One of the bad things about living on a battlestar was the hull. It forced every passageway to eventually curve back on itself or dead-end. There were days when Kara ached for a straight-line distance that she could run until she was so far from the beginning there'd be no going back, and so far from Lee that she didn't love him anymore. If that were possible.
Lee was behind the pilot briefing room podium telling them the committee's plan. As he spoke, his voice shook around the edges and his eyes kept wandering away from the audience to the floor, the overhead, and the bulkheads. To Kara it was obvious that only Lee's commitment to the Fleet and his uniform were holding him together and the uniform looked sadly frayed. No wonder he hadn't told her the details.
Except for High Card and Rat Frak who were flying the current patrol and listening on the wireless, Kara had assembled every Viper pilot on Galactica in the pilot briefing room. Those who couldn't sit in the chairs reclined on the deck or like Kara leaned against the back bulkhead. Even Slinger who'd been in sickbay for a week recovering from a bout of pneumonia had been carted in with an oxygen tank after he'd called Kara and insisted that it was his right. Only the Lords knew for sure how he'd heard.
"The Commander will be making the same announcement to everyone else in a few hours," Lee had said, "but I wanted you to know first. I'm sorry I don't have time for questions." He'd been firing off words faster than a Viper cannon. "But I'd like to be able to tell the Commander where we stand."
A thin young man, so white blond and fair he looked like a Picon Winter Wraith, Kara thought his name was Gregory, stood up. "I say we send a message back with Captain Adama. Let's tell the Commander we're all in it. Raise your hand if you're in." Gregory's hand shot up immediately as he looked at the other pilots. Around the compartment every hand went up. Not all of them quickly, it's true, but every one of them went in the air -- even Slinger in his wheelchair. Over the wireless High Card and Rat Frak swore their hands were raised.
Lee's shoulders bowed and his head hung for a moment, as though a great burden had suddenly been placed on his back and he needed a moment to adjust, but when his head came back his eyes were shiny and all he said was, "Thank you. Thank you. I'll tell him. He'll be proud of you." Everyone in the room knew that Commander Adama had started his military career as a Viper pilot. They felt a personal connection with their Commander, and Kara believed he felt the same with them.
Kara caught up with Lee just outside the hatch and matched his hurried stride down the nearly empty passageway. It was mid-watch and few people were about. "Lee, you have a minute?"
Lee didn't look like he had even a second, but he smiled and said, "Sure. Why don't you walk with me?" He was really running more than walking. At the first intersection, they dodged left down a side passage to bypass a section that had been breached a year ago and was no longer airtight. It was completely deserted here. "What do you need?"
Babies didn't matter to Kara, but she knew they mattered to Lee, to the whole Adama family for that matter. Back when she'd been dating Zak, they'd never quite worked out their baby issues. "Tell me more about our baby legacy. We'll have five each?" Not a big family by Colonial standards, but a respectable beginning.
However, from what Lee had said, for volunteers most likely it would be both their beginning and their end.
Lee glanced at her. He was probably surprised at her interest. Babies weren't Kara's thing. She'd made no secret about that when she'd been dating Zak. But she hadn't really been unwilling; it'd been more like she'd needed lots of convincing. At least, that's what she always told herself. Lee said, "For the women, whatever eggs are harvested, most of them will have four to six. The men up to five. Lighter's hoping for five hundred babies in all."
"Serena must be very happy that she'll finally have a family." Motherhood was going to catch up with Galactica's wicked witch. Kara wanted to laugh her head off. She tried to keep it down to a polite snicker. "At least she can't keep her legs crossed anymore."
Lee stopped so quickly Kara was several steps down the passageway before she realized that she'd left him behind. "That was uncalled for, Kara."
Uh-oh. She'd gone too far again. Kara was always doing that with Lee. It was one of the hazards of caring too much about what happened to him, but now wasn't the time to back down and make nice. In a week they were all going to die destroying the Cylon home world. Lee had just said so. "Uncalled for? Why? Because Serena won't sleep with you? Everyone knows that."
Lee's face closed down and his ridiculously square jaw tucked into his chest in a defensive movement. She'd hit him where he lived, where they all lived.
This time Kara had gone so far she was out in orbit, but she wasn't going to stop. Not now. She was going to tell him the truth. "Serena doesn't deserve you, Lee. She's the luckiest woman in the universe and she doesn't even know it."
