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The Demetrius
All the civilians have cleared off the Demetrius long before Gaeta steps aboard, wide awake and already aching from the memories of the night before. Come back to me, baby, whispered Louis; Gaeta sweeps his gaze over the ship's interior and tries not to wrinkle his nose at the reek of sewage.
So this is the chariot that might bear them to Earth. Not exactly what Pythia had in mind, he suspects wryly. Though it's been a frakking long time since what anybody suspected, and what actually came to pass, aligned with any sort of neatness.
Swiftly, he claims one of the racks and moves on to the CIC, acquainting himself with the ship's navsat and auxiliary systems. By the time Captain Thrace takes the deck, he's settled by the largest DRADIS screen to await her first command.
The Demetrius jumps away from the fleet with a shimmer. Just before it does, Gaeta closes his eyes and sends up a silent echo: I promise.
(He doesn't know that by then, something has shifted, jarring that particular path out of the ship's reach.)
It's the first of five jumps they make in a single week alone. It's the only one that doesn't cross back over itself.
So this is the chariot that might bear them to Earth. Not exactly what Pythia had in mind, he suspects wryly. Though it's been a frakking long time since what anybody suspected, and what actually came to pass, aligned with any sort of neatness.
Swiftly, he claims one of the racks and moves on to the CIC, acquainting himself with the ship's navsat and auxiliary systems. By the time Captain Thrace takes the deck, he's settled by the largest DRADIS screen to await her first command.
The Demetrius jumps away from the fleet with a shimmer. Just before it does, Gaeta closes his eyes and sends up a silent echo: I promise.
(He doesn't know that by then, something has shifted, jarring that particular path out of the ship's reach.)
It's the first of five jumps they make in a single week alone. It's the only one that doesn't cross back over itself.
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It's a reality. It's her reality. It's the destiny she never believed in before it was handed to her. It's a beautiful blue planet with white clouds. She can see it behind her closed eyelids, feel it like stims in her bloodstream. She starts painting Earth's signposts – the ringed gas giant, the comet, the trinary star – above her bed with such fervor that she never notices stray globs of color on her sheets until she finally goes down for an hour or two of sleep, and sometimes when she wakes up she can almost taste its air.
Nothing stops her for long: not questions about the months she can't account for, not sleeplessness or headaches, not the ship's heat, not the way her crew's grumbling is getting louder all the frakking time. Not Sam's lingering looks. Not her own frustration after twenty days pass and she starts to wonder if she's really lost her way back.
She starts taking her meals in her quarters when she spares the time for them, letting her food grow cold – it sucks anyway – while she pores over her charts, goes over and back over the route they've taken, measures distances, searches for patterns in star clusters, plans their course.
She could use more sleep. She could use a good frak.
She's not getting either.
When she calls for Gaeta again, ready to give him the order to change course, she knows how the crew will react. Anyone who doesn't like it will have to go frak themselves. She doesn't think any of them get it. This isn't a joke. This is Earth, and she doesn't care if they don't trust her any more or if they don't like her methods but if they want to get there they have to work with her.
Sitting at her desk, she closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.
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For his first few steps into the room, Gaeta doesn't even bother to look up. It takes that long to swallow down the knot of frustration and bear the news as needed; even with that, he can't keep the sardonic tilt out of his voice. "She's reversing course and returning to sector seven," he tells everyone, to scowls and less than quiet groans.
Athena exhales a sharp breath. "That's the tenth course correction," she mutters. "She give a reason this time?"
"Reason?" Gaeta, midway through fetching a cup of makeshift coffee, puts his eyebrows up. He turns back to them: no mistaking the sarcasm now. "Let's just say I think she's steering with her gut."
They've had twenty-two days of this crap. Aside from Anders (whose loyalties run deeper by benefit of marriage), Helo's holding up the best of all of them; on more than one occasion, Gaeta's felt a twinge of guilt at not carrying himself so well. Starbuck is their commanding officer, and in all honesty, it's not like he hasn't had experience with poor leadership before. He ought to be used to this. He should at least stay quiet, if he can't bring himself to echo Helo's sharp requests to can it.
But, gods, this is not what he signed up for: a ship that smells so foul he still can't get used to it after nearly a month, a captain with no rudder, navigation that's literally turned into fingerpaintings, a promise with no coherence. Not to mention the even darker mutterings that surface with increasing regularity, that only one thing can come back from the dead like Kara Thrace did and it sure isn't a human --
Helo shuts down those conversations even faster.
Gaeta forces himself to listen in silence as he drinks his coffee. He tells himself: soon he'll find a door. Soon he'll see Louis.
Soon, this failed experiment will be done.
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He uses that word lightly. It's not a good thing to be around Kara, not any more. He knows how things look: he volunteered for this mission to stay by his wife's side. That's part of it but not the whole story.
No. He's here to distance himself from Tory and Galen and Saul. Not another frakking minute with those three. Cylons? Frak that: he's Sam, just Sam: nothing else makes sense. He knows what he knows—that's not a lot—but if he believes in one thing it's his wife. I say I'll do something, I do it, she told him back on Caprica. If anyone can find Earth, it's Kara.
*
She won't look at him or turn to talk to him. Calls him Ensign like he's no one, like they've never been intimate. She won't tell him what's wrong, won't acknowledge him, does everything in her power to mock and hurt him. Throws all those carefully-crafted discussions they had about their marriage back in his face. The way she's acting now reminds him of the things she said to him after New Caprica. And I look at you, and I want to tear your eyes out for looking at me. She told him that, calm and cool. I just want to hurt someone and it might as well be you. So you should probably go before that happens.
But she only gets to tell him that kind of thing once. He's not stupid enough to stand around and take it a second time, grabs the brush out of her hand, forces her to look at him. Maybe she looks but doesn't see, but all he can do is hold their arms together so their tattoos match. That's real. It's the only thing left that is real. She won't talk to him, won't touch him, doesn't care about him. Calls him a dumb motherfrakker, says she only married him because it was safe and it was easy and he was just pathetic enough to go along with it, but she's lying. Lying as she shoves him away until his back's against the door, as she goads him into an almost-kiss, as she challenges him to make her feel something. To feel anything. Frak or fight? I dare you to make me feel something, Kara, he wants to say. I dare you.
He's action, not words. That's his strength and he's not sure he succeeds this time—Kara doesn't say—but he feels. Afterward, leg draped around her sheet-clad body, she finally opens up. It took a challenge to make it happen—she had to coax and hurt and torment him into it—and it was worth it. But her words, man, they chill him, and after she asks if their marriage was real, she asks if he feels different.
Kara, he wants to say, I'm a frakking Cylon. I don't know what or how to feel any more.
Looking at the wall, she tells him everything seems so far away. The way things feel, the way they taste, like she's watching herself but not really experiencing it. Not living it. Like her body's just this alien thing she's still attached to. She asks if it seems crazy to him.
