Word Count:21,422
Date:10/29/04
Series: One
Rating: T
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: William Adama and Laura Roslin
Warnings:
Summary:
Spoilers/Disclaimers:
Chapter 1
Laura Roslin, President of the Colonies, was tired. That was an understatement. She was exhausted. Thankfully, in just a while she would at least be able to lay down. Still, the destination of the bed she was headed to would not make matters better.
But she was damn glad there was a place to go. The Lenna Dell was a fine ship, such as she was, and was probably the only thing keeping Laura alive. Once a research vessel from Caprica, it had been a legal solution to the outright ban of networking within the medical community. Scientists hadn’t been allowed to accumulate their information on a network, compiling research and cross-referencing findings, so ships had been designed for that purpose. Central locations for research and pharmaceutical development, they had been home to some of the greatest minds of the planet in the areas of medicine and drug therapy.
The Lenna Dell had been between locations at the beginning of the war, and had defied the order to land due to the combustible nature of many of her chemicals used for processing. She had gone into the atmosphere, and that had been what had saved her. Once Colonial One had started gathering a fleet from the miscellaneous vessels left intact, the Lenna Dell had slid right in with the rest. It hadn’t been until weeks later that they had realized the true treasure they had.
As illness and disease swept the overcrowded conditions of their ships, and injuries made themselves known, the need for a central location for the medical personnel became evident. Gathering essentially every medical worker from every ship, they had been brought together and then redistributed with a more efficient understanding of what was available. The ship once more became a central location of information, only this time it was practical rather than theoretical.
It had been upon that ship that Doctor Salik had located someone with the experience and desire to treat a tenacious type of breast cancer that had been making Laura’s life a living hell. She didn’t want to complain; after all, she was at least alive. But that didn’t make constant nausea and incessant pain following radiation any easier to manage. The part of her that was grateful that the chemicals still existed and the radiation equipment as well was not at the fore.
The treatments had been going on for over a month now, aggressively trying to destroy the tumor or at least reduce it to an operable size. The chemotherapy was literally unbearable. She passed out most times after vomiting for hours on end, but the radiation was worse. Her only saving grace was that the treatments did have breaks in between, and she had a few days to heal and recover. And, she still had her hair. It wasn’t much, but with fleet depending on her for some kind of leadership, it was all she had.
Laura held her head as the transport vessel began to dock. She absolutely hated this part of the journey. She could have managed if there were no landings or takeoffs, but the launching and docking was enough to make an already unbearable nausea completely unacceptable. She closed her eyes tightly, breathing in through her nose out from between gritted teeth, and just tried not to lose what little breakfast she had choked down. She needed what little strength the food would give her, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to stomach it later today.
Finally the movement around her stilled and she was able to open her eyes without the cabin spinning. She was here. The worst was over, for now.
She waited until she heard the pop of the hatch, and then tried to stand. Billy was at her side in a heartbeat, his thin arms bracing her without his ever being asked. When he’d come on as her assistant, he couldn’t have expected this. She sometimes felt guilty for dragging him into this, but he never complained. He was just there; a quiet and supportive presence that was ever efficient. She couldn’t manage without him. Maybe that was why she had never offered him the option to leave. Thank the Lords he had never asked.
Once she was steady he moved back to an appropriate distance. She appreciated the discretion as much as the support, and thanked him with a shaky smile. He returned it with one more genuine, and she was reminded again that she had life a lot luckier than many. She could get through this. She didn’t have a choice.
"Good morning, Miss Laura."
President Roslin took a deep breath and smiled at the sunny voice that awaited her in the docking bay. "Good morning, Princess," she told the little girl. "How are you today."
"I am just fine," Katee told her with a grin. Then Laura lost her audience as Katee spotted her assistant behind her. "Mr. Billy!" he squeeled.
"Hi, Katee," he responded, obligingly picking the girl up and twirling her around him twice before setting her back down. Laura wished she had that kind of strength, even as the squeeling made her head ache.
"I’m ‘posed to walk Miss Laura to the treatment room," Katee announced unnecessarily. This was not a new routine.
"Lead the way," she told her with a small hand gesture. Katee turned and took off at a skip. Billy had to take Laura’s arm to help her keep up. Still, it was worth the rush. There was something clean and sweet about Katee that Laura missed in working with adults. The beauty was that Katee would always be sweet.
Perhaps it was years in the schools, but Laura had known on sight that Katee was a special little girl. It wasn’t the stereotypical roundness of her face, or the flat bridge of her nose. It wasn’t even the slow speech or odd shape of her eyes that had announced the most common congenital anomaly from Caprica. What had shown Laura just how special the child would be had been a simple smile, innocent and honest and pure. Laura had known then that she was in love.
What she hadn’t known was what a child like that was doing on the fleet’s hospital ship. While she had been pleasant enough in the girl’s presence – not a trial, as she loved children and always had – she had been less polite when she’d spoken to the lead physician.
"Shouldn’t she be with her parents?" Laura had asked Doctor Hucker, the ranking military physician that had taken over the command of the medical personnel.
"Most definitely," he had replied, and had then said no more.
"Well…" she had prompted.
"We don’t know who or where they are," he had said with a sigh. "She doesn’t even know her last name. When she arrived just after the attack, she was sick and weak, so we nursed her a bit and she sprung back with the resiliency of childhood. No one seems to know where she comes from or where she belongs, so she’s stayed here."
The explanation made sense, but it didn’t satisfy. "She needs to be with other children," Roslin had announced, her skills as an educator coming to the front of her mind. "She needs the social and academic exposure. We need to transfer her to one of the ships that has adequate facilities to educate her."
"How many educational specialists are still alive?" the doctor had asked. "What ship would that be? Who would she stay with? The only option we found was the Kastyline, and I refuse to put her on the orphan barge. She’d be eaten alive by that group."
Laura had her own ideas about the Kastyline, the ship where they had placed most of their child care workers and their families along with the four hundred children that had been parentless following their survival of the war. It was a horrible solution, but distributing the children throughout the fleet would take time. It had been the best they could do. The ship was first priority after the Galactica for protection and supplies, and it was staffed to the best of their meager ability with teachers and as many pediatricians as they could recruit. They did their best for the children. Laura demanded that much, and the Commander hadn’t argued. He too realized that the children were their future.
But the doctor was right. A disabled child would be fodder for teasing. Children never meant it, and often regretted it, but they were cruel by nature.
"How old is she?" Laura had asked softly, guessing six or seven by her size.
"We’re not sure. Taking in the teeth that have come in, we’d estimate ten or so. She doesn’t know her age. All she knows is that the techs here are nice to her, and she can help in small ways. It’s a functional life, and it’s the best we can provide.
Laura hadn’t been able to argue, although the mother in her regretted the child’s constant exposure to illness and suffering. The Lenna Dell was a good ship – state of the art in many ways – but the most serious of injuries were sent here, and the most ill of patients. Due to space and the difficulty of transporting people back and forth in their limited shuttles, they tended to move the doctors rather than the patients.
That had been another challenge. Getting the medical personnel in one place was beneficial for consultation and convenience, but with over forty ships to manage it wasn’t always easy getting the doctors to the patients. Some of the ships had assigned physicians and techs – ships like the Galactica and the Astral Queen, where populations were large and the potential for injury and illness high – but for most of the ships there was only a tech stationed aboard, if that, and a doctor that rotated through once every week or two. Even on the Galactica, specialists only came once a week for appointments and only the rarest stayed aboard for extended treatment. It was not an ideal situation, but nothing about their ragtag survival was ideal. They did the best they could.
And yet Laura had to believe that there was a better place for this child. Exposure to cancer patients, insane patients, and critically ill patients could not be good for her. Or so she had thought.
But Katee was a resilient child, full of laughter and joy with the world around her. She brought a ray of sunshine to the dismal gray of the ship, and she could make all but the most ill of the patients smile in gratitude if nothing else. She was a walking, talking beam of light.
She was also the only thing Laura looked forward to on this damned ship. As they reached the treatment room where she would receive the day’s medications, Laura sat heavily onto the narrow bed. She had done this before, repeatedly, and she still hated it. Each treatment seemed to make her weaker than the one before instead of making her better. There was much truth to the saying that often the cure was worse than the disease.
Katee fluffed her pillow and smiled, and Laura had to smile back. "What have you been doing?" she asked the child, even as Billy took his seat by the door. She had never asked him to stay for these sessions; he simply seemed to think it was part of his responsibility to her. She wished that she were strong enough to send him away, but likely she would need someone to call for a tech when it got really bad. There were times she couldn’t even reach the call-button.
"I been working," she said proudly. "I got to take trays for breakfast, and I’m gonna go pick them up with Miss Kathy," she announced. Such pleasure, Laura thought, from such menial work. How much they could all learn from this child.
"That sounds fun," Laura lied.
"Do you want a food tray?" Katee asked with a furrowed brow.
"No, Princess," she replied. "My tummy hurts me when I get my shots."
Katee nodded gravely. While she had been protected from the most ill of patients, there was only so much she could be guarded when she essentially had free-roam of the ship. It was either that or imprison her, and even Laura couldn’t see that as an option. The crew seemed to take care of her, each one looking out for their little princess, so Laura hadn’t pushed matters with Doctor Hucker since that first encounter. It was just as well. The man had a commanding personality and was far too much like Adama for her liking. He was military, and had no tolerance for politicians. Like it or not, Laura was that. At least until they could make arrangements otherwise.
Yet to force an election would mean revealing her illness to the fleet, and that was a panic she didn’t want to be responsible for. They had few enough leaders to rely on, and most took heart from her understanding nature and status as a member of the "real" council that had once existed by their election. Letting them know that she was ill – possibly even fatally ill – would undermine the fragile security that she and Adama had tried to foster.
Adama. He knew. It hadn’t been possible to keep her illness from him, as he was privy to every flight in the fleet, and was personal friends with Doctor Salik, who ran the fleet Life Station. Patient confidentiality be damned, the doctor had the Commander in his office within minutes of her request for assistance with the matter. It hadn’t been one of her finer moments.
To his credit, Adama had been both understanding and helpful; she had to give him that. It didn’t mean that she liked his demand that she immediately begin therapy aboard the Lenna Dell. She did so under the guise of encouraging the patients and regular maintenance physicals, but her weekly visits would soon look suspicious. If all went well, another month would make the tumor operable and they could just get it over with. That had been Adama’s hope. Explaining her frequent illness, however, had been done by blaming the stress of command, and she didn’t like the implication. She could perform her office duties as well as anyone, regardless of how she had obtained those duties. She refused to leave the fleet to solely military leadership. The people – the regular people – deserved a voice.
So she provided that voice. She provided the diplomacy. She did her best to begin building the cabinet by appointment or election, whichever was most practical at the time. She tried to keep the civilian matters separate from the military machine, and she prayed every day that she would be able to remain healthy enough to do so.
As the technician arrived with a little bag of clear fluid, she wondered once more if maybe she was being unrealistic in planning anything at all.
"Good morning, Madame President," the tech said softly. "How are you feeling?"
"Her tummy hurts," Katee supplied.
The technician grinned. "I imagine it does. This won’t help much. I can give you an injection for the nausea, though. The choice is yours."
She had taken the shot before – out of pure desperation – but it tended to knock her out for hours and leave her groggy for days. And the vomiting wasn’t really stopped by the shot, but rather it was delayed. She would still throw up; better here than in her quarters where she would have to clean up the mess herself.
"No, thank you," Laura replied. "Let’s just get it done."
The tech nodded, and waited while Laura unbuttoned the first few buttons of her blouse to reveal the direct line catheter they had placed at her first appointment. The drugs were far to damaging to regular veins, so this went into an arterial line. From there it went to her heart, and into every cell of her body. Now, if the damned stuff would just work, she would believe it worth the torture of the treatments.
