The new pump motor worked, and, fittingly, Caff called us all around the still. We pounded down our shots, but I didn't quite keep up with the guarded happiness shared by the others.
"Good job, everybody," Caff said. "We haven't had an alert in about eight years on the Lady, but all of you remembered what to do, and in good time."
He went on, but my thoughts turned inward. Caring about someone I considered a friend, like Diana, didn't bother me. Just knowing I had a friend, outside of the deteriorating professional cohesion on the Lady made me feel as if I wasn't trapped in a giant aquarium. Now, though, I had to face the fact that I cared for her, that what I felt, in my gut, was more than just a reaction to being on this tub with a bunch of guys and a butch navigator. My world was a little better because she was alive, and in a world that may not have a tomorrow, that scared me. I poured myself another hit of our house brew, and let it burn down my throat, settle in a little hot corner of my stomach, as Jeffers barreled through the shop. His every stride screamed urgency and authority.
"Alright, " he began, with a sideways glare toward Toby. "Floor damage aside, everything is back in order. One problem, though."
At this point, we didn't even react, as a whole. Bad news was evidently the order of the day.
Jeffers cleared his throat and continued. "Galactica has not joined us yet."
Marty leaned toward our XO, eyes wide.
"Whaddya mean 'not joined us yet,' Mr. Jeffers?"
He sighed and responded: "They're not here, Samuels. They didn't jump in with us, yet. And we don't know why."
So much for brooding and introspection. It was back to the grind of reaching the next hour alive. If Cylons showed up, we were done in under five minutes. Heavy silence permeated the group, as Jeffers turned and crisply returned the way he came.
"Alright, people. We can't do anything about our missing big guns," Caff said. "But we can get on the stick and check the secondary lines and thrusters for any damage from the pump motor failure. Besides, I'm sure we'll be getting calls from other ships needing help. So you know what to do. Get to it."
We scattered to our new tasks and, for the first time since we initially jumped beyond the Red Line, I felt as if we were just putting off a quick death.
The battlestar Galactica did return, a couple hours later, but we were greeted only with more silence, and no information. Colonial One was still jammed from the rest of the fleet, but she still flew in formation, next to our protector, which loomed over us now like an oppressive behemoth instead of our valiant shield. Civilian shuttles slowly resumed traffic, and we finally got a message, through Zenar and the Prometheus, that Bertrand was indeed safe and sound. Other information, via wireless, wasn't so good.
Shortly before the basestar forced our hasty retreat, one of Adama's raptor pilots shot him point blank in the chest three times. He was now in critical, but stable condition, and Colonel Saul Tigh was running the show. I barely knew who Tigh was, beyond meeting him in Galactica's infirmary after getting jumped on the Mazingo. His high-strung demeanor and loose-cannon rhetoric did little to ease my mind about the future. The only good bit of news was that absolutely no one was harmed aboard Colonial One. Roslin was in the brig, but her cabinet was left aboard the President's ship. I doubted Diana was having an easy time, but at least she was still alive. I had hoped that she was on assignment, among the fleet when the coup went down. That was doubtful, though. All indications showed that Roslin's entire cabinet stood with their President.
We shuttled out, passing the time helping other ships whose engines and hyperdrives didn't handle the sudden jump well. We patched lines, swapped brains, and did what we could to buy them time, until Galactica's silence broke, and ships could book time on the space tug. Everyone was edgier, and a little too happy to see us come aboard. Galactica was like having a big, mean dog that you couldn't touch, but had on a chain at your front door to keep out intruders.
I heard the news that the Quorum of Twelve was dissolved, by Tigh as I patched up secondary lines on a supply ship out of Tauron. I felt a little better that we had armed ourselves on the Lady. Anger simmered in me, in the people I saw every day, as I worked. Upon returning home, we all shared late night stories and rumors, how we were under an oppressive thumb of a drunk, who got his job only because the Commander who fought for his life was the Colonel's best friend. People began sit-down strikes, including, we found out, our tylium refinery ship, the Gideon.
Caffrey was doing a booze run, there, in exchange for an old secondary thruster unit that we could use for parts. Mangan told us that all outgoing shuttles were cancelled per Stengler's orders. All of us were back, and we just had to wait on Caff. He needed to find a shuttle fast. I literally shivered when word came that Tigh was sending marines to the Gideon, to take what they refused to give.
Mangan's face was a blank, as he lit up a cigarette. "Alright," he began, evenly. "Jimmy should be able to catch a shuttle out within the next half-hour or so. If he don't get back here, he knows to get word. When he gets back we'll figure out what we're gonna do if Tigh sends his jarheads knockin' here."