Gods, she has no frakking idea how crazy it doesn't sound.
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Pulled out of her reverie, she turns from her painting to see Helo standing there expectantly. He doesn't have to look so frakking concerned; almost reluctant, she smiles at him and tears herself away from her work so she can find the chart she wanted him to look over. "I'm glad you're here. I might've found something."
She shakes off the idea of talking about the upcoming rendezvous with Galactica – they still have time – but the chart she hands him does nothing to wipe the concern off his face. Spectroscopics are promising, they can agree on that, but he notes the two long-range recons already run on that grid. She bares her teeth in another smile. "Third time's the charm, maybe."
It has to be. It's still one of the most promising leads she has, previous recon or no previous recon, and maybe the problem is they're not looking hard enough. Maybe the problem is that the pilots don't really understand what the frak they're looking for.
Luckily Helo doesn't let his hesitation get the better of him: he says he'll have Athena prep to go once Sam gets back in. "Hey," he adds, "what about you? You been getting any sleep?"
"I don't know," she hears herself answer, on autopilot, but then stops and restarts. "Not much." It doesn't feel like a more satisfying answer – doesn't look like one for him, either – but it's more honest. Fighting the urge to grind her knuckles into her eyelids, she half-turns, glancing back at the painting above her bed. "It was so clear when I first got back. If I could--" She could feel it like steel through her skull every time they jumped away, and now there's nothing but this sense of disconnect from everything around her. From Earth, from what life was like before, from Sam, from sex, even from Helo. "If I could just focus, I know that I can find that sound again."
Helo promises they'll talk when he gets back, but no, she knows what she needs to do: "I think I'll go with you on this one."
Again, he hesitates. "You haven't flown a CAP since we left the fleet."
Her lips quirk humorlessly. She can still fly circles around every pilot on board this ship, and all this time the problem could've been that they're not seeing something out there that she can. "I think," she repeats, level, "I'll go with you on this one."
She suits up once he's left the room, and it turns out there's nothing her crew won't grumble about. They bitch when she gives them new orders, they bitch when she does her own frakking recon, they probably bitch in their sleep. Tuning out the drone of ship gossip, she goes straight to the hangar and climbs into one of the Vipers waiting there. It's not hers – not the one that made the trip to Earth – but it'll have to do.
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I never knew her as anything but Cally. I wonder if anyone else did?
Her glance drifts across the other mourners in attendance at the small service, and lingers on Lee Adama, so recently become the new Quorum Delegate for Caprica, and on his father, and on the way that Bill is steadfastly ignoring his son.
There are layers upon layers of grief here, Roslin notes, with the near-certainty of more to come.
She'll have to start preparing the Quorum for the possibility that the Demetrius might not return. Gods blast Lee Adama, anyway, for ingenuously hinting to them that she and Bill were working together to explore a new potential path to Earth. Even had that been true -- and oh, she's already had that fight with Bill, that he'd committed them all to this without telling her -- there were things that could have been done, that should have been done --
Too late now, she reminds herself. Deal with the day as it comes. There's plenty to do, and little enough time left for her to do it in.
As the priest ends the service, she leans up and murmurs so that only Bill can hear her.
"I liked the ceremony." He glances over at her, and Roslin nods, holding his gaze, trusting him to understand her unspoken request.
Little enough time left, indeed.
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Not this time.
Everyone, Gaeta included, has to listen to Starbuck muttering ceaselessly over the wireless -- come on, come on, I know you're out there somewhere, she keeps saying, loud enough to get Hotdog asking questions and everybody else gritting their teeth. Gaeta closes his eyes, keeping his weariness contained as best he can. By now, it feels like he's going through a pantomime of his job, as useless and inconsequential as playacting. There's nothing out there. They're not --
Beep beep beep.
Gaeta snaps to alert without thinking, staring up at the screen.
"Starbuck, DRADIS contact," Hotdog shouts an instant later. "Demetrius, we've got an inbound, one bogey bearing one-four-niner -- "
No longer going through the motions, Gaeta seizes the comm and rallies Demetrius to action stations. The pilots chatter rapid-fire between themselves: it's a ship, a Cylon ship, a Heavy Raider peppered with blast damage and set adrift into space. Nobody moves to take it down.
Even now, everybody's waiting on Starbuck's order as her Viper hangs motionless between them.
When a Two's voice fills the room, Gaeta nearly drops the comm.
"Kara," whispers the Heavy Raider's occupant, and even through the crackling wireless he sounds like a man laying eyes upon the gods. "I'm alone. It's not an attack. I knew I'd find you. Knew you'd be out here searching."
"Leoben?" she breathes.
"I'm here for you, to offer a truce between Cylon and human." He can hear the smile in Leoben's voice, and it chills him to the core. "And a chance for you to complete your journey."
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He said that it isn't an attack, that he's alone, so she's letting him aboard. On her terms, regardless of the hope flooding her chest.
He has more than one gun trained on him by the time she's hurried to the CIC, but his eyes meet hers the second she walks in. He smiles at her. "Kara. Thank you for this. We were praying for a miracle."
"It wasn't a miracle." She doesn't want the reverence his tone gives her. Goosebumps prickle over her skin, and somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks it's good to know she's still capable of that. "It's like I knew you were out there."
She knew they needed to return for more recon. She knew she needed to be out there.
Mathias and Helo have a hushed exchange to one side, but Leoben, still smiling, looks at her like his world is finally making perfect sense. Someone's must be. "Don't look at me like that."
"I'm sorry. The difference between the way you were on New Caprica and now--"
"I'm the same person!" she hisses, voice dangerously low, and her right hand curls into a fist, nails biting into her palm.
"I have eyes," he argues harmlessly, the calm in his voice edged with absolute certainty. "I can see. God has taken your hand and purged you of the questions, the doubt. Your journey can finally begin, but there isn't much time. The others, the ones I left behind: they need your help. But not as much as you need theirs."
"Why?"
Stepping closer despite his restraints, he aims his mouth at her ear and lowers his voice. "Your crew. They don't trust you."
She doesn't need him to tell her that. What she does need is a straight answer about why he's here. When Helo tries to step between them, urging her to have their prisoner moved elsewhere, she almost lets the marines take Leoben straight down to storage.
The next words out of his mouth change her mind.
*
A blue planet surrounded by clouds. The hybrid described it to him, so he says, and the beauty of it made him cry.
As suspicious as she wants to be, he has no reason to know exactly what she's looking for and no reason to know what's happened to her since she last saw him.
The marines are skeptical when she stations them outside and lets Leoben enter her quarters uncuffed, unguarded, but she's more interested in his reaction to the painted guideposts above her bed. He gravitates toward the painting of his own accord, silent until he reaches above his head and touches the thick textured shading of the gas giant. He knows it; he describes what she's seen like he's reciting a familiar poem to her.
Riveted, she watches his finger underline the comet's path. He tells her about the hybrid, about taking the hybrid's words to the others on his baseship, about the ship going rogue, and for the first time she believes him without reservation.