With Katee watching avidly, the technician inserted a needle into the catheter line and begun the infusion of deadly chemicals. There was something vaguely insane about poisoning one’s self to get healthy, but she was beyond caring about the irony. Instead, she looked over at the bright and sunny face surrounded by long, straight blond hair and equally straight bangs. It helped to keep herself centered on something other than the misery.
"Can I read you a book?" she asked the child.
Katee’s face began to glow as her smile spread wide and fast. "I’ll go get one," she said anxiously, and scampered away as quickly as her legs would carry her. It was an old routine for them, even after no more than a month. Laura would read one of the rare books remaining from their home world – she wasn’t even sure where they had come from – and Katee would curl up beside her and point to the pictures. Her favorite was that of a beautiful fairy princess with wide blue eyes and long blond hair. That was where Katee had gotten her nickname. She was the Princess of the Lenna Dell, the guardian angel of sick politicians, and the only bright spot in an otherwise gloomy existence.
But for the moment she was out of the room, and Laura could let the fatigue and frustration show for just a few minutes. Billy noticed, and came over to hand her the pillows that had been shoved aside when she’d seated herself on the bed, and to hand her a small basin for when the inevitable occurred. She thanked him with another silent smile, then let him off the hook.
"If you’d like to go somewhere else," she began.
"I’ll stay," he said softly. "It’s the least I can do."
"Why do you say that?" she asked in confusion.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before answering. "I told you that my parents moved to Picon, but I didn’t really tell you why."
"You said it was to be with your sister, and their grandchildren."
His eyes widened that she had remembered the long distant conversation, but he didn’t comment. "That’s true, but there was a reason they went then. Mom had just been diagnosed with cancer. She wanted what time was left with her family. In a way, I guess she got that. But if things had been different, it might be her with the treatments, and I don’t think I’d want her left alone for them."
His face was so earnest, and so young, that she was reminded once more of Katee. There weren’t many people in the fleet that retained any semblance of honesty or graciousness anymore. Survival was foremost, and it was every man for himself as supplies ran low and space ran lower. To see such a generous gift, even if it was just of his time, was something she hadn’t expected.
"I’m so sorry about your parents," she told him gently. "They must have been amazing people, if their son is any indication."
Billy blushed a little at that, then handed her a blanket that was at the foot of the bed and took his seat back in the chair next to it. Katee would be back soon enough, and it was better if they weren’t overly serious when it happened. At the very least, reading a book to the child would pass the time, and force her to keep herself together for a few hours longer.
Right then, every hour was important.
Chapter 2
Lee hated shuttle flight, but it was better than nothing. He had put himself on the roster just to get off the Galactica’s grounded crew for a few hours. Tomorrow he would likely give Kara the same opportunity, just to keep her from climbing the walls. Half of the Vipers were still in repair, and most of the Raptors were being overhauled for defective seals, so that left only about eight real missions in any given day. As much as he wanted at least two of them, he knew it wasn’t fair to anyone.
So he was piloting a shuttle, on a mission his father had recommended, to pick up the President from one of her routine checks of the fleet Hospital Ship. Except it wasn’t a routine mission. That was what his father had told him that morning when he’d been called to the office to get details on the assignment. His father had been surprised to see him.
"I didn’t expect the CAG to be pulling shuttle duty," he had said with a smile. "You put yourself on report or something?"
"Not a chance," he had admitted. "That’s Kara’s tactic. I just exercised my right to do something besides walk the decks. If it’s a problem, though…."
Adama had shaken his head, his smile fading. "Not at all," he admitted. "I’d just as soon it be you. At least you know how to keep your mouth closed about high security issues."
"Security?" Lee had asked. "My understanding was that it was a routine flight."
"Yes and no," Adama had said with a sigh, and then sat down. Over the next hour and a half, Lee had gradually gone from intense surprise to a dull kind of shock. Apparently while the mission was routine, the President’s visits to the hospital ship were not. She had cancer, and might die from it, and to prevent a panic they were keeping it quiet until she’d had a chance to recover or reach a point where they knew she would not.
A scene had flashed through Lee’s mind of the President faltering a couple of weeks back. She had looked tired to the point of exhaustion, and intuition had told Lee that it was more than the stress of leadership. After all, he’d been there when she’d assumed the Presidency, and she hadn’t fallen apart then. But she had been bracing herself against walls to stand and looking more gray than pale. It made a sad kind of sense.
Her treatments were done weekly aboard the Lenna Dell, which was where Lee was headed. She had gone over on the Nautilus, but it was having a little trouble with the docking supports. Rather than take a chance on something failing with their President aboard, Lee was to pick her up in the Daedelus. The Nautilus pilot would stay aboard until they either repaired the problem or brought in a towing crew to get it back to the Galactica.
Sadly, it wasn’t an unusual occurrence. These ships had not been designed to work together, and the adjustments to docking and balancing the fleet was taking a toll. It was frankly the least of the fleet’s problems though. Lee was also aware that fuel shortages were becoming an issue. If they didn’t find a planet with Tylium in the next couple of weeks, chances were high that they would reach a crisis stage. Lee really didn’t think it would come to that – they had come too far to fail now – but it was a possibility. It was just one more piece of information that he had to juggle as Commander of the Air Group. The crew hadn’t really noticed the lowered temperatures to conserve fuel used for heating, but it was only a matter of time before cool became cold, and life support was impossible.
Yet information wasn’t his primary concern at the moment. He was concerned for the President. Regardless of his father’s and her differences, she was a decent woman with the best of intentions, and she’d shown him that she had some good sense thrown into the mix. She hadn’t required a large number of screw-ups before she began deferring to other authorities that might be more qualified to make decisions. One big screw-up had been enough. The same could not be said of many leaders. She had the people’s best interests at heart, and she didn’t make the same mistake twice. There was a damned lot to be said for simple good sense in government.
He didn’t like to think of her sick. She had been a fairly strong woman, he had thought. Not that strong women couldn’t get cancer, but he had a feeling it was worse when they did. She didn’t seem the type to be able to be sick without it making a serious dent in her lifestyle. On top of that, it would seriously affect the fleet. And, although he hated to admit it, she was a damned nice person. No one deserved to be sick, but nice people deserved it even less. It seemed that the nice ones always got the worst of it.
Okay, there was one other reason that having her sick bothered him. As his father had once said, she was a school teacher. A part of him couldn’t help but think of her that way, because it was what she had been first. She reminded him of any of a dozen teachers he’d had over the years – patient, and understanding, and tolerant of his endless questions and Kara’s endless antics. The thought of a teacher ill bothered him. That was dumb, but it was gut-level and he couldn’t help it. Teachers weren’t supposed to get sick.
"Daedelus on final approach," Lee radioed in. "Request docking on port bay."
There was a static pause before he got his clearance and eased the shuttle into position. He felt the tug as the grapples took hold and pulled the shuttle in the rest of the way. His panel showed hard seal, but that didn’t mean it had been smooth. This style of shuttle just wasn’t designed to air-dock with larger vessels – it was designed to land in an open bay. It was no wonder that the Nautilus was having trouble.
Lee shut down systems quickly and then went to the hatch to open it from his side. Once in the docking bay, he was met by Lieutenant Collins, who had flown the President over on the Nautilus for the last several round trips.
"Good morning, Captain," he said in a clear and friendly voice. "I see they didn’t play around with sending the rookies."
"Not for a Presidential transport," Lee agreed. "I’ve been briefed on the nature of her mission. Can you let me know if she’ll need anything else that I should prepare before she boards?"
The Lieutenant was quiet for a moment before answering. "Towels," he admitted. "I keep an extra load on the Nautilus. I’ll bring them over. And if you have any ice, that would be good too."
"No ice, but I have a cooler," he admitted.
"I’ll fill it," the Lieutenant assured him. "Her assistant is pretty good about caring for her so long as he has what he needs. They won’t bother you."
Lee shook his head. "I’m not worried about that. I just want to be sure she’s comfortable."
"Not much you can do about that," the Lieutenant admitted. "Just try to keep the takeoff and landing easy. They seem to bother her the most."
Lee actually had already known that from his time on Colonial One, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he checked his wrist to see that he still had an hour before he was scheduled to leave. He had come early on purpose, wanting to see the ship for himself. Oddly, this was one of the few ships in the fleet that he hadn’t had time aboard, simply because their transports were so limited. This was as good a time as any to look around.
So he began his wandering and looking. He was surprised how much he liked what he found. It was clean to the point of sterility, which was a wonder of its own right in the fleet. Water was at a premium, so he wondered how they were managing it even as he realized the necessity. He passed by a few Colonial officers on his trek, some limping and some rushing, but all pausing to snap a quick salute. If he didn’t find a place to hole up, he might well have a sore arm by the end of this. Salutes were still used aboard the Galactia, but primarily they were confined to the CIC, where they were appropriate and appreciated. No one wanted to salute every time they walked down a hallway, and it served no real purpose.
A familiar face caught his eye as he rounded one corner. It was the president’s aide, although he’d forgotten the name. Something young, that was for damn sure. Bobby? Tommy? He settled for a nondescript, "Hi there," as he approached the young man.
He turned quickly, smiling as he saw him. That was a good sign. It wasn’t likely her assistant would be smiling if Roslin carried any resentment towards his quick return to his duties rather than taking her up on her offer to move to Colonial One. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the offer, but a Heavy Cruiser wasn’t his idea of flight. He preferred the Vipers: sleek, fast, and deadly.
"How’s it going?" Lee asked as he gestured to the closed door that the man had been staring at.
"As well as can be expected," he admitted.
Billy. That was it. Sheesh, one would think he could remember his own father’s name, but he’d never known William to go under anything other than either his rank or "Dad". Well, the exception to that was Tigh, but then they never used one another’s right names. His father still called Paul by Saul, citing some reference in the ancient scrolls where a prophet’s name was changed. Whatever worked for them. After all, with the world gone from around them, everyone needed a good friend. Lee thanked the Lords for Kara every day, and he assumed that his father did the same for Tigh. It was a last link to their past, and a promise for their future. At least it was for him.
"Will she be able to get to the ship?" he asked Billy simply.
"She’ll walk it," he said with a wry grin. "She wouldn’t let anyone see her do otherwise. She’s the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.
Lee smiled at that. He knew a few stubborn women himself, and one in particular came to mind. One that was going to make him crazy if he didn’t get her into a plane soon. It was worse than a drug withdrawal, but he couldn’t deny it. He felt the need to fly himself. That was why he was here.
Lee took the seat that was beside Billy and decided to wait. They didn’t say much, but instead both took the opportunity to enjoy the quiet. If the sounds of illness behind the door were audible, they were not unexpected, nor frequent. Lee did his best to ignore them.
"Mr. Billy!"
Lee turned quickly to see a small blond girl running up to the man next to him. She climbed up on his lap without asking, and he had to smile at the expression on Billy’s face; it was somewhere between pleased and embarrassed.
"Princess, this is Captain Adama," Billy told the girl. "Sir, this little princess is Katee."
"It’s nice to meet you Katee," Lee said, extending one hand. The child was having none of it, instead climbing from Billy’s lap to his own and giving him a huge hug. He couldn’t help but smile. Billy was on the verge of laughter.
"What’m I ‘posed to call you?" she asked earnestly.
He looked into blue eyes that contained sparkly white spots and appeared slightly tilted. She had gorgeous eyes. "How about just Lee," he told her softly. "That’s what my friends call me."
She nodded with a seriousness that was at odds with both her actions and speech. "Mr. Lee," she agreed.
"Just Lee is fine," he corrected, but she shook her head.
"Nope. You’re a grown up, so you have to be a mister. That’s what my daddy always said."
"Were is your daddy?" Lee asked curiously, wondering what the girl was doing running about the ship alone.
"I don’t know," she told him with a furrowed brow. "He’s with my mommy, I think. Do you know my daddy?"
"I don’t think so," Lee answered, confused by the odd look on her face. "What’s his name?"
She shrugged one shoulder, "Daddy."
He nodded. "Well, um… I know a lot of daddies," he said simply. "Is your dad a mister something?"
