SAFE-TY SYS-TEM: A Classic Battlestar Galactic Story
By VStarTraveler

Author's Notes:

This story was written for fun, not profit, and all parts of Battlestar Galactica remain the property of their respective owners. That said, it is an original story that takes place in the Classic Battlestar Galactica universe of the 1978-79 TV series. Many thanks to my friend Amy for letting me borrow her character Abby for a brief appearance.

For those unfamiliar with Battlestar Galactica and the BG lexicon, the story begins in the Twelve Colonies of Man in a distant galaxy. The humans there have been fighting an on again-off again war for 1,000 yahrens, the Colonial year, against a race of sentient robots known as Cylons, who live in another system not too far away. The Colonies have built large spaceships called Battlestars and small fighter ships known as Vipers to take on the Cylons' giant Base Ships or Base Stars and small Raider fightercraft. At the beginning of the series, the two sides are at a stalemate and are preparing for a peace conference. This story begins about that time.

As noted, a yahren is roughly the Earth equivalent of a year, and a sectar is about a month, a secton is about a week, a cycle is about a day, a centar is roughly an hour, a centon is approximately a minute, and a micron is the Earth equivalent of a second. A metron is the Colonial meter. Most of the other terms can be determined from context.

Chapter 1:

Honorable people often inflict worse punishments on themselves for their mistakes than would their peers.

Such was the case of the man on the cot. Anyone who knew him would attest that he was indeed quite honorable, or at least, he tried to be as honorable as anyone in his condition could be. As a result, the self-inflicted punishment he was experiencing was quite severe.

His sleeping body suddenly jerked, stiffening, allowing a single foot to stick out from under the sparse sheet that covered him. A keen observer might have also noted that, unless the man was a skilled contortionist, his lower left leg did not appear to be where one ordinarily should be.

As he stiffened, he cried out yet again, abruptly concluding his ritual nightmare for what he would probably have guessed was the five to six hundredth time. It was a rare night since he'd awakened after the accident almost two yahrens before that he had not experienced the dream at least once. Each time, he saw himself lose concentration just before the critical moment and then make a tiny error, leading to a tearing of metal, an explosion just outside his cockpit, and the long scraping noise as the remains of two Vipers hit the ground hard and slid along for hundreds of metrons.

The dream always concluded with Joster's pale, dead face staring lifelessly at him, silently mouthing words that Urdea still could not understand after countless viewings. He'd even considered studying lip-reading to help decipher the words but had decided against it, since he wasn't sure how effective that would be anyway. His almost nightly experience with pallid nightmare ghosts, albeit a single one a great many times, led him to believe that they generally didn't make a habit of enunciating their words all that carefully.

He'd finally decided that the ghost was saying, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem," which he took as being an accusation about his carelessness. Now, viewing Joster's shade was both his nightly torment and his nightly penance.

Although the search had been quite intensive, very little of Joster's remains was ever located, with most, including the haunting face, having been consumed by the fiery explosion or pulverized by the long skid. The rescue team found Urdea's mangled body almost a centar after the crash. Although he was technically still classified as alive by the attending Med Techs, the damage had been severe enough that "remains" had seemed almost applicable. They later told him that his flight suit had saved his life, so he cursed it soundly and swore then and there that he would never wear another one. Of course, it was already obvious to anyone observing him that this was no longer an issue anyway. His days as a Colonial Warrior were over.

Almost a yahren after the accident, he'd been released from the care facility with most of the physical damage either stabilized or corrected. Twenty-three bones had healed, mending the close to forty fractures he'd suffered, although he'd carry nine of the pins, five implants, and three plates permanently. He'd also received four organ replacements, several substitutes, most of a mouthful of teeth, and countless grafts and plastic surgeries, all taking more operations than he cared to remember. In addition, what little was left of his lower left leg had been amputated and replaced by a prosthesis. Combined, this left most of the visible damage corrected, but the psychological damage was another story entirely.