For the first time she wants to believe him.
When he asks to watch her work, she lets him. When his hand guides her paintbrush, she lets it.
When his opposite hand flutters like a wary bird at her hip, she barely notices.
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As if that could possibly fill the gap she left; it was either that or kill himself. Then she returned, not dead after all but changed. Changed enough that when he gets back from recon he finds out not only did she bring a Two aboard, but they're holed up together in her quarters. Time to see what the frak's going on between Kara and the toaster she killed six times on New Caprica. He never expects to see the two of them painting, Leoben's hand right on Kara's hip, both looking entranced. That's it, that's frakking it: all it takes to drop Leoben is one well-aimed punch.
His Hey. Hey hey hey hey! Get the hell away from her meets resistance from Kara (she's even more frakked up these days than he is) but he can't stop and won't stop despite her protests and despite Leoben's not-so-subtle digs at the two of them, and when the marines cart Leoben off on his orders, he follows. The two of them have unfinished business. Kara's spared nothing more than a backward glance.
*
He has no patience for this shit but here he's got the one-up: he knows who and what he is. Leoben doesn't. He'll take the advantage.
Leoben speaks first. "I'm glad you're here." (Yeah, right.) "You and Kara, did you get things worked out? Because you should. You weren't meant to be enemies."
Gods, he can't stand the condescension, gives Leoben a good hard kick. Infuriated, he knows why his wife killed this model so many times. "No. That'd be you and me. What do you want from Kara?"
Leoben shrugs. "The same thing I've always wanted. For her to understand her destiny."
That's not good enough. If his fists haven't made that clear already, he's willing to keep going. He doesn't mind killing this Two, even though it's supposedly one of his kind. He has no frakking idea what that means, readies to take out every last frakking frustration on this guy... until Leoben's words stop him cold.
"What is the most basic article of faith? That this is not all that we are."
What the frak? It gives him pause, just for a moment, even as he remembers the advice everyone gives about Leoben: don't listen. He'll get under your skin.
"C-Bucs rule!" Leoben laughs like it's all some joke.
"What did you just say?"
"Forward guard, right? I saw a couple games. You were good. But after all the celebrity and acclaim, what were you? Just another face selling magazines, another piece of scoreboard trivia, and you always knew you were destined for more. You were just waiting for your singular moment of clarity."
Singular moment of... what the frak right does Leoben have telling him his own business? Time to end this; he cocks his gun and presses it to the guy's temple. Singular moment of clarity his ass. "Well, maybe I just found it."
"You kill me, Kara's dream dies with me."
He's heard this crap too many times. "I don't think so. I think you download into another Leoben body and you spew more lies."
For the first time, Leoben looks frightened. "No one's coming back. We were lured out of resurrection range. Ship was attacked. We survived. The baseship was damaged. We were set adrift."
That's news. "What are you talking about? Who attacked you?"
"War has broken out between the Cylons. Battle lines have been drawn between those who embrace their nature and those who fear it." There's an almost acute sadness to the words but frak it: he's not getting drawn into it. No sympathy from him; he's had it, turns to leave.
"Good. You can blow yourselves to hell for all I care."
Leoben's protest is swift. "That's one way, that's one way. There's another. An alliance. Allow our paths to converge. You save us from our savage brothers. And our old one, the Hybrid, will show Kara the righteous path. And together, they'll lead us to the Promised Land. Together, we will find Earth."
Sometimes, enough is enough. Sometimes, it's more than enough. And sometimes, it's just frakking hard to know what to do. No one gets to use his wife's destiny as a bargaining chip. No one. On his way out, he slams the door and doesn't look back.
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But at the moment, her resolve is wearing thin.
"He said his base ship was attacked," Anders is explaining, in the CIC of the Demetrius. There was one thing she didn't like – they may all be used to looking at steel walls, but the Demetrius has a particularly dark and dank quality to it.
"That they were ambushed by their own kind."
"So now the Cylons want us to rescue them?" Felix is across from her. His voice is too derisive for it to really be a question. "That's – novel."
Seelix puts her hands on her hips. Sharon can feel Helo shift next to her. She knows he's already sensing, and dreading, the storm brewing beneath their words. But he's another thing about this mission that she doesn't like. It was one thing that she'd be stuck with this – Cylon knowledge, Cylon endurance, it was her part and she could accept it. But it had been harder to accept her daughter losing both her parents, so soon after they'd finally taken her back.
"Well, he's proposing an alliance," Anders answers. "Between us and his damaged baseship."
"How's that supposed to work?" Seelix isn't really asking, either.
"Yeah, are we supposed to let them piggyback on our Nav FTL systems and help them jump out of harm's way?"
"Join forces with the Fleet." Unlike the others, there's nothing facetious in Anders' voice.
Sharon's thoughts are more in line with Felix's response.
"... right."
"If it's true." Helo points out.
"Frak." Seelix snaps. "Are you actually thinking about doing this?"
"XO, listen. Bringing Leoben on board, that was questionable at best." Felix is trying to cut out the sarcasm and speak as though there were something to debate. "But jumping to the baseship? It's suicide!"
Helo shakes his head. "Nothing's been decided."
"And what, you trust Starbuck to make the right decision?" Sharon asks. "Because she's out of control."
"Well, what are you saying?" Anders' voice is rising. At another time she might have felt pause at being the one to bring this all to the surface. But now -
"We are running on fumes, Anders. In two days, we're going to be late for our rendezvous with the Fleet."
Sharon knew it wasn't personal, that both she and Helo had been assigned to this. She knew Helo had frakking volunteered. She could even understand why he'd volunteered. But Sharon couldn't value Starbuck's desperation to prove herself over her own daughter. This wasn't worth Hera losing them both.
"We've got to do something before she takes us all down with her."
With the brief silence that follows, Sharon knows she's likely pushed this too far. Starbuck may be their captain, but Helo's her XO, and because he's not a frakking terrible one, he finally pushes back.
"Are you talking mutiny?"
Sharon doesn't answer.
"Because that's sure what it sounds like," he continues, now looking around to all of them. "You wanna tear this ship apart, then keep on riling up the crew, making your crazy Starbuck cracks. Otherwise I suggest you both shut the frak up."
If Sharon weren't feeling that nervous pit in her stomach, that rising sense of panic that she had to work to suppress, she might have complied. "Starbuck is leading us into a trap. Cylons are going to capture the freighter, they're going to have nav data leading straight back to the Fleet."
"Then we better keep that from happening." Starbuck's voice sounds through the CIC. Sharon doesn't know how long she's been there, but she doesn't care about that, either. Starbuck'll need her Cylon Expert.
"Order the CAP back and lock down the ship. Soon as we work out the jump coordinates from Leoben's raider, we go."
The crew turns away from her, silent. Even with their feelings on it muted, their expressions hidden from her, it's enough to make Starbuck bring up her constant reasoning for this two-month, desultory flight.
