I can't imagine what made the commander think I was the right person for this job.
The president wanted someone who wouldn't be 'easily confused'. There has to be someone else in fifty-thousand people who's better trained for this than I am.
I'm a Viper Pilot. I'm an instructor. I am not an interrogator, and I can't figure out what the hell made him think I was.
Do I come off as that unfeeling? That untouchable?
Right now I would very much like to be anywhere other than here. This... this thing scares the shit out of me. He knows things that no-one knows.
I don't talk about my mother to anyone. Not unless I'm completely drunk. That way I can pretend to have made it up, to have exadurated a few minor incidents. Lee knows a little, the commander a little less, but it's not something we discuss. It's certainly not something you could 'pick up' on the wireless.
And honestly, I didn't even buy that line the first time. Sure, he could have heard my call sign, he might have even picked up my first name - Lee and I tend to fall into old habits and call each other by name when we're on patrol - from the wireless, but how would he know that I'm Starbuck - not Boomer or Cat or any of the other female pilots. And we're pilots, not pin-up stars. It's not like there are pictures of us floating around the fleet. He shouldn't have been able to pick up on who I was.
And then it got personal...
They can look like us. That's creepy enough. But they can read our frakking minds. That's terrifying. I've been very careful to keep people at a safe distance until I know without any doubt that they can be trusted. Even then I don't burden them with stories of the poor little girl who got burned and hit and locked in closets all in the name of religion. No one needs to know that. I don't need the pity or whatever that would follow.
This Leoban guy says that the Cylons have religion. That worries me. I've seen - I've lived through - what can be done in the name of 'getting closer to the Gods'.
He says he can 'see love' - what the hell can a machine know about love? And how do you see it even if you know what it is?
I'm starting to think that what worries me the most is that he isn't lying this time. That the Cylons really do have religion, really do believe in some kind of God. Really do have souls.
Shooting Cylons out of the sky has never bothered me because they were machines. They didn't have mothers or fathers who might care for them. Sisters or brothers who may miss them. Friends who would mourn.
What if we were wrong? What if they are alive? I have authority to destroy this ... this... him. it. whatever. I'm supposed to get whatever information I can and then kill it.
I remind myself that he knows things about me that I don't want becoming public knowledge. When I tell the marines to put his head back in the bucket and hold him there I remind myself that he has the whole fleet agitated because there may or may not be a bomb hidden somewhere on one of the over one hundred ships we have caravaning around the galaxy.
His whole attitude unnerves me. He wants to live. Why? Cylon-people supposedly just get downloaded when their hardware gets frakked. Why does he think he needs to live? In this body? In this place? He could escape. He's proven it and I have the bruises on my neck to show for it. So why doesn't he? Other than having nowhere to go, I suppose. Still, after the strength he showed in that move, he's letting us torture him. Why?
I've always like Commander Adama, but right now I'm so angry at him I could spit. What the frak was he thinking sending me here? Where on my resume does it say Viper Pilot, Sharp Shooter, Card Player, Cylon Psychologist?
Lee could do this better. Look what he did with Zarek. He's gotten his father and the president to come to agreements when it looked like there wasn't a chance in hell of that happening. He could get the information we need without all the problems a screw-up like me is having.
Gods, I'm going to have to debrief when this is all over. I'm going to have to explain that he got into my head and did exactly what the commander told me not to let him do. He confused me. He's making me feel sympathetic for him. For a Cylon.
There isn't enough headache medicine in the fleet for what this is doing to me.
And when I have to explain this... telepathy or whatever it is, I'm going to have to explain how I know he was in my head. I'll tell the commander. And I don't care if Lee is there. But I will not go into this in front of Tigh. No way in hell. Nowhere in my job description does it say I have to tell my sob story in front of the whole damn command staff.
I'm who I am because it's who I chose to be. Not because it was beaten into me that I should behave this way or that.
Dammit! If he wanted to prove that he could get into my head, why couldn't have chosen another way?
Okay, Kara, deep breath. He wanted to rattle me and he knew this would do it. More than Zak, more than frakking up as a cadet, more than surviving my squad at the beginning of the war, this would shake me up and keep me from thinking clearly.
Put it out of your mind. Think about the job you were sent here to do.
Get the information. Pass it up to the commander and the president and keep the fleet safe. That's all I need to worry about.
That's what my job is now. And I'm going to do my job.