as the officer was escorted to his quarters.
"This has got to be the dumbest thing that I have ever had an officer under my command do. I can't believe you thought you were going to get away with something like this." Lee turned his look on the Lieutenant and leaned forwards, placing his hands on the desk as he continued. "If you come out of this as more than a mere scrubber of ion tubes I'll be surprised."
Lee held up his hand as the officer in front of him opened their mouth as if to speak.
"I don't care that you think you did not do anything wrong. You made a mistake, and right now, mistakes kill. If my pilots can't trust, don't like one of the people on their wing, then we don't only lose a pilot in battle, we lose a ship, and right now, those ships are irreplaceable, more than pilots are." Lee collapsed down into his chair, steepled his hands in front of him. "Just why Lieutenant Wiels, do you think I should even try to keep you on the flight roster? From the time you pissed Lieutenant Schmidt off to the point you were released from the Life Station I've had every female pilot in here, and half the male ones as well, turning in complaints about your actions."
"Respectfully sir, Lieutenant Schmidt initiated the fight." Lee turned his command stare, one he had practiced during long hours in the academy before a mirror, one his father was known to use on sons, as well as soldiers.
"You can keep spouting that daggit crap at me Lieutenant, but be advised that with the evidence that I have from the other pilots, the Commander won't give a flying frak about who started it. You have taken every opportunity given to you to insult, defame, criticize, or otherwise harass all of the female pilots we have on board. Evidently for no other reason than you enjoy doing so, because they won't give you the time of day, and the fact that they all have better proficiency scores than you. In fact I see no reason to keep you on the flight roster at the current time based upon those scores and the information about your exploits I have received." Lee leaned forwards and rested his elbows on his desk. His voice was hard and cold as he continued, the tone brooking no argument from the younger officer. "Consider yourself confined to quarters, and restricted to basic waste system maintenance pending research into your actions, and a formal Captain's mast. Dismissed."
Lee watched the blank hatch that covered the entrance to his office/quarters in silence, still in the same pose he had taken before the other man had left. Things were bad, and were only going to get worse before they got better. Morale was at a low that had to be seen to be believed, and nothing on the horizon suggested that it would be getting better anytime soon. Right now even word that there were other survivors, when the fleet had spent so long supposedly knowing where Earth was without going there, would do nothing to bring spirits and hopes up. It would simply be seen as another ploy.
Lee gave a sigh and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Something needed to be done luckily he could simply write another report and kick it up the chain. Lee did not have enough rank to have to worry about what to do about moral, all he had to do was deal with the results of the low morals. Namely a pilot down to the fact he could not keep his head on straight, and another due to the fact she could not keep her temper. He tapped his fingertips together for a moment, and reached for his intercom handset.
"Specialist Dualla, Captain Adama here, I need you to page Lieutenant Thrace for me." There was a long pause of silence as the communications officer was doing just that, and Lee had more time to figure out just what he was going to do with Lieutenant Schmidt. One thing was certain though, Kara was going to be there for that confrontation, he would much rather not be in the infirmary after it.
"Thrace here." Lee grimaced, as he was once again confronted with just how incredibly primitive the systems on the Galactica were. Kara's voice popped and spit, as if the call were an inter- colony one, instead of a mere intra-ship call.
"Kara, Lee. I need you to go down to the brig and collect our wayward Lieutenant Schmidt. Have them prep up one of the `house arrest' cells as well." Lee did not want one of his more important pilots to get even more depressed than she was already probably feeling, but he could not be seen to be going light on her either. At least the cell he was planning on using was not fully open to the rest of the brig, and though it was in essence solitary confinement, there were the benefits of having a private room and head.
"Captain, don't you think isolation may be going a bit too far?" Lee heard the stress on his rank, and figured that she was probably in either a public place, or one in which there were at least a few officers present.
"I've got to do something Kara, I can't very well let one of my pilots get away with assaulting a fellow officer. Now if the Commander would step in, that would be different. *I* can't show favoritism. Plus I can't do much more than put Wiels on shit detail and pull his flight status for prior poor performance. Sooner or later I'll have to put him back on flight ops and that means he's still in pilot's quarters." Lee gave a long sight as he shook his head. He switched the headset from one ear to the other in a vain attempt to hear better. "Mel needs to get away from him for a bit cool down and get her feet back under herself. I'm not going to put her under full isolation, just confine her down there during off duty time. She can have all the visitors she wants, I don't care about that."
"I still think you're being too hard on her Captain, the bastard had it coming to him." Lee gave a bit of a chuckle, hearing unspoken in Kara's voice how much she would have enjoyed giving just that to Wiels herself.
"Be that as it may, she stepped out of line Kara. I've got to do something or I lose what little respect I have down there."
"Understood."
*****
Mel ignored the pain her palms were producing as she lifted herself in another pull-up. The bars of the brig cell were hardly made for the exercise, being vertical rather than horizontal, but she had found that if she gripped them right, and braced her forearms against adjacent bars just right, then it was possible to get some sort of decent exercise done. At least triceps were easy to get to.
The burn that spread through her shoulders and upper arms as Mel slowly went through repetition after repetition only served to remind her that she had not done her usual regimen for far too long. She knew that she had a valid excuse, after all in the past two weeks she had hardly had time to sleep, let alone exercise, but she needed to take more time for the latter. Even now she could feel that mindless rage slip away from her in the haze of physical exertion. With each pull she felt that sick crunch which had jolted through her body as an elbow separated slide further away.
Mel knew she would probably be spending a lot of time in the brig in the next few days and outside of the fact that the toilet gave no privacy at all, it was not such a bad place. She could see how Kara could spend a lot of time down here. No assholes to disturb your time, and the marine guards were on duty so they tended not to talk. Just time to sit back and enjoy the silence. Which explained why she was going stir crazy, because Mel had never been one for enforced calm.
"Frak me, this is different alright." Mel opened her eyes and found herself fairly well looking into Kara's which was different, because usually she was a few inches shorter than the other pilot. Mel gave a bit of a smirk, and tilted her head to the side in a questioning manner.
"Looks different from the outside huh?" Mel grinned at the other woman's nod and lowered herself carefully onto unfeeling feet. "So what brings you down here, I'd rather thought you'd avoid the area if you could."
"Well unlike normally, I wasn't the one striking the asshole. So, Captain Adama decided that since I knew the route so well, and was available, I could come escort you up to his office for the standard dressing down." Mel grimaced at that as she stepped back from the cell door. Kara lifted up the keys and jingled them for a moment before stepping forwards to undo the lock.
"How pissed off is L…the Captain?" Mel tried to cover up her hesistation, seeing the hard way that Kara's eyes narrowed at the first hint of the L, and the interested look that the guard had thrown their way. More than a little gossip was making the rounds about the two top pilots, and personally Mel did not want to add any more to it but saying something that could be construed way out of line. She had enough of that to deal with herself.
The way the marines had mumbled on their way down here, and made it all to clear to Mel that they expected her `boyfriend' to come down and bail her out in no time flat. She was not sure what upset her more, that her personal life was known to everyone, or the fact that they had obviously decided that Saul would place his personal feelings above his duty. At least after she had arrived at the cell their musings had become inaudible.
"More pissed off at what you did, than at you personally I'd suspect. I think Lee's been looking for weeks for a reason to cut him off at the knees, and he's upset that you did not keep your temper and come to him with a complaint. Now, he has to discipline another pilot, while not garnering the anger of every other female pilot in the frakking crew." Mel looked long and hard into Kara's eyes, before she eventually had to look away. There was a truth in there, and Mel could see more than a little bit of anger as well. She knew that she deserved it. Lee's job was hard enough, being outside the crew, someone who led them, but who did not have their trust. He also had that Adama name to live up to.
"I know, I frakked up Kara."
Chapter 3
The dressing down of Mel was something that Kara did not want to be around for, so taking advantage of the fact that she had not had the time to, she stepped out for a run while it was being done. It also gave her more than a little time to mull over things that she had put off for far too long. Things that she should have been thinking about during her last mission, but had not wanted to.
What Cally had asked of her, was one of the hardest things she had ever faced in her life. Kara was still not even sure if she had the strength to go through with what she had decided to do in this case, what she had decided in the last hour of pounding through the corridors of the Galactica, garnering more than one strange look. It had been a long time since she had pushed herself so hard, and she had not even had the breath to respond to the Commander's usual question.
Now though, now she had no more room to run in, no more time to put off the decision. She had already talked to Cally, had already made a decision, the easy one as it were, looking into the young woman's eyes, seeing the shattered soul that lurked beneath their liquid depths. Now though Kara had the hard decision to make, how to tell Lee, which is why she was simply standing before the hatch to his room, instead of being inside telling him. With a deep breath to steady her nerves she walked in.
Kara found it almost anti-climatic, and could not help the chuckle that broke past her lips as she found him asleep in his chair, sprawled out over a mess of paperwork shoved this way and that. Slowly Kara took a couple steps to stand beside him, and unable to withstand that impish spirit that clawed away inside her any longer, suddenly shouted out.
"Officer on deck!"
Kara could not help the laughter that dissolved her into a twitching pile on the floor as Lee started up out of the chair, and just as quickly fell to the ground as legs that were rendered nerveless by the posture failed to support him. She watched helpless as he face evolved from anger to amusement, and took his hand to help herself up as he stood.
"I suppose I deserved that for falling asleep like that….. but there's just so many hours in a day."
"I understand Lee." Kara steeled herself, and watched as concern filled his face. He knew her too well, and she needed to get this over with as soon as possible or she would not be able to do it at all. "We need to talk."
"Kara… what's wrong?" Kara took a step back away from him as he reached out for her. She knew that if he touched her, she would not be able to go through with this, and that, that would be something she would never be able to forgive herself for. Kara could live with the fact that he might not forgive her for what she was going to do, but at least that was going to be the right thing.
"Lee," Kara began, and had to swallow and take a deep breath to steady the tremulous tone she heard in her own voice. She began again, glad to hear that her voice had steadied. "Lee, I want you to just listen to me, and not, not get angry, or protest, until I get through. Can you do that?"
"Yeah." Kara could hear the concern in his voice, and she turned away, unable to look at him in the eye. He was going to hate her for this she knew, but there was no other route that she could take. Not and still be able to look at herself in the mirror in the morning.
"Lee, I had a talk with Cally the other day. A long talk, before I went out on that mission. Before you ask, yes, it's the reason why I've been acting distant, and touchy lately. I told myself…. told myself that I would not get emotional over the decision I had to make, but I am, I can't do anything else." Kara quickly, and furtively wiped away a tear that began to form, and closed her eyes against what she was going to say next. "Cally… Cally was in love with Prosna, Lee, and now she wants, Lords this is hard."
Kara took a deep breath and turned, opening her eyes and looked up at him. Lords, this was harder than she had thought it would be. It should be easy, and yet she still did not know how she truly felt about him. She loved him, yes, but not in the way she had Zak, and not in the way she had loved anyone else in her life. It was all strange and confusing, and though she wanted him to know why she was doing this, she did not know herself.
"She wants a child Lee." There Kara had said it, or most of it anyways, and she hurried to continue before he could interrupt like she knew he was going to say. "She wants his child, but she can't have it. He's dead, he died before Ragnar. She wants you to father his soul child Lee."
"Kara… I… I can't. I can't do that to you. I can't do that to her." Kara looked at him, and crossed her arms in front of herself, trying to keep back the tears that threatened to fall.