"It's a chance to find Earth. I intend to take it."
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Helo is grim when he tells her Mathias is dead -- gods, Mathias is dead -- but nobody dares to get in her way once she turns her back on them and storms below to yell at the frakking Cylon she was dumb enough to let aboard.
Leoben starts to rise when she enters his makeshift cell, asking if she's okay, and she rears back to punch him in his lying mouth. "What'd you do?" Anger scratches in her throat. "Blow the tylium stores?"
Mouth bleeding, he meets her eyes. "That's the Kara I used to know."
"The Raider's in pieces, you motherfrakker!" She doesn't stop, can't stop; she wants to beat him until he can't say another word, until her own knuckles bleed. Until he fights back, and then more until he can't. Until it's satisfying. "Sergeant Mathias is dead, not that you give a damn."
"You can't think I had anything to do with it."
"I wasn't even on the deck. I was too busy believing you instead of watching out for my crew."
"My ship was under fire," he protests, never lifting a hand to strike back. "The reactor could've been damaged."
"It was a set-up!" Her fist connects with his jaw. "Say it!"
He spits out blood. "Hit me. Hit me again."
"You used me," she rasps, sweat in her eyes and blood on her hands, "to get close to the ship."
"How may times did you kill me on New Caprica? Don't stop now." How can he sound so calm? "Go on," he urges. "Do it. I won't come back this time, I promise. Resurrection ship's well out of range. Go on, do it. Do it!"
Pushing him to the floor, she towers over him with her fists clenched and can't. She can't. Deflating, she sinks to the floor, her knees up in front of her like a wall between them. "What are you doing to me?"
"All of your life you forced back the truth by lashing out at everyone around you, anesthetizing yourself with ambrosia and empty affairs, but you've lost the taste for those petty things."
Her fingers claw at her hair. "I'm the same person."
"No. There's a void, an emptiness that can only be filled by taking the next step on your journey."
She leans forward, voice so low it's almost a whisper. "What happened to me in the two months I was missing?"
He pauses, barely. "I don't know."
Is he frakking kidding? Her eyebrows furrow. "The mandala? The paintings? My mother? It had to mean something."
"You have to make peace with your past."
"Why?"
Blood drips around his mouth, staining angry red pathways down his lips and chin; he takes no notice of it. "Because that part of you is gone. I told you when I first came aboard this ship that you had changed. I look at you now and I don't see Kara Thrace. I see--" His eyes search her face. "An angel blazing with the light of God. An angel eager to lead her people home."
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Captain Thrace stands in the middle of the mess, not quite making eye contact. In spite of everything, ingrained habit took precedence: everyone, including Gaeta, got to their feet as she came on deck.
"We've all come to remember Sergeant Erin Mathias. To grieve for our loss. To honor her." Starbuck breathes out, focuses, meets their eyes with a clarity Gaeta doesn't expect. "Mathias is dead because of me."
The frisson of shock feels like water icing beneath his skin. None of the feeling makes it to Gaeta's face. After so many months witnessing Starbuck's lack of responsibility as captain, to hear their leader lay claim to something rocks him to the core.
He didn't expect to feel that way after he left New Caprica.
"We've all heard the words, the prayers, but I don't know what any of it means anymore. We want to believe that she died for something. But in this war, people die and it is just stupid, it's an accident, there's no nobility to it." Her voice rises. "There's nothing we can grab onto that's gonna make it any easier. They're just gone! I have to live with that." She looks away and wipes her mouth. "You know, I know that this has been a difficult mission. And maybe I haven't..."
Everyone waits for her to finish. When it becomes clear she won't -- and that no one else will conclude those thoughts for her -- Gaeta steps forward. His hands stay clasped behind his back. "Captain," he ventures, and even he's a little surprised by how gentle his voice has become. "We've downloaded the rendezvous coordinates to the FTL. We're ready to jump back to the Fleet on your order."
She stares at him as if he's begun speaking Old Gemenese. "We're not going back to the Fleet."
A fresh flare of anger ignites Gaeta's shock, burning it away. Pike explodes: "What the hell are you talking about?"
The scuffle's quick, but loud and furious; by the end of it, Helo stands over Pike, clenching the gun he used to strike him, not moving to help as Seelix pulls him to his feet. He remains motionless even when the crew swirls past to take their stations. Starbuck, her missive complete (and her orders delivered: we came here to complete a mission, and that baseship has something to do with it), has long since left.
"Mr. Gaeta," he finally says, abrupt enough to startle.
In an instant, he draws himself straight. "Sir?"
"Set Condition One throughout the ship." Helo lifts his head, and as soon as Gaeta sees the look in his eyes, he understands.
Action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship.
He never expected to feel this after New Caprica, either: the sick churn of knowing he's about to commit an unforgivable wrong, and knowing it is the last, best option for anyone to take. Gaeta can practically feel the tension vibrating from Helo. He's certain he's putting out a similar frequency of his own.
Starbuck arrives, breezily demanding the sitrep, brushing off Helo and Gaeta's last pleas for her to reconsider. Adama won't leave them if they miss the rendezvous, she says. They have to do this.
"When the Admiral put me in command, he told me to trust my instincts," she snarls. "Find the next marker, see if it checks out. Lead the people from the Fleet home. That is what I intend to do! Now, prepare to jump!"
Helo swallows. "I'm sorry, sir," he says, clear and steady. "I cannot obey that order."
Gaeta knows he's next. Through the ringing in his ears, he hears Starbuck relieve Helo of duty, sees her turn to him. "Mr. Gaeta," she says, "you are now the new XO. Prepare to jump on my mark."
His palms sweat. He can't force out more than two words; two words, though, are all he needs. "No, sir."
Anders looks around the room, not quite believing what he's hearing. "Okay, everybody needs to think about what they're doing here -- "
"They have thought about it, Sam," interrupts Starbuck. Cold fury mingles with incomprehension as she narrows her eyes. "They all have. It's a mutiny."
Hearing her give name to the action makes Gaeta's stomach lurch anew, but he holds his chin high, holds position.
"Captain Thrace," says Helo. "As XO of the Demetrius, and acting under Article X of the Colonial Military Code...I'm hereby relieving you of command."
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Human, Cylon, none of them are perfect or have the answers. Kara says she does and he wants to believe her. Maybe more than anyone else on this godsdamn ship, he wants to believe her and does, in his heart if not in his brain. But even he doesn't know where the circuitry ends and learned intelligence begins. All he knows is what it means to be Sam, and he's always gone by his gut. Always. His first move is always to protect, to defend, to stand up for those he loves. On this ship there's only one person who fits that description, and right now she's restrained by someone she trusts.
Trusted. It's his automatic reaction when he steps forward, the words defend Kara the only things he knows. "What the hell are you doing, Karl?"
"Stand down!"
