Bill Adama knew that there were problems on his ship. In fact, he knew that there were very serious problems. He was short staffed everywhere. There were rumblings coming from maintenance about people getting pneumonia from breathing in too much mold, and even more rumblings about people insisting that they were being served mold in the mess hall. People were grieving and unhappy and there was precious little comfort available to anyone and even simple things like meals and quarters were becoming unpleasant. There hadn't been any suicides, thank the gods for that, but there had been a lot of death, and enough of those had been suspiciously reckless that he couldn't help but wonder.

He excused a lot because of just how unpleasant things were. There was so much fraternization going on, he couldn't even keep track of who was with who anymore, and truth be told, he didn't really care. If it helped morale, then he wasn't going to stop it. The only time he had stepped in was over Valerii and Tyrol and that was because it had gotten much larger than casual sex.

Stim abuse was different, although he had no intention of throwing the guilty into the brig. Stims were supposed to be kept under lock and key and he had made sure that all of his officers understood that stims were not to be used unless he ordered it. It was too easy to slide down the slippery slope into addiction. It also affected performance worse than the users thought. He had thought that everyone had learned a lesson from watching Kat implode emotionally while trying to land a Viper hopped up on stimulants. It wasn't a healthy thing to do, no matter how much work needed to be done.

He had to admit, he had been surprised to see the dilated eyes, twitching, and disjointed responses that typified stim abuse on Lt. Gaeta. Not so much that the man was using stims, Adama understood the temptation, had even succumbed to it back when he was a Viper pilot, and he knew as well as anyone that there was a lot of pressure on the officers. No, what surprised him was how suddenly the signs had appeared. Either Gaeta had a much higher tolerance than most, or he had taken a very deep dive into the world of stim abuse.

Which would be dealt with, and Gaeta was luckier than Kat in that the problem would be dealt with discretely. It was very lucky, or possibly just sad, Adama wasn't sure which, that Tigh had been too inebriated to notice that the watch officer was higher than a kite. It was a shame that Gaeta had been too out of it to notice how excited and happy everyone had been, but that was what happened when stims took over. It was unlikely that Gaeta would have noticed if the ship had been on fire, judging from how he had been acting.

He walked into sickbay, noting with pleasure that for a change, no one was screaming and there wasn't a line up. The various paramedics were stitching up a few crew members who had sustained minor injuries. Nothing too serious, Cottle would have already sent a grousing report.

" Don't I have enough to do without you sending me more problems?" Cottle huffed as he entered the main exam area. Judging by the way the medics all scurried away, Adama knew that the quiet was soon to be broken. Still, it wasn't like Cottle would get that upset over another case of stim abuse.

" I trust that Lt. Gaeta made his way down here?" He tried to not let Cottle get to him. Sure, Cottle was the only doctor in the fleet, but he was the commander. That meant that no matter how pissed off Cottle was, he expected the doctor to raise his concerns in private. It wasn't like he enjoyed sending the senior staff down to sickbay strung out on stims.

Cottle seemed to understand that. He gestured to his office. He made a point of closing the door carefully as soon as Adama was inside. He thrust a print out at Adama. " I hope you didn't tell anyone that you thought he was using stims, because he's clean."

"He's clean? That's… a surprise." A big surprise. " Are you sure?"

" I ran the test twice. He's not on stims." Cottle sat down at his desk and leaned back. " You know, Bill, if you want the crew to not wander around looking and acting like they're tripping out of their skulls on stims, you have to let them eat, and drink, and sleep occasionally. You might have fewer problems with mutiny, too." He lit up a cigarette. "Someone on stims would have needed a couple horse tranquilizers just to calm down. Besides, despite the obvious signs, he's not showing the symptoms of stim abuse. Stress, exhaustion, yes, but no stims." Cottle took a long puff. " You know, on average, people get about six hours of sleep every twenty four hours on this ship. That's two hours less than they should get. Now do you want to guess how many hours a night you have allotted to your lieutenant? About two. When he's not busy with secret projects. Do you want to guess why he seems a little disconnected?"

" I didn't know that." He should have known that, especially before assuming it was stims. He did sign off on the schedules, and it had been noticeable that maintaining a true watch schedule was only possible because the watch officers, all three of them including Tigh pulled more hours than they should. He tended to dump extra duty on Gaeta because unlike Tigh, he didn't have the rank or the confidence to tell the Old Man to frak off, and unlike Alghee, he was thorough, competent, and not prone to having sex with anything that wandered by. " It is just exhaustion? Nothing else?"

" I'm not a shrink," Cottle said after a moment. " My guess? He's got something on his mind, above and beyond the charming circumstances that we find ourselves in on a daily basis. I don't know what, I skipped the touchy feely let's all talk about our dead mommies nonsense, but I assume it's related to his duties. Whatever the secret project of the day is," and Cottle held up his hands, " you might want to drop the urgency. If possible."

" It's not." In fact, Adama thought tiredly, the very fact that they were so close to a working weapon meant that he couldn't drop the urgency. If anything, the urgency had to be at least maintained, if not increased. They desperately needed a weapon that gave them an edge.