"How likely is that," Toby asked him.
Our FTL tech responded with a shrug. "I dunno. We don't supply Galactica with anything, so if he has to scramble for supplies, we'll be pretty far down the list." He turned to leave, his body tightening slightly as he dragged off his smoke. I knew he hated public speaking, and was only Caff's second because our foreman was his good friend. He could have been a boss a few years ago, but preferred the solitude of running the FTL, instead. Of all, he wanted to see Caff back soon the most.
"Well," I said. "Adama didn't kill anyone on Colonial One. That probably means Tigh won't either."
I remembered what Caff told me, the night of the coup, about Adama being a soldier, not a mass murderer. He acted swiftly, but methodically. Saul Tigh, based on my limited view of him, was an apparent loose cannon, but wore the same uniform. I just hoped I was right.
Mangan stared at me, hard. "Adama's laying in a hospital bed. This is Tigh's show. Just remember," he continued, without looking back as he left. "Receive any shuttle that CiC permits hard seal with your sidearm."
Another hour ticked by, there was no word from anyone, until Mitchell made a very rare appearance Down Below. He slid down the ladder, and found me working the still. Before I could tell him to let Mangan know, per the chain of command, his urgency cut me off.
"Just got news, Krenzik. Shots were fired on the Gideon. And…there were some deaths."
I felt the blood drain from my face, and, seemingly from my whole body. He did it. The old drunk sonofabitch really did it. What we would not give, he would take. I turned to leave, run down and tell everyone, but Mitchell caught my arm.
"What? What else, Mr. Mitchell?"
"B-before this. . . We were originally supposed to meet this morning with Tigh--the Captains of the fleet, I mean. Then he cancelled. And now this."
He was a thin, spare man, but then he looked totally frail, pallid. He clutched onto my arm, still--a little too hard.
The intercom chimed. "Shuttle docked, aft airlock," Jeffers said.
"Look, Mr. Mitchell," I said, gently prying his fingers away from my bicep. "You heard that, right?"
He nodded.
"That's Caffrey, now. We'll find out what happened, and the Captain will get us going from there, right?"
"Y-yeah."
"Okay. You go ahead," I told him, my voice cracking a little, as if his feeling of terror seeped through his fingers, into me. "I'll tell everybody else, alright?"
"Okay," he said, and hastily returned up the ladder. I stopped by my bunk, strapped on my shoulder holster for the first time, made sure I had a full clip, and headed for the cargo hold and the airlock--armed--per Mangan's orders.
I decided to save a little time, and head up the freight elevator, but it was already descending. Good. Caff was on the job. He probably had a good plan already, and information straight from the source about what happened. When he got us together, we could get the job done, whatever it was. The door slid open, but it wasn't my boss.
Standing next to Mike Briar, her blond hair in a messy bun, she looked at me blankly, her gray eyes sunk into her skull, behind dark circles and hard lines. Her mouth hung open slightly, and her suit was rumpled, as if she had worn it nonstop for days. She teetered a little, and Mike helped steady her. I didn't think. I just took her hand, which felt dry and cold, and helped her out of the elevator.
"Diana," I asked her. "What happened?"
One Hour Ago
I wonder if it was like this, at the spaceports on Caprica, and all the other Colonies, when the attacks began. Everywhere around me, people are 12 deep, shoving ,clawing, elbowing, shouting and crying, desperate and frantic. There are men and women holding their children high above their heads, screaming for someone to take their child aboard, if not themselves. But one by one, the shuttles have been lifting off. And now that it is down to the last one….the throng is pushing up against it still. Several large, burly looking ticketed passengers—perhaps one of them the shuttle pilot—have placed themselves at the entrance to the shuttle, and the pilot is holding a old-looking civilian pistol. They're checking ID at the entrance to the shuttle—only those on the list are allowed to enter.
"Go!"
With his hands firmly on my shoulders, Pete has been shoving me, the entire way, all the way from his quarters, where he had offered me shelter only hours before.
….I had thought I was safe here. I had thought I was finally done, on the run, that I had found sanctuary from the storm that had begun when the President and the Commander had locked horns across the void. I guess I was wrong.
"They're not going to let me on—"
"I'll make them let you on! We've got to get you off this ship!"
My planned reply was cut off abruptly as an elbow slammed into my side. I staggered, pushed into Pete, who somehow managed to keep his balance (probably by bumping into the guy on the other side of him, as well). I struggled to regain my balance, with Pete's hand on my shoulder still, when I felt another hand briefly on my other shoulder.
"Miss...Miss Thalyka? What the hell are you doing here?"