He's never taken orders from Karl. He's never been very good at taking orders from anyone, although he's swallowed his frakking pride and done it on this ship. He's sure as frak not gonna change now, now that Sharon's got his wife in a headlock. This is all wrong.
"Order the marine guards to the control room," Helo commands. "Tell them I'm placing Captain Thrace under arrest."
He can't believe this. Yeah, it's been frakked up on the Demetrius and yeah, the crew's been muttering mutinous thoughts for a while now, but he can't believe he's the only one who believes enough in Kara to want to see this thing through. Filled with fire, she tells Helo how godsdamn wrong he is about this whole thing.
So much for loyalties; Helo has it figured out. "Either way, we're taking Leoben and his proposal back to the fleet. We'll let the Admiral sort it out."
When Kara spits that Helo's throwing away their last chance to find Earth, he has to agree. Steps forward, gets right in Helo's face: someone's gotta do it. Someone has to be the frakking voice of... of reason? Compromise? Attention to their mission? He knows Kara, and they're so close he can taste it and if he can, it's got to be driving her frakking crazy.
"And you'll be going back to Galactica as mutineers. How do you think the Admiral's gonna sort through that?"
His weapon's at his hip. He doesn't want to use it, but frak if he'll see his wife arrested for doing her godsdamn job, for carrying out their godsdamn mission. Mission. Since the day he met Kara, his life has been framed by her missions and if it wasn't for that he'd be a dead man. Cylon. Whichever: he has to stand up for her. He has to, like it's wired into him.
Helo's not worried. "That's up to him. Mr. Gaeta, reset the FTL for the first jump back to the fleet." Gaeta obeys, Seelix -- frak her with her guns trained on his wife -- tells Kara they ought to just airlock her Cylon ass. Like hell he's gonna let that happen, or let anyone think about it, or let them talk that way to his wife. Kara protests she's not a Cylon, as if it matters any more who is and who isn't, and before he knows it his gun's drawn.
Someone has to do something here. Someone has to act. Kara does first, scrambling to get out of Sharon's hold, and he yells for Gaeta to stop. Stop spooling the FTL, stop listening to Helo, stop... stop everything. Sharon scrambles to hang onto Kara, Seelix waves those guns, Helo's waiting for the Marines, and Gaeta... no, no no no ("Gaeta, abort the jump!"), he can see the monitor reporting that the drives are spooling, and that has to stop. They're so close, so frakking close.
"I said abort the jump!"
Gaeta doesn't. He doesn't pay any frakking attention and this is it. All the talk, the grumbling, the muttering, the poison they've been spewing about Kara, it all comes to a head right here and now. It's a full-fledged mutiny, and like frak is he gonna stand around and watch his wife get taken down.
He hardly even pays more than passing attention at first when his gun fires. Not until he feels Barolay's arm against his chest, holding him back, and hears Kara shouting his name and sees... "You want to know who's in charge? You want to know who's in command? You frakking want to know? It's Captain Thrace, godsdammit! Now you let her go."
(Oh, frak him. What has he done?)
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His first gasping cry isn't from pain. It's from shock, nothing but a startle reflex as it registers that something's hit him and his leg's stopped working. Something's wrong.
Then he crashes to the deck and starts screaming in raw-throated agony.
The bullet tore all the way through his shin. It's pulverized the bone. Blood soaks his fatigues and gushes down his leg -- what's left of his leg -- Anders frakking shot me, he realizes, and Gaeta claws at his knee as he howls louder.
The crew rushes in from all sides. Nothing they're saying sinks in, and nothing he's yelling in response makes any sense, either. He's gone blind, everything's seized up and wrenching apart and going red, someone's oh gods someone's frakking digging their fingers into what used to be his shin bone and all Gaeta can do is scream through it, and curse at them, and choke out to get your frakking hands off me --
He doesn't feel the pinprick of a needle going into his thigh.
He feels it when the morpha kicks in, though, and sags limp against the deck before blacking out entirely.
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Fingers wet with blood, she shouts for Gaeta to be taken to a bunk. All she can think as they carry him away is that mutiny didn't mean much once blood was spilled and she demanded a first-aid kit.
She hears Sam say her name like he wants to explain, and her head shakes, a fraction of a movement. This is no time for a heart-to-heart; right now she's still commanding this ship and there are a few things she needs to do while she can.
"So now what?" Helo looks from Sam to her. "Orders at gunpoint?"
His jaw drops when she admits she never should've ordered the Demetrius to jump to the baseship and then explains that instead she's sending it back to the fleet while she takes a Raptor to check out Leoben's story. It's not even the most insane decision of the day.
Sam insists on going with her, and that's fine. She may need the manpower, and gods know he hasn't made friends on this ship today. With that settled, she turns to Athena. "This is crazy, but I need you. I need someone who speaks their language. If this is a trap I want to know about it."
Athena's as incredulous as her husband, but she doesn't put up a fight. Helo protests that the Raptor won't have enough fuel to make a jump to Galactica, and he's right.
But the baseship does. "We were sent out here by the Admiral to complete a mission. Not for me, but for the people of the fleet. If I'm right, the payoff is Earth."
If she's right, this mission is worth all the sweat and yelling and unhappiness. If she's wrong, she'll be a problem off their hands. At least it'll mean she won't go back to Galactica's brig.
Stubborn, Helo sets the clock for fifteen hours and seven minutes, the longest the Demetrius can wait before jumping to meet Galactica. He says they'll be here until the clock runs out.
*
Taking Leoben to the Raptor, she reminds him that he's the first to die if this is a trap. She'll do it herself.
Once Leoben's seated, she takes her spot beside Athena and asks point-blank if she needs to watch her back on this mission, if the two of them can work together, but Athena insists she's okay and gives her word. That's all anybody has at this point.
It's a surprise when Barolay follows them aboard and refuses to leave even though volunteers aren't needed. "You've been kicking ass since day one," she says. "You say you can find Earth, I want to be there when you do."
Nice to have a vote of confidence.
(Fourteen hours and forty minutes.)
"Can you feel it?” she hears Leoben behind her. "The anticipation? God's plan is about to be revealed."
She bites her tongue hard as Sam tells him he better hope so.
On Athena's count they jump. Sam reports multiple contacts in all quadrants, and he's not kidding: ships were massacred here. Baseships are in pieces; Raider wings float ahead of them, sparking uselessly. They'll have to find Leoben's ship now, but Sam says DRADIS is too cluttered to pick it out.
If it's still in one piece.
"Watch yourselves," he reports. "We've got ordnance popping off all over the place."
"Looks like he wasn't lying about a civil war," Athena mutters.
"This is it," she hears herself say. "I can hear it." Like a siren call, a vibration in her ears, this sudden yearning in her chest that makes everything else seem small. "Give me the ship."
"Starbuck, do you have any idea where you're going?" Despite any misgivings, Athena turns over control of the ship.