She shrugged again, settling onto his lap for what appeared to be the duration of his wait. He wished he could mind, but the girl reminded him so much of the kid his father had brought home from the garbage cans that he couldn’t quite take his eyes off her. Maybe it was the dark blond hair, although it was neatly trimmed and combed, as opposed to Kara’s wild tangle. Maybe it was just that pure innocence that reminded him of what Kara had never had. Most likely it was that edge of confusion. He had the distinct idea that her parents hadn’t survived the war, whether she knew it or not. He wasn’t sure where the sad thought had come from.
"Do your parents live on this ship?" he asked her gently.
Katee shook her head. "They went away when the bright lights came," she told him softly. "I miss ‘em."
His heart broke. Looking over at Billy, he saw the same emotion that he was feeling. It was a combination of sadness and pure rage that this child should be all alone. "Where do you live?" he asked.
"Here, silly," she said with her smile returning at full force. "I’m Princess of the Dell."
"I’ll just bet you are," Lee agreed.
His conversation with the girl was cut short as the door before him opened and a technician stepped out accompanying President Roslin. She looked absolutely awful. Her face was somewhere between gray and green, eyes sunken and lips pale. She looked like walking death. He was taken aback at this change from the vibrant woman he had met only months ago.
"There’s the Princess," the President said softly. Her voice was faint, but audible.
Katee immediately hopped off his lap to give the President an oddly gentle hug, if her reaction to him had been an indication. She definitely seemed to know that gentleness was called for. President Roslin hugged her back, frail arms grasping only slightly.
"Captain Apollo," she said with a barely perceptible nod. "I’m grateful that you’re early. I would very much like to get back to my quarters on the Galactica."
"Yes, Sir," he said softly, wondering how she could even stand when she looked so ill. Again Kara popped into his mind, and with her the memory of a stubbornness bordering on stupidity at times. She was horrible when she was sick. He was grateful that it didn’t happen often. "I’d be happy to leave as soon as you’re ready."
"What do you say, Princess," she asked the girl softly. "Can you walk me to my plane?"
Katee smiled broadly and carefully took the President’s hand. "Is your tummy better now?" she asked her.
"A little bit, Princess," the President replied. "Still kind of yucky."
Katee nodded her understanding. "So we should walk slow," she decided.
"That would be fine."
Lee and Billy stepped in behind the President and her small escort. Lee watched for stability as they made the short trek to the ship, and stepped forward to take one arm as they reached the steps to the docking bay. She didn’t wave him off, but leaned on him heavily as she made it up the several steps with difficulty. She would have done so with more ease if she’d had her other hand for the rail, but she didn’t seem inclined to let go of the small girl’s hand. He really couldn’t blame her.
Once aboard the small shuttle, Katee ushered the President to a seat that reclined and watched her sit heavily. Then she looked around until she found a pillow and blanket, and carried them carefully to her charge. It was almost comical watching the child spread the blanket over the President, and tuck an unnecessary pillow behind her head. Roslin’s smile stayed intact, though. Not natural, but intact.
"There you go," Katee said proudly. "If your tummy gets sick again, you can use one of those bags," she informed the President. "That’s what I had to do when my tummy was hurting."
"Thank you," President Roslin replied earnestly. "I couldn’t have gotten back here without you. You be sure to come see me the next time I’m here."
"Next week, like before?" Katee asked.
"Next week," Roslin confirmed. "Have a good week, Princess."
Katee’s smile could have lit half the ship. "You feel better," she commanded. And Lee thought that if anyone could command an illness to retreat, it would be this little scamp. He couldn’t keep his own smile off his face as he watched her go back out through the door, walk carefully down the stairs using both hands on the rail, and then take off skipping down the hall.
"She’s something," Lee said to no one in particular.
"She’s beautiful," Roslin confirmed. Billy was behind her, gently taking away the pillow that had her head pressed forward so that her chin was resting on her chest.
"She lives on board?" Lee asked.
Billy answered for the President, who had closed her eyes and effectively tuned them out. Lee couldn’t blame her. "Yes," the young man said. "The doctors and technicians have pretty much adopted her. They didn’t want her sent to the orphan ship."
Lee nodded at that. He was glad there was someone looking out for the child.
"Will she need anything before we go?" Lee asked.
"I’m fine, Apollo," she answered by herself. "I’ll manage until I’m back in my room."
Lee didn’t see how she could, but he didn’t argue. He simply made his way to the front of the ship and began preparations for the smoothest takeoff he had ever attempted. He managed it well, and the flight was quick an uneventful. He again exercised his ability to be precise as he landed the shuttle on the Galactica without so much as a bump. It was tiring, but not so tiring as landing a Viper hands-on.
By the time he had systems shut down, Billy had Roslin half way down the ladder to the Galactica’s flight deck. He thought of following, but decided it wouldn’t be welcome. If it were him that was sick, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted an audience. He finished clearing out his paperwork before handing his clipboard to a deck hand and walking the distance to his office. Instead of going in, he detoured to his father’s office, unsure whether he would be there. Adama and Tigh alternated shifts of command, and while they were frequently seen there together, just as often one was trying to recover from the exhausting twelve hours of life and death decisions.
Lee got lucky, and heard his father’s, "Yes?" when he knocked at the hatch.
"Just me, Sir," he said as he eased the door open. "Do you have a minute?"
As it turned out, his father was just getting ready for work. He was in his undershirts and pants, but hadn’t yet gotten to the upper half of his uniform. Wiping his face on a towel, Adama gestured for Lee to come in.
Seeing that the bed was not yet made, Lee began quickly arranging the covers in the usual military style. It took him only a couple of moments to have the bed made with its requisite military corners, and tight enough that a coin would have bounced a foot.
"You haven’t lost your touch," his father said with a grin, now pulling on his uniform shirt.
Lee gave him a sheepish grin. He hadn’t even been thinking, just moving to keep his thoughts at bay. Now he sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed and faced his father. "You’ve had me making beds since I was three," he remarked. "It’s a habit."
"I’m sure it is. And thank you; I’m running behind this morning."
"Finally get more than an hour’s sleep?" Lee asked with an attempt at sarcasm. It fell flat, because there was more truth than joke in the words.
"Forgot to set the alarm," he said with embarrassment. "If Lieutenant Gaeta hadn’t called to check on me I’d still be sleeping. Thank the Lords Saul doesn’t have anywhere to go."
Lee grinned at that. "He probably would have let you sleep the day if you’d asked," he suggested. "It might be a good idea. Nothing much is happening now."
His father sat heavily on his chair and reached for a boot. "That’s the problem," he admitted. "What needs to be happening is some Tylium processing, but there isn’t any to process."
"We could always jump back to a known location," Lee suggested. "It might be a good idea before we get too low to jump."
Adama looked up sadly. "We already are," he admitted. "Not the Galactica, of course, but most of the ships. I won’t leave them without some kind of protection. We simply have to find a source in this quadrant. I have Vipers looking because our Raptors are down, but then you know that."
Lee nodded. He made the schedules. He knew what the missions were. "So it’s getting tight?"
"We’re not at a crisis point yet," his father said firmly. "We’ll find a way. We don’t have a choice."
"Well, I’d better let you get ready for work," Lee told him as he stood.
"Didn’t you want to see me for something?" Adama asked.
Lee really didn’t want to bring it up given his father’s current burdens, but he couldn’t see a way around it now. "President Roslin," Lee admitted. "Are you aware of how sick she is."
"Yes, I am," Adama said quietly.
"Don’t you think something should be done to speed up the process of appointing a government?" he asked. "She looks like she may not make it to morning, much less through an election."
"If she becomes incapacitated, she has asked that I act in her stead until she recovers," Adama said simply. "I won’t do so unless she orders it, or is unable to order anything. We don’t have a lot of checks and balances right now, but we need them. We have to pray that she recovers."
"And if she doesn’t?"
"Then we do our best to create a civilian government on our own," he admitted. "The general population won’t tolerate military leadership for long. They are too used to freedom and having a voice, and that isn’t possible while maintaining military discipline. There has to be a final word. It’s simply how things work."
"I would think you’d be happy not to have her opposition," Lee said in confusion. "Not that I think you’d wish her ill, but if she were unable to continue I’d think it would be counterproductive to appoint someone else to replace her."
"It’s what I’ll do, Son," Adama told him firmly as he tied his second boot and stood. "Was there anything else?"
"No, Sir," Lee admitted. "I just wanted to be sure you understood how sick she really is."
Adama nodded gravely. "I check in to see her at least twice a week, with or without official reasons. There aren’t many people who know, and that’s the way it has to stay, but I would assume she needs someone around her for encouragement. As you now know the situation, you should probably do the same. It’s bad enough being sick without being lonely too."
Lee nodded. His father had a point. He would be sure he dropped in to see her on occasion, even if it was just to let her know that he was thinking about her. She was a nice person. Again it occurred to him that nice people tended to get a raw deal in this world.
Chapter 3
Laura Roslin finally lifted her head from the basin and put it back against the pillow. She wasn’t in her quarters, as she had intended to be, but in the infirmary. When she had finally passed out from the constant vomiting, Billy had called for help and she had awoken with an IV in one arm and a very annoyed Doctor Salik looking down at her.
"Dehydration is as dangerous as this cancer," he had said without preamble. "And the death is decidedly quicker. If you can’t be trusted to pay attention to your own body’s signals, I will admit you to Life Station and to hell with all this damn secrecy. Are we clear?"
President Roslin didn’t see the humor in her being ordered by a Captain – doctor or not, nor the irony in his decision to violate the Commander’s orders. What she saw was the man who was doing his best to keep her alive, and that she had let him down. She had let them all down. "Yes, Sir," she told him in a croaky voice that was weak from her throat’s constant abuse.
The doctor took a deep breath while he considered her. "Half of the nausea is from the dehydration," he explained in a more sympathetic manner. "And of course the imbalance of electrolytes and low blood sugar. How long has it been since you kept anything down?"
"I don’t know," she said vaguely. It was the truth. She couldn’t remember the last meal that hadn’t made a return visit.
He nodded. "I’m starting you on intravenous nutrition," he explained. "It will bypass the digestive tract and go directly to your blood. It should get your strength back in short order. It may not stop the vomiting, but it will prevent you losing the fuel your body will need to get well."
"Thank you," she said simply.
"It’s not a solution," he clarified. "It will destroy your kidneys in a matter of weeks. But it’s all we have until we get you through the next two sessions of chemo. The problem is that I’ll have to get it in you on a regular basis, and that will require your presence here or a tech in your quarters. Which would you prefer?"
"Why can’t I do it myself?"
"Because you aren’t qualified," he told her. "We’re talking about introducing high-powered nutritional concentrate directly into your blood. The potentials
for contamination or infection are very high. That’s why I don’t normally offer this as an option. Your body isn’t giving me any choice. You refuse to slow down, lay down, or rest. If you can’t give your body what it needs to heal, then I have to start pitting body systems against one another to do it for you. I don’t appreciate this choice, but if I have to make it I’ll damn well do it right. So, here or a private tech?"
"The tech," she allowed. "I’m sorry I’m such a lousy patient."
He didn’t reply to that. She couldn’t blame him. Her illness had kept him hopping since she’d let him know about it two weeks following the destruction of the colonies. She hadn’t wanted to do it, especially since at the time they hadn’t had any of the resources necessary to treat it, but the doctor on Caprica had been adamant that she receive immediate treatment before the cancer progressed any further through her body. If she was going to lead what was left of the population, even long enough for someone more qualified to be elected, she would have to do her best to stay alive for the job.
She was beginning to wish that she had simply decided to die. It would have been easier. Self-pity wasn’t something she enjoyed, so she cut that thought off before it really formed. She didn’t like being sick, but she liked whining even less.
So instead she cleared her mind and tried to rest without much success. The IV in her hand stung, and she absently wondered why they hadn’t just used the line in her chest as they did for the chemo. She also wondered whether Billy would bother to bring her work down to her, and decided that likely he wouldn’t. For such a young man, he was awfully protective. Knowing he had gone through something similar with his mother certainly explained a lot.
