Title: Stream of Consciousness
Author's Name: RangerLord
Main Character(s): Lee, plus a little Sharon and Kara
Posting Date: 02 January 2006
Word Count: 1475 w/title
DRADIS Category: Short story
Ship, if any: None
Spoiler Warnings: Hand of God
Rating when posting: K+

Author's Note: The idea that Lee Adama is a Cylon is not an
idea to which I personally subscribe. This story was written for
a challenge on ScienceFictionBuzz/Worlds of Wonder in which
authors were challenged to tackle this idea.

Stream of Consciousness

On the catwalk above the hangar bay, Captain Lee Adama supported himself with his elbows on the railing. From the half-shadows above the deck, he observed the few knuckledraggers on third watch as they worked on the battered fighters below. He held a bottle of ambrosia in one hand, dangling it precariously over the edge of the catwalk. The small amount of remaining liquid sloshed gently, making soft splashing sounds as the bottle swayed in his grasp. The sweet liquor odor drifted upward, outward, filling Lee's nose with its honey-like scent. Down on the deck the mechanics continued their repairs, unaware of the pilot's presence above them.

Lee stood upright for a moment, holding the bottle at eye-level to gauge how much ambrosia remained. Gazing into bottle, he spoke a toast, his subdued words lost in the echoing cavern of the hangar bay. "To fallen comrades, lost this day, may the Lords of Kobol take mercy upon your souls." He took a long swallow, emptying half of the remaining liquid. It was not going to be enough to drown the memories of those he had lost.

He slumped once more onto the railing, the bottle held out above the deck. He thought about the mission, remembering what Kara had said. Don't over think it. What did that mean? He shrugged it off again, just as he had done when Kara said it. Thinking was what had saved him, saved the mission. Perhaps in combat Kara was all passion and instinct, but for Lee it was totally different. In the terror and confusion of battle, Lee rode a steady undercurrent of thought and analysis. He locked onto those thoughts, and they guided him through.

When Fireball and Chuckles bought it, he had been ready to scrub the mission and tell his surviving pilots to bug out. His inner voice had calmed him, though. Steadied him, and showed him the opportunity that the trench ahead of him presented. Putting trust in himself, he had whipped his Viper around, down into that trench, and poured on the throttle toward the Cylon mining facility.

Then his inner voice had urged him into the conveyor tunnel.

He had balked at that. Taking Kara's advice not to over think the mission might be one thing, but becoming Kara by pulling some damn-fool stunt like flying into that tunnel was quite another. For a moment, he had argued with himself. Then he'd lost, and the Viper was careening down the tunnel above the conveyor, twisting and dodging the protruding bits of framework and equipment that threatened to destroy him at any moment.

Suddenly he had reached the end of the conveyer, and his eyes sought out the exit to the surface level of the refinery. He took it, and seconds later he was on the asteroid's surface, encircled by the machinery of the Cylon refinery. Keeping the Viper at a hover in the asteroid's slight gravity, he surveyed his surroundings. The tylium precursor tanks dominated his view, the very tanks he had come here to destroy. The Lords of Kobol were with him! He prepped the explosive charge that was clamped to the lower fuselage of the Viper, preparing to drop it beneath the nearest of the cluster of tanks that Doctor Baltar had designated as their target.

But he held off, listening to the currents of thought in the back of his mind. His position in the refinery, where the Cylons couldn't fire on him without hitting their own facility in a volatile spot, gave him a moment's breathing room to consider his actions. "Don't over think the mission," Kara's voice admonished him. Beneath her memory, though, swirled thoughts of danger and alarm. Yes, a blast beneath the storage tanks would be a crippling blow to the refinery. If the intruder were to detonate a weapon beneath the cracking tower, however, it would be devastating.

Suddenly Lee's decision was made, his actions cemented by the warnings in his mind. He kicked the Viper upward on its maneuvering thrusters, gunning the main engines at the same time. The fighter practically leaped over the storage tanks and then dropped back into cover just above the surface of the refinery. Swinging the nose around, Lee fired the main engines again, pulling back on the stick to climb away from the Cylon base. As he did, he released the explosive charge, which bounded across the refinery to land under the cracking tower. Lee climbed away from the asteroid, toward safety, hoping that the defensive guns would be surprised by his maneuver. Below him, the refinery erupted in a series of explosions that dominoed across the facility. The defensive guns were silenced as the entire Cylon base fell victim to the devastating chain reaction.

On the catwalk, Lee looked at the ambrosia bottle. He had returned to the Galactica to a hero's celebration. In the face of a crippling fuel shortage, his mission had secured for the fleet enough tylium to meet their needs for a long time. The crew treated him as though he had single-handedly saved them all. Several bottles of ambrosia had passed through his hands, as well as some of the Chief's secret hooch. He wasn't sure just how much he'd drank. Lee just knew he'd been high since the mission started. First the adrenaline rush of combat, then the thrill of success as the Cylon base was destroyed. After that came the adulation of his crewmates upon his return, and finally the onset of drunkenness as he celebrated.

He knew he was high. He also knew something was wrong.

His eyes narrowed, creasing his brow as he stared into the empty spaces of the hangar bay. He had always had an analytical mind. At various times before he had joined the Colonial Fleet he had considered such careers as legal prosecutor or police investigator. His nature, his tendency to seek out the answers and motivations for everything around him, had allowed him to dismiss the undercurrent of thought in his mind as something to be expected, something normal.

Now, he turned his conscious thoughts in upon himself, and he considered all that had happened this day. Despite the fog of ambrosia, or perhaps because of it, he didn't take long to reach a conclusion. Revulsion and fear gripped him; waves of anger and denial washed across his mind. He searched within himself for something to refute his conclusion, something to prove that his self-realization was a horrible mistake.

The crash of glass echoed throughout the hangar bay, and Lee's attention snapped back to the world around him. He found himself still standing on the catwalk, both hands gripping the steel railing so tightly they appeared white and bloodless. On the hangar deck, the mechanics stood silently looking at him. He glanced at the broken ambrosia bottle on the deck below , and then turned away, striding down the catwalk toward the hatchway. There was someone he needed to talk to, someone who could help him sort this all out.

Five minutes and a few salutes later, Lee was in the secondary containment room outside Sharon Valerii's cell. He picked up the phone, waiting for her, and then said, "We have to talk."

For Lee, time seemed to stop. He stood there, staring into Sharon's dark eyes, clutching the telephone. He listened as she refuted his conclusion, assuaged his doubts. She told him he was simply projecting his fears onto himself. She said there was so much untapped power within the human mind, and he was just lucky to be using more of his brain than most people.

She told him he wasn't a Cylon.

He was exhausted, and he was still drunk. Sharon told him to get some sleep. Lee turned toward the door, preparing to summon the guard to let him out. He was brought up short when he saw Kara Thrace standing in the doorway.

"Lee, what are you doing?" Kara's eyes had that hard look, her face revealing coiled anger. A few steps, and Lee was face to face with her. She put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him. "Lee!" she said, shaking him. "What were you doing in there?"

Lee shook his head, as though to clear it, and turned unfocused eyes toward Kara. "Nothin'," he said, as a trace of annoyance crossed his face. "Jus' talkin' to our prisoner 'bout somethin'," he added.

"Stop it, Lee, you're scaring me," Kara said. Her eyes were locked on his, her face a shifting expression of fear and concern.

"Huh?" Lee responded, still bleary-eyed.

"Lee, I was watching you, in there with that thing that pretends to be Sharon." Kara's expression was intense, her eyes searching Lee's face. "You were standing there, staring at her," Kara continued.

"But neither of you said a word."

fin