Lee's eyes searched hers a moment then he looked away. "If there's nothing else, Lieutenant Thrace, I have to go now. I'm late."
She nodded, "Of course. Let me know if you need backup." She'd blown that into space. Sometimes she was just so stupid.
Watching Lee's back disappear down the passageway as he jogged away, Kara murmured, "I'm sorry, Lee. I didn't mean it." He was too far away to hear. Nothing ever changed between her and Lee. No matter how much she loved him, it was always too little and too late.
.
Across the room from the group gathered around the lunch cart, Colonel Tigh murmured for Adama's ears only, "Bill, can I talk to you a minute?"
Lee hadn't returned yet, so Adama nodded. "What's up, Paul?"
"Uh, I can't talk Gaeta out of going. He insists that we won't have a chance of getting home without him to navigate." The Colonel's lips pressed together in a wry smile before he continued, "He's says I'm an okay navigator, but he's a lot better." Unfortunately, it was the truth.
"Have you explained we probably won't have a chance even with him? He may never see that new baby of his." Gaeta's wife Melinda was seven months pregnant with their second child.
"He knows, Sir. It's a matter of honor. He doesn't want to be left behind."
"I understand." As the Colonel started to turn away, Adama added, "Make sure Gaeta gets a double progeny allotment, give him and his wife ten legacy babies if Lights will let you. He's a good man, and his kids should have a lot more sisters and brothers. And Colonel …" Adama looked into Tigh's battle-weary gray eyes, "…you bastard, you too. Even us crazy old farts should have a share. Remember what they used to tell us after the first war."
"Yeah, I remember: 'If war is hell, a big family is heaven.' I will." The Colonel shook his head in disbelief. "Imagine, me a father at last. That's damned close to a miracle."
Adama chuckled. "Tell me about it." Even Adama would have his share in the legacy project. Commander Lighter had insisted on it.
After giving the committee members another fifteen minutes to eat and take care of business, Adama told Chief Gibson to flick the room lights a couple of times to call them back to order; and with a last visit to the coffee pot, the men and women slowly migrated back to the table.
At the last possible second Lee stepped back through the hatch. As he walked behind his father on the way to his chair, he muttered between one gasping breath and the next, "One hundred percent."
Adama's eyes flicked toward Lee but he acknowledged the information in no other way. He knew what those three words meant. One hundred percent of the Viper pilots had volunteered to go, Lee included. And Kara. Although he'd expected that, it still hurt like hell. First Zak then Lee. And even Kara too. He must be some kind of monster to kill his own children. Adama swallowed hard and gave himself a count of five to calm down.
"Colonel Tigh," he said. "I believe you, Lieutenant Gaeta and Captain Adama have a report."
The Colonel picked up a short printout. "The first three ships to land on Zodiac will be ripping out their inertia regulators for us. That's uh … " he looked at the paper " … oh, frak. I can't tell which ships that'll be. Barthmelent there knows. Anyway, they'll shuttle 'em back up to us. As for the rest of it …" As Colonel Tigh kept talking, Adama's mind wandered through a gray garden of memories, the good, the bad and the merely painful. He knew Tigh's whole report anyway. He'd helped write it.
Then it was time for Lee and his plans for the mission that would most likely kill him.
Referring to a clipboard holding his pilot roster, Lee said, "I have twelve more pilot volunteers than I have battle-ready Vipers. I'll need one to pilot the Squadron Raptor and another to work its electronics suite, so that cuts me back to ten extra. Lieutenant Thrace and I have been working out a list of our best and most experienced. I think we'll have a final list for you by tonight, Commander."
Adama mentally shook away his misery and took command. "Make that nine extra men, Captain. We'll need a man to fly in the penetration party -- your very best. It's not going to be easy to fly like a Cylon." Lee would know whom he had in mind.
He did. "I'll talk to Lieutenant Thrace about it, Sir. I think she'd probably rather be in a Viper, but if that's where you want her, I'm sure she'll do it. She'll just need to log a few hours of practice in that frakkin' monster."
"See that she gets it. Be sure to warn CIC and try to keep the blasted thing out of sight on the far side of Zodiac's moon or something. We don't want a trigger happy gunner to shoot her out of the sky." Lee nodded and made a note.
Colonel Tigh spoke up. "Can I see that roster, Captain?" As he took Lee's clipboard, Tigh looked across the table at the geophysicist Massinger, who'd been quietly listening for most of the morning, although now and then a tear rolled down her cheek. After completely soaking her handkerchief, the Doctor had started using one of the napkins from the lunch cart to wipe her eyes and nose. "What's your son's name, ma'am?" Tigh asked.