She was so busy trying to rest that she didn’t bother with listening to what was going on around her. Her own mind was filled with miscellaneous thoughts that had no relevance, and no string of thought seemed to go anywhere. She was actually relieved when a soft voice broke through her attempts to take a nap.
"How are you feeling?"
She smiled in spite of herself. Her greatest rival; and her biggest supporter. She didn’t know what to do with the man. She had disliked him on sight, and had quickly learned to respect him even before she fully understood. He was a good man. She supposed that was the bottom line. "Better, Commander," she replied without opening her eyes.
"I was a little surprised to hear that you’d come down here. I thought it must be bad."
She heard him shifting through the room and finally opened her eyes to see him standing near the foot of the bed she was on. "It wasn’t voluntary," she admitted. "Billy sent for the medics, and I was in no condition to argue."
"At least you admit it," he allowed. "What can I do?"
She sighed. "Nothing. It’s just a combination of dehydration and lack of food. The doctor is taking care of it."
He looked down on her for a moment, then shook his head. "Somehow, I don’t think it’s that easy. You’re going to have to slow down."
"How do you propose I do that?" she asked softly. "Announce to the populace that I have cancer and need a few weeks off for intensive therapy?"
"Maybe just announcing that you’ve taken ill, and will be reducing your responsibilities until you recover," he suggested.
"I have a job to do," she said softly. "I didn’t ask for it, but neither can I back away from it. I took an oath."
"So did I," he told her gently. "But that oath doesn’t mean anything if I work myself into a grave. I have a responsibility to keep myself healthy and ready for duty. You have that same responsibility. You need to slow yourself down."
"Lords, I hate it when you’re right," she admitted with a slight smile.
"I try not to let it happen often," he told her with a wink. "As far as I’m concerned, you have the most recent virus that’s tackling our crew, and you’ll be resting for a few days. That’s all anyone needs to know."
"Thank you," she responded simply. It was the least she could say, but he didn’t seem to mind. He nodded his acceptance, then took a seat in the chair near the door.
"I just wish all our problems were that easy to solve," he muttered. "Do you mind if I hide out here for a few minutes?"
"I can’t see you hiding from anything."
He smiled again, but then it faded. He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t want to bother her. It was the same expression she saw on Billy’s face at least twice a day. "Go ahead," she said softly. "I promise not to get out of this bed to do anything about it."
He looked at her for a moment more, then sighed. "I’ve had to dispatch security forces to a number of ships," he admitted. "Rumors are spreading that there are fuel and food shortages, and attacks have begun on select populations. It bothers me that people would turn against each other when we need one another to survive."
She nodded her understanding. "We’ve discussed this," she reminded him. "We knew there would be those who took their own survival more seriously than others’."
"I know. But I never thought I’d have to send security in to protect our weakest," he said softly. "There have been attacks on the Minestra and the Lenna Dell both. Patients, mostly. Those who are old and weak, and who some feel are unworthy to live. It’s infuriating."
"The Lenna Dell?" she asked anxiously.
He nodded. "There have been a few injuries there, but no deaths. When several of their elderly patients fell ill, they began tests to find out if we had a new virus on our hands. It turned out to be poison. The kitchen staff has been questioned extensively, but so far there are no leads. That’s why I have security placed there now. My men may not be perfect, but they are honest. If they see anything going on, they’ll let me know."
"Do you know what sections are affected?" she asked softly.
"The long-term care units, so far," he admitted. "But we’ve had the same thing happening on the Minestra in a ward of disabled patients. Many lost everything with the war, including parts of their bodies, and now someone wants to take their lives. It’s as bad as what the Cylons were doing, only worse. It’s selective genocide."
"Any deaths there?"
He had that look of uncertainty again. He didn’t answer.
"You know I’ll find out," she reminded him.
"Six," he admitted. "Four by poisoning, and two by suffocation. It’s deliberate murder, and it’s directed at those who can’t protect themselves."
She shook her head in a combination of frustration and anger. These were her people, as much as they were the Commander’s, and it felt as though she were being personally attacked. "We need to be increasing our population," she ground out. "Not destroying it."
He nodded. She knew they felt the same way about it. They shouldn’t be attacking one another; they should be having children.
Children.
"The Lenna Dell," she said with urgency. "Those that were poisoned, were they adults or children."
"Adults, I believe. Why?"
She closed her eyes in a measure of relief, but her urgency wasn’t abated. "I need to see Captain Apollo," she told him anxiously. "Immediately."
Adama stood quickly. "What’s the matter? Are you ill?"
She shook her head. "There’s a child," she explained. "She is disabled, and on the Lenna Dell. I want her removed until we find out what’s happening. She doesn’t have any family; only the medical staff looking after her. We need to move her someplace safe."
"Why isn’t she on the Kastyline? She would be safe there."
Laura shook her head so adamantly that she made herself dizzy and had to pause. "I know children," she finally said. "They are cruel to anyone different. Katee’s disability is obvious, and she’s too gentle to fight back. It would be like sending a puppy into a pack of wolves."
"Why Lee?" he asked.
"He was there," she told him. "He’s seen her. He knows who she is. He can take Billy with him. She likes Billy, and I know she’ll come with hif. there," he said softly. "And a warship is no place for a child."
"There are children aboard the Galactica," she argued. "And I’m not talking about something permanent. Just bring her here until we catch whoever is doing this. If you don’t, I’ll do my best to do it myself, and to hell with my supposed ‘illness’."
"Who will care for her?"
"Billy," she improvised. "She likes him."
"Billy has duties of his own," the Commander reminded her.
"Why are you making this so difficult," she said in exasperation. "It’s a simple request. I just want this child to be safe. There must be some kind of care available here. We have a classroom set up for more than fifteen children on this ship. I know, because I arranged it. She can go to class during the day and stay with Billy in the evenings."
He just looked at her. She knew she was being unreasonable. She knew it. She just couldn’t stop it. She cared about the little girl with the blond hair, and every time she saw those sparkling eyes she was reminded why they were trying so damn hard to keep their civilization alive. Reason told her that Katee was fine, and safe, and most likely better off where she was. But reason wasn’t straightening out her heart, and that heart wanted the child as far from any attacks as she could possibly be. Security wasn’t enough; she wanted Katee here, where she could be assured of her health and well being.
The Commander had demanded that she and her immediate cabinet be housed on the Galactica. Space had been cleared, and they were provided with round-the-clock security in the event that anyone should get the idea to express their frustration at living conditions by taking it out on the government directly. She wanted that same security for Katee, and nothing less would do. It wasn’t reasonable, nor practical, nor logical. It simply was.
The Commander was still looking at her, still considering. At least he hadn’t yet said ‘no’." "She’s just an innocent little girl," Laura said as she closed her eyes. She was starting to tear up, and she hated to be weak in front of this man. "You can’t leave her there. Please."
"I’ll speak to my son," he finally agreed. "If the child is willing to come, and if those caring for her will consent, then we’ll bring her to the Galactica on a temporary basis. Once the situation is more stable, she will have to be returned. Yes, there are children on the Galactica, but it’s because they are directly related to someone aboard or have been essentially adopted. In the event of a Cylon attack, the Galactica will be the primary target."
"And the only ship with built in defenses," she added. "Please."
"I’ve already agreed," he told her gently. "I’ll take care of it."
"I know you think I’m being silly," she began, but he cut her off.
"You’re being human," he told her. "If we don’t care for those weaker than ourselves, then there just isn’t a point. If it’s this important to you, I’ll bring her here. We’ll work out her care somehow. Perhaps someone she knows can come with her. That could be a solution."
"Thank you," she told him gratefully. "I’m sorry."
He shook his head, not even acknowledging her apology. "No thanks is necessary. I haven’t done anything yet. I’ll speak to Lee and send him back over to the Lenna Dell. Try not to let it worry you."
"I bet you’re sorry you mentioned it," she said in a tired voice.
"Actually, yes," he admitted. "But only because it’s worried you. I didn’t mean to add to the stress you’re under. You have enough to deal with."
"You do as well," she allowed. "I know you speak to me about it, but do you have anyone else to confide in? No one man can carry everything by himself. And," she took a deep breath, "I may not always be here."
"I told you because you would have found out anyway," he told her honestly. "If I was just worried about the situation, I’d take it to my XO. He’s a good listener, and a good friend. Don’t worry about me. Probably half the reason you’re so sick is that you worry."
The last had been said with a wink but she replied as though it had been serious. "I’ve always taken things seriously," she admitted. "My job has always been making things happen for our future – our children – and that’s a serious business. It’s more than passing laws and hoping for the best; it’s considering their needs with every thought, every breath. I don’t know any other way."
"I know," he told her softly as he stood to leave. "And there are times that I’m grateful for it. But I still think you need to let yourself rest."
"I will," she promised. "Just let me know when Katee is aboard."
He shook his head with a small smile. "Damned stubborn woman," he said without heat.
"Always," she returned with a matching smile. "So don’t forget it."
She could swear she heard his laughter as he walked from the room, but she was too tired to know for sure. Sleep was finally coming to her, and she welcomed the momentary oblivion it offered.
Chapter 4
Lee Adama once more found himself behind the controls of a transport shuttle, but at the very least he wasn’t alone. It had taken him twenty minutes to talk her out of insisting to pilot the vessel, but he had finally managed to get Kara into the co-pilot seat as they set out for the Lenna Dell. Half the time he had been tempted to let her fly the damn shuttle, but it was a matter of male pride more than anything else.
Well, that and basic control issues. He had enough trouble being aboard the Galactica when someone else was running the show; he couldn’t’ tolerate it on a smaller vessel. He had learned that on Colonial One when he’d been so tempted to knock a perfectly good pilot out of his seat just to manage the situation himself. Sometimes, he thought he was far too much like his father for his own good. At the very least he knew his own faults, even if he wouldn’t admit them aloud.
But he had wanted Kara along. First, for the company; she kept his mind busy. And secondly he wanted her help with the child he had been instructed to bring back. While the girl had been happy enough to crawl all over him when Billy had been there, he had no way of knowing if the familiarity would continue when he arrived without the younger man. Despite his father’s suggestion, Billy had been up to his ears in the President’s work, and he couldn’t be spared for the moment. As the only other person aboard the Galactica with any experience with her, that had left Lee on his own. He assumed a feminine presence – however untraditional she might be – would smooth things over if little Katee got upset.
Getting permission to take her had been easy. One call to Doctor Hucker had assured not only the staff’s cooperation, but the physician’s relief. Apparently, President Roslin hadn’t been the only one to think of Katee when threats had been presented against the weakest members of the fleet. The thought still made Lee sick. Survival was one thing, but survival at the expense of others was unforgivable.
So he and Kara were on their way to the hospital ship to pick up a little girl and deliver her safely to the Galactica. It was his second mission in as many days, and Lee was beyond grateful. He was almost enjoying himself.
"So, we go in, pick up the kid, and fly back? That’s it?"
"That’s it," he assured Kara. "Twenty minutes tops."
"And I’m here because…"
"Because you were bored," he told her with a grin. "And who knows, you might be able to help me out with her."
"I don’t know anything about kids," she countered. "But you’re right; if I’m off the Galactica, it’s a good thing. I was getting seriously claustrophobic."
Lee turned his head to watch as Kara looked out the front canopy with every evidence of true relief. He couldn’t blame her. There was something about the open expanse of space, with or without visible stars in the distance, that was just plain comforting.
"So, what do we do with her when we get her there?" she asked him.
"At this point, she’s going to Life Station," he said. "She’s comfortable around doctors and techs, and it’ll be a familiar environment. Besides, Cassie said she’d be happy to watch her for a few days."
"Cassie? She doesn’t strike me as particularly motherly."
He shrugged one shoulder. "She doesn’t need to be," Lee told her. "Just so long as she’s good babysitter material."
