They say that love will always find a way. I say: only if it has a really good star chart. Riikka Korpela Kobol, Thirteenth Lord of Kobol
"You did what?" Sharon Valerii almost yelled. She sat up, letting her uniform jacket slide completely off her arm and onto the deck of Raptor Three One Two.
After Lee Adama had returned from the Star Chaser, Chief Tyrol had begun repairs on the hole punched through the Raptor's belly last week. Although operating systems had already been repaired, the cabin still had only the magnetic emergency plug to hold out space. The Chief had to weld on a durallium patch.
Lieutenant Sharon Valerii had joined Tyrol to do a post-flight check. It's not that she didn't trust Lee with her bird, but the Raptor was the only private room she and Tyrol had on the Galactica, and even then they had to polarize the front canopy and dog the hatch.
Underneath Sharon, Tyrol said, "I thought you'd be pleased, darling. We've got Boxey to think of now." He tried to pull her down for some more post-coital cuddling.
Sharon wasn't having any of it. The pure pleasure and intimacy of just minutes before had disappeared. She felt like she'd been thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool back at Picon pilot training headquarters. Climbing off Tyrol, she reached for her skivvies, slacks and shoes. "But you didn't tell me, Rolly. You didn't say a word. The Commander could give me all kinds of trouble over this. I could be taken out of the flight rotation or be put on report, maybe even thrown in the brig! I outrank you! It's my responsibility!"
Tyrol sat up, rumpling their wool blanket into a pile of Colonial green. "The Commander's had the request on his desk for three days. If he was going to do anything like that, it would've happened by now." His tone of voice said, "Be reasonable."
Sitting down in the pilot's seat, Sharon continued dressing, as stonily silent as an asteroid.
Tyrol sighed. "Damn, you're hard to figure out." Getting to his feet, Tyrol zipped up his pants, then his coverall. Men had it so easy when it comes to clothes and sex.
Sharon finished tying up her boots and began finger combing the tangles out of her long hair. It had been so long since she'd been able to wash it, the strands felt oily and slid thru her fingers like so much limp spaghetti. Now was the time to tell him, she decided. She'd been trying all day to find a better time, but if he wanted to unload trouble, she could hit him with some of her own. "President Roslin has asked me to be at the commanders' party."
"Oh, she did? I'll bet she wants to give you a medal or something." Tyrol took second chair where Helo used to sit. "You're a big hero." He grinned, obviously glad to talk about something new. Tyrol hated fighting with her.
She smiled back at him, but then looked away and licked dry lips, trying to think of a good way to say it. There wasn't any. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all. "I'm supposed to bring a date. So . . . so I've asked Captain Kelly." As Landing Deck Officer, Kelly was Tyrol's immediate superior.
Tyrol's prolonged silence had the thick texture of knee-deep mud. "Oh, well, yeah. That's great. Kell's a good guy. I'm sure you two'll have a great time."
When upset, Tyrol scrunched his shoulders and stuck his head forward. At the moment he looked like he had a Viper on his back. Pulling on her jacket, Sharon stood up and began to button. "What was I supposed to do? You can't go and I have to. So I found a date."
Tyrol's precious love anchored Sharon, but she always seemed to be casting him adrift. She'd always had deep problems with relationships. The chaplain blamed it on her orphaned childhood. She blamed it on herself.
Tyrol's jaw thrust out even further, his face closed down. Ever since Sharon had met him, he'd led with his chin on everything, and their romance had been no exception. "Do whatever you want," he said and then with extra emphasis and a sneer, "sir."
Sharon had been about to apologize, but that brought her hackles up. Slamming the hatch switch, she snarled, "Great. Tell Boxey I'll pick him up after second watch."
"Yes, sir." Tyrol jumped off the Raptor's shoulder and stalked across the maintenance shop deck in the direction of the tool room.
Picking up their blanket off the deck, Sharon wrapped it up in her arms and sat down heavily in the second chair Tyrol had just vacated.
The maintenance crews had been so busy on vital repairs there'd been no time for clean up. A few spots of Helo's blood speckled the Raptor's instrument panel and the monitors. Somehow Helo still filled the cabin. Tyrol filled it too. Ghosts and arguments crowded the narrow space.
Hugging her blanket close, Sharon tried not to cry. Only one tear made it down her face. Hearing someone at the hatch, she looked up. It was Tyrol. He wore his icy cold professional work face. "Lieutenant Valerii, sir. We've been asked to report to the officers' wardroom A.S.A.P."
Chief Tyrol tried not to think about the woman sitting next to him at the wardroom table. If Sharon could keep her mouth shut, so could he. It was best that way. He'd been a fool to think she could possibly love a grease monkey like him.
The officer wardroom had been turned into some sort of auxiliary CIC. A portable wireless console stood in a corner. The hotshot Viper pilot Lieutenant Thrace and Dualla from CIC stood over it, both of them wearing earphone racks. Thrace had one of her big cigars in her mouth and a murderous expression on her face. Dee just looked worried. Colonel Tigh – Tyrol always thought of him as "the Bastard" and spelled it with a capitol B – was deep in conversation with Mother Elosha and the bureaucrat from this morning, Jerry somebody, whose voice had sounded so remarkably like Commander Adama's.
