" So Say We All "
It wasn't like the ship could exist without the flight crews. It wasn't like it was easier to train someone to all the functions of the flight deck. Sure it technically took longer to train a viper pilot and bridge officers had to have more technical course work beyond the initial officer training, but it took close to that amount of time to turn a raw rook fresh from Basic into a skilled technician. Longer, truth be told, if you wanted that skilled technician to work in a cohesive team.
Tyrol sighed as he looked down the roster. There were a lot of spaces to fill, too many. And the ones remaining.... It was easy for people to say that no one was a rook after the last two days, and while he understood the mentality and agreed with the philosophy behind the statement, it didn't change the fact that his crews were mostly empty and the ones who remained were not experts. The Galactica had, in the past few years, been more of a training ship and proving ground than a real fighting ship. If you could work on the Galactica, where there were no integrated computers, then you could work anywhere. It was a mark of honor, even among the pilots, to say that your first posting was on the Galactica. It was true, too. By its very design, it was harder to work on the Galactica. The commander made it more difficult by never backing down on the issue. On the one hand, Commander Adama's refusal to have any integrated computer systems on board the ship had probably saved their lives. On the other hand, it certainly had dragged the old man down in the fleet standings. He wondered if the commander felt vindicated at all.
Not that it could be much comfort, Tyrol supposed after a moment of thought. Being right was all fine and good, but when being right meant that almost every single person in the colonies died.... No, he doubted that Commander Adama drew much comfort from being right.
As for himself... Tyrol didn't know what to think or how to feel. He didn't have a family beyond the people on the ship and he hadn't been looking forward to the next few months after the decommissioning. There was something about gutting a war ship and turning it into a tourist attraction that tore him up. He had intentionally kept away from the conversion of the starboard landing bay into a museum because he couldn't bear to see it happening. Now though, there was a part of him, a very small part to be sure, that was going to delight in ripping out the damn gift shop from the viper launch tubes.
The problem was that there were a lot of members of his family that weren't going to be there. Eighty three people didn't seem like a lot, not when you put them up against the billions upon billions that had died, but the next time he called for a formation on the deck, there were going to be a lot fewer faces. And it wasn't just the rooks who had died. Prosna had been the first friend he had made in Basic. And now the man was dead because the colonel wouldn't spare one minute before blowing the deck.
He would have to think about promoting some of the remaining people, he realized. Most of them weren't ready but he couldn't do it all by himself. There would also have to be a recruiting drive in the rest of the ships in the convoy. There were fifty thousand people give or take out there and there had to be a few with military service.
And a lot of the work wasn't going to be skilled labor, not at first. The destruction of the gift ship and museum was going to take a serious amount of raw labor. Repairing the port landing bay and getting the remaining vipers working would take more time, especially as short handed as they were. Cally had done the initial survey and even if he pulled all of his people and just worked on the port landing bay, it would take weeks. And he couldn't pull everyone for just one task. The commander wanted the refit of the starboard landing bay started and while there had been no time limit given, he was pretty sure that there was an expectation that it would be done quickly. Then there were all of the civilian ships that desperately needed engineering assistance. And after that? There would need replacement vipers and raptors, there were a few civilian ships that could be converted to fighting ships. That would also mean building some new ships to hold the displaced civilians and they were already packed too tightly on any number of ships to begin with. For health reasons alone, more ships would need to be built. He grinned ruefully. In five minutes he had come up with enough work to fill several lifetimes.
The commander had approved pulling every able bodied person on board off regular duty and having them work on the landing bays. It would help but it was a lot of people to manage that weren't trained. The pilots were willing to work on their ships, for the most part, but in the past they tended to balk at doing more mundane tasks like clean up work or heavy lifting. They were a just a bunch of arrogant fancy fliers for the most part, he thought with some contempt, that had no idea how much actual raw work it took to put their ships in the sky...
He stopped himself before he went further down that train of thought. There was a place for that particular resentment and it was in the past. All of the pilots, and almost everyone else on board the ship including the few refugees that had been picked up had been down helping haul away debris. And there were precious few pilots left. It would be unlikely to find any ex viper or raptor pilots in the convoy.
Sharon would know more about it than he would. Sharon was, as near as anyone could tell, the only qualified raptor pilot left. Suddenly, he wanted to see her, to hold her. In one respect, he was much luckier than everyone else. Sharon had survived and he had survived and the issue of fraternization seemed very very minor now. They were on a trip to a place that no one had been in known history, and most of humanity had died, and there were a million things to do but he wanted to be with his girlfriend. And for once, he was going to go with his heart. Earth, and all the things they had to do to get to Earth, could wait one shift.
