Ch 27
They walked down the hallways talking business in case anyone happened to be listening. Kara would flit ahead and look into rooms that could be used for talking in private and apparently all of them were occupied because she was getting more and more annoyed. Finally, two decks and three hallways later they found an empty storage room that wasn't used very often and they locked the door behind them. Kara began pacing the floor as Lee engulfed Lauren in a long awaited hug.
"Okay you two, there's time for that later. Right now I really want some answers."
"I can tell. Impatient much Kara?" Lauren laughed as she pulled away from Lee and sat on a box. "Well where should I start?"
"Start at the easy stuff? Maybe you can explain how you ended up on the Pegasus when I thought you were on Picon," Lee sat next to her and she leaned into his shoulder, resting her head on it.
"Well that's pretty easy, good idea. Okay, so I left Caprica on schedule, reported to Colonel Tinasso on Picon and was put to work immediately. Seems the Colonel had specifically asked for real hard workers cause he was very shorthanded. So that's why I didn't call you from there, I never had a chance. I was working 16 hours shifts and trying desperately to keep up."
Kara motioned anxiously for Lauren to hurry up the narrative but she didn't push it to hard because she knew what Lee had gone through in the past months. Lauren seemed to pause long enough to collect the right facts and she moved on.
"Well, 8 days into the suicide shifts, Tinasso gets an urgent request from Admiral Gataki over at Scorpion. Scorpion had just lost half of their staff to the strikes and the Pegasus was due in for a three month overhaul. Since Scorpion had the government contract for the fleet they absolutely had to get Pegasus done on time. So Gataki called me up cause he knew I could get the job done. Tinasso about threw a fit but I still owed Gataki because he was the one that allowed me to transfer back to Caprica." She gave Lee a pointed look at the memory of showing up on his doorstep.
"So you got transferred right after your transfer? That's twice now! You are the luckiest person alive when it comes to transfers ya know?" Kara said as she once again started pacing. Lauren and Lee both thought about the circumstances of Lauren's past transfers and they both nodded solemnly.
"Well so I was working on Pegasus, bunking on the station and working harder than I had for Tinasso while we waited for the strike to break. Well I was asleep in my rack when the attack started. In all the chaos and panic I guess I figured that being on a fully armed Battlestar made more sense than being on an unarmed station so that's where I went. When Cain ordered the jump out we all just held on and prayed."
"Where did she order the jump to?" Lee's curiosity was now piqued.
"Anywhere. She just knew we had to go. We'd been in full dock and we'd seen three or four of the other ships docked there blown apart at the beginning. The Cylons started dropping nukes for maximum damage and it worked. Luckily the Pegasus was on the far side of the station so we weren't even seen until last but by then the damage was done. There was debris flying everywhere so we couldn't even launch Vipers so Cain shook loose the docking clamps and got us far enough away to jump. We ended up on the far side of Tauron and we hid behind that big ugly moon it has, waiting to see what happened. After a few hours there was no contacts so Cain ordered the crew to start repairing the damage to the ship and readying the Vipers."
"What? Were you going to go looking for them instead of getting the frak out of there?" Kara's disbelief was thick but she hadn't been there.
"Well you'd have to ask Cain about that. She made the order, we just followed it. While we were readying the fighters she sent one of her officers down for a headcount and a roster of talent so I ended up inside one of the Vipers. She ordered us to jump to Caprica after we'd readied and when we showed up we got smacked by a basestar."
Lee's concern was evident, not just for Lauren but for all of the pilots, "Heavy losses?"
"Yeah, about a third of the pilots. A few managed to eject and we picked them up but most weren't so lucky. We recalled everyone and jumped back out to Tauron to recover. Cain knew that it wasn't safe to stay there much longer so we decided to head for the outer reaches of the system and see if we could find any other survivors."
"Is that when you picked up the civvies?"
"Yeah, some of them. We decided to head out for one of the munitions dumps on the far side of Tauron and we found a few more civvies out there. Once we were fully stocked again we told the civvies to keep moving outward and we'd catch up to them but Cain wanted to go back to Caprica one more time to see if we could pick up any broadcasts or anything useful. When we got there the Cylons were all but gone and we decided to go looking for them."