I could have asked him the same—Of all the people I had expected to see here, James Caffrey was one of the last. Physically, he looked the same as he had when I had last seen him, shaking hands with the President the day he and his men had come aboard to fix the engines. But the expression on his face was that of someone who was both shocked and appalled, and his eyes were different as well…haunted and somewhat dulled….but even more strangely, appearing to come alive with light as he laid them upon me, in the same way they brightened when the President had grasped his hand, aboard Colonial One.
"I—They—I was off Colonial One, when Colonel Tigh dissolved the Quorum, and—"
My voice just cut off, after that…it was all too much to take in, and to spit back out again…all too much to process, and the crowds around us continued to shove and scream.
"Sorry about bumping you, Miss Thalyka, I'm trying to get to my shuttle. Where's yours?"
Before I could speak, Pete had already blurted out an answer.
"She doesn't have one."
"What? What do you mean she doesn't have one?"
"When I found her here, she said she'd been jumping shuttles through the fleet without booking passage on them, ever since Tigh dissolved the Quorum. And most of us here, on the Gideon, we don't agree with what Tigh and Adama did—so I told her to stay here. I thought she'd be safe here. I guess we were idiots—We didn't think he'd come after us so soon for a couple a lousy cups of coffee. We got a right to refuse to resupply a tyrant. We got a right to stand up for ourselves."
Caffrey shook his head.
"This is crazy. Too crazy for her to be here!" Then, he looked to me, putting a meaty hand on my shoulder. "We have got to get you outta here. You're public enemy number one to them."
Me? Public enemy number one? He was right about one thing: This WAS crazy.
"I don't think—I mean—there are no spaces left on the shuttles. And I can't show my ID!"
Hell, I couldn't even let it be seen at all now, let alone try to use it to book passage on a shuttle—even now, it was sharp against the sole of my left foot, where I had stuffed it in the bottom of my shoe, days before.
Caffrey craned his thick neck above the crowd, brow furrowed in deep concentration, then his eyes lit up with a quiet resolve.
"Come with me, both of you. My shuttle's just down here."
He gently, but firmly, took me by the arm, forcing the sea of terrified men, women, and children to part before him, as Pete pushed us forward, from behind. He finally stopped at a docked shuttle, with almost no room inside--even to stand. As I watched, the pilot with the weapon and the two burly passengers shook their heads, and pushed away a woman with tears running down her face, her hands in a knot, pleading with them to let her on—at one point attempting to shove a handful of money, jewelry, and what looked like a bottle of booze into their hands as a bribe. No use—They didn't budge.
Who was he kidding? Could he honestly think that somehow, they would let me on? They weren't letting anyone on, who wasn't pre-booked before all this chaos had begun.
He smiled, a little sadly at me, then turned to the pilot at the door.
"Hey Frankie--"
"No more room, Caffrey. Get on so we can get the hell outta here before the Jarheads show up."
James Caffrey waved a dismissive hand, and replied: "She's taking my seat."
The pilot, Frankie, didn't even have time to open his mouth more than halfway, let alone get a response out.
"I most certainly am NOT."
The mechanic shook his head emphatically.
"You have to. There's no telling what they'll do to you if they find you here, after you were on the run."
"Come on Caffrey, I don't wanna leave with an empty seat," Frankie shouted. "Coming or going?"
"She's coming Frankie, just one second."
"No, Mr. Caffrey! I won't take your seat I--"
"They aren't lookin' for me. They're definitely looking for you. Frankie will take you back to my ship, the Lady. You'll be safe there."
"Godsdammit, I can't take your seat! It doesn't matter if they aren't looking for you! Don't you see They're going to storm this ship with marines? And Tigh is going to take what he wants, one way or another—No matter what he has to do to get it, or who he has to go through! You have a seat on that shuttle. You have a seat off this ship--"
"Well," Caffrey replied, since you feel that way…" he trailed off, looked at Pete. And then, I felt their grip tighten on my arms.
Instinctively, I tried to wrench my arms away from them, but unfortunately, both of them were larger and stronger, and also, at the moment, much healthier.
"What are you DOING—"
Neither of them paid any attention to me, instead, they pinned my arms behind my back, practically lifting me off the deck, and shoved me head first onto the shuttle, so hard that I smashed into—and past—several people already inside, ending up in the middle, nearly on my rear end. The pilot, Frankie, barely got out of the way in time. I scrambled back to me feet as well as I could with so many people surrounding me, and tried to claw my way to the front…But Frankie, with a nod at Caffrey, was already, to my horror, closing the hatch. I shoved even harder against the other passengers, but to no avail—the shuttle was packed so tight that one could barely move an inch, let alone ten feet, and the hatch slammed shut before I was even halfway there.