Mother Elosha looked as calm as always. Jerry seemed incredulous. Large schematic print-outs covered one table.
The Commander's son Captain Adama sat across the table from Tyrol and Sharon. As the Captain spoke, Tyrol rubbed his face trying to make the tight jaws relax. He'd been afraid of something like this when the Commander had wanted to go on this moon-blown trip. And Suben was dead. Damn. He'd been a good man with a spanner.
The Captain finished up. " … and that's all we know so far. They made him strip and Dualla thinks the wireless transmitter must be laying on the deck. All we can hear is some kind of rumbling and sometimes a few words in the background."
"So what can I do to help, sir?" They must have brought him and Sharon here for a reason.
"Actually it's both you and Boomer here." The Captain nodded at Sharon. "The Three One Two's docker still holds the last unlock sequence, right? I mean it hasn't been wiped yet."
Sharon answered that one. "That's theoretical, sir. There's no practical way to recall and use it again and I don't think anyone has ever tried."
The Captain's eyes shifted to Tyrol. "I agree, sir. Short of ripping the docker out of the Raptor and hauling it to the sequencer in the main lab, there's no way to get at the information." It was one of the drawbacks of their un-networked old battlestar. Information in one computer pretty much stayed there.
"How long would that take?"
Sharon said, "At least a day, Captain. It's a lot of work."
Tyrol glared at her. Why did Sharon always think she knew his job? "Begging the lieutenant's pardon, but it wouldn't take that long. Four hours. A miracle for each minute less. The docker's computer is rigged to every piece of the mechanism. Every lead has to come off and be labeled or I'll never get it back together again."
"Well, then that's one thing we need from you -- a way to get the Star Chaser's hatch open and without cooperation from their bridge. We found a few old twelve schematics in the archive. They're over there but we have no way of knowing modifications." Both Tyrol and Sharon started to get up. Now what did she think she was doing?
"Wait. There's one more thing. We think that the Commander's told us to shoot out their gravity generator."
"Really, sir? Wow!" Now that was a genuine stroke of genius. Made of solid metal and with practically no moving parts, even long-time spacers thought of gravity generators like planet cores. That is, they didn't think of them at all. They just were. Generators were almost impossible to destroy, but with sufficient force they could be damaged, and it did very strange things to a ship's gravity.
Captain Adama was worried. Tyrol could see it in his face. "If I shoot it out, what will that do? It won't crush him will it?"
"No, sir. Even damaged generators max out at one g. Depending on just where your shell hits, there will be pools of gravity loss all over the ship. If it takes out the stabilizer, the pools may travel around. At the very least, there'll be significant fluctuations."
Sharon had managed to sit quietly for a minute. "What am I going to do, sir? Pilot the Raptor?"
"First I'd like you to work with the Chief on the docker problem. You'll have until seventeen forty-five to come up with something. At eighteen hundred whether you have a docker solution or not, I'll be wanting you to pilot the Three One Two over with a rescue party. They'll be wearing E.V.A. mag boots so they can move around the ship even without gravity. The kidnappers are going to think that you're flying a workhorse, so you can't let them see you either."
Frak, Tyrol thought. I can't work with Sharon on this. Not today. He was about to ask Captain Adama to assign someone else, when he caught an angle in the Captain's face that strongly reminded him of Commander Adama. The Captain wasn't just worried about his superior officer, he was worried about his father, and he looked exhausted, drained. He had more important things on his mind than a lowly chief's mixed-up love life. Tyrol asked, "Is there anything else, sir?"
"Just more thing. Colonel Tigh is working on a way to relay messages to the Commander through the evening news broadcast. Mr. Blanchard's going to pretend to be the Commander and Mother Elosha will choose some verses from the Scrolls. We're not sure they'll even let him listen, but if there's no possible way for you to get that lock open, we can try to tell him to open it for us."
"I'll do my best, sir, but dockers on a commercial vessel, they're built for security. It's going to be like trying to open a bank vault. I hope you can make that message thing work."
"We can get that docker open for you, Captain." Sharon seemed determine to disagree with everything Tyrol said. Before they'd argued as a lovers' game. It didn't feel like a game now.
Tyrol rose to go, but Sharon had one more question. "Who's going to shoot out the gravity, sir?"
Captain Adama's jaw tightened. "I am."
"Like hell you are." Lieutenant Thrace had come up behind them. "I'm twice as good a shot as you."
The Captain straightened up. "Watch yourself, Lieutenant. I said I'm going to do it and that's it."
Thrace snarled, "Yes, sir. Captain Asshole, sir."
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Life is made up of marble and mud. Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables
Another one of those eye-catching quotes. Love does seem really mixed sometimes, doesn't it? Send me a review and tell me what you think.