Kara nodded, but didn’t reply. He didn’t press her. Kara had never felt comfortable around kids – not even when she was one – but it wasn’t really her comfort that had prompted him to invite her. It was Katee’s. Something told him the little girl wasn’t going to be as thrilled with the solution to her safety as Roslin was. Lee wasn’t entirely sure that he was comfortable with it either. Kids and a war ship didn’t strike him as a good match, but he had to admit that they didn’t have a great deal of choice. He’d been aboard the Kastyline, and it wasn’t a friendly place. They did the best they could for the kids, but most of them were a long way from sweet and innocent. The youngest of the children had been taken into families aboard various ships, and who was left were essentially the more difficult children. They were troubled, lonely, and traumatized. And being children, they took out their feelings on anyone weaker than themselves. Katee was definitely that.
The flight was as short as yesterday’s, but the landing procedure was decidedly more difficult. He requested clearance, waited, and requested again while holding steady just off the port bow of the spacecraft. Finally he was given clearance, but it was tense rather than friendly. It wasn’t an atmosphere he particularly cared for, and he was even more grateful that they were taking Katee off the ship.
Once they were hard-docked, their hatch wasn’t immediately released. That in itself was odd. He popped his side, and waited with veiled impatience for someone to let them aboard. Perhaps it was being the Commander’s son, but he wasn’t used to such a rude reception and it made him wonder just what had really happened on this ship.
Kara wasn’t looking any more pleased at the situation than he was, but she remained quiet while they waited. When the hatch finally opened, they exited to the ramp and a reception of armed guards. Well, this was fun.
"I’m Captain Apollo," Lee said loud and clear. "I have clearance from Commander Adama to pick up a child that’s being cared for here."
"I know that," the apparent leader of the security team replied, lowering his weapon and stepping forward to offer his hand. "We confirmed it before we opened the hatch. I spoke with the Commander myself."
"Good," Lee replied as he took the man’s hand and shook it briefly. "So, is there a problem?"
"Several," the man replied with a weary sigh. "But we’ve sent someone to get the girl for you. I can’t say I’m sorry to have one less person to try to protect. This place is getting to be a madhouse."
"Any leads?" Kara asked as she stepped forward and around Lee.
The security guard looked her over, and then back to Lee for confirmation. It grated on his nerves. She was in uniform, and she was an officer. There was no reason to ignore her.
"Well?" Lee prompted.
"None," the guard admitted. "But we’ve had two fires set near the area they keep their elderly patients in, and I’m getting sick of chasing shadows. It could be anyone," he said with a sigh. "But my bet is one of the technicians. This is happening in too many places for it to be someone without free access. I can’t believe a doctor would do it, but that’s a possibility too."
"How about patients?" Lee asked.
"Not likely. We have them pretty much under house arrest just to keep the movement down. The commander has three garrisons assigned to this ship, so there’s almost as many of us as there are rooms to cover, and we’re still not finding anything out. Somebody wants these folks dead, and they don’t care what damage they have to do to get it. We’ve already lost one medication store to the fires."
Lee’s brow furrowed in concern. "Do you need more men?"
"It wouldn’t hurt. If the Commander can spare them…"
"I’ll see what I can do," Lee offered.
"Is that her?" Kara asked.
Lee followed her glance to the blond child whose face was tear streaked and frightened. She was being carried by one of the doctors, but she didn’t really look hurt. "Hey, Katee," he said softly. "What’s wrong?"
"I don’t like the bad men," she said with a glare at the security officer Lee had just been speaking with. "Guns are bad."
Lee smiled at her. "You’re right, they are bad," he agreed. "Sometimes. But sometimes they can keep us safe. That’s what these guns are for. They’re to keep you safe."
"But I wanted my dolly," she muttered as the doctor transferred her into Lee’s arms. She clutched his neck tightly, her face buried in his neck.
"Things were getting a little tense on the ward," the doctor told them carefully. "I didn’t think it was a good idea to wait around looking for a toy. I promised her I’d keep an eye out for it, and when I find it I’ll send it over on a transport or something."
Lee nodded his understanding. "Did you hear, Katee? He promised to keep looking, and then send it to you. Okay."
She just shook her head, her face not leaving his neck, which was now wet. He was reminded of years before when Zak had lost something treasured and would get so upset that he couldn’t have found it if he had tried. Most of those times he had given what comfort he could while Kara found whatever was lost. Somehow he didn’t think sending Kara onto this ship was an option today. The tension was palpable around him, and he just wanted to get the three of them out of there.
"Does she have any clothes?" he asked.
The doctor shook his head. "We’ve been washing out what she has at night when she’s sleeping in a shirt or something. There aren’t many children’s clothes available.
"We’ll find something," Kara assured him. Then, looking Lee in the eye over the child’s shoulder, "Let’s go."
Lee nodded and turned to carry the girl through the hatch and back to the ship. She didn’t seem inclined to get down, so he nodded for Kara to take the controls while he held the child on his lap. He hadn’t expected this kind of a reception when he’d set out on this particular mission, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be the one holding Katee during the flight. But she seemed to know him, and she had finally stopped crying, so he didn’t press matters.
For her part, Kara was as efficient as always with startup procedures and requesting permission for takeoff. She had them gently disengaged from the hard dock without a jolt, and on their way back to the Galactica. She flew it as smoothly as he had when the President had been ill, but with considerably less effort. There were times Lee envied her skills at the helm.
"What do you think?" Kara asked softly as she turned her head to look at him.
He felt more than a little uncomfortable with the girl wrapped around him, but he tried not to let her know that. "I think it’s worse than they’re letting on," he admitted. "And maybe that this was a better idea than we had thought."
Kara nodded her agreement. Lee’s attention was divided between her and the child who had just raised her head to look around. "Katee, this is my friend Kara. She’s flying the ship."
Katee looked as though she was in awe. "I thought only misters could fly," she said almost reverently.
"Nope," he told her. "She’s better at it than I am."
Kara gave him a wink, but didn’t comment on that. "Hi Katee," she said softly. "Do you see that big ship out there?"
Katee looked forward through the viewport at the Galactica. They were approaching quickly, but Kara kept the flight smooth. The child nodded silently.
"That’s where you’re going to live for a while," Lee told her. "One of my friends, Miss Cassie, will be taking care of you. Is that okay?"
Her arms tightened around him and Lee did his best to relax as Kara set them up to land on the Galactica. The landing was as smooth as her takeoff had been, regardless of her unfamiliarity with the ship itself. Some things in life simply weren’t fair. Lee was a damn fine pilot, but it was a hard-earned skill. Kara was just a natural.
Their reception here was far more to his liking than on the Lenna Dell. Still, he wouldn’t really be comfortable until he could deliver his charge to the Life Station and check with his father regarding what the hell was going on. This was more than just a simple threat. The guards had shown him that this was more than a passing danger. Their medical supplies were being threatened, which could potentially cause more lives than even the poisoning, fires, and aggression. It told him that whoever their enemy was, their thinking wasn’t rational and that was even more dangerous.
Thankfully, Katee seemed to like her new babysitter. Cassie had been friendly and open in a way that Kara was not, so the child had gone to her willingly. It didn’t bother Lee, but it did bother Kara. She grumbled about how easily the girl had been transferred from Lee’s arms into the med tech’s, when Katee hadn’t looked at her or spoken to her since they had left the transport.
"She doesn’t like me," Kara complained.
"She doesn’t know you," he corrected.
"And she knows you?
He shrugged one shoulder. They were walking down the main corridor of the Galactica, headed for CIC where Lee hoped he would get some answers. "Kara, I’ve seen her before, and under better circumstances. She was too nervous to really like anyone."
"Except Cassie," Kara said with more than a little sarcasm.
He had to smile. "Do you want to watch her?" he asked her.
"No," she admitted. "I don’t know anything about kids, really. I just don’t want her to hate me."
"She doesn’t hate you," he told her with a grin. "Why is this bugging you so much? You don’t even like kids."
"I don’t not like them," she argued.
"Cassie’s a nice person," he told her simply. "She’s used to being around people who are sick or scared, so she’s a natural with kids. Just be glad we have someone to do it. The President isn’t in any shape to, and I don’t want to."
Kara shrugged a shoulder but didn’t reply. He hadn’t known her pride was quite that sensitive, but he supposed he could understand. Kara was a long way from traditional in a lot of ways, but it was hard to get past the stereotypes of childhood. She might be the best fighter pilot he’d ever seen, and the most creative and tenacious officer he’d ever known, but somewhere underneath all that she was still a woman.
It took three salutes and one short conversation to get them into CIC. That wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Security though the Galactica was always a little higher than anywhere else, and command was by necessity well protected. But even knowing the necessity, Lee was more than a little frustrated by the time he reached his father.
"Was the mission a success?" his Commander asked as soon as he was within speaking distance.
"Yes, Sir," he replied. "But I have some concerns about the situation. I’d like to talk to you about the security on the Lenna Dell."
"I’m off duty in an hour," Adama said quietly. "I’ll meet you in my office then."
"But, Sir…"
The look his father turned towards him cut off any other questions. He might not always believe as his father did, but at the very least he could read his father’s moods. At the moment, there was pure fury in his father’s eyes, and it wasn’t directed at him. Something was wrong, and seriously so. Unfortunately, he would have to wait an hour to find out what it was.
"Yes, Sir," he finally said.
His father nodded, and he turned to leave. He nearly slammed into Kara doing so. She gave him a wide-eyed stare of surprise as he came close to knocking her over and tripping himself in the process.
"What?"
"We’ll come back," he told her briefly, not really knowing or caring if she had heard his father. He had another source to check before he let this drop, and it would take him less than an hour to do it. Then he’d know what the frak was going on.
"Lee?"
"Come on," he told her over his shoulder.
He didn’t wait to see if she would follow, but instead took off towards the President’s quarters. It didn’t take him long to get there, despite security in the corridor that was higher than it had been in CIC, and when he did so Kara was right behind him as he’d subconsciously known she would be.
She was still there when we walked up to the President’s door and pounded hard. It was answered by a med tech wearing the standard issue uniform. "I need to speak to the President," he told her firmly.
"Who is it?" Her voice was weak, but recognizable.
"Lee Adama," he called past the tech. "I just need a minute of your time."
"Come in," she replied.
Lee looked behind him to see Kara’s confused expression. "Top security," he told her briefly. She nodded her understanding, and they walked into the President’s office, leaving a disgruntled medical technician holding the door. Thankfully, the tech didn’t hang around, but disappeared into the background taking care of some nameless task.
Besides, his attention was on another woman, and Lee was brought up short by what he saw. Laura Roslin was not the woman he had first met, nor even the moderately ill woman he had transported the day before. She looked old and drawn, her skin pasty and her limbs frail. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, but clearly should have been lying down in it. She looked an inch from death, and suddenly his worries, concerns, and impatience seemed rudely out of place.
"I’m sorry, Madame President," he said softly. "I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m sure you should be resting."
She lifted a frail hand and waved it briefly. "I’m fine," she assured him. Yeah. Right. "I assume you have news about Katee?"
"She’s aboard," Lee assured her. "And she’s fine. You were right about the Life Station. She slipped right in with them as though she belonged. I think she’ll do fine with Cassie."
Lee heard Kara’s sharply indrawn breath and put a hand behind him to clasp her arm and silence her. She knew him well enough to take the hint.
"That’s wonderful," Roslin said softly, finally leaning back against the pillows yet leaving her feet on the floor rather than truly laying down. "One less thing to worry about."
"I suppose the situation there isn’t good," he began, fishing for information but hoping that he wasn’t imposing during her illness. She looked so frail…
"It’s deteriorating, from what I can find out," she told him softly. "It’s hard to know for sure. They’re afraid that if I get bad news I’ll fold up," she told him in a wry tone. "Billy has enough sense to know that I worry less when I know what’s going on, so he keeps me up to date. The latest is that the aggression is spreading and now can be found on nine different vessels. What we aren’t sure of is whether the groups are coordinated – although I can’t figure out how they can be – or if they are coincidental. Coincidence isn’t very damn likely."