"Lee, I already told her that I was alright with it. I told her you would do it." Kara could see the anger ignite in his eyes, she had been expecting that, and played her ace. Life was like pyramid, you had to know when to play the trump card. "Lee, you can't tell me you would have said no, if I'd asked you to do this for Zak. You have been kind to her, asked her how she was doing, was hell you even held her so she could cry on your shoulder. You are her gallant frakking knight, and she knows that if you say yes, you aren't going to hold it over her for the rest of her life."
"Kara I…" Kara stepped forwards, and with tears that she could hold back no longer, placed a pair of fingers on his lips.
"Lee, please. Cally is so broken right now. The only man she thinks she could ever love is dead, and he died to save her. She wants something that she can hold onto, a memory that won't fade with time. That won't grown dim until you can no longer remember what he looked like without a picture to remind you, or what his voice sounded like, or whether or not he liked strawberries more than watermelon." Kara rested her forehead on Lee's shoulder as she continued softly. "I thought about doing it myself when Zak died, but frak I know I'm no mother, and I could not give up flying then."
*****
Lee was shocked at what Kara was asking him to do. Not for the action itself, it was something that was held over from the Cylon war, something that had been started to help people deal with the losses of that war. No, what he was surprised about was that she was asking *him* to do this. He had no time to protest though, and really nothing to protest. What she was asking was perfectly reasonable, outside of the fact that it was Kara asking it, and it was him she was asking it of.
Lee had no answer for Kara's question either. Not one that he was willing to admit to her, let alone himself. He would like to think, that on the basis of their relationship, that he would have said yes to her, had she asked back then. Still there was some small part of his heart that cringed at the mere thought of only having that connection with her. It was the same part that was cringing inside of him now. He never had a chance to say anything though, because there was a knock at the door, followed by a slow opening.
"Kara? Lee?" Calling the voice hesitant would have been an understatement. Lee though could think of no other way to categorize it though, and he looked to Kara. This had been her idea after all, she could field this.
"Come in Cally." Lee covered a grimace, sliding his face into the poker face that only sometimes fooled Kara. She sounded so sure of herself, so confident, it wouldn't have hurt if she had just let her voice shake, waver just a little. The face seemed to fool her now as she gave him one last long searching look and turned to face the hatch herself. Kara took a step and pushed Cally into Lee's arms, which he brought up instinctively to catch the younger woman. "I'll be back in three hours or so. I've a friend to visit in the brig."
Lee watched in terror as Kara left, and more than a little of that must have been evident to Cally, who gave a quiet sob and buried her face against his shoulder. His arms wrapped around her without a conscious thought and he smoothed his hands over her back as she spoke.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry I ever asked… I shouldn't have but I wanted… I…"
Lee interrupted, realizing that whatever he wanted to do, he was not going to be able to simply turn away. Times were hard for everyone, and some people had lost those that they would turn to. He wished that Kara would have given him enough time, enough time to at least have conferred with his father. It would have been an embarrassing subject, and one hard to talk about but he knew the older man had to have some advice in times like these.
"Shhh… Its okay. I just thought I was going to have a little more time. Kara left out when you were going to be coming over." Lee gave a bit of a chuckle to make it seem more like a joke than it really was. "She's always been like that you know, for as long as I can remember. She forgets that just because she knows something it doesn't mean that everyone knows something."
"Yeah she does that on the flight deck sometimes too." Lee gave Cally what Kara had always called his innocent grin, the one she claimed had the ability to melt any woman at the knees. He gently wiped away the tear tracks from her eyes and when she looked away, tilted her chin up so he could look into them once again.
"You've got nothing to be sorry for Cally. You want to live, and you want to bring a life into this world. One that I know you'll cherish with all your heart. If I've learned one thing about you since I've come aboard, its that you do what you put your mind to. Lords know we've seen so much…. I'd like to see more life aboard this ship. I'm honored and deeply touched that you would trust me with this." Lee realized as he said the words, that he was honored and touched. He hoped that one day, the life he would be making would be one with Kara. He would deal with what having a child, his child by body would entail later, when things were calmer, and he had time to sort through them. "If there is anything, anything at all I can do for you tonight, or any other, you only have to ask. Some things I might have to check with Kara first, I'd rather not be laid out with you in sickbay."
He gave her another grin, and saw a faint echo of an answering one upon Cally's lips. It was not complete, and was more than a little shaky, but it was a grin, and it would do for now.
"Could you, not talk…. and turn out the lights please? I don't… I don't think I can do this otherwise." Lee took a long look into those fragile eyes before him and gave a bit of a nod. Not talking would make it easier for more than just her. With the lights off, maybe he could pretend that this was just a dream, that it wasn't real unless it occurred with more than just the dim glow of the luminescent strips on the floor and the walls. He released Cally and turned to do as she asked with the lights. No sooner were they off than he heard a soft sigh of relief drop from her lips.
The whir of a zipper, and a sudden rustle of clothing prompted him to turn around.
Chapter 4
Mel was not really all that tired. She had pulled a standard eight hour shift, had her evening meal a bit before, in the charming company of the Marine guard, and was not looking at the ceiling of her cell. Hack was boring. More than boring, brain cell killing boring. There was a knock, followed by a pause before the door opened into the room.
"You've got a visitor Mel." Well, seemed she had graduated up to the first name basis. According to Kara that meant they figured they were going to be seeing more of you in the future. Mel was not sure she liked that. The door opened farther and Mel almost smiled. She held back only because Kara looked miserable.
"Hey convict. Miss the brig so much that you've taken to coming in on your own?" Mel gave a wink to the Marine guard who was valiantly trying to suppress a grin himself.
"Something like that. Unfortunately there haven't been any superior assholes around to strike lately." Mel gave a grin at that as she pulled her legs out of the way to make room for Kara to sit on the bunk. The Marine had already closed the door, and she knew he would not linger around the room too long, he had expressed a bit of relief that it was not Kara there in brig in the first place. Seemed the other woman was not above taking a swing or two at her jailers if they pissed her off.
"I'm surprised to see you down here this late. I know you said you'd visit, but I noticed on the schedule that you and Lee are both off this evening, I figured…" Mel did not continue as the downfallen look on Kara's face said it all. Mel chewed on her lip before deciding to venture a bit of sympathy. "Kara what's wrong? Did you and Lee have a fight?"
"Something like that…." Kara mumbled so softly that Mel was barely able to make out the words. Mel dragged her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she watched Kara. The other woman flopped face down on the bunk, and Mel held her peace. Knowing that to poke further at what was troubling Kara was likely to get her a fist in the face, if not some rather prying questions in retaliation Mel just clamed up. Either the other woman would talk about what was bothering her or not. Mel was hardly her mother, and could barely even claim to be a friend much less a close one.
The silence dragged out, only broken by the mechanical sounds that groaned through the Galactica's hull. The sound was a constant backdrop, one that faded into near non-existence after a time. Mel had found such noise hard to get used to when she'd first been posted shipboard for training. Growing up as she had only the natural sounds of a world had ever filled her ears, not the irrhythmic sound of machinery.
"Lee's having sex with another woman." That caught Mel flat footed, as she had wandered off in thought, remembering those first few lonely nights aboard the training battlestar years before. Being in a room with hundreds of others and yet feeling completely and utterly alone.
Sleeping with another woman though? Frak that was not good, at least not in any way she could think of it being good. Lee was not like that, at least she did not think he was. He had seemed to be completely devoted to Kara, and there had been more than a little hostility held by other female pilots who did not understand why `Starbuck' always got things her way.
"Why do I get the feeling there is more to it than that?"
"Because…. Because I asked him to do it."
*****
Saul leaned back in the chair with a groan of protest. The hours lately had been long, and would only get longer as time went on. The news had been good that Mel and Kara had brought back, but good news does not necessarily mean a good future. Especially when good thing that will that future is zipping along at a real space speed all but unreachable with modern technology.
"I've went over all the reports, all the ship engineering specs that we've got. There isn't a chance in hell any of the drives would take the hot rodding necessary to get it up to an intercept speed in any reasonable amount of time." Saul kneaded his forehead before leaning forwards elbows on his knees. "Even now that we've found it, it is useless to us."
"Not necessarily Saul." Tigh looked up, trying to find the eyes hooded by the way his friends head hung, looking down at the desk.
"It'd be suicide even in the best of ships, not to mention we don't have the fuel for it Bill."
"Do you remember Angel recon 471 Saul?" Saul must have made a sound, though he could not recall doing so, because Bill's eyes finally moved to meet his own. He saw the same haunting pain in those eyes that he knew was in his own. Angel flight had been a long time ago, and Saul thought he had left it buried in the past. Left that sucking pit of despair and darkness behind him.
"Frak Bill, you can't be serious." Saul shook his head not wanting to believe his friend had even considered that. "We had a whole fleet backing us then, the best engineering minds in the Colonies and still only four of us made it back."
"I know Saul, but still, it comes down to a simple fact. Either we try, and we are successful, or we don't and we die. Without some input of much needed supplies the fleet is not going to last much longer. We need things, things that we can't get from isolated bases that may or may not be Cylon infested, things that colony founding ship will have." Saul gave a long sigh as he scrubbed his hands over his face. He knew his friend was right, but he did not want to admit it. "I've already talked to Tyrol, he thinks that we should use one of the Valkyries instead of trying to modify Vipers. Enough room for all the fuel, already heavily armored…"
"I know where you are going with this Bill. Frak, we've only got one pilot that's checked out on those things, and only one of them in working condition right now." Saul looked up as he steepled his hands in front of him. "I'm not just saying that because of what… used to be between us either. We've pushed her hard Bill, and if we keep tapping our best for these missions before they have a chance to train others we won't have what we need when we need it."
"I know Saul, I know. We were in the same squadron together. Avenging Angels… never a mission too tough, too dangerous for us to fly. We were the best of the best…"
"Until we died." Saul set his jaw, grinding teeth together before he continued. "How many missions until we lost the best of us Bill? How many before Bud `Rocketman' Jones died? The very first, saving the rest of our asses, I've lived the rest of my life knowning that the cost was not worth what it bought. We would have been able to do more with less if he had lived through that one."
"I know Saul, I know. It didn't end there, but skill isn't everything when you strap yourself into a cockpit. Blood and guts and luck play a part that shouldn't be overlooked." Bill gave a long sigh and shook his head. "I wasn't planning on telling you, until we started the mission, but after my discussion today with President Roselin I am not going to do what I originally planned. You'll have to go on that mission Saul. We need someone familiar with the systems you'll find on that ship…"
"And we're the only two who have the experience with the manual type systems that we'll see over there." Saul gave a groan and leaned back. "I know why you tried to take it yourself Bill, but facing my demons for me won't help."
Chapter 5
It had been a long time since Mel had seen this many people together, mainly because she had been in the brig. Otherwise it was because getting this many people together, the last remnants of humanity was something of a bad idea when you were still in the middle of a war. Still they had not had any trace of the Cylons in the last month, so everyone was feeling rather safe.
Feeling safe did not make the occasion, nor the uniform she was wearing any more comfortable. The Galactica had hundreds of the uniform coats on board, it had been thought they would make good souvenirs. They had only just missed being spaced with the rest of the souvenir junk, as an intrepid supply officer had forseen a need nobody else had. So, high collars and itchy starch were the call of the evening, even though Mel would have just as rather worn her flight suit.
The occasion itself was bad enough, Saul was going to be here, no doubt with his wife, and the pain that the thought of that knifed through her every time she thought she heard his voice. Still, she had to be here. Orders were orders, and these had come down from Adama himself. Even not following his orders were as likely to get her grounded as anything else.