Far more damaging than the actual injuries, the accident had taken both of the people Urdea cared most about in all of the Twelve Worlds. His wingmate, a slender young Libran, had been with him for only a few sectons but they'd quickly become close. They'd originally been teamed together by the Command Staff so Urdea could "help take off some of Joster's rougher edges," and eventually turn him into a real pilot. Instead, Joster had been killed as a result of Urdea's momentary loss of concentration, his stupid act of carelessness. He'd evidently let his mind drift away from the important task at hand, preparing to land his Viper in formation on the planet Sagitara.

He'd thought briefly of his beloved Abighiá, Abby, who he would have soon been seeing for the first time in fourteen sectons. Just before the start of that very patrol, he'd decided to ask her to take the Seal with him. The mission being all but over, he'd seemingly let his mind wander for just an instant. While he didn't remember it, his hand had evidently twitched slightly to the left, but it was more than enough to bring the two Vipers into contact and then to their mutual destruction as they had been preparing to do a touch-and-go landing in a remote area on the planet.

His Abby had been studying agronomy on the planet, but she interrupted her studies and started coming to see him every day, spending as much time as the medical team would allow while he was unconscious. She saw clearly the ravages his body had experienced, but she stood by him, doing her best to nurse him back to health as his body began the long recovery process.

Still, the sight of his broken body left her largely unprepared for the impact the accident had had on his mind. When he'd awakened and realized the extent of his injuries, he'd refused to see her again, hoping to somehow spare her any more anguish. She'd tried time after time to change his mind, sending letters, notes, and cards, all completely without success due to the guilt in which he was already beginning to drown himself. After some sectars, the frequency of the attempted visits decreased, and then trickled to a halt, as did the letters some time later. With the exception of his nightly visitor, Urdea was then truly alone.

Joster had been single, with his only remaining family being his mother and two siblings. Urdea had tried to contact them through Colonial Military channels, and had offered to set up scholarships for the siblings, but Joster's mother had declined any contact with the man who had killed her son, no matter how sorry he seemed.

Wanting to get away from it all, Urdea had bought an old shuttle, packed it with his few possessions, and left for the frontier on Canceria, his home planet. Flying slowly to conserve fuel, he'd programmed the shuttle's course before bed that cycle and then suffered through his nightly visit, with those flaccid lips mouthing, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem."

When he'd awakened some centars later, he was surprised to find that the programmed flight course had changed, and he was instead headed directly toward Libra, Joster's home world. Urdea had immediately reprogrammed the course and watched as the shuttle changed direction. A few centons later, however, he was surprised to see the course changing back toward Libra again. He had fought it for a full cycle but had finally given up when he realized that whatever was causing the course change would not easily be corrected.

The shuttle had finally landed, automatically it seemed, in open and uninhabited grassland just over thirty kilometrons from the nearest human settlement. After studying the area, he decided that this land would become his home. He'd visited the settlement, with the shuttle nav-computer working perfectly without any repairs, and he'd laid claim to the land and purchased building and farming supplies with the last of his money. He'd built a combined hangar and barn with most of the supplies, and with the leftover pieces of building materials, he'd built a small sod-covered hut and started a small farming operation. He'd succeeded in isolating himself as much as was possible, with only Joster's unwelcome nightly visage for company, so he could stew in his own guilt, frustration, and loneliness.

On the particular night on which our story begins, upon seeing Joster again mouthing the silent words, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem," Urdea had risen from his cot, and attached his prosthetic leg to the implant just below his left knee. He wiped sweat from his brow and walked to the pitcher of water he'd drawn from the well the afternoon before.

As he reached for his cup, he glanced through the small opening in the exterior wall. He was only mildly surprised to see flashing lights in the distance in the direction of Kenkillen, the nearest settlement. He'd heard on the local broadcast that Adar's peace treaty with the Cylons was being signed that day, so he assumed that the flashing lights were celebratory fireworks. He flipped on his small broadcast comm to get the latest word but received only static in reply. He'd planned to travel to Kenkillen the next afternoon for supplies anyway, so he returned to bed without another thought of the lights. Instead, Joster's pale face dominated his thoughts once more as he wondered yet again just what Joster meant by "Safe-ty sys-tem."

Outside the little hut, somewhere in the distance, a hooter sounded, its eerie wail breaking across the plains where darkness ruled once more.

'***