The doctor looked surprised. "Gregory. Gilbert Gregory. His father and I are … were divorced."
Tigh scanned down the roster; and picking up a pencil from the table, he drew a straight line across the page. Handing the clipboard back to Lee, he told him, "There's one less for you, Captain."
Taking the board, Lee looked at the name crossed out and nodded. "Sure, Sir. One down, eight to go." Massinger started crying in earnest.
Adama smiled slightly. As far as he knew, the Colonel hadn't had a single drink in two years, partly because it was both hard to get and illegal and partly from self-control. Paul had changed and only for the better. "You're one surprising son of a bitch," Adama whispered to his old friend.
.
Elena Lighter had known William Adama since their Academy days. Back then no matter what the deviltry, Adama had always been out in the forefront, an instinctive leader as well as being brave to the point of stupidity. She'd seen him and Paul Tigh pull off air-cycle acrobatics that vid. stunt men wouldn't have dared.
But this would be Adama's craziest stunt yet, attacking the Cylon home planet. More than likely it would get him and a lot of other people killed and he knew it. She could tell from the stillness in his hands and the quickness in his eyes.
One of Elena's own hands went to the bottle that still rested on the floor beside her chair. The baby legacy had been her idea, born out of her desperation to keep the gene pool as broad as possible as well as their shortage of fertile women, but Adama had picked up on it immediately. He'd liked the idea that he and his volunteers could leave something of themselves to participate in the new world. She could only assume that it also eased a little of his guilt for condemning so many people to almost certain death.
Elena hoped that she could bring all the babies to full term. Even back on Caprica the in-vitro process had been still fairly new and here on this pioneer world, all sorts of things could happen. She'd promised Bill five hundred babies over two years. The reality would probably be somewhat less.
Bill's son Lee and Paul Tigh were discussing the Viper pilot roster -- who'd go and who'd stay behind. That must be one of Bill's deepest pains: that the baby boy he'd once cradled in his arms was going to die with him. Elena had lost all of her family in the Judgment -- her husband, both of her grown daughters and her three grandchildren. Now, three years later, whenever she thought about them, it still hurt like a knife wound in the gut. That pain would never die, but she went on with dogged determination. Babies had always her business and she still had a lot of work to do.
Bill stood up. "I think that's enough for today. Why don't you all go start pulling this show together? Just get back here tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred." He beckoned to his son to stay behind and while he talked a moment with him, Elena waited patiently standing a few chairs away, discussing with Captain Silliam possible burial strategies for Paracelsus's new home on Zodiac.
Over Silliam's shoulder, Elena watched an angry disagreement quietly play out between Bill and his son, both of them so controlled their voices never rose above a whisper. Finally, Lee turned abruptly on his heel and left. Silliam looked after the departing back and said, "Excuse me. I need to arrange pilots with Captain Adama." He trotted off as well.
Bill stared at the hatch where his son had disappeared until Elena cleared her throat with the traditional two-beat cough then he turned towards her with an apology. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Lights," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"When can I start lining up foster parents?" she asked him. After Bill's argument with his son, he'd probably see the question as both mundane and pointless, but she needed to know. "We should start while everyone's still shipboard. They're going to get pretty scattered after landing and not everyone will have wireless access."
"Not yet," Bill said. "I'm going to tell my crew in a couple of hours, and Laura and I'll put out the general announcement in the morning. Why don't you shoot for tomorrow evening? Give 'em a chance to think about what it all means?" He looked distracted, his eyes focused inward rather than on her. Bill and his son always seemed uncomfortable with one another. He was probably replaying the argument in his mind.
"Sure. Sounds good," Elena said. Then without letting herself think about it, she wrapped her arms around Bill in a tight hug and said, "Frak you, you old fool." Nuzzling his neck and she repeated herself more quietly in his ear, "Frak you," then pulled back to look into his eyes. Although they'd never acted on it, there'd always been an attraction between them, even when they'd been married to others. Elena hoped Bill would understand her offer.
Bill understood perfectly. "Me too. Anytime you want," he murmured and kissed her cheek. Stepping away, he continued more loudly for the benefit of the half dozen other people still in the compartment, "Hey, old girl. We all have to do what the Lords give us. You do your job and I'll do mine."