"Lieutenant." Mel stifled a curse as the object of her thoughts spoke from just over her shoulder. She turned carefully and drew up into a salute.
"Sir." Mel glanced over to the older woman who was following close to his elbow. Frak, great, the President was here, which meant that there was no way in hell he would have spoke without having a reason to. "Madam President."
"Lietenant Schmidt is one, well, almost my only scouting pilot right now, as Lt. Valerii is on sick leave on the Lenna Dell." Mel gave a glance over at Adama as she had heard those words. She had heard rumors about why Sharon had been missing, but nothing definitive until now. "She was one of the pilots who found the Olympia, and will be the pilot to fly the mission to that ship."
"On behalf of everyone in the fleet I'd like to thank you Lieutenant, without your efforts we would have no hope right now." Mel gave a nod as with a glance to Adama she fell into an at ease posture. Mel knew her knuckles were white with strain as she clasped her hands behind her back. "I could not help but notice the limp you have Lieutanant Schmidt, were you injured in your last mission?"
Mel clenched her teeth together. She knew the question was innocent enough, but she had grown used to thinking that everyone already knew about her unique predicament. Still, she did not like talking about it, and her first impulse was to say something that would land her back in the brig, and likely not in a cockpit again.
"Madam President, Lieutenant Schmidt lost both her legs in a flight accident back on Picon years before the attack." Mel breathed a silent sigh of relief as Commander Adama deftly stepped in there, as if he sensed how the question had upset her. "I reactivated her commission while we were doing the first sweep for veterans in the fleet."
"Indeed." Mel took no small sense of satisfaction from the sudden uneasiness that appeared on the President's face. "Well I would like to thank you again for all that you have done, for the fleet."
"Just doing what I can do Madam President."
"And the Lieutenant is doing a damn fine job, as one of our best pilots." Mel stiffened, and she could see the sudden calculating look that came into Roselyn's eye as Saul's voice spouted behind her. Damn them, if they had not kept her unaware of what was going on in the meeting hall she would have spotted him coming. Spotted him and maneuvered to keep from having to confront him. "She's done a hell of a lot more than most."
"Colonel Tigh, thank you for coming this evening." Mel noticed the tight smile that the President gave Saul, but did not turn to look at the other man, not knowing if she could keep her composure if she saw his face. A week in the brig and he had never even come by. She understood why, even if it hurt. "Where is your wife?"
The words lanced through Mel and she clasped her hands even tighter as her jaw clenched against sudden words once again. She saw Kara and Lee drift into audible range, and visibly flinch themselves before making their way closer, probably to defuse any situation that might occur.
"How the hell would I know what my `Ex' wife is doing? She took off the minute you turned your back. She has better things to do." Saul gave a wry chuckle as he jerked his head over towards the hatch behind him. "If you want to go look for her, I'm sure you'd have the best luck in pilot's quarters."
"Saul, you're drunk." Mel blinked vaguely in surprise at the statement from her commanding officer whose voice seemed more pained that angry. Saul's voice had none of the signs she attributed to drunkenness in it. No slurred speech, no overwhelming anger, but as she turned slightly she caught a whiff of breath that held more than just a little alcohol.
"Damn straight I'm drunk. Thanks in no small part to the heroic actions of our President in reuniting me with the woman who no longer even bothers to use my last name during her bed climbing. That and a very fine bottle of Bernusian Ambrosia I happened to find on yonder table." Mel bit her lip, wishing she could just fade into the background, unfortunately she was boxed in on almost all sides.
"You should be thankful Colonel Tigh that you have a second chance, there's not many that do right now."
"Thankful for what woman? The Cylons are chasing us down, intent on killing us, and now I've got to deal with the woman who destroyed my career on top of all that? Enough to drive a man to…"
"Enough Saul." Commander Adama's voice cut in on Saul's tirade and ended it as effectively as if he had punched the other man. Mel found herself under the of the Commander's glare, and shrank back from the scrutiny she found in that gaze. "Lieutenant, you will escort Colonel Tigh back to his quarters and see to it that he gets a couple sober ups while your at it. It is your responsibility to ensure he is ready for the mission tomorrow, and that he does not make another appearance at the awards ceremony tonight. Understood?"
"Yes sir." Mel turned after snapping a second salute to Commander Adama, and glared at the man she most had not wanted to see this evening. Saul shook his head slightly and averted his eyes from her gaze, and turned, proceeding her to the hatch with just a bit of a wobble, and Mel concentrated on not feeling the eyes on them, or the words that were spoken as they left.
*****
"That man is a drunken slob."
The words burned into Adama and he turned to face the titular leader of the Colonial fleet. He wished that Saul had not done this, not tonight, but he knew that the other man had been pushed beyond the breaking point, not just in the past few days, but in the past few years. He had thought he was getting back the strong friend who had turned down command of his own Battlestar in order to serve with his only surviving colleague. He had seen the person Tigh had once been in his actions of the past few weeks, only to come tumbling back down again by the thoughtless actions of the woman in front of him.
"Madam President in all due respect you have no right to judge that man. I've served with Saul Tigh for more than forty years. We fought against the Cylons in the Galactica back when she was new, and when we were the last shining hope for humanity. I watched that man bear up under a burden of grief, under pressure that cracked many others and continue on, berating us when we showed the slightest bit of weakness." Adama paused to catch his breath, continuing on in the harsh, cold tone that he had started speaking in. "I watched him make decisions that spelt out life and death, life for the colonies, death for those under his command. Decisions that I do not know I could have made. That man is made of duty, he gave his entire life in the service to his government. Gave up his own chance for command in order to bolster me. Watched his chances of a continuing career burned out from underneath him by his wife because he had done what duty demanded of him, instead of what she wanted him to do."
Adama turned and looked around the hall and clasped his hands behind his back. He could feel the others who were listening in on the conversation, could see anger in some eyes, no doubt because he was defending his XO who was far from popular. Still, he owed Saul, owed it to him to make him a man again. A person who could stand on his own two feet again, to hold his chin up with pride.
"The day that you order those under your command into a situation where you know they are going to die, and that they know they are going to die, because it is for the good of the fleet, that day is the day you can judge him. Colonel Tigh is going to get into a cockpit tomorrow, sealed inside behind layers of armor, strapped to several hundred gallons of Tylium, to make what is at best a long shot at reaching the Olympia. He's going to be sealed in that cockpit with the memories of the last time he tried to do something like this, sealed in with the memories of those that he ordered, knowingly to the deaths in the same. The day *you* do that Madam President, is the day you can judge him."
Chapter 6
Lee gave a low whistle as the Valkyrie was pushed into sight of the observation window by the lift. Final preparations had taken nearly three hours, and the whole seeing off group, consisting of himself, Kara, his father and the President had retired to the room used most often by flight instructors to give the crews more space to work. Lee never was one who liked the lines of the Valkyrie's though there were those in the flight deck that loved the old ships. More than one pilot would like to get their hand at flying one, but with only one operation bird, they could not take the risk of it being downchecked. The ship that was before them now bore little resemblance to the rugged lines he was used to seeing though. Heavy tanks bulged under both wings, and the entire front of the ship was shrouded by heavy plates of armor making it look more like a heavy wedge.
"Frak they butchered her lines. She's going to be a pig to fly." Lee gave a nod at Kara's words as the muted chatter of the final flight checks came over the speakers; muted because of the conversation taking place in the back of the room between the Commander and the President. Lee knew if the latter had not been in the room, the volume would have been turned up to normal levels.
"At least she doesn't have to fly her through atmosphere with that junk on." Lee remarked softly as he stepped closer to the portal. In truth flying the Valkyrie through atmosphere right now would be impossible. Though drag was not a problem in space, ships were designed with a certain center of mass in mind, and with as much stuff as had been put on that ship, the center had shifted enough that none of the thrusters would be aligned right, and the gyros would be all but useless.
"Yeah, like that will make it any easier." Lee gave a soft shudder at the truth in Kara's words, trying not to think what the coming days would mean for the pair down in that ship. A week at least sealed up in the cramped cockpit with no room to move, surviving on concentrated flight rations, recycled water, and with no facilities besides those built into the suit. Not comfortable by any measure of the word, which did not mention the difficulty of plotting and successfully completing as many jumps as they had to.
"A long shot." Lee sighed as he heard footsteps coming towards him.
"A long shot? Lieutenant Thrace, I understand you are something of a… well a gambler. Perhaps you can put a number on this long shot? I've heard a lot of how dangerous this is, but I don't understand just how so much so, or why." Lee found himself pulling into an at ease standing position as the President and the Commander stepped up beside them. Silence reigned for a long time before Kara answered.
"Odds…. I'd say they are about twenty to one… against successful completion." Lee felt a pain in his gut develop as Kara spoke. He had known things were going to be difficult, but he had kept himself from thinking about how hard it would be.
"I… see…" Roselin sounded as shaken as Lee felt, and he took a glance over at Kara. Things had been hard on her lately, and his relationship with her was far from unstrained right now. He knew she had to be feeling worse than she let on, with one of the only pilots who greeted her as a friend. "Why, why is it so difficult, they are just making a series of FTL jumps aren't they?"
Lee looked to his father for the explanation. He knew he could, or Kara could explain it, but he felt it was best left up to the Commander. After all, he had made a flight just like this one once before.
"It is difficult not because of the jumps themselves, but because of the types of jumps that they are making. You understand that a FTL jump can trade distance at maximum charge for velocity changes on the far end." Commander Adama waited until Roselin gave a nod. "Max transfer jumps trade almost all that distance for velocity, you jump only a couple feet every FTL jump, and use the energy for maximum velocity transfer. It is an easy enough process in interstellar space, but unfortunately even the Valkyrie cannot carry enough tylium to allow for the jumps to take place in interstellar space. They have to jump inside a gravity well, using the `boost' jumping towards the star gives them to increase the velocity."
"I still don't understand what makes that so dangerous." Lee glanced over at Kara and then back out at the Valkyrie as Mel's voice came softly over the speakers.
"All systems go, lifting off, see you on the flip side Launch Control." Lee clenched his hands into fists as the Valkyrie lifted and bobbled slightly, the nose hanging hanging lower than it should.
"Come on Mel, you can hold her…"
Lee silently echoed Kara's sentiment as he watched the Valkyrie drift over to the side, thrusters flaring frantically as one adjustment after another pushed the ship around. Slowly the ship steadied into a hover above the deck, before slowly sliding towards the exit of the pod. Three people breathed audible sighs of relief, as one danger was passed. With that much tylium aboard, a wreck may have very well destroyed the Galactica itself.
"Its not so much the jumps, but the velocity." Lee gave a slight nod as he turned his attention towards the Commander and the President. "After the first ten, fifteen jumps they'll be moving at an appreciable fraction of C, fast enough that erosion by dust and gaseous hydrogen becomes a problem. If they're lucky they won't hit anything larger."
"And if they aren't lucky?" Lee looked away again as the President as silence spoke for itself.
*****
"Frak she's nose heavy." Mel cursed silently to herself as she fought to control the sluggish beast that the Valkyrie had become. On its good day one could hardly say they were highly maneuverable ships, but this made a shuttle look like a fighter in comparison. Only the fact that the thrusters were vastly overpowered to begin with even allowed Mel to keep the thing under a semblance of control.
"You're drifting left Mel." Mel suppressed a smirk at the way Saul's voice was even and calm, belying the fact that they were coming very, very close to the pod's wall on that side.