Cottle blew smoke rings. " I figured as much. So once he wakes up from the mild sedative, shall I just send him on his way? Pump him full of anti-depressants? Punch him in the mouth? All of the above? Whatever that's eating at him, sleeping on it is going to put off the crash, not stop it. Not unless you know what's wrong and aren't telling me." Cottle took another long drag on the cigarette. He gave Adama a long, searching look. " This reminds me of when Valerii shot herself in the face. So much so, I made a point of checking with Dr. Baltar on whether he had gotten around to testing all the CIC staff. He had, and everyone had passed. I trust that warms your heart. And your bullet scar."

"I'll deal with the scheduling situation." Adama stood up. He understood what Cottle was trying to dance around, that he knew what the secret project involved, and that the situation with his tactical officer was edging towards an explosion.

Cottle nodded. " Might not be a problem for long anyway. Your Cylon prisoner? Is showing increased signs of severe depression. There's a problem."

The problem, Adama thought angrily, was that his project failsafe had somehow failed him, and he didn't understand that at all. That meant his next little chat would be with the failsafe, and he didn't look forward to that. He didn't like being angry with Dualla, even when she deserved it.

Dualla stood stiffly at attention. She knew exactly why she had been called to the commander's quarters. She didn't appreciate it at all, not one bit. Yes, she knew that she had been assigned to the project to watch for signs that Lt. Gaeta was getting in too deep. She had done that. She had written up reports. She had stood in the commander's quarters and verbally expressed her concern that an officer, and a good friend at that, was getting hoodwinked by a Cylon into thinking that he was somehow guilty for a heinous crime. What she couldn't do, what she didn't have authority to do, was stop a downward spiral once it had gotten outside of her control.

She had been worried when she started to hear rumors about Gaeta and Valerii. Even though she knew that Kara Thrace was behind the majority of them, it wasn't like she could go to Kara and tell her to shut her mouth. Just like she couldn't give Helo the piece of her mind that she had wanted to give him ever since she had heard that he had been hassling Gaeta. She had been especially worried when she started to realize that her friend, and the man she was supposed to be watching out for, was spending all of his time, both on and off duty, obsessing over a computer program that had consumed his personality for the last six days.

She could worry. And she did. She just couldn't do anything. And Commander Adama knew it.

He was looking at her with real anger. She looked right back. He didn't scare her, much anyway.

" So how exactly did things get to the point that Lt. Gaeta is in sick bay?" Adama asked softly. He took a seat behind his desk. " Well, Petty Officer?"

" Permission to speak freely, sir?" She was counting on that.

" Granted."

" I'm not the lieutenant's mother. I'm not an officer. I don't have the authority to stop the things I see happening." Dualla kept her tone cool and even. She knew she had Adama's respect, and one of the reasons that she did was because she didn't let her rage take over. " I told you, repeatedly, that the Cylon was trying to twist Lt. Gaeta into believing that he was some sort of Cylon spy. I gave you tapes with the pertinent parts keyed up for listening. I gave you reports on my concerns. I have been available to you, and to Lt. Gaeta, to be supportive and to make sure that things don't get out of hand. These are things in my sphere of control." She held up her hand to stop Adama from speaking.

" Here are the things I don't control. I can't work an identical shift as Lt. Gaeta, so I can't watch him all of the time. I can't stop Lt. Agathon or Chief Tyrol from telling everyone about the interrogation project because even though I'm under orders not to discuss it, they aren't. I can't stop the nasty rumors that have about half the ship thinking that Gaeta is a Cylon. I can't order him to go get some sleep, or eat, or to do anything really, because he's my superior officer. He isn't required to explain himself to me or ask my permission before he starts using stims to complete his project, or before he works himself into a breakdown because I might be a friend, but I don't out rank him." She paused to catch her breath. " I can only report to you what I know. I had no idea that Lt. Gaeta was using all of his spare time to work, or that he was skipping meals, because I can't be with him every minute of the day and still do my job. I told you I was worried."

Adama glared at her. She glared back. Finally he looked down at some papers on his desk.

" Do you think Lt. Gaeta is a Cylon, Dee?" It was the way he asked it that worried her. Like he was considering the possibility very carefully.

"Absolutely not." That was the truth. She had always gotten a bad feeling about Sharon Valerii, but never about Felix Gaeta.

" They can be very deceiving," Adama said after a moment, " But I am inclined to agree with you. She got in his head. The good news is that he did the same to her, and now I need to make a choice. Do you have any idea how close Mr. Gaeta is to making this virus work?"

" No sir, the math is over my head. Dr. Baltar could give you a better answer." She supposed. Dr. Baltar was, in her opinion, more of a showman than a true scientist. He might say it was close, just to please the commander.

The commander grunted. " I doubt that, very much." He took off his glasses, and took a step closer to her. " We need this virus to work. From now on, if you see or hear, or suspect anything, you are to come to me immediately. That means, if you think anyone or anything is threatening this project from being completed, you tell me immediately. If it's an emergency, you use any force necessary to make sure that we end up with a working computer virus."

" What do you think is going to happen… sir?" She hadn't thought of anything that struck her as an emergency. She also didn't like the emphasis he was placing on the virus. It suggested that the people making the virus just might be expendable.

Oh hell, she thought suddenly, we are expendable compared to a weapon that can stop Cylons cold. She suppressed a shudder. There were a lot of reasons that she was glad to not be an officer, and the cold blooded trading of lives of one.

" I don't know what's going to happen," Adama said. " But let's be prepared."