Searching the debris, she turns the Raptor and eases them forward until what she sees ahead of them makes her breath catch in her throat. "The comet! It's the ship!" All this time she thought it was a frakking comet, but it's the baseship. Leoben's baseship drifting past the gas giant, just like her painting. For the first time in weeks she doesn't feel out of her own body at all. Tears suddenly sting her eyes, and she hears herself laugh in disbelief. "This is what I was meant to see."
She casts a backward glance at Leoben, who smiles and nods at her as though he knew all of this would happen.
"Incoming," Sam warns, snapping her to attention, "right, two high! Break, break, break!"
The impact comes before she has a chance to react. One minute the ship is lurching from the blow, and the next the world goes black.
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"Just pack up everything that's there," she admonishes, more sharply than she means to. "All the drafts. I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands over the next couple of days, so just... pack it up."
Roslin can hear the acid edge in her tone, and from the look on Tory's face, it’s clear that she has as well.
She doesn't want to be soothed; doesn't want to be reassured. Two more treatments, Tory tells her, like she's supposed to believe that it’s going to matter. Roslin knows better than anyone else just how poor her chances are, even with the Doloxan. She remembers exactly how little good it had done her mother.
All things considered, she'd rather have the chamalla, but that had ceased to be an option the moment Lee Adama had forced her hand in open court.
Had he known what he was doing? Does he now? If only she could be sure. Someone has to be President when she's gone, after all. Roslin knows that Tom Zarek's just biding his time, and there are certainly worse choices – Gaius Baltar, for example. Still, what with everything she knows about him from his history on Sagittaron up to the sense of him she's gained through the years of working with him first as Quorum delegate and then as vice-president, she’s certain that there have to be better choices, too.
If only Billy hadn't died. Or if Gaeta hadn't chosen to go back to military service; he'd done well as Baltar's chief of staff, far better than the man had deserved. Or if she was certain Tory could handle the pressure over the long term; she’d seemed so overwhelmed just a few short months ago.
If, if, if. She hates the uncertainty as much as she hates the feeling of everything slipping through her fingers, drifting away, out of reach. Just like the Demetrius, of which there's still no sign. If there's no word by the time she’s done with these last two treatments, she’ll have to talk to Bill. They'll have to find a way to cut their losses and move ahead, yet again. They'll have to find something else to give them all the hope that they so desperately need.
Tory's waiting for a response, and with an effort, Roslin recalls herself to the moment and forces herself to steady, speaking with deliberate care. "I’m going to need you to keep a keen eye on everything that comes across this desk, Tory. Every single thing."
"I appreciate your confidence, Madam President."
That isn’t quite what I’d call it, Roslin thinks, with grim amusement, but only nods. "Thank you."
She pushes herself to her feet, using the desk for support.
"Let’s go."
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A blink. Gaeta's in one of the bunks, not remembering how he got there. Another: Helo's telling him something about fifteen hours. A third: he's alone, feeling cool metal under his hands as he struggles to breathe.
When Helo appears above him again (three eyeblinks later, or an hour, or six months), Gaeta tries to explain that they need to jump back soon. The morpha sludges the words together, rendering them useless. Dizzily, he swears he can feel infection eating away at the inside of his leg, itchy and crawling like insects.
Once they stop dosing him out of fear he'll OD, time grudgingly returns to its plotted course again -- more or less. It's enough that when Helo pays another visit, he can pull his thoughts together enough to relay them coherently.
You promise me something?
Anything.
Tears ball up into a lump in Gaeta's throat. Don't let Cottle take my leg.
Hey. You're gonna be all right --
Don't frak with me, Karl. His voice shakes. I know every minute that we stay here means it's more likely that he's gonna have to. Please. Okay? Promise me.
Gently, Helo squeezes his hand, and answers exactly how Gaeta expected him to answer. Felix, you know damn well I won't leave until the clock runs out.
Gaeta's face tightens against another wave of pain. He turns away.
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Yes, she was trying to ignore it. Her Raptor was damaged. The fact that she'd damaged it while landing it in an even more damaged Cylon baseship was something that is going to have to wait. Some kind of wall was moving behind her, but despite what would probably be the proper precautions, Sharon ignores it, circling her ship with a flashlight in one hand to assess what hope of salvage there was for her.
She's examining the underside of the starboard wing when something presses against the back of her flight suit. Her heart pumps into overdrive, and before she's even spared it a thought, her sidearm is out, and she's spun around.
"Get the frak away from me!"
It's not just one Eight, but a whole group of them, all watching her intently. It doesn't feel anything like a homecoming. The glares and threats from the Galactica crew when she'd first boarded felt more familiar. These Eights, even if they watched her with her own dark eyes – she'd never felt more like a stranger.
Two of them, undoubtedly the most daring, are standing only a few feet from her, unfazed by the sidearm that Sharon quickly lowers. "They call you Athena now," says one, a note of restrained excitement in her voice. "You even wear the uniform like you're one of them. You were the first to say no."
Sharon slips the sidearm back in her holster. "No to what?"
"The entire plan," the Eight explains. "You joined the humans. Had a child. You showed us that we don't have to be slaves to our programming."
Sharon nearly rolls her eyes. She doesn't have time for this, more than anything doesn't want to share her experience with these women who keep staring at her as though she were an exhibit in a museum. Still, she also doesn't reply, and the Eight, as though building up her courage, begins to let the words spill out before she loses her nerve.
"We wanted the same thing, but it turned out to be a disaster. The Sixes have made one mistake after another. They have to be stopped before they get the rest of us killed."
She pauses, and turns back to the Eight behind her. "Ask," the Eight prompts.
The first Eight turns back to Sharon. "You could help us."
It takes Sharon a moment to even fit the pieces of this together in her mind. The absurdity of it. "You want me to lead a mutiny against the Sixes."
"It's the only way," the Eight insists.
We've got to do something before she takes us all down with her.
The words had come out of her own mouth hours ago. Hours. And yet, Sharon doesn't hesitate in her answer.
"You guys make me sick."
"Why?" She even sounds slightly hurt.
"Because you choose your side and you stick."
It was like looking into a frakkin' mirror. Petulant. Fickle. Slaves to their programming. There was nothing more unknowable and loathsome than her own face.
"You don't cut and run when things get ugly. Otherwise you'll never have anything. No love, no family. No life to call your own."
Hell yeah, let the Cylon go.
Sharon walks past them, not sparing a glance back. It's time to acknowledge it. She knows where to look for supplies on this ship. "Now you guys can either help me or get the hell out of my way."
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(--the data stream: it's right there. If she can do it, if the rest of the Cylons can do it, can do it too? What's it like? Will that be... could it... is there some way it might make him feel like he's a part of things? Will it flood his brain with a complete and sudden understanding? It might give him away. It probably will give him away. The stakes are high, so much higher than anyone can possibly imagine: he rests his hand above the water-filled tray. Closer, just a little bit--)
"Anders, you're on me."