"I got it, I got it…" Mel mumbled softly, mostly to herself as thrusters flared in sequence. This thruster to stop that drift, that one to straighten out the ship, those to stop the new drift. It was like learning to fly a new ship all over again, and one that wasn't very well balanced to begin with. "Ahhh, there we are."
"FTL drive is now charging for our first jump." Mel frowned slightly as she guided the Valkyrie out of the ship and over to the jump coordinates. Saul's voice sounded shaky enough to be a serious problem.
"You aren't haven't problems with the sober ups are you? If you're going to ralf, you'd best do it now before the jump." Vomiting in a helmet was never a good thing, and luckily the planners of the mission had decided that it was perhaps a very real possibility and had provided sick bags for just such a use, but you had to break the seal on the helmet to use them. Not something that you wanted to do normally in a ship hurtling through space.
"No… It is just that… I'm fine." Mel frowned slightly as Saul did not sound fine at all, but decided that it could slide for now. Her fingers tapped over a series of keys, activating the FTL navigational systems and causing the computer to start crunching the pre-stored coordinates.
"You sure? You sound shaky."
"Gods frak it woman, I've already said I'm fine. Now pay attention to your flight plan, we're wandering again."
Mel chuckled softly as she pulled the ship back up onto the flight path. The navigation computer realized it was at its countdown start and the red LED numbers began to drop. Mel really wanted to take one last look at the fleet before the jump occurred, but with the armor plates kept that from happening.
"FTL jump in three… two… one…"
Chapter 7
Mel arched her hips as a low moan broke from her throat. Lords she was so close, just a little longer, just a little more. Her hand slipped down between thighs, cupping and stroking at sensitive skin. Her hips rolled once more in response to his, yes, so close now. The feel of him spasming under her hand the sudden feel of him thick, hot, wet inside of her pushed her over the brink.
"Oh Lords Saul…"
"Mel… Mel….Lieutenant Schmidt!"
Mel opened her eyes vaguely realizing what was going on. She clicked her mic to let Saul know she had heard him and was now awake. Thank the Lords that she had taken to deactivating the VOX mic and using the manually activated one, if he had heard that. She took a couple shuddering breaths, fighting to gain control of her voice, her breathing and her rebellious body.
"We're coming up on the last set of jump coordinates that you have inputted into the navigation system." Mel gave another shudder as she heard his voice again. The past three days had been all but impossible. Being so close, wanting to talk but knowing that it was best not to, with nothing but the slight hum of dust impacting the ship, and the occasional nerve rattling bang.
"Understood." Mel began flicking fingers over switches and noticed the amber light off to her left. "Are you getting the warning light on the O2 supply as well?"
Mel tapped the pressure gauge with her finger hoping that the low reading was just from the needle being stuck from a prior changeover.
"Yeah, it came on about fifteen minutes ago." Mel gave a soft groan while she looked at the status lights on the life systems panel. All but one showed red, which was definitely not good. "We lost the last two tanks sometime earlier in our travels. I went to switch over to them when the alarm came on, only to find them empty. We had false green on the board."
"Why didn't…" Mel did not have a chance to answer as Saul growled back.
"I didn't wake you because a sleeping person uses less oxygen. A person that isn't calm uses more as well. I've been in this situation before, and I knew we were going to die from the beginning so keeping calm was easy. Best if we ran out before the jump that you were still asleep during it, less painful that way." Mel swallowed as she heard his voice, the pain that was lurking there in the depths. She had known he had not wanted to be on this mission, but he had not talked about it, had not talked about anything. There was fatigue in that voice as well, which made her think that he had not been getting all the sleep he had claimed. "As it is, we should be able to stretch it out to the end, some of the empty tanks still got some air in them."
Mel gave a soft curse as she moved gloved fingers over more switches and squirmed in her seat. Being awake meant that she itched now, and the thought that they might be running out of air meant that her sides began to ache. The navigation computer began to hum between her legs as it began comparing last minute star fixes as they approached the jump point. The FTL drive began its own disharmonic noise as it began to spin up.
"Just how close?" Mel asked as her fingers moved to also begin the warm up sequence on the main drives. They had sat cold for more than four days, helping to keep the energy usage to a minimum. The port engine balked at the first attempted start, and Mel held the preheater key down for two more cycles before hitting the autostart button again.
"Well, depends how close we are to the Olympia, how much maneuvering we'll need to get to a useable airlock, how much speed differential we still have." Mel heard Saul give a grunt and the main cannon light arm light came on. "Doubt we'll need that but better safe than sorry."
"How long?" The navigation system was flashing for attention, showing that they were on course and would reach the jump point only a few seconds after the predetermined jump time. She pressed the accept on the reconfigure command, and watched as the countdown timer changed.
"Six hours, though I'd recommend not taking any more than four hours. We're going to be running deep into the red as it is." Mel winced and settled her hands on controls that were becoming live under her hands once again as flight systems crept into the green after the long downtime.
"Frak Saul, if I'm not out of this flightsuit in six hours I think I'll die from the sheer crawling of my skin." Mel said lightly, trying to remove some of the depression she heard in his voice.
*****
"You wanted to see me sir?" Lee pulled himself into an at attention stance as his father looked over his glasses from the report at him. Bill waved the papers at a chair, and sat back in his own seat, putting down the report and removing his glasses.
"I didn't ask you here as your commanding officer Lee, I asked you here as your father." Lee gave a soft groan as he settled into the seat, knowing what this talk was going to be about. He had seen it coming ever since that night, just the thought of it made his face flush with heat. Kara was nearly as much Bill's daughter as he was Lee's own father. "I can see you've been dreading this. We've got to deal with it before it starts affecting your performance as CAG."
"Not dreading so much as not looking forward to. I wish I could have talked with you before." Lee waved his hand slightly, still not wishing to talk about it unless he absolutely had to.
"Before?" Lee sat silent, trying to think of how to tell his father about everything. He had never been one to be very open about any of his relationships. "I know you relationship with Kara is strained right now Lee, you two hardly speak with each other anymore even in briefings. You don't look at each other, and scuttlebutt has it that she's been spending every night in pilot's quarters."
Silence stretched as Lee looked down at his hands. He knew things were frakked up right now between him and Kara, and every time he had tried to talk to her about it, she had flat out avoided him. That it had been her idea that alienated them only made her shunning of him worse. How to explain that though, to a father that was almost more of a stranger than a family member, it was impossible.
"She isn't pregnant is she? If so, you need to fix this now. I'll not have my grandchild born illegitimate." Lee looked up startled and shook his head.
"No, she's not. If it were just that, everything would be simpler." Lee gave a sigh, and decided the best way to explain everything was to just give him the facts. "Specialist Cally from the deck crews approached Kara for permission to ask me to be the soul father of a child. Kara gave it, and said yes for me."
There it was out, the whole cause of the strained relationship. Lee felt relief, an almost unexpected amount of relief.
"She said what for you?"
"She told Cally yes, that I would do it. Then, when Kara talked to me about it, well she convinced me that I couldn't say no, that it would be hypocritical." Lee paused for a moment, taking a breath as he shook his head. "She said I wouldn't have said no if she had asked I do the same for Zak, and damn it, she was right. I wouldn't have said no."
"So you did this… for Specialist Cally?" Lee could hear the resignation in his father's voice and gave a sigh himself.
"Yeah, how couldn't I? Kara had it right, I was the only one Cally was going to approach, and right now, too many people don't have anything to hold onto their lives for. So I did it, and now Kara won't even look into my eyes." Lee looked up to his father hoping, expecting some sage advice and only got a shake the head in return.
"I don't know what to tell you Lee, but knowing Kara, she'll be thinking she doesn't deserve your friendship anymore because of what she did." Lee looked up and shook his head.
"Yeah, but kinda hard to convince her otherwise when she won't speak to me."
*****
Kara was moving through the corridors at a brisk pace. That maintenance technician had been right when he had recommended the secondary access corridors for her daily runs. They were narrower than the mains, but fewer people meant that she could run without the distraction of people or conversation.
Kara knew that she needed to do something about Lee, and soon. The longer that she let this draw out, the harder it would be to do anything. There was already the talk among the ship's female population that they had a falling out and she knew that it was only a matter of time before someone else decided to take up the unexpected opportunity.
She idly wondered whether or not she should let them take their chances. The Lords knew that Lee deserved someone better than her, but she could just not let him go. Kara knew though that she could not let him go again, not and stay sane.
It was hardly through her third lap through the corridors when the attack came, suddenly and with only the barest of warnings. A section of lighting went suddenly dark, the sudden explosion of a sap against the back of her skull. A feeling that was pain but almost more a pressure. Kara did not feel herself plow into the corridor floor, but she could blearily make out the voices she heard.
"See… I told you she'd come by here."
Chapter 8
The Valkyrie plowed back into realspace after the sickening moment of the jump. Mel fought the unconscious heaves that wracked her body, knowing that was the last jump they would be able to make period. Something had come out of alignment badly in the jury rigged FTL system.
"Dear Lords, tell me we made it." Mel gave a harsh chuckle at the sound of Saul's voice and slapped the navigation computer as the display fuzzed out of focus. Everything was falling apart rapidly now, as if the ship itself knew its long hard hours of work were nearly over.
"Yes, we've got a return right now checking against our predicted arrival point." Mel slapped the display again as it began to fade out and gave a low whistle as the plotted course and their position brightened not. The ship wallowed as she fed the throttles into the shuttle engines, and she had to keep constant pressure against the stick as the thrust tended to want to push the nose down. "I'm not going to argue anymore when Kara wants me to do the jump navigation, a person couldn't have plotted that closer if they'd wanted to. Thirteen minutes to intercept, blow the outer armor panels."
Mel needed her sight right now, needed the ability to eyeball the situation, since they weren't going to be docking inside the ship, but were going to have to clamp onto the ship outside an airlock. The panels over the cockpit had been installed with explosive bolts so that they could blow them off. Both to give that visual ability, and to allow them to actually exit the craft.
"Thirteen minutes, arming the explosive bolts now." Mel ran her eyes over the display panels once again. Everything looked good, though the engines were running slightly hotter than she expected. That could be explained by boil off of more coolant than expected, or having the exchangers running at a less than optimal rate. "Firing."
The explosive charges went off and the springs welded to the underside of the canopy armor kicked the entire plate off of the ship. Stars filled the sky, those not occluded by the mass of the ship and its ice shield were shifted noticeably to the blue. Mel reached over and flicked the switch that activated floodlights installed between the armor plates and the ship's hull plate and turned the Valkyrie slightly. Reflected light glittered off of metal plates and pipes frosted over with frozen gases and water crystals.
"That has got to be the most beautiful sight I've seen in a long time." Mel said softly. The ship dwarfed the Galactica in size, and as the Valkyrie's engines slowly clawed their way closer and closer along the flank. Mel looked wonderingly at the massive fusion tori that dominated the flank of the ship, and the even more impressive fuel tanks that fed those fusion engines.
"Hope, Lords, I didn't even think I would see this, this is hope." Mel gave a nod as she fed a bit more power into the engines.
"How does she look Colonel?"
"Hard to tell out here, no visible damage on this side but the Olympia was old even before setting out on the trip that led her here. Depending on how well she was refitted, will determine how well she's been preserved." Mel looked over the ship, and for the first time realized that she had no real idea how they were going to stop the thing. Saul sounded groggy but it was probably just the lack of sleep, nothing more. It had to be stopped of course, only the Galactica would have been able to duplicate the Valkyrie's journey and there was no way she could carry the fuel to do so.