Lee let out a breath. "So it’s not just two places now?"
"No," she confirmed. "It’s pervasive in almost ten percent of our ships, and we aren’t sure how many deaths can be attributed to it. Some of our ill and injured were bound to die; it was a medical certainty. But not this many, and not under such questionable circumstances. I’m afraid we have a vigilante group of sorts, and it’s targeting our weakest."
"I see," Lee said gently. "And you didn’t have enough to worry about," he added with a slight grin. The news was so horrible that sarcasm was the only way he knew to manage it.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I get through the days," she told him. "For now anyway. So long as my faculties are intact, I intend to keep abreast of what’s going on. When they aren’t, your father will take over until either I’m well or someone else is elected. Either way, the government and this fleet will go on."
"Yes, Sir," he answered. He wouldn’t baby her. She wouldn’t appreciate it.
"Now, are you going to introduce me to the lady behind you?"
Lee grinned at that. "You’ve met her," he said with a smile. "This is Kara Thrace. Starbuck. She’s the recipient of one of those clusters you handed out."
"Ah," the Roslin said softly. "I knew I recognized the face. Didn’t place you without the dress uniform, though. It’s good to see you again."
"You," Kara began, then had to clear her throat. "You, too."
"If you’re here with Captain Apollo, I’ll assume that you know better than to spread this information around the fleet."
"Yes, Sir," Kara said quickly.
Roslin nodded. "Now, let’s talk about something important," she said with a smile. "When will you be able to bring Katee to see me?"
Chapter 5
Kara Thrace watched as Katee sat on the floor and played a simple game with Boxey. They were near the same age, the two children, and yet it was almost like watching a child babysitting. Katee didn’t understand the finer points of rolling the die and moving the pieces around the board, but she was clearly having a good time and Boxey was endless in his patience. Kara figured that it must be from his constant tolerance of adults. There weren’t many children aboard the Galactica, and only one his age besides now Katee, so he had learned to make due with whatever company was available.
"He’s good with her," she said softly. "He doesn’t seem to care that she’d different."
"He’s tolerant by nature," Sharon confirmed. "He’s been really flexible since he got to the Galactica. I guess he was always like that."
Kara turned her attention from Boxey to her friend once more. "How about you? Feeling flexible?"
Sharon gave a shrug and a smile. "I don’t get much choice in the matter. The shifts are irregular, the food is sporadic, I have no clue how to be a mother, and I spend half my time here in family quarters with him. Flexibility seems to be the name of the game."
"I thought the Chief was here with him," Kara mused.
"He is," Sharon confirmed. "But he’s really my responsibility. We just figured it was better for him to be with a man than a woman given the circumstances. I hate that we live in a world where my intentions might be questioned, but that’s life. There are fewer questions with Tyrol taking him on."
"Is there anything he wouldn’t do for you?" Kara asked with a sideways grin.
Sharon’s half-smile faded completely. "Yeah," she said softly. "Let me move in officially."
"That’s not him," Kara corrected. "That’s Fleet policy."
Sharon gave a sigh. "I know that, too. It’s just frustrating. I came so close to losing him, and now even though most everyone knows, we still can’t say anything. It’s making me crazy."
"So you spend a lot of time here?" Kara came back to the original subject.
"Yeah. Like I said, he’s really my responsibility. I couldn’t see him sent to the Kastyle with the other orphans. He’s a good kid, and he deserves some kind of home, even if it’s not much. He’s a big help around here, too. He keeps stuff picked up and helps teach reading to the Evans’ kids. If we could just get something more formal set up in the way of school, it would be better for everyone. Maybe I should send a note to the President or something."
Kara thought about the pale, fragile woman she’d seen the previous day, and realized that one more thing just might be more than she could handle. She’d known the President wasn’t well – that had been obvious for weeks, and had even been explained by a viral illness – but what she’d seen wasn’t viral. Laura Roslin was very sick, most likely with cancer or system failure or something. She wasn’t sure why Lee hadn’t told her, but she was sure that he had his reasons. She planned to find out what those reasons were as soon as she could get him cornered. "The president is pretty busy," Kara hedged. "Besides, the kids need one another and a chance to get themselves together more than they need a formal education. It’s not like there’s an academy to get into or anything."
"True," Sharon agreed. "But it would help them pass the time. They already have something set up on the orphan barge. This could be similar."
"Maybe," Kara conceded. "I’ll talk to the Commander about it when I get a chance."
"Thanks."
She watched as the children finished one game and began another. This wasn’t so bad, this babysitting. She could do this. Okay, so she’d taken the child to Sharon for some subtle pointers, but she was still managing it.
Earlier that morning when Cassie had been ready for duty, she had called Apollo to let him know that she was going to be too involved to keep an eye on Katee. They had known these times would occur, so Lee had laughingly asked if Kara wanted the job. Being off shift, and ready to prove herself although she had no clue why, she took up the challenge. Any discomfort she felt at doing so was made worth it by the look in Lee’s eyes when she’d agreed. He really had expected her to chicken out. She didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted. After all, the day before he’d been assuring her that she was doing fine.
So Kara had picked up the child from Life Station, accepting a tight hug from Katee that hadn’t been as enthusiastic as the ones Lee had gotten, but was pretty nice just the same. It had reminded Kara just how little human contact she really got. She couldn’t remember the last casual hug she had received. Weeks before, Lee had held her as she cried all one night, but that was something different entirely. For the most part, Kara kept to herself, and others kept their hands to themselves. She had always thought she liked it that way. Katee’s hug had been both spontaneous and unsolicited. It had been pretty nice, really.
Kara had soon found that Katee was big on hugs. She hugged the Commander when introduced, and she had hugged Sharon when they arrived here. She had even hugged Boxey, although he had winced as though she had smacked him. He was still between the ignoring girls and hating girls stages, and didn’t yet like them getting too close. Kara remembered the age well, because she’d watched both Zak and Lee go through it. Thankfully, they had never really considered her a girl, so she hadn’t been on the receiving end of either their affection or distaste. She had just been there.
It was interesting watching Katee in action, though. She wasn’t all that perceptive about those that were uncertain of her. Well, she was in a way. She had her own reserve around Colonel Tigh, which Kara found hysterical – the kid had taste. She had also been rather formal around Tyrol, extending him a hand to shake when introduced, rather than giving the usual hug. Yet with Cally she had been as affectionate as she had been with Lee, and Kara had trouble puzzling that one out. After all, even though Kara had liked the child – well, not disliked, anyway – Katee hadn’t wanted a thing to do with her on their first meeting.
Finally she had taken the child by the President’s room. The woman had looked slightly better than the day before, but it was a minimal improvement at best. Katee hadn’t seemed to mind as she threw herself into frail arms with the first truly honest smile that Kara had seen out of her. The President might be attached to the girl, but at the very least the affection wasn’t one-sided.
The basic tour of the ship complete – something Kara had done mostly to give herself time to adjust to the tiny human being – they had come back to play with Boxey. He had scrounged an old board game from the ready room, and the two had played several games. Katee had yet to win one, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was content just to play. If Boxey had to keep helping her with the rules and reminding her what to do, it didn’t bother her. She looked perfectly happy sitting cross-legged on the floor with the game board before her and the two women behind her looking on.
Kara was feeling a lot more comfortable, too. She hadn’t realized how much it had bothered her that Katee didn’t like her. Granted, there was no reason for her to, but for some reason it had grated on Kara’s nerves to the point that she wanted to fix it. She didn’t know what that really meant. She was used to going against the grain, and had never really cared who liked her or didn’t. From the time she was a child, she had gone her own way, and to hell with what others thought. She still did the same thing.
And yet the "Katee seal of approval," as Sharon had called it, held some kind of value for Kara. Someday she would sit herself down and try to make sense of it all, but that day wasn’t today. Today she would just babysit for the first time, and hope she didn’t mess the kid up too badly in the process.
Kara’s quiet observation was interrupted by a knock at Sharon’s hatch. She answered the door, finding Lee standing there with an urgent expression. "Is Kara here?" he asked without preamble.
"Yeah," Kara answered for herself, calling across the small room. "What’s up."
"I need a co-pilot," he said simply. Then, turning to Sharon, "Are you on the roster? I can’t remember off hand."
"Yeah, until tomorrow afternoon. I have to be down in the repair bay for cleanup in a few hours, though."
Lee nodded quickly. "Cassie should be available by then. Do you mind?" he asked with a silent gesture towards Katee.
"No problem, Captain," Sharon replied. "Go."
Lee did so, not even looking back to see if Kara would follow. She would have been irritated if he hadn’t looked like the situation was absolutely frantic. She gave a quick wave to Katee, a smile of apology to Sharon, and then took off at a jog to catch up. "What’s going on?" she asked as she matched his long strides.
"There’s been a fire set on the Kastyline," he said quickly. "It’s out, and no injuries, but they got the guy who did it. We’re going to be questioning him, and trying to get information on who’s doing it elsewhere. The Commander wants us to try to determine if this is isolated, a copy-cat, or part of something big and organized."
Kara nodded her understanding, not even considering that his attention was focused forward and there was no way he could see her. Her comprehension apparently wasn’t an issue, because he kept right on walking. "Are they bringing him here?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "We’re headed to the Rising Star. My father didn’t want to get this guy within range of the President. She’s taken all this very personally, and he wants her as protected as possible."
Kara knew not to say any more on that front. If Lee wanted the illness kept secret, it wasn’t her place to question the request. "So why do you need me?"
"Because," he answered as they began to descend the ladder to the landing bay. "Someone has to keep me from killing this bastard, and you’re the only one likely to manage it."
She had to grin at that. She was more volatile than he was, so if he was looking for moderation on her part he might just be out of luck. "And if I kill him?" she asked only half joking.
"Then at least there’s a witness that can affirm it’s justifiable homicide."
"Shouldn’t security be doing this?" she asked as she jogged up the hatch into a Raptor just behind Lee. He wasn’t wasting time; that was for damn sure.
"Probably, but my dad wants it confidential until we have something concrete. If this gets out into the fleet, we’re going to have more than just vigilantes. The passengers will start turning on one another right and left, and we don’t’ have enough men to keep people safe on this many ships if they aren’t doing their fair share."
"Granted," she answered as she slipped on her headset and took the right-handed seat at the front of the Raptor. She wanted to do the flying, yes, but not enough to test Lee’s patience at the moment. Maybe if they found something out, she would ask on the way back.
Lee was already half-through pre-flight checklist by the time she’d mentally caught up. She made some minimal adjustments from her end as they waited for the lift to take them up to the flight deck. Once there, Lee pretty much took the responsibility for getting them there, and doing so quickly. She called in the landing request while Lee managed the landing procedure. It wouldn’t occur to her until later just how easily the trip had gone, and how in sync the two of them had been. Neither had to wonder what the other was doing. They just did exactly what the other expected.
Kara was back to scrambling to catch up when Lee popped the hatch and descended to the flight deck. The Rising Star was one of their largest ships, and she knew that it also had some of the highest security. That was probably why it had been chosen for this particular task. It had been designed as a pleasure craft and casino, but now it simply served as an excellent living quarters for hundreds of families. Because the compliment was high, so also was the security. It was probably the least obtrusive place to question anyone that they would find.
Lee didn’t ask for directions, but that didn’t surprise her. He had assisted with the inspections on most of the ships, and he knew his way around very well. The thing that did surprise her was the lack of security in the flight area. Neither the landing bay nor the flight deck had more than the usual number of guards, which was to say only one or two. After the reception they’d received on the Lenna Dell, it seemed strange to her.