It's Kara's voice; his hand pulls back. Another time, he promises himself. He looks at Kara, looks at Leoben, looks at the Six and slowly, slowly lets go of... of everything. "Might be better if I stay here. I know more about the Raptor's system than they do."
It's the first time he's willingly let his wife walk off with Leoben, but he can come to terms with that later. There's too much going on. Barolay and the white-haired Six are butting heads over some shit that happened back on New Caprica--now's not the time--and the Six slams Jean's head against the side of the Raptor. What the frak: Jean scrambles to her feet, insists she's okay, and then--
Oh, gods, Barolay: she drops like a sack of frakking bricks, and he's there in a flash ("Hey, hey,") checking for a pulse ("Jean?"), listening for her breathing ("Hey, Jean?"), and she's not... she doesn't...
"You killed her. You frakking killed her!" Nothing feels real and everything feels wrong. He grabs that frakking toaster, that Six, and throws her to the floor and before he knows it his gun's on her, and it's just like what happened with Gaeta all over again, and he can't, he can't--
"You want to know what it feels like to die, huh?" In his hand, the gun meets the back of the Six's head. "You're nothing! You're a frakking machine!" Gods, he hates them so much. He wishes he'd never heard the word Cylon, wishes he'd never heard that frakking music, wishes he wasn't one of them, wishes he wasn't capable of any of this.
In the din and confusion he hears Kara ordering him to stop, to put the gun down, but he can't. "What do you want me to do, Kara? You want me to forget about Barolay? You want me to forget about New Caprica? No frakking way! She just killed Barolay!" Kara insists; he can't. He can't do it, not even when Kara tells him he has no idea what's at stake here, tells him to look at her, to put the gun down.
For once on this godsdamn mission, Athena sides with him. "They killed one of us and you're just ready to let it slide?"
Thank frak. "She's right. You can't let this go, Kara. If you don't want to do this, I will." (He can't breathe.)
"Put the gun down, soldier." (Frak you, Kara, he thinks, don't call me that, I'm no frakking soldier.) "I need to see the Hybrid."
Mission. The Six, the one in charge, is talking to the Six who just killed Barolay (Jean, no, his one remaining teammate, his best friend) about New Caprica, about how Jean killed her once, about how they tried to work through it after the Six's resurrection, and he just... no matter what they say, Barolay's still dead. She's still dead and not coming back. His gun's still at the Six's head.
"You shut your frakking mouth."
He doesn't want this. He doesn't want to be a Cylon and he doesn't want to be a soldier. He doesn't want this mission, he doesn't want any of this and just when the two Sixes look like they're making their peace with whatever--he doesn't know, he doesn't know a godsdamn thing--suddenly that dominant Six has her finger wrapped around his on the trigger of his gun and presses.
Frak! In an instant he's freed himself, turns the gun on her. "Gods damn it!"
"No resurrection ship," she tells him, voice as cold as ice. "You understand? She's just as dead as your friend." The Six stops in front of Kara. "Is that enough human justice for you? Blood for blood?"
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Kara's eyes travel from the fallen Six to Barolay's body and then to Sam's stricken face. A sad bone-deep weariness threatens to creep in. She's sorry for all of this -- she's sorry -- but it has to end here. They're so close: they have to follow through.
She turns back to the Six running the show. "Take me to the hybrid."
From the time they enter the dimly lit room, the hybrid doesn't shut up. Only the head is visible over a tub full of cloudy gel. The eyes stare, unseeing; she seems oblivious as they enter, oblivious to Leoben and the Eight that follow, oblivious to the Centurion guard.
--integrity of node seven restored repressurizing the children of the one reborn shall find their own country the intruders swarmed like flame like the whirlwind hopes soaring to slaughter all their best against our hulls--
Kara stands there for the space of a few heartbeats. "I'm here," she finally says. "You wanted me here, so..."
--conflicts with the obligation to provide access FTL sync fault uncorrected no ceremonies are necessary--
She doesn't know what she expected, but this sure as frak isn't it.
--the children of the one reborn shall find their own country end of line reset track mode monitor malfunction traced recharge compressors increase the output to 50% assume the relaxation length of photons transfers contact is inevitable leading to information bleed--
She crouches for a closer look, hoping to do something, trigger something, make the hybrid take notice. "I don't understand."
Feeling a presence beside her, she turns to see Leoben kneel with her. "You can't hurry her. You have to absorb her words, allow them caress your associative mind. Don't expect the fate of two great races to be delivered easily."
All that is easy for him to say.
The hybrid drones on, ship functions mixed with riddles and the occasional reference that sounds like scripture, and she loses track of how long she waits, crouching long past her knee's aching protests. She doesn't even know what she's waiting for, and the hybrid doesn't seem inclined to help.
"We're rigged and ready," Athena announces as she enters. "Time to pull her offline and get out of here before we miss our rendezvous."
She barely looks up from the hybrid's face, but she knows Athena is right.
"Any luck, Captain?" Athena asks.
"Not a frakking thing."
--but you are a spark of God's fire core update complete--
"Frak it!" Legs stiff, she steps back from the hybrid's tank. "Unplug the damn thing. Let's get the frak out of here."
--threat detection matrix enabled dendritic response bypassed the received dose is altered by the delayed gamma burst going active execute--
The Eight who accompanied them nods and moves across the room to do as requested, but before she can unplug anything the hybrid suddenly arches in her tub, head thrown back in a long wordless scream.
The Centurion in the corner steps forward, metal talons rotating into guns, and the Six's yells for it to stop do no good: it opens fire, killing the Eight where she stands. Athena hits the floor, retaliating, and Kara unloads both of her own guns into the Centurion until it falls, sparking, its head half blown away.
The hybrid's scream doesn't stop. Sam hurries in, his own gun drawn. "What the hell happened?"
Blood from the Eight's body trickles into the hybrid's tub, turning the gel inside a sickly red.
Putting her guns away, she leans down one more time, a breath away from pleading, and gets right in the hybrid's screaming face. "What do you want from me?"
It stops.
The room goes quiet again, and the hybrid looks straight at her, seeing her for the first time and smiling. A wet hand rises to cradle the side of her face. "Thus will it come to pass the dying leader will know the truth of the opera house. The missing three will give you the five who have come from the home of the thirteenth. You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end."
Those eyes bore right through her. She doesn't understand.
She doesn't know if she wants to understand.
"End of line," the hybrid continues, voice flat again as her hand falls backs into the gel.
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Faith, he tells himself, we have to have faith. There has to be some point in it, in all of it. It can't all have been for nothing. Since the beginning he's believed in Kara and in this, this insistence of hers, and he knew it would come to fruition eventually. He trusted her.
And he's a Cylon, and no one here knows it. Not the Six who killed her sister with his gun: she's saying something about the look on the dying Eight's face, that she doesn't even see them any more. "She's looking past us. I've seen that look many times." The words pour out of his mouth, but he doesn't know why he's saying them or who exactly he's trying to comfort. "But never in the eyes of a Cylon."