"Excuse me for asking this now, but just how are we going to haul the Olympia down from this velocity? She took years to get up to it, and we don't have years." Mel edged the throttles back slightly as they came upon the first habitation ring, and began scanning for an airlock. She was so concentrated that she only barely heard Saul.
"Years, tears, bears." Mel realized he was giggling, and then chuckling. She froze for long seconds wondering just what was going on before it hit her. They were low on oxy, anoxia.
"Shit." The expletive burst from her mouth as her eyes moved towards the gauges, only now for the first time noticing that the LED beside his O2 feed was flickering dimly. "Lords damn it. Saul, Saul! When did you switch to your suit O2 reserves? Saul answer me!"
*****
Kara felt herself come to a stop after being dragged a short distance and finally was able to gather enough of her wits together to start and struggle back against her attackers. She drew breath for a scream just when a dimly lit figure slapped a length of cargo tape over her mouth. Her hands were bound to a pipe with the same substance before she could get them to strike out.
"There that'll hold the bitch for now, get over here and load her up."
Kara watched, her eyesight still blurred and not altogether steady from the blow to the head as another figure approached. The light was incredibly dim, as the emergency lamps had been covered with something, blocking out all the light and making it impossible to figure out who the person was, though his voice seemed so familiar. She felt the cold prick of the needle as it slid into a vein, and then the harsh burn as some thick substance was injected in.
"How good is that stuff?" The familiar voice asked again, and after a few seconds Kara heard the reply.
"It'll throw her for a loop but good. Interrogation mix, gets her feeling all warm and fuzzy, throws the mind for a loop, she'll wake up tomorrow with only the memory of the physical sensations and nothing else." Kara could already feel the effect of the drug, her arms, legs were heavy, weak, impossible to move, that and the euphoria always present with pain relievers as well. "More importantly for us, it works as a tactile enhancer, pain is more painful, pleasure more pleasurable."
Kara knew by the evil chuckle that followed that statement just what they had in mind, had known in the back part of her mind from the very first instant the sap had hit her head. She was finding it harder and harder to think through the buzzing in her head though. She knew she should be angry or scared or something, but when the hand that had injected her full of the drug drifted down and over her breast, she only let out a low moan of pleasure.
Kara was uniquely aware that that was the wrong response she was making right now, but every nerve in her body had seemed to be hyper aware at that touch, and it was as if her mind had no control over her actions, her responses. It was as if she was three people at once, Kara, the thinking part of her mind, and her body, all disassociated from each other. Her back arched as the hand brushed over her tightened nipple.
"See, look, the whore is already all frakked up."
"Who takes first shot?"
*****
Captain Kelly cursed impatiently once again as he waited for his security crew to get in place on the second exit from the storage room. He had to go clear to Adama to figure out that there was another exit from that room, and the sounds that he was hearing from inside it only twisted his stomach.
"Damn it. what's the holdup?" He whispered into his VOX mic and nearly yelled in relief.
"We've got the corridor blocked go when ready."
"Cut the lights! Go! Go! Go!" It was confusion, and the reason Kelly had given up on Marine duty and transferred to Fleet as a LSO was because he hated boarding operations. Flashes of light, darkness, the confusion of men, some yours some not, the screams the shouts.
"He's got a grenade!" The movement of the light of Kelly's gun illuminated many things. A still form on the ground, blood torn clothing, but there was no time for that. Another form, sweating, half clothed, wild eyed fingers fumbling at the arming mechanism for a thermal bloom grenade.
"Drop it! Drop it!" Kelly was only partially aware that it was his voice screaming out the command, throat already torn and sore from screaming orders, commands that he didn't even remember making, let alone hearing. And instant to make a decision, the roar of the rifle loud in the metal room as it barked once, twice thrice.
"They shot Simeon!" The yell was dimly heard by Kelly as he turned towards the voice, finger twitching mind already trying to forget the look on the face surprised by sudden pain and death.
"On the ground! On the ground now!" A rifle but clubbing the side of a head to make a point, and then suddenly within a span of a few seconds more it was over. The scrabbling the fighting as the fight simply went out of those left trapped. "Get the lights back on, and secure the Prisoners.
"I'm going to need a medical team." Kelly spoke into the short ranged radio looking around the room and realizing that there was more than one person dead, more than two wounded. Someone was groaning in the corner, one of his men, knifed sometime during the melee. A forehead caved in in response, a knife bloody in the corpses hand, thankfully not one of his men.
"Ah shit, what did they do to you Starbuck?" The question was deep, sad, brutal in the close confines of the room, and more rhetorical than Kelly liked. He turned towards the voice, eyes still scanning the chaos of the room. Shit, he wished he hadn't killed Simeon, if he had been a cylon possible intelligence would have been useful. Kelly immediately placed the symptoms. The whimpering, the rubbing up against the blankets and gave a low curse.
"Make sure that med team has an interrogation detox kit. We've got a Nerve Sharp overdose up here."
"Lords damn you, you fraking scum!" Kelly turned and pointed a finger as the other Marine punctuated his words with a boot to the ribs.
"Belay that soldier! Get these prisoners secure, and get them to a holding cell. The Old Man is going to want to talk to them."
Chapter 9
"Damnitall Saul." Mel cursed as her eyes scanned the ship finally finding an airlock which is not completely covered or rimmed by ice. The maglocks on the landing gear of the Valkyrie crunch down with the sound of splintering ice, and a cascade of glittering shards are almost beautiful sparkling in the light of the spotlights as they drift past. There is no time at all to enjoy the view though, as Mel was pulling off straps and hitting the cockpit canopy release and powering down the engines all at once. No time, no time her mind was telling her.
Saul had quite giggling minutes ago while she was still trying to find and airlock. Suit tanks gave out fast, unlike a ship where the sheer size and volume of air would let you eek out for even a half hour on the edge. She snapped the tether in place and pushed off out into freefall. It had been too long since she had moved around in such, and she was in far too much of a hurry. The tether jerked her up, stopping a motion that would have otherwise sent her drifting forever among the stars.
"Lords frak it." Mell cursed as inertia from unmuscled legs jerked her body around before she could get a hand around the tether. She took a deep breath and released it opening her eyes as she pulled herself back towards the Valkyrie. She grabbed the emergency release on the weapon officer's canopy and jerked it, nearly tumbling again only held in place by her grip on the handle.
Without trying to waste any additional time, she reached in, her hand trailing the emergency cross connect line and hooked it up to Saul's supply recepticle. Hopefully it would buy her some time, hopefully it was not already too late. Mel blinked her eyes clear as she slapped at his harness releases, pulling free his tether to hook to her belt, having already relearned how necessary the things were.
"Damn you Saul, not like this. please not like this." Mel reached down and carefully pulled him loose, trusting the oxygen feed line to keep him alive as there was nothing else she could do now. It was going to take time and either that line was buying her that time, or precious seconds had already fled. Her hands pulled his helmet against hers, and her ears strained before they heard the faint sounds of his breathing. Glittering snowflakes of hoarfrost drifted by, frozen tears of the Lords perhaps.
"Get a grip Mel. figure out what you need to do." Mel's mind was fuzzy from the rush of adrenaline, a lack of sleep, proper food, and disorientation from the jump that was still not all that long ago. She continued to mumble to herself, the sound of her voice more comforting "Get power to the airlock controls, they'll likely be dead or on powersave. Get inside, find air, and power to recharge the suits when they get low."
She felt better having a plan, something that had been ingrained into her back in the academy. The hard part was accomplishing the plan. She pulled Saul out of the cockpit, not an easy task with the way she always set to drifting away from the Raptor every time she did not brace herself correctly. Her legs were more and more in the way as time went on, clumsy in gravity they were only a hindrance in Zero-G.
"I am so practicing free fall maneuvers when I get some free time." Mel muttered to herself finally getting Saul out of the cockpit and floating beside the Vakyrie. At least then she knew what to do from training. Easiest way to carry a wounded or unconscious body in low G was to strap it to your back, tethers around the waist. Easy enough to do, as the suits were designed for it.
"Now get the airlock open. Bring the power umbilical from the Valk and hope one of the universal connectors is right." Mel opened the panel and pulled the umbilical loose, snapping the carbine clip to her belt. "Now how to get over there"
The airlock was not far away, ten, fifteen feet at the most Mel judged, and if she had the complete use of her body not all that hard to get to. Just walk over there on the metal hull using the boot mags. Unfortunately without working toes to use the mag controls that option was not open to her.
"Well," Mel muttered softly thinking things through aloud as it kept the silence at bay. "The tether is long enough that I can maybe push off from here, and try to snag one of those handholds."
Mel thought about it for a while, conscious of the fact that though she had, maybe time now, she did not have much of it. She shrugged inside her suit, wishing she could drag a shirtsleeve across her face to clear her vision. Carefully she turned slightly and reached out to shove off the Valkyrie's side.
It took two tries, as the first was completely frakked as soon as she tried it. Sure she went more or less, mostly less towards the airlock but she also set herself, and Saul at her back spinning because of the attempt. At least the tether eventually stopped that as well when it jerked them up short. The second was successful.
"Oh frak me, you gotta be kidding me." Mel grumbled, looking back over the glittering surface of the Olympia at the Valkyrie. Not three feet from the opposite side of the Valkyrie from where she had pushed off from was an access ladder that led right past the airlock door she was not at. "I always have to do things the hard way."
She continued to grumble opening the red marked access panel for the emergency airlock controls. Mel breathed a sigh of relief to find the instructions printed in a language she understood and the power recepticle as well as the controls to be a type almost standardized throughout the Colonial Fleet. At least the older portions anyways.
"For once I'm glad to be flying an obsolete hunk of junk."
*****
"And trying to corner Kara to get something done would be about as intelligent as cornering a wounded Bearcat." Bill gave a grin and rubbed his jaw. "I'd suggest not trying to do that. You might come out worse for the wear."
"Might? Might?! I'd be lucky to simply get put in Life Station for a while, and though I may enjoy Kylen's company, I would rather not enjoy it from a hospital bed." Bill was rather disturbed by the look his son gave him then, intense and more than a little probing. "Just how are things between you and our Doctor these days?"
Bill thought of just how he was going to answer that. Talking with your child about a relationship was actually harder than talking with your parents, and it had been a long time since had to do the latter. Luckily for Bill the phone buzzed for attention with a call from CIC just then.
"Adama." Bill listened intently as the news came over the line. Lords was it not good, and his eyes pressed closed. "How is she?" The words were choked out, his teeth gritted together as he awaited words. "I see, tell Kelly I want a briefing in an hour, I'm on my way sickbay."
It took every erg of his massive self control not to pick something up, hurl it against the wall and scream. Still he knew his face was calm as he stood and turned towards his soon, whose face was every bit as controlled as his was. Obviously Bill's terse sentences, tone of voice had let Lee know something had gone very wrong.
"Landing accident? One of the nuggets?" Bill shook his head, for all that it was a good guess given the limited information that Lee had. Kelly was the Landing Signals Officer after all, well besides being a de facto head of security now due to his former work in the Marines.
"No Lee, Kara was assaulted on her daily run." Bill looked up, he knew his eyes were hard, and he knew that there were still tears threatening to fall from them. Damn it, she was almost his daughter, if not by marriage, then by the heart. The way Lee's face got even harder at his words was like a blow to the belly. "Kelly had a suspected Cylon under surveillance, it led the attack."
"How, how long ago?"
"Thirty minutes more or less. Command is frazzled with Saul gone and they were dealing with the issue without having thought of the need to contact me. Gaeta finally got in for his relief shift and realized what was going on." Bill looked up and could see the question in his son's eyes. "She's in sickbay, along with a wounded marine. They're not good."