As he led her up a stairwell towards a series of doors, Kara found out where the security personnel had been hiding. The entire hallway was lined with them, all armed and most of them holding guns at the ready. Lee nodded to them as he approached, and they cleared a narrow path for the two of them to reach the doorway. She supposed there were indeed advantages to being the Commander’s son. Most people seemed to know Lee on sight. Kara saw even more guards when the door was opened and she and Lee stepped through the hatch. They also saw just how securely a prisoner could be held.
The thin man was secured to the chair he was sitting in at both the forearm and leg with heavy-duty gray repair tape. It was more commonly used to stick together spacecraft until real repairs could be arranged than for restraint, yet it was quite effective. There were no less than ten guards in there, all with weapons aimed at him. They were not playing around. While Kara understood how everyone had been on edge, and also that this man might be the key to what was happening, she didn’t quite understand the measures that had been taken against him. It seemed over the edge to her.
"Captain Apollo," a tall blond man said as he stepped forward. He was dressed in a colonial uniform, but had no flight insignia. Kara didn’t know what he was. "I’m glad you’re here. We haven’t found any other Picons aboard, but we’re still looking."
"Thank you," Lee replied as he took the man’s hand. "Incarcerate any that you find, he requested. "We’ll sort them out after we have the situation under control."
"Will do," the officer replied. Then he stepped back and allowed Lee access to the prisoner.
"How hard are you going to make this?" Lee asked in a deadly soft voice. Kara hadn’t ever heard that tone from him, and it concerned her.
"I am willing to cooperate," the prisoner replied.
"Who else is involved in this?"
"No one," the prisoner said. "I was acting alone."
"Right," Lee muttered. "So much for cooperation."
"I don’t get it," Kara finally said. She didn’t have to elaborate.
"He’s a Picon, from the Ayiciti sect. They’re a racist group that essentially has no ties beyond their own. They’ve been responsible for more deaths on Picon and Virgon than any other single group.
"I am Aviciti," the man said calmly. "And I am the last."
"Not likely," the officer that had spoken to Lee told them. "We’ve checked with the security officers on five of the other vessels that have had attacks, and all of them have Picons aboard. We don’t have their sect identification yet, but it’s a matter of time. This particular sect is telepathic within their own race, so communication would have been possible even without wireless or other capabilities. I don’t know the distance, though. It may not matter, as the ships are close enough together that they can form a chain of sorts if they try."
"So it is an organized effort?" Kara asked.
"Apparently," Lee muttered. Then, turning to the prisoner, "You know this might go easier on you if you decide to tell the truth. The more information you give us, the better chance you have of making some kind of a deal. I can tell you now that if the Commander has his way you’ll be fodder for the Astral Queen. We’ll announce that you’re killing off the sick and the kids, and we won’t have to worry about you after that. Even prisoners are a little miffed when orphans are indiscriminately murdered. It’s all the same to me, just as long as you’re out of here."
The prisoner didn’t move, but he did close his eyes. He didn’t look he would be giving them any information at all.
"How do we find out if we’re right?" Kara asked. She was glad they had a lead, and that at least on one ship they would able to keep the violence down, but there were thousands of Picons in the fleet, and the vast majority were good people. Genocide against them was no better than what the Ayiciti were trying – it was deciding who lived and died. And yet, if it was the Picons, they had to do something.
"We’ll have the rest of the Picons checked for the Ayiciti symbol," he began. "They carry a brand inside their right arm. That’s how this one was identified. It’s just a screening, though. Maybe there’s someone loyal to fleet from the sect. Hell if I know. If they are, they’d be able to tell us what they’re thinking. Frak, I’d even forgotten about this obscure area of Picon until this all started and they caught this guy." Lee turned his attention back to the prisoner with the calm expression and closed eyes. "But I can tell you this much; this guy is not getting off the hook. If he turns in the rest, he may get imprisonment rather than death, but that’s the best he can hope for. Premeditated genocide was unacceptable even before the human race came down to fifty-thousand."
"Something’s wrong," Kara said softly as she watched the man’s head lag to one side, his body shifting slightly, but held in place by the tape binding him. He looked as though he were unconscious. Or dead.
Lee turned and immediately placed a hand at the man’s throat, cursing foully as he did so. When he turned back to her she read the news in his eyes, and she really didn’t have to be told. "He’s dead."
There was a flurry of movement as security did their best to try to do something. In moments, he was removed from the restraints and men came running with red Medic boxes. But it didn’t help. Just as the man had the ability to communicate with his own people over distance, so also did he have the ability to will his own heart to stop. Kara had to wonder what kind of mental development had allowed this one sect to surpass all the others. Perhaps that was why they were so racially biased; it was likely their own selective inbreeding and such that had exploited their potential for neural development.
Lee spent the next hour on the com with his father, and by the time he got off he was so far beyond angry that she wasn’t sure what to do with him. Picons were being found dead on many of the ships that had been attacked, apparently some form of mass suicide to protect their master plan, whatever the hell it had been. None of it made sense to Kara: not the killing, or the dying. She would have to check with Eloshia when she got back to the Galactia and see if there was any religious basis to the sect’s beliefs. Somehow, Kara didn’t think so. But anything that could help explain this situation was fine with her. She was at a loss.
Kara fought the bitterness that rose in her as she followed Lee back to the Raptor. Their one clue to this mess was dead, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. There was no way to determine how many Picons might be involved, or if he’d been telling the truth and he was the only one. They knew that more had to be involved from the unexplained deaths, but how many and to what end was still a mystery. The most frightening part was that there were thousands of Picons still alive, and no way to know which among them might have either the same goals or even the same abilities. They might still be in danger of further attacks. And what pissed Kara off the most was that now they knew very little more than they had before they had caught him.
Chapter 6
Lee Adama gripped the controls of the Raptor far more tightly than was necessary on the trip back to the Galactica. But he was furious, and he couldn’t do a frakking thing about it. Nothing. This entire trip hadn’t gotten them anything useful, and his presence might have even pushed the wrong buttons. He’d thought he’d been diplomatic. Apparently, he had been wrong.
"It’s not your fault," Kara offered softly from the seat beside him. The woman was entirely too good at reading his mind. At the very least, she knew him well enough to know that responsibility was something he was most often willing to assume.
"So, whose fault is it?" he asked bitterly.
"The Picons to start," she told him in an offhand manner. "At least if we’re right about who’s been making the attacks."
"We won’t know now, will we?" he asked her. They were approaching the Galactica, and he needed to concentrate on landing. Unfortunately, he was so pissed off that his hands were shaking, and that didn’t make for an easy touchdown.
"Transfer controls," Kara told him with a sigh.
"I’ve got it."
"You’ve got the shakes," she corrected. "I don’t feel like getting knocked around."
He thought seriously about smacking her, but she had a damn good point. Further, he didn’t want to explain a rough landing to Tyrol. He didn’t want to explain anything to anyone. He just wanted to hit something. Or someone.
"Frak," he muttered, releasing the controls and slamming the lever that would transfer command to the co-pilot seat.
Kara didn’t say a word, just gently eased them into the open hanger bay of the Galactica and set them down as gently as ever. Once down, she locked in the magnets and knocked the lever back into the primary pilot position. At the very least, he wouldn’t be answering questions about why he’d let her fly.
Cally was quick about her debriefing, and as the Raptor had made an easy landing with no difficulties there weren’t any repair requests to initiate. They shut down systems, gave Cally a perfunctory report, and left the Raptor together.
Kara was still at his heels when he passed by pilot’s quarters to go to CIC. He looked back over his shoulder at her, and knew the look he gave her wasn’t inviting. If he had his way, he was going to completely lose it and he preferred that she not be around to see it. He’d worked damned hard over the years trying to drill into her that violence was not the answer to every difficulty. He didn’t want to undo any progress he might have theoretically made towards that end.
Despite the glare, she stayed on him. Fine. She could just be a witness to his frustration. He’d deal with it later. Just as he reached the last corridor to CIC, he was brought up short by two figures he hadn’t expected to see.
The President was walking down the corridor, and was looking a good deal better than the last time he’d seen her. She was upright and steady, and it took him a moment to recognize the expression on her face as an indulgent smile. It was evidence of an emotion so far removed from what he was feeling that it completely threw him. Looking down, he saw that Katee was walking beside her, chattering quickly with an animated expression and hands flying about. Whatever she was talking about, she was excited. And happy.
"Mister Lee," she said as she spotted him, then ran up to him and threw her arms around his waist. He wasn’t sure what to do. His body was still humming with anger, and yet he had this tiny scrap of a person wrapped around him, and it was damned hard to stay mad in the middle of a huge hug.
"Hello, Captain Apollo," the President said quietly. "I see you’ve made it back."
"Yes," he admitted. "I’m on my way up to CIC to discuss the situation with the Commander."
"Can I come?" The voice was as excited as it had been a moment ago. He hated to crush it.
"Sorry, Sweetie," he said gently. It had been a long time since he’d made excuses to a child. He hoped that she wasn’t as persistent as Zak had always been. "Only grown ups can go there."
"Why?"
He took a deep breath, searching for a way around this discussion. The President didn’t offer any help. "It’s where we do the work to make the ship go," he finally said. "Everyone there is really busy."
"Do they fly it like Miss Kara?"
Lee’s impatience actually faded slightly as he looked into wide eyes that were totally innocent. "Kind of," he explained, bending down to look her in the eye so that her neck wasn’t craned back quite so far, and taking her little hands in his. "It’s a bigger ship, so it takes a lot of people to fly it."
"Can I help?"
Lee smiled at that, almost forgetting that Kara was behind him. Almost, but not quite. "Not today, Katee," he told her. "Warships aren’t really a very good place for little girls."
"Why not?"
Lee closed his eyes a minute and felt frustration of a different level begin to fill him. How did anyone explain a war to a child without scaring her? How was he supposed to express that life was precious – especially that of innocent little girls – and that it had to be protected? Why should he even bother protecting a child’s feelings when there were terrorists and murders among them? And how was he supposed to have any hope at all for the future when he wasn’t even sure about the present?
"I don’t know," he finally said with total honesty. He expected an argument like the ones he’d received when he hedged around Zak’s questions as a child. He expected her to push him, or at least to ask again.
What he didn’t expect was small arms to encircle his neck and give him another tight hug. "That’s okay, Mister Lee. There’s a lot of things I don’t know. You’ll learn them when you get bigger."
If that didn’t put him in his place, he thought as he returned her hug, he didn’t know what would.
"Katee was helping me take my walk," President Roslin told him. "We should probably get going. Please ask the Commander to come see me when we have some information on the situation."
"Yes, Sir," Lee said softly. He patted Katee on the back as she released him and moved back to the President’s side, carefully taking the older woman’s hand in hers. Together, the two of them moved down the corridor. Within a moment, he heard Katee’s animated voice once more, and something told him that she had already forgotten about the somber moment they had shared.
"You okay?" Kara asked him.
He was still staring down the corridor, even though Katee and the President had already turned down another and were out of sight. It took him a moment to bring his attention back to Kara. "Yeah," he finally said, releasing a compressed breath.
"You ready?" she asked.
He nodded. "Let’s get this done."
Side by side, they walked down the corridor towards CIC.
"How do we keep this from happening again?" Commander Adama asked softly. The room was silent following his question.
Lee looked around the conference room at the assembled experts and felt vaguely unnecessary. In the week since the deaths of the Picons, his father had begun an all out investigation into everything from the origins of the Ayiciti sect’s religious beliefs to the biology of their telepathy. He had utilized their compiled list of professions and skills to gather anyone from anywhere in the fleet to get to the bottom of what had happened. And the bottom line was that they could not let it happen again.
"I don’t know," Doctor Salik said softly. "There are as many subgroups of our people as there are places on the twelve planets. Each planet developed individually, with it’s own separate evolution. We are all descendent from the same original fathers, but over time and locations the variations have been limitless."
"So we aren’t even all necessarily human?" the President asked in confusion. It was a blatantly rude question, but necessary. As Doctor Salik was explaining it, there were as few similarities between some of their people as there were between humans and Cylons. The prospect was terrifying.