Maybe they're not so different after all. Maybe they all want the same frakking thing: to make their lives mean something. Is that concept so difficult to grasp? He doesn't think so. The dying Eight reaches out.
"Athena, you were right. Forgive me."
Athena almost meets her sister's fingertips with her own, but pulls back at the last minute and he's not sure if she doesn't want to comfort, can't comfort, or can't face her mirror image dying. Frak, he's not sure he could, but he knows one thing he can do here. He kneels to the Eight, cups her face in his hand. She deserves her dying wish: to not die alone. "It's okay," he tells her softly, "I'm with you."
For what it's worth, he's with her; her hand wraps around his wrist. Whether she knows it or not, she's dying in the hands of one of their own Final Five. Or just some safe easy pathetic motherfrakker who's dumb enough to buy into it all. He feels it when she dies, just like he's always felt it when his friends and comrades died, and when she's gone he reaches over and closes her eyes and strokes her cheek and squeezes her hand and wishes he could say he sees peace in her face.
War's not nice and tidy like that, though. All around him, focus is on the mission, on the hybrid's last words before the room went dark and faded to a red as deep as the Eight's blood. "She will lead us to the end. We will now know the truth of the Opera House," Leoben whispers reverently.
The Six continues. "The home of the Thirteenth."
Kara's voice floats over the hybrid pool like some sort of tangible ghost, soft and lost. "What?"
"The Hybrid said, 'the missing Three will get you the Five, who have come from the home of the Thirteenth.' The home of the Thirteenth Tribe of humans."
No one watches him watch the Eight settle into nothingness, her blood still fresh.
"And the Five is your Final Five Cylon models." He always knew his wife was smart, she's figuring it... oh, frak him. Now what does he do? Confess?
The Six is figuring it out too. "If they've come from the home of the Thirteenth Tribe, then they must know the way back."
"They know how to get to Earth," Kara mutters.
I don't know anything, we don't know anything, he wants to protest but can't, has no frakking idea how to get to Earth, has no frakking idea about anything. The dead Eight is his anchor right now. She's his reality, and he can't, won't, can't let go.
Athena nods. "And the missing Three is the model you boxed for looking at the faces of the Five."
"D'Anna." Leoben names her.
"She can recognize them." (She can recognize him.) "Let's go. Demetrius is waiting for us." Kara's all action, all mission now, and no one's paying attention to him or to the dead Eight. No one knows, no one so much as suspects. Everyone's ready to move, to make progress, to figure this shit out, but he lingers, waits as long as he can. All he wants to do is... is... all he wants to do is have the freedom to just be Sam, the same Sam he's always been. He has it for now, but it sure as frak isn't going to last.
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The racks are right next door to the Demetrius' CIC; Gaeta can hear everything, and understand nothing. The constant beep of the countdown matches the beat of his heart. Maybe they're home already, he thinks, blurred. Maybe he's in sickbay, with Cottle just outside to administer morpha and repair his leg.
Even when he closes his eyes, he can't fall asleep: a new wrench of pain drives him awake every time he tries. The whole room smells like blood and the inescapable stink of sewage. When Gaeta wraps his hand around the chain holding his rack in place, the metal feels vaguely tacky under his palm.
Prepare to jump, he hears, but can't remember saying it. The voice doesn't sound anything like his, either. It almost sounds like Hot Dog's.
Then, from nowhere, the beeps escalate. A strange back-and-forth echoes over the comm. Gaeta doesn't know why until he hears the tension in Helo's voice ease: oh, he realizes. They made it back.
That means he can finally go home.
The lump in his throat clenches so tight it almost chokes him. A staccato of checklists fills the CIC -- "Sublight." "Go." "Helm." "Go." -- as they repeat the jump prep, this time with Starbuck, Athena, and Anders alongside them. (Did he hear mention of a base ship, too? No. No, he can't frakking trust anything he hears right now, that can't be what he heard.) Gaeta struggles to open his eyes, fingers tightening around the chain.
When the Demetrius' FTL hitches, frakking up the planned tandem jump and sending Starbuck ahead of them, his lips part to try and explain where they must have gone wrong. Nothing comes out. It doesn't matter, anyway; all it takes is a couple of minutes to get the FTL spooled up again. They're doing fine without him.
(They don't need him.)
Gaeta tries to keep breathing, looking anywhere but at the bloody mess below his right knee. He's never felt ill from a jump before. Godsdammit if he'll be sick this time.
But when time and space finally compresses to shove them toward Galactica, it slams down on his leg so hard that his whole body erupts in agony.
The last thing he hears before passing out is, Jump complete.
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Hoshi doesn't wait for Adama to have to give the next order; he links with the weapons response crew, solving the mathematics on his system in tandem to confirm their calculations and reaching the same conclusion, which he spins in his seat to report.
"Gunnery reports firing solution - on your command."
Adama begins the countdown, and Hoshi prepares himself to launch--
"Weapons hold!" Tigh shouts, and for one critical moment everyone in CIC stops, staring at the XO in shock.
It's in that frozen second of stillness that DRADIS sounds a new proximity alert.
DEMETRIUS glows on the screen before him, and suddenly Hoshi finds that he can't breathe.
"Identify yourself," Dee commands, and the silent hissing of the comms between the ships seems to last an eternity before Helo responds.
"Galactica, Demetrius, I authenticate. Bravo Tango Eight."
The next part of Helo's transmission is lost to him in an overwhelming surge of dizzying relief that prevents him from noticing anything but the ringing in his ears.
It's them, it's him, he's back, they're back, they're home --
Hoshi fumbles one hand flat against the metal of the console in front of him to steady himself, giddy with silent joy -- a joy that vanishes in a single sharp stab of fear as the comms continue to crackle.
"Request immediate evac and medical assistance; Lieutenant Gaeta's been severely wounded, Galactica, do you copy?"
He barely hears Dee's crisp reply (Copy, Demetrius, a medical team will be standing by).
Felix.
The next hour crawls by in an agony of efficiency. Hoshi does his job, operating smoothly together with Dee to direct the Raptors first to the Demetrius and then to the basestar, with Tigh himself going along with the latter to lead the Marine reconaissance team. He recalls the Fleet from the emergency jump position back to Galactica's side, and while he works he strains to hear Tigh's low-voiced report to Adama without appearing to eavesdrop. He can't catch all of it; just enough to confirm that it's true, Felix was shot, and that whatever happened, not everyone made it back.
Adama nods to Tigh and turns to him. "Mr. Hoshi."
"Sir," he responds, instantly.
"You have the CIC."
He swallows any faint hope of being able to be relieved mid-shift, or even at the end of it, and responds instantly, "I confirm, sir. I have the CIC."
Hoshi turns control of his console over to the junior officer and moves to the command position as Adama and Tigh leave the CIC.
He can only wait, and do his duty, and hope the admiral will come back soon.
Felix will understand.