Bill nodded to the door, and was thankful that he did not have to say anything more. Each and every word wrenched at his heart, doubly so when he saw how they impacted on Lee.
The Lifesation was a long way from Bill's quarters, buried as it was in the center of the ship, protected from hostile fire and boarding actions. It also meant that it was a long way from everywhere in particular as well. The design meant that without the other smaller emergency stations around men would be lost if they were severely injured in the heat of battle. It also meant that Bill and Lee were barely halfway there before red lights started flashing and Gaeta's voice came over the intercom.
"Set condition one throughout the ship, I repeat set condition one throughout the ship, this is not a drill, this is not a drill." Bill shared a look with Lee, whose face was as strangled as his own.
"Get to your Viper, Gaeta wouldn't over react, it has to be Cylons."
"Understood."
It was all that needed to be said between the two Bill knew. Their actions were also exactly opposite what either one of them wanted to do. Both wanted to be in sickbay right now hovering over Kylen's shoulder trying to find out just how a certain pilot was doing. Feelings be damned when duty calls. Bill watched his son for a few long seconds, seeing the tension in Lee's shoulders, the jerky edge to his lope before turning and making his way back towards command.
"SitRep." Bill ordered as he stepped in to command, after a long lonely walk back to command. It was made worse by the need to walk, instead of run like his soul screamed at him to do. Panic was the bane of the fleet, and all that it would take for it to spread was one hint that the Commander was anything but calm and collected.
"Two Cylon Basestars arrived in system and began launching Raiders four minutes ago sir. The fleet is jumping now, FTL drives one and two spun up, all ready vipers are away." Bill gave a little nod to Gaeta, and made a mental note to show his satisfaction with the junior bridge officer at a future date. The man was holding up well, and was a fine officer. Even if he did need, Bill thought, a beard to hide his far too young face.
"Very good Mr. Gaeta." Bill looked up at the DRADIS screens and clasped his hands behind his back. It was all out of his hands now, and in the hands of the Lords of Kobol. Still there were precautions that needed to be made, because this attack coming so soon after the apprehension of a suspected Cylon. "Set the mission clock for thirty-three minutes and activate after our jump Mr. Gaeta."
There were startled looks and more than a little fear turned towards Bill as the junior officer visibly swallowed and turned from his rechecking of the jump coordinates to do just that.
"It would seem that our vacation is over people." Bill just hoped that his words were not as prophetic as they sounded.
Chapter 10
It did not take Mel long to realize that the ship was not a Warship and was a relic from days before the time when computers became anathema. For one there were maps everywhere, emergency shelters, directions on how to get to this or that, the position of critical valves and pipes behind access panels clearly labeled on the panels themselves. Secondly there were computer terminals every couple hundred yards, and not the limited ones that were just coming into vogue back in the Colonies before the start of the war. According to what little she took time to puzzle out, it seemed that the consoles could have controlled just about the entire ship, if it and they had power.
"Which they don't right now." Mel mumbled to herself to steady her nerves. The entire ship was all but dead, even the nitrogen atmosphere that was supposed to help maintain seals had more or less outgassed out of the ship. The pressure inside was about what it would be at fifteen thousand feet back on Caprica, plus it had no oxygen. Which was why she was headed to the Captain's quarters. It was outfitted as a emergency shelter, plus it was in territory that according to the brief information she'd gleaned from Saul during their flight it was supposed to have been occupied sporadically during the centuries planned colonization flight. If any of the O2 tanks still held anything, the ones feeding that area would be it. If anything had power, it would be there.
"Remind me to bring up the fact that two people is not the minimum number necessary for a job like this the next time around. Next time, we bring one of the big transports, maybe Colonial One, along with a half dozen or so people." Mel reached out, as she caught a glimpse of a handhold in her helmet light. She needed to get her bearings again, as floating through this graveyard ship was getting to her. Plus it was a lot bigger than she had ever thought it would be.
"Mmm, getting close now, just three, four corridors ahead and then to the right another five. Damn this ship is big." The Captain's quarters weren't evident on this small map, but centeral command was and the quarters were just aft of that. She pushed off with one arm, having gotten used to the way her body with the combined mass of Saul reacted to such things. "They certainly knew how to build a ship back when it they tooled between star systems at sublight."
Mel reached out and hooked her hand around another ring in the side of the corridor. She jerked to a stop once again. She consulted the map there, and gave a nod, glad to know she had stopped in the right place. The ship was so dark, and it was hard to tell where the cross corridors came through with only the light from her helmet lamp. Mel glanced at the O2 guage and her wrist and grimaced. Five hours of O2 for one person doing not much of anything wasn't much time at all for two people, one of which was doing quite a bit.
"Not far now though, and if there isn't any air in there, well this whole trip was for nothing." Mel bit her lip as she pulled on another handring, propelling them down towards what was hopefully sanctuary. She had to wonder if Adama had known just how hair brained this plan had been from the very beginning. She had to wonder if Saul had known. "Frak, he probably did, that's why he got drunk."
Mel started to giggle when she came to the door. Frak, they even labeled the doors here. Captain's Quarters were written in big red letters across the hatch, and emergency life shelter written in glowing yellow under that. The door was an airlock, she should have expected that, one without power, she should have definitely expected that.
"Doesn't look good Saul, but I gave it my best you know." Mel undid the tethers that held him to her back, leaving only one in place, before snapping them in place instead so that she could use them to help tension her against the door. Working the airlock manual controls would be easier if she did not drift away all the time. "That can't be right."
Mel tapped on the pressure guage that was showing a near one atmosphere reading behind the lock door. There was no reason for that, none at all.
*****
Lee knew he had never flown this good before in his life. It was all because he had realized in the first few seconds of action that Kara was not there to bail him out, and it was up to him to ensure that everyone that possibly could made it back alive.
He flitted recklessly in and out between fighters, ambushing a raider there, saving a Viper here as his hands played over the controls. Lee was flying, giving orders more with instinct than real thought, the sheer number of contacts out there impossible to keep track of as his body was constantly flung from one side of the cockpit to the other by maneuvers.
"All civilian ships have completed emergency Jump, get your boys home Apollo." Lee gave a sigh of relief as Dee's voice came into his ear. She was a damn good person to have in flight ops, no matter how bad things were she was calm and level. Not to mention she had a voice that had every male pilot and most of the female ones willing to die to protect.
"You heard the lady, lets get our asses back home." Lee counted slowly to twenty, watching birds peel off out of the melee and carefully insert themselves into a combat approach pattern. It was a carefully crafted thing, each Viper trailing the other by enough that individual suppression guns could scratch their back if a Raider tried to follow them in. He gave a glance at his scope, and flipped the viper around, nailing the afterburners as he did so. Last one in, normally he'd have Kara right off his wing, she never let him play tail end Charlie alone.
It would be suicide with most any other pilot, having two landings simultaneously in the docking bay, but Lee was comfortable doing it with Kara. She always seemed to know how he was going to move before he did, he new instinctively how to adjust when she was going to do the same. He kept one eye on his scope, threading through defensive fire as he came in, making sure there was nothing back there to jump him, all the while listening to Dee on the wireless.
Eyes counted the birds left to land tallying up those he had heard already had. Four, four too few were in the count. Either they'd lost those pilots, those Vipers or they had never taken off. Lee hope it was the later, but knew some would turn out to be the former. Flight ops was going to be a little more empty tonight.
"Frak me, you've got to be kidding me." Lee groaned out as he noticed the flight pods were already retracting. Lords this was going to be close, and he had no time to slow down. Not if he was going to make it aboard the ship before the pods completely cut him off.
Hands, feet flew over controls as he kept the afterburners shoved into the max. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw just why the Galactica was hurrying things along. Looked like he had cut things a little close this time, and just over his shoulder, not far back at all, was a sheer avalanche of missiles. Lee did not need the radiological alarm screaming in his ear to know that more than a few of those were nukes.
Lee pushed his ship around in a screaming turn, cutting to line up with the flight pod and he knew, just knew that it was quite possibly going to be too close. He was coming in way too hot, and threw were ships all over the landing deck. The warheads were catching up now, and he could see a few in front of him screaming in on Galactica far too quickly. He wasn't going to make it, he could see that now.
"Apollo to Galactica. Dee tell Kara and my father that I lo.." Lee's words were choked off by a gasp as the side of the Galactica suddenly jumped towards him. Ribs were getting very very close now, but there was a thin sliver of hope ahead. Lee's hands reacted even before his mind had processed, and the Viper flipped into inverted flight as Lee spun it onto its back.
There was a crunch of metal, a sudden fling against straps, another crunch and then just darkness.
*****
"Radiological Alarm."
"Sir, those missiles are going to be right on Apollo's tail. We need to start retracting the pods." Gaeata's voice followed that of Specialist Dualla's. Bill looked up at the DRADIS and the storm of fire coming down on the Galactica. The first Basestar had been joined by two more, which had either no Raptors to launch, or had not bothered to launch them. All three were spitting missiles out into space at the warship as fast as they apparently could.
"Retract the pods, prepare for immediate hyperlight jump." Bill felt something die in him as he gave the order. He knew that he was all but dooming Lee to death, as only the largest stroke of luck could get his son back alive. Still there were twenty six hundred other souls onboard the Galactica that he had to keep safe, as well as those in the fleet.
Bill gripped the chart table as he watched the DRADIS console, silently praying as Dualla reported all but one final active Viper aboard. He decided he would wait to get a tally of the losses until after the ship jumped. Then he would have to decide just how to tell Kara.
"Come on. Come on Apollo you can make it." Bill looked around to see that everyone on the bridge were holding their breaths as Dualla chanted, and while looking at those faces and watching the blue icon of the Viper he nearly missed something else.
"Brace for contact." Bill roared a mere second before the idiot savant mind aboard the Cylon warhead detonated. The Galactica groaned and heaved as the warhead spent its fury against its armored flank, even as it responsed to the computer prompting and closed relays deep within its flank.
"Jump!" Bill pushed himself up from where he had been flung against the starboard side of CIC and looked around surveying the damage. Not so bad this time, not so bad once people had learned to secure their chairs. "Jump completed sir, DRADIS contacts, it's the fleet sir."
"Damage report?" Bill had to push Lee from his mind, that warhead had bitten something out of the old girl, he could feel it in the throbbing hum of the deck plates. His warhorse was limping, perhaps lamed.
"Coming in now sir, it doesn't look good."
Chapter 11
"Commander Adama, the President is on the line for you." Bill looked up from where he was trying to coordinate the damage control parties. He would personally love to have Chief Tyrol, or Saul here right now, but both of them were unavailable, and so he was the last person who had intimate knowledge of all the override valves and secondary lines throughout the ship.
Bill gave a glance up at the clock, twenty-two minutes remaining, and they still did not even know the extent of the damage. This was going to be close, very close.
"Put her through." Bill picked up the receiver and waited for the click on the line to indicate that Dualla had done just that. "Madam President."
"Commander, how bad is it?" Bill debated trying to downplay just what this might mean, and realized that doing so would not do any good.
"Very bad, we haven't even isolated all the damaged areas yet. We know we've lost both the starboard propulsion pods. Currently we're trying to get the mechanisms to allow us to completely release them, to prevent further damage." Bill looked up at the damage control board before continuing. "It is a very real risk that we'll sustain further damage from an explosion before we are able to do that."