"We are human," he corrected, and then gave a sigh that echoed Lee’s feelings of frustration. "But humanity is not only one race. Even among your planet, the Capricans, there are varieties of race and culture that differentiate them based on location or evolutional changes. There are chromosomal differences, some considered handicaps and others considered beneficial. These same types of differences existed on all of the twelve worlds, and when combined with selective inbreeding of certain sects within certain planets, there were recessive characteristics that became dominant. As an example of the differences, we know that Picons and Geminons cannot procreate. There is just enough genetic difference that the chromosomes do not combine. It’s rare to find this significant of an evolutionary change, but there is a good deal of documentation that such situations exist.
"In the case of the Ayiciti, certain areas of the brain were more developed than most. They were telepathic and had survival instincts and safeguards that were incredible. They could literally control their own life force – blood pressure, heart rate, all of it. Things that are impossible for us were evolutional possibilities for them. Similarly, certain areas of our brains that deal with conventional reasoning and problem solving skills were less developed. There are many hypotheses for why this happened, but the seclusion of their particular sect combined with selective genetic engineering appear to be at fault."
"You said that their reasoning skills were limited," the President interrupted. She was rubbing her temples as though she were tired, and Lee could sympathize. They had been having this discussion for the last two hours, and while they knew a little more than they had when they started, they were a long way from any useful conclusions. "How could they manage genetic engineering?"
"I didn’t say that they initiated it," the doctor said blandly.
"So they’re a result of someone else’s experiments?" asked Doctor Pantheos, a scientist that had been located on the Rising Star. His specialty was neurology, and his knowledge had been useful to them. "Somebody did this to them?"
"It’s a likely theory," Doctor Salik admitted with a sigh. "With the planetary records lost, and no primary network of information, so much of this is speculation. We do know that the Virgons and Picons spent years at war, and that many sects on the planet Picon were very technologically advanced. We can’t really know exactly what went on."
"How many similar situations do we have within the fleet?" Adama asked. As usual, his father’s voice silenced the murmuring that had begun around the table.
"How high can you count?"
They all stared at Doctor Salik following this pronouncement. The potential for disaster that he was introducing was astronomical. Rather than being one people, he was saying that they were in essence divided by biology even more than by location. It went against everything that Lee had learned in school, although he had to admit that he had more training in tactics than in genetics.
"He’s right," Doctor Pantheas confirmed. "Even among the crew of the Galactica, the majority of which are Capricans, we’ve found many alterations in basic chromosomal structure. It’s an evolutional certainty given enough time and variant conditions."
"But we are all human," Salik reiterated. "And no one race or people is better or worse than another."
"How will this complicate our population issues?" President Roslin asked.
"We can request compatibility studies prior to marriage," Doctor Salik offered. "But unless you plan to begin denying permission to marry, I don’t see the point."
"No," Eloshia stated firmly. "If we are to become one race, we cannot accomplish that by dividing ourselves."
"But why?" Lee finally asked. All eyes turned to him, making him more than a little uncomfortable. He was tired of feeling like an idiot. "Not the marrying," he clarified. "I mean the Picons. I understand the evolution of their difference, but why did they use it to justify attack and then kill themselves? Granted, the Picons have been known for warring tendencies, but so have other planets. They’ve never attempted genocide before."
"Survival?" the President offered, looking to the doctors for confirmation. "Is that a strong enough drive?"
"Given the state of our fleet," Commander Adama stated softly. "I would say that survival would be a highly motivating thing."
"There is also the issue of radiation exposure," Doctor Pantheas added. "Our preliminary scans showed that the majority of our people have received high doses of radiation following the nuclear attack. Even those that were not on the planets during the attacks have been exposed to nominal levels here in the fleet. We don’t yet know how that will affect our genetics or our neurology."
"So we can’t know exactly what happened, and we can’t know if it will happen again?" the Commander asked in a soft voice.
"No," Doctor Salik confirmed. "We don’t, and we can’t."
When the assembled experts and consultants filed out of the room half an hour later, the majority of them looked as confused and frustrated as Lee felt. He would have to talk to his father about it all at some point, but at the moment there were simply no answers. This might have been a fluke, and it might be the beginning of a terrifying pattern, and there was just no way to know one way or the other. For his part, Lee just wanted to get back to his bunk and start sorting some of it out in his mind.
Ironically, the one thing that he kept reminding himself about the situation was something he’d learned from a little girl. He didn’t have to know everything. None of them did. They would learn it eventually. For now, he had to pacify himself with the knowledge that the suspected terrorists were gone, and that there had been no attempts against anyone for the last week. His father had told him that security measures would remain in place until they were more certain that the threat had been eliminated, but in general the worst of this particular issue was finished.
Lee couldn’t remember all that much about high school and college biology. He’d had only a cursory interest in genetics, because you couldn’t fly a plane with genes. He remembered enough to know that everybody had forty-six, and that twenty-three came from each parent. He also knew that some people had too few or too many, and most of the time such a defect was fatal. Little Katee had one of the most common Caprican disorders, which was one chromosome too many. Now he was being told that those same genes that created each of them – that made them unique individuals and yet a part of their parents – could be mutated dangerously into something that didn’t even seem human to him. It was all too much for him to comprehend. But the worst of it was that they couldn’t predict whether a similar situation could occur in the future. The pessimist in him felt that the possibility was high. For all the similarities in the twelve colonies, and for all the cooperation they provided one another for military defense and basic research, the bottom line was that the fleet was now a miscellaneous mixture of twelve different worlds. It was a concern that hadn’t even occurred to him before.
"Well?"
Absently, Lee closed the hatch from the inside of the pilot’s quarters. Kara was sitting on her bed waiting for him. While he had weaseled his way into the briefing as the CAG, she hadn’t had such a convenient excuse. He wasn’t opposed to sharing with her – indeed, it would likely be all over the fleet in short order – but until he had consent from his father he wouldn’t be announcing any of it in open quarters beyond the bottom line. "No answers," he said simply. "But the immediate threat appears to be over."
"So that means things will go back to normal?" she asked.
"Depends on your definition of normal," he countered as he used the ladder to lever himself up onto his bunk. "But yeah, things are straightening out."
He lay down, unsure of whether Kara would press or just accept his answer. She was quiet for so long that he thought he might have gotten lucky. He should have known better. And yet when she spoke, her question was far from what he would have expected.
"Lee?"
"Yeah?" His voice was resigned. He’d never known Kara to let anything drop.
"Does this mean Katee goes back to the Lenna Dell?"
He hadn’t thought about that. "I guess so," he answered. "I’ll check with the President about it. Why?"
"No reason. She’s just pretty cool for a kid. I’ve taken her a couple of times this week, and she’s not much trouble. Maybe she could stay here and keep Boxey company."
"I don’t think so," he replied. "My father didn’t have a lot of say about Boxey. He’d pretty much already been adopted by Sharon, and Tyrol was willing to keep him and make care arrangements. He’s also older, so he can look out for himself when the need’s there. But Katee doesn’t have parents to watch her, and as bad as it sounds, no one’s going to take on a kid with the problems she has."
"Why do you say that?"
He shrugged. "Most everyone on board has pretty significant duties," Lee explained. "Shifts are irregular, workload varies according to where we are or what needs to be done, and living conditions are pretty minimal. I can’t think of anyone who’d like to raise a child in that kind of environment, much less a special needs child."
"Maybe."
Kara sounded unusually quiet, enough so that he turned over and hung his head down to look at her. "What’s wrong."
"Nothing," she replied. "I’ll just miss her."
"I will too," Lee admitted. "She’s a good kid."
As it turned out, Katee’s departure was far more imminent than Lee had suspected. The following morning, he received an order to transport her back to the Lenna Dell. The only thing about the situation that made him feel remotely better was that he would also be taking one of President Roslin’s old friends from her days as Secretary of Education. The older woman was a former teacher, as Roslin was, but had no pressing duties. She had been with the President for the Galactica’s decommissioning, and had stayed with the cabinet members since. Educational advisors weren’t really a necessity on the Galactica, and while the woman had been named to a committee that was beginning to design educational programs for the remaining children in the fleet, it wasn’t necessary for her to be on the Galactica to perform her duties.
So Lee and Kara found themselves once more shuttling Katee on the short flight to the Lenna Dell. Unlike the initial trip, which had been quite somber, Katee was her cheerful self for the return voyage. She sat on Kara’s lap while Lee piloted the Shuttle craft, pointing out various ships as they passed them and asking what felt like hundreds of questions.
The President had been reserved that morning when they had picked up the girl, but she hadn’t been in tears. While she would miss having the girl close, Lee knew that for the next few weeks her trips to the hospital ship would be regular. They would have frequent status reports on the child, whether formal or informal, and at the very least she would be where she was comfortable. Lee had always been half afraid that the child would get lost aboard the multiple passageways of the Galactica.
Upon landing, they received quite a nice reception to the ship. Lee shook hands with the same security officer that he had met previously, although Lee wouldn’t have known him if he hadn’t reintroduced himself. The atmosphere was so different from their pickup of the child that it didn’t even resemble the same ship. Doctor Hucker met them at the hatch when they left the shuttle, and Katee ran to his arms as though he were a long lost father. That made Lee feel far better about leaving her. Like Kara, he’d become quite attached to the little girl.
"How’s my girl?" the doctor asked with a huge smile.
"I’m bigger," Katee announced. "Miss Laura told me so."
"You certainly are," Hucker agreed with a smile. "How is Miss Laura."
"She’s better," Katee told him with a smile. "Doctor Sally gave her some medicine in her neck and she doesn’t get sick anymore."
When the doctor raised one eyebrow, Lee clarified. "Doctor Salik said that a lot of the illness was due to electrolyte imbalance. She got sick, and that made her sicker, and started a cycle. Since he’s been keeping her hydrated she’s done very well."
Doctor Hucker gave a knowing nod. "I told her that two months ago," he remarked. "The woman never listens to me." He ended the statement with a wink, and Lee had to remind himself that they were talking about the President of the Colonies.
"I’ll be bringing her over in a few days for the treatment."
The doctor’s smile faded somewhat. "Well, Katee will look forward to that. Won’t you, Princess."
"Did you find my dolly?" Katee asked, apparently not catching much of the conversation that was going on around her.
"We sure did. We put her on your bed."
"Can I go?" she asked anxiously.
"Katee, don’t forget to take Miss April," Kara called out. The older woman had just come off the shuttle, still wobbly despite the smooth flight and landing. She gave a smile though, and followed as Katee led her towards the main hospital corridor, and presumably to her room.
"I’m glad she’ll have someone to look after her," the doctor said softly. "We did our best, but…"
Lee nodded. "She needs someone of her own."
"Exactly," he admitted. "Although, I have to tell you that the kingdom hasn’t been the same without its princess. The subjects get along better when she’s in command."
Lee and Kara both laughed with the doctor over that, then they said their good-byes and moved back into the shuttle for the return flight. Lee waited until Kara had systems ready and clearance for takeoff before gesturing for her to take the controls. She gave him a curious glance, but didn’t argue.
"What’s the occasion?" she asked as she happily began takeoff procedures.
"Fair play," he told her with a shrug.
"Thanks," she replied, and her smile was worth missing an opportunity to fly.
They flew in silence for a while, and then Kara spoke softly. "Do you think she’ll be okay?"
Lee thought about it for a moment, not sure why he was so carefully considering his answer. "I think she will," he finally decided. "After all, she was okay before, and now she has someone to keep a closer eye on her. I think she’ll be fine."
"Going to miss her?"
"Yeah," he answered softly. "She grows on you."
"And she gives great hugs," Kara told him with a wink.
"What would you expect from a princess?" he asked her with a smile.
Kara returned the grin. It was good to see her smiling some. In that way, he thought that Katee had been good for all of them. She was a little ray of sunshine, and for a while everyone on the Galactica had seemed to have a reason to smile. Whether it was an accident of biology or an intent of fate, little Katee had a gift for bringing peace to those around her. Lee would be a