It wasn't like the ship could exist without the flight crews. It wasn't like it was easier to train someone to all the functions of the flight deck. Sure it technically took longer to train a viper pilot and bridge officers had to have more technical course work beyond the initial officer training, but it took close to that amount of time to turn a raw rook fresh from Basic into a skilled technician. Longer, truth be told, if you wanted that skilled technician to work in a cohesive team.
Tyrol sighed as he looked down the roster. There were a lot of spaces to fill, too many. And the ones remaining.... It was easy for people to say that no one was a rook after the last two days, and while he understood the mentality and agreed with the philosophy behind the statement, it didn't change the fact that his crews were mostly empty and the ones who remained were not experts. The Galactica had, in the past few years, been more of a training ship and proving ground than a real fighting ship. If you could work on the Galactica, where there were no integrated computers, then you could work anywhere. It was a mark of honor, even among the pilots, to say that your first posting was on the Galactica. It was true, too. By its very design, it was harder to work on the Galactica. The commander made it more difficult by never backing down on the issue. On the one hand, Commander Adama's refusal to have any integrated computer systems on board the ship had probably saved their lives. On the other hand, it certainly had dragged the old man down in the fleet standings. He wondered if the commander felt vindicated at all.
Not that it could be much comfort, Tyrol supposed after a moment of thought. Being right was all fine and good, but when being right meant that almost every single person in the colonies died.... No, he doubted that Commander Adama drew much comfort from being right.
As for himself... Tyrol didn't know what to think or how to feel. He didn't have a family beyond the people on the ship and he hadn't been looking forward to the next few months after the decommissioning. There was something about gutting a war ship and turning it into a tourist attraction that tore him up. He had intentionally kept away from the conversion of the starboard landing bay into a museum because he couldn't bear to see it happening. Now though, there was a part of him, a very small part to be sure, that was going to delight in ripping out the damn gift shop from the viper launch tubes.
The problem was that there were a lot of members of his family that weren't going to be there. Eighty three people didn't seem like a lot, not when you put them up against the billions upon billions that had died, but the next time he called for a formation on the deck, there were going to be a lot fewer faces. And it wasn't just the rooks who had died. Prosna had been the first friend he had made in Basic. And now the man was dead because the colonel wouldn't spare one minute before blowing the deck.
He would have to think about promoting some of the remaining people, he realized. Most of them weren't ready but he couldn't do it all by himself. There would also have to be a recruiting drive in the rest of the ships in the convoy. There were fifty thousand people give or take out there and there had to be a few with military service.
And a lot of the work wasn't going to be skilled labor, not at first. The destruction of the gift ship and museum was going to take a serious amount of raw labor. Repairing the port landing bay and getting the remaining vipers working would take more time, especially as short handed as they were. Cally had done the initial survey and even if he pulled all of his people and just worked on the port landing bay, it would take weeks. And he couldn't pull everyone for just one task. The commander wanted the refit of the starboard landing bay started and while there had been no time limit given, he was pretty sure that there was an expectation that it would be done quickly. Then there were all of the civilian ships that desperately needed engineering assistance. And after that? There would need replacement vipers and raptors, there were a few civilian ships that could be converted to fighting ships. That would also mean building some new ships to hold the displaced civilians and they were already packed too tightly on any number of ships to begin with. For health reasons alone, more ships would need to be built. He grinned ruefully. In five minutes he had come up with enough work to fill several lifetimes.
The commander had approved pulling every able bodied person on board off regular duty and having them work on the landing bays. It would help but it was a lot of people to manage that weren't trained. The pilots were willing to work on their ships, for the most part, but in the past they tended to balk at doing more mundane tasks like clean up work or heavy lifting. They were a just a bunch of arrogant fancy fliers for the most part, he thought with some contempt, that had no idea how much actual raw work it took to put their ships in the sky...
He stopped himself before he went further down that train of thought. There was a place for that particular resentment and it was in the past. All of the pilots, and almost everyone else on board the ship including the few refugees that had been picked up had been down helping haul away debris. And there were precious few pilots left. It would be unlikely to find any ex viper or raptor pilots in the convoy.
Sharon would know more about it than he would. Sharon was, as near as anyone could tell, the only qualified raptor pilot left. Suddenly, he wanted to see her, to hold her. In one respect, he was much luckier than everyone else. Sharon had survived and he had survived and the issue of fraternization seemed very very minor now. They were on a trip to a place that no one had been in known history, and most of humanity had died, and there were a million things to do but he wanted to be with his girlfriend. And for once, he was going to go with his heart. Earth, and all the things they had to do to get to Earth, could wait one shift.