"Explosion?" Bill could tell that Roselin had thought that the worst was over. She did not understand how insidious battle damage, especially from a nuke could be. Valves spot welded open, or unable to shut completely because their seats had been warped. Electronic activated controls unworking because the mass of electronics that told them what to do had just become so much junk from EMP.
"It was a bad place to get hit. We've got tylium still feeding into the engine spaces in both starboard pods. There are hot spots all over, and it won't take much to set things off. Our only hope is to get those pods detached." Bill held back how slim a hope that was. They were supposed to automatically eject if the tylium reactors went offline and the temperature was over a certain level, which it was. They had not. They were supposed to be remotely detachable but were not responding to commands. That mean doing things manually, onsite, and that meant losing men.
"How many. how many casualties do you have?"
"Around thirty, a good count is impossible right now. It is only going to get worse." Bill could hear that she didn't really, did not understand how he could not know how many were going to die, could not put a number on it for the politician.
"Can you evacuate the Galactica?"
"The flight deck is non-operational. We can't extend the pods while we are still in the process of trying to eject the drives. Plus the nuke hit us at a bad time, we had a lot of birds on the landing deck of the pod, they got tossed around, Chief Tyrol is trying to get it cleared." Bill cleared his throat looking back at damage control, and continued harshly. "If there is nothing else madam president, I need to get back to work."
"Is there nothing we can do to help?" Bill thought about that for a moment, looking up at the mission clock. Twenty minutes.
"Pray."
*****
Mel found the reason for the lock having a higher pressure the moment she equalized and opened the lock. Part of the ship did have power, albeit at low levels. Part of a station keeping program of some sort that was running, keeping certain areas of the ship marginally ready for human habitation in case it needed to wake someone from coldsleep. The coldsleep chambers were empty though, and the computer did not have the programming as to when it needed to wake someone, as the final updates had never arrived. Still there was something running, some primary directive, and Mel breathed a sigh of relief as the lock pressurized again.
Oxygen. Fourteen PSI of air, of which a mere three was life giving Oxygen. Mel double checked her suit gauges against the airlock ones, then checked her O2 sensor, a bright lively green. Carefully she cracked the seal on her helmet, waiting for the rush of air, or choking breath that would indicate that all of her precautions were for naught.
"Nothing but sweet, clean, frakking freezing cold air." Mel coughed out the last as the breath she had taken had proven to be far too deep in the dry cold air. The suit didn't have an external temperature guage, but judging from the feeling of it on her cheeks it had to be at least thirty below in the lock.
Well at least she had found half of what they needed to survive the next few days. Air was air, and if she could find power, they were set. At least long enough to die of starvation. Mel worked the wheel that opened into the room beyond the airlock and pulled Saul through after her, not trusting a single ancient seal with their lives.
"Get his helmet cracked, almost out of O2 and I need him breathing without being tethered to me." Mel mumbled softly as she positioned Saul in the middle of the room and fumbled with the latched to his helmet. She took care to make sure the faceplate seal was broken and open a fair distance, without opening too far to let too much heat leak out. It was unbelievably cold in the captain's stateroom. So cold her breath was freezing on her faceplate, making it necessary to completely remove the helmet in order to be able to see, let alone work. "Lords its cold."
Mel looked through watering eyes for something, anything that would be the emergency source of power, her eyes finally catching the lightning bolt, yellow trefoil design of an emergency RTG unit. She pushed herself over to the unit, thanking whatever bureaucracy that caused the same universal signs to be used. Mel scanned over the controls, figuring some things out before slowly turning the wheel beside the sign in the indicated direction. Radiation shield, she knew, it was all that was keeping the unit from producing power in the first place, and sure enough, as she turned it, the current indicator slowly crept up into the green range.
Carefully she punched buttons, not wanting to power anything on that might even resemble a computer. Recent experiences with the Cylons had led her to believe that the Commander was right, every computer system could not be trusted. Circulation fans, lights, CO2 scrubbers, and oh Lords a heating unit gained power as she punched buttons the units whispering and humming into life.
She looked around in the harsh white light, light that reminded her so much of Caprica, of Leonis that it made her heart hurt, at the cabin. Yes, there, sealed in those tin containers, that would be emergency supplies kept in an inert atmosphere. Blankets, maybe food and a little water all sealed to keep them fresh. She pushed off, becoming more and more aware of just how cold her head was getting, just how bad her body reeked inside the suit.
She pried the unit open, breaking the lead seal with the point of her survival knife. There was supposed to be a tool around her to do that, but at the time Mel could really care less about trying to find it. The near monomolecular edge on the ceramic blade made short work of the soft metal. She gave a sigh as it turned out to have the survival cocoon packed on top of everything else. Just the thought of getting warm sent a rush of heat to her head as she turned back to where Saul floated in the middle of the room.
"Only one in here, and I'm running out of gas. Well it will have to do for now."
*****
Lieutenant Sharon `Boomer' Valerii gazed at the wreck that was the Galactica through one of the many viewports on the Lenna Dell. She should be there, should be with Tyrol and all her friends fighting to keep the ship alive. She should not be hear, helpless and only watching as nearly everyone she knew and loved were battling for their lives.
"You're going to do something, you're going to save them aren't you Boomer?" Sharon gave a start and looked over to where Boxey was looking out another viewport, silent tears, the tears she could not shed were leaking from his eyes. She gave a sigh, and glanced back out the viewport before her jaw hardened and she turned back into the room.
"Go find me a flight suit Boxey, I'm finding the Captain, they've got to need a pilot right now to get medical help over there." It was little enough, but it was something to do. Something more than sitting here and simply waiting for good news. Lords of Kobol it felt good to be doing something again, Sharon thought as she watch the boy rush out of the room to do just what she asked him to.
Chapter 12
The flight deck was a mess. Combat landings were never very pretty, but that nuke that had hit had flung Vipers and not quite secured enough equipment all over the pod. Most of the Vipers were still whole, and those that were easily gotten to were already being hauled down to the maintenance level to get prepped for the next flight. There would be a next one everyone knew, the Cylons had found them again.
Cally though was not concerned with those. The landing computer had logged one last viper right before the pod had slammed shut and the ship had jumped. One last viper that had the man, who fathered a child for her, had been the flesh for a memory. Lords she had to find him, he had to still be alive.
The bow end of the pod was a mess of Vipers. Four of them had come together in a mangled heap, and there was a pall of smoke drifting over them and a pile of foam from a fire crew that had already come through. Cally's eyes scanned tail numbers as she climbed over and around them, knocking on cockpit glass and reading the expressions on the faces inside. She was on a mission yes, but if there was anyone too hurt, too much in pain, she would get them out.
Racetrack, Hot Dog, Chuckles, they all gave her the thumbs up and a grin, and for once she wished that the flight deck crew's radios would allow crosstalk with the pilots own short range sets without having to be hard plugged. The final viper was upside down, missing its starboard engine and wing, the vertical stabilizer, its frame was bent and Cally knew that it would never fly again. It'd go into the bone heap where all the scraps to pick over to keep other Vipers flying eventually went, the zombie pile as some of the deck crew called it.
Cally climbed under, around through the piled up Vipers that shifted uncomfortably because of her actions. She began wiping at the soot smudged canopy and then giving that up as futile as there seemed to be just as much soot on the inside as the outside, at the body of the Viper itself.
"Frak! Chief, I need a rescue saw and a med team immediately over here!" She stuck out her arm and waved, knowing that Tyrol would catch the movement and understand just where she was. He knew where everything was in a time like this. He never lost track of a deckman, never misplaced anything since that venting action before Ragnar.
"Cally, whose bird is that? Whose bird?" Cally looked up to find the Chief right there over he shoulder looking down between the tangled mess of metal that she had just come through. She wondered just how, looking back now how she managed not to tear her suit getting through there. At times it was nice being small. "Cally, whose bird?"
"It's the CAG's." Cally could hear the tears in her voice, could feel them on her cheeks as she looked up at Tyrol. She turned back towards the cockpit and began wiping at it again. The wiping turned into hammering on it with her fist as if that would make everything better. "I can't, I can't see in to see if he's alive Chief, I can't see!"
"Damn it." Cally could hear the thinking in the Chief's words, knew he was glancing to the left and the right as he tried to figure out what to do. Even before she could ask for the saw again he was shouting out orders. "Mellor, Falkins, get these pilots out of our birds, we've got a rescue op to run and by the Lords I'm not having a pilot die on my watch. Socinus, Wells, get the frakking stabilization foam over here and spray these down. Keep this area here open, and get an emergency lock and a med team down here yesterday."
Cally looked up over her shoulder as a spray of sparks erupted over her shoulder and realized that the Chief was working the saw on making the opening she had come through bigger. Removing gear and twisted debris in a manner that was probably going to downcheck at least one other bird, she opened her mouth to speak when he silenced her.
"Cally the CAG isn't as small as you are, and we aren't getting him out unless this hole is bigger. Now see if his cockpit is holding air, if it is, we'll need to get the lock in place before cracking it. He might have a suit breach." Cally looked at him for a long moment before swallowing and turning back to the charred Viper beneath her.
"Yes Chief." Cally pulled a multitool out of her belt and started stripping what panels she could off of the environmental systems so she could do just that.
*****
Bill walked back and forth, pacing the same four steps over and over again. It was a bad habit, one that showed nervousness but he simply could not stand still as the Galactica, the tough old bitch, groaned and trembled around him. He could feel she was wounded and wounded bad, her flanks vibrating as another compartment vented uncontrolled or under the touch of Damage control into space. He had done all he could already, now it was up to his crew to get things done. He could only hope that he had trained them well enough in their jobs.
The situation had already improved in the last few minutes. The venting action was yet another on the Ventral Starboard engine pod, one that was expunging volatile tylium out of the pod and into the relative safety of the unconfined space around the Galactica. Bill's eyes moved up to glance at the clock, the timer on their lives. Twelve minutes, twelve more minutes of life is all that they had.
"Yes!" Bill looked up as Gaeta's cry rang through CIC and main power suddenly came surging back online in CIC, the emergency lights shutting off and the faint hum of charging batteries started up in the background. He threw a questioning look at the Lieutenant who went back to work even as he reported. "Shunted power through leads one-thirty-three and one-thirty-seven to cross link ZZ and over into the main power net. Those siege cannons they removed for our decommissioning are still worth something! We'll have FTL capability in another eight minutes sir."
As cheering echoed through the bridge, Bill chewed his lower lip, mentally following the schematics before breaking into a grin, seeing just what the junior officer had done. The comforting chattering sound of the FTL jump computer finally working on a jump solution was almost music to Bill's ears. It was the reverse of what those cross links had been meant for, as they were designed to allow power to flow into the massive weapon coils even it the primary busses had been destroyed or shorted out. It was an outside the box solution, a solution of the type that very well could save all their lives. Bill's brow furrowed together as he tried to think just where that idea was going. He continued to listen to the background chatter.
"Boomer, Galactica you are cleared to airlock Gamma Thirty Delta Five." Bill watched as Petty Officer Dualla, such a young soul to bear the responsibility, but it was always the young ones that did so well as communications officers did not even pause but took another call. This one was longer, and she listened for a while before responding. "Understood Chief, I'll pass it on to the Commander."
Bill watched, his heart clenching as she looked up, her eyes glistening and found he could not breath as he waited for her words. He knew what they had to be about, whom they had to be coming from. Part of him wanted to get it over with, let the pain start, while another wished he would never have to hear the words.
"The Chief reports nineteen Vipers will be ready for launch in ten minutes. Three are salvageable, and two are total write offs. He reports twenty-two pilots ready for service." Bill felts his jaw clench as he gripped the chart table in front of him and looked down. If the chief was reporting on Viper status it could mean only one thing. Bill's heart sunk as despair started to overcome him. He could not lose Lee, he simply could not lose all that he had left of his family. "One pilot is down due to a broken arm, and sir, the CAG, Captain Adama is being taken to life station for a severe concussion and smoke inhalation, but he's alive sir."
Bill jerked as if he had been kicked by her words, and then jerked again as their meaning actually sunk into him. Lee was alive, alive by the Lords. By damned it was time that he made sure that all his family, all his crew came through this alive. He gave a short nod before speaking in reply to Dualla.
"Get Captain Kelly on the horn Dee, I've got an idea about that engine pod. And Dee, clear all ships and shuttles off our Starboard and dorsal beams, get the Galactica between them and that pod."
*****
Mel awoke with a cry of fear and a gasp to a gentle shaking of her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around the warm figure that was pressed oh so close against her, and buried her face in the merge of shoulder and neck. Deep wracking sobs shook her body as she buried herself further into the presence before her, arms wrapping tightly around the solid form.
She shook uncontrollably as the anger, the pain, the fear from her dream leached out of her body and her mind came to grips with reality once again. She was not alone, she was not floating, drifting free through space in the Valkyrie with no rescue, no return home in sight. No, she was on the Olympia, warm, wrapped in a cocoon bag with Saul wrapped around her.
Saul wrapped around her, Mel realized suddenly with a flush of heat that ran through her body. Saul with his face pressed into her hair, murmuring words of comfort into her ear as his hands soothed along her back. She relaxed into his body, before remembering just what had happened before now.
"Lords damn you Saul." The words ripped from her throat as she pushed back slightly from him and began hammering her fists and arms into his chest. It was a rather futile effort as the cocoon hampered her blows and kept her from truly getting far enough away to get a swing in that would do some damage. Her blows became even more desperate, even wilder as he said nothing but pulled her in close to him again. "Damn you, you could have died on me. Damn you Saul, don't you ever go and leave me alone like that again."
Mel could not even say whether or not the last words had anything to do with him passing out in the Valkyrie or something before that. She just knew that she did not live without him in her life in some capacity. She could live without him if it was necessary but she did not want it to ever be necessary.
"Lords I'm sorry Mel, I'm sorry for everything."
"Captain Kelly, I've got an idea about that pod.Yes, yes I know we can't save it, but if we don't get rid of it soon, the Cylons are going to be on top of us, and an engine pod in contact with the ship flooded with tylium." Bill knew he did not have to go on. The thought was already imprinted into Kelly's brain as it was in his. That much tylium, even a small warhead could set it off. "Now from the DC schematics there isn't any tylium between frame. frame A-376 and A-363 right?"
Bill waited for the affirmative, knowing by the sound that the man was flipping through pages of notes hurriedly scribbled on a page here and there. He knew that Kelly had a better idea of where the tylium pooled than anyone else, better than Damage control as everything was never perfectly passed on and Kelly was the man on the spot.
"Good Kelly, now I want you to pull your people back, we're giving up on getting the pod detatched manually. It is simply taking too long." Bill glanced up at the clock which now read a little more than ten minutes. "You've got seven minutes to get the following done. First, I need you to seal off all the hatches at frame A-376 and open all lengthwise and crosswise hatched from there back to fame A-373, open all compartments to space. Seal all cross hatches at that point and vent all fuel lines to atmosphere. Pull back to A-370 opening all cross and lengthwise hatches to A-363 with everything vented to space and seal all crosswise hatches there. Then pull back to at least A-360, sealing everything behind you as you go, and pulling everyone out. I want a full head count, nobody, I mean nobody gets left behind. You've got seven minutes."
Bill listened as Kelly sputtered on the other end of the line fore a moment, willing to let the man vent some of his frustration before cutting down on him. Truth to tell it was a crazy plan, something Kara was more likely to think up than an Adama, but he had a feeling that it would work. Either it did or it didn't, they had no more than nine minutes to get something done.
"Seven minutes Kelly, I'm getting that damn bomb off my ship even if I have to blow it up myself." Bill slammed the headset down knowing that the other office would get what he wanted done, or die trying. Bill moved over to where Gaeta was still trying to cross connect power relays. He studied the schematic for a moment before pointing out various things and giving orders to the junior officer. "I want you to forget about getting power to the guns. We're going to jump out of here right when the Cylon's arrive so that won't be a problem, not now anyways. I want you cross connect lines B-37 through C-13 into substation Delta seven, and prepare to backflow all the power from generator plants Epsilon and Gamma into those lines."
Bill had not felt this alive in years, not since the time that Zak told him he was getting married. Ever since then he had been living in a funk, existing not living life. Time now it was going to change, he was going to live, they were all going to live.
"Spin up FTL drives one and two mister Gaeta. Specialist Dualla advise the fleet that they are to begin immediate FTL jump to the emergency coordinates." Bill looked up at the clock and made a silent promise, one that would see to it that the Cylons got their own just deserts as soon as he got his ship free of looming death.
*****
"Dee, Boomer. Just what is going on here?" Sharon was feeling a little uneasy as the civilian fleet began jumping out away from Galactica even while the other ship was venting from two of its drive pods. The Galactica still had not extended its flight pods, and was still spinning, tumbling in space ever so slightly.
"Commander Adama's orders Boomer. He thinks that the Cylons are going to follow us here. Its one of his feelings I think, and you know how they are." Sharon gave a slight nod as she passed over the Galactica again, eyeballing the damage. Remembering that Dee could not see her she clicked on the mic again.
"If he's got a feeling its best we follow it. I might like those FTL jump coordinates though." It would determine whether the old man actually trusted her or not after the operation. Believed that she was only Cylon, or believed that she was truly human. "And Dee, you've got atmosphere venting from the Dorsal Starboard drive pod now as well as tylium from the ventral one."
"Yeah, it is the Commander's plan." Sharon could hear the change in Dee's voice, knew from experience that the Commander, the Old Man was watching his communications officer, or was at least listening to the conversation. "You should be getting the FTL coordinates now."
Sharon transferred her attention to the data terminal which was scrolling FTL coordinates. She gave a silent prayer to whatever gods that had seen to the fact that there had been a military shuttle available on the Lenna Dell.
"Frak Dee, I'm barely going to be able to make that in this clunker." Sharon almost wished that she had one of those Valkyries that Mel flew before wishing silently for her sweet little Raptor. Either one of those ships would have more than enough legs for that jump. Sharon gave a whistle as she looked over the coordinates and did some mental math. It was an insane plan, jumping back towards the Colonies. The Cylons would never be expecting that.
"Boomer, this is Galactica Actual. I need to pick your brains a bit." Sharon gave a silent curse as Commander Adama came on over the wireless, seeing another couple ships jump out. The old man was nothing but business you could tell from his tone of voice.
"Galactica, Boomer, go ahead." Sharon knew what he was going to ask her, there was only one thing he could be asking her at a time like this. It had to be about the Cylons. She wasn't one, wasn't controlled by them anymore she hoped, but there were still flashes when she could remember, things, about them.
"Boomer, I know this has to be hard for you, but I need to know how the Cylons are tracking us. We believe we killed one of their sleeper agents shortly before this jump. We believe that his death triggered some sort of dead man's switch." Sharon was trembling as the old man spoke. Lords, if she hadn't had Dee, had not had Jaybird there with her she might have done the same. She tried to think as she maneuvered the shuttle away from the Galactica for her jump, the clock said she had a little over five minutes.
How many were there, another sleeper agent. Something like a door opened in Sharon's head as her thoughts murmured those words. Sleeper agent, they have to be able to contact the Cylons somehow, relay information. It needed a transmitter, one that could, well the math was beyond her, and she knew she was missing half of it. Echo the jump emergence back through the momentary tear in space to a special receiver back at Caprica, give the location of the stars a split second after emergence.
"The Radar One emplacement sir, we had problems with it right?" Sharon could feel the facts fall into place, yes it would work. Hook this, and then that up, then do this to bring it offline and then have the software reflashed after substituting a different flash chip.
"They're using that? How?" Sharon knew that it was right, and knew that simply bringing the station down would keep it from working.
"I can't, I can't really explain it sir, I don't understand how it's supposed to work, only that it does and they can track us through that. Power down the emplacement and they should not have the ability to do so." Sharon paused as equations flashed across her vision, wiring diagrams, parts that could be substituted here and there. It wasn't so much a working model as a `how to do' set of instructions for constructing the device. "I can, I can try and write down what I see, what I understand when I think about this, maybe the Chief or Gaeta or someone will understand it, I can't."
"Understood Boomer, and well you can feel better, I'd be worried if you did still understand that. Since you don't I think that's a good sign you're only human, don't you?" Sharon blinked heavily a few times, looking out over the Galactica. The old man was something else, he always seemed to be able to read the minds of the people under his command.
"Roger Galactica, Boomer out."
"Galactica out Boomer, see you on the other side."
*****
"Mel?" The suit to suit wireless connection was incredibly low gain right now, crackling and hissing as Saul called out to her. Still it was good to hear his voice since she could not see him. They had split up hours ago, her to try and get some of the life systems up on backup RTG power, and him to try and take a status of the engineering systems. She was concerned as he had still not indicated just how they were going to get the Olympia to well stop.
"Yes Saul?" Mel was finally getting used to the useless mass that her legs added to her body, was even learning how to use to get certain things done. For instance, her left leg had an artificial knee, and nothing flesh below mid thigh she could simply jam it in and around various handholds or pipes in order to get leverage to use a hand wheel. It was something that would have been painful at the least with a real leg, and possibly damaging to the joint.
"I hope you're having more luck than I am." Mel gave a grimace, as that did not sound good at all. Saul sounded almost defeated, and she had been hearing that far too much lately. Luckily she did have good news, news that might even cheer him up later as well.
"Not bad luck, I found a potable water tank that doesn't seem to leak, and got the heaters working on it. We should have running water if I've figured out the plumbing diagrams correctly." That was the big if. The diagrams were well labeled and clearly marked, but trying to trace everything back from the cabin to the tank and make sure that only the correct valves were opened was almost impossible without a complete chart. A chart that did not exist except in computer form, a computer which was still powered off. "Oh and I found a storage room full of freeze dried meals, so if we've got water and power."
"We've got something warm and filling to eat. Gods I'm looking forwards to some real food." Mel gave a smile as she realized Saul had not realized just what else they could do with water and power. She was determined to show him though as soon as they both got back to the quarters. "We're going to have a long day looking at diagrams tomorrow Mel. I'm sure now that we're going to have to power up some of the computers in order to get the fusion plants online, I can't believe how much automation there are in these systems."
Mel gave a silent nod as she thought about it. The Galactica used fission and tylium boosted fission plants for almost all of its power generation, simply because one could design a physical feedback control system, which required minimal if any computer oversight. Not so easy to do with larger fusion plants, in fact impossible.
"Well we pretty much knew that was going to be the case. We'll just have to make sure we take some precautions before bringing it online." Mel thought about the case of explosives that they had packed in the Valkyrie expressly for those precautions. "Do you want me to pick up the kit from the Valk on my way back?"
"No, I don't want to do a solo space walk. We'll need to move the Valkyrie to a hanger anyways. We'll do that tomorrow as well." Mel bit her lip as she checked the valve positions one last time before buttoning up what she hoped was the final access panel.
"Well we'll find out how good of a plumber I am when we get back to the quarters. Meet you there?"
"Affirmative, fifteen minutes Mel."