Diana sat in our breakroom, still, quiet. I had taken her by the arm, and she let me guide her right to that seat, looking up at me as if all the mental energy she could spare was encompassed with other things. Horrible things. Marines were storming the Gideon, and I hoped Caffrey would be back soon, and then we could plot the next step.
Mangan told me to sit her down, while he sent Toby up for the nurse. Luckily, I didn't have to worry about rubberneckers, or watching her crumple even further under a barrage of questions.
"You know her," he told me. "Find out what the frak happened." With that, he barked his orders out to everyone else, and ran up the ladder to tell the flight crew about our new guest.
She stared at the table's smooth formica surface, which was as blank as the look in her eyes. I grabbed my 32-ounce plastic tumbler, perhaps the last from the Highchurch port EZMart in existence, and filled it with water. Gently sliding a chair close, I sat next to the Secretary, my friend, and placed the cup before her.
She looked up at me. The fire in her eyes, when she grabbed me by the shoulders on Cloud Nine, standing over that manufactured stream, was gone. In its place was a sterility, like that of the fake moon that had bathed us in its light. She had feared her eyes would become as cold and dead as a Cylon's. Cold, they were. But I saw the primal fear of someone who was helpless to stop horror that she had seen.
Her trembling hand wrapped around the plastic cup as she brought it to her lips, and she swallowed in huge gulps. Water dribbled around the corners of her mouth, onto the table, her jacket. Diana put the nearly empty cup down, eyes finding the tabletop. I didn't realize how dirty she was until I saw the water cut through the grime on her face, as it dripped unattended from her chin.
Fast answers weren't going to come, no matter I badly I wanted them. The new clean spots around her mouth highlighted the grime at the cuffs of her suit jacket, the jagged holes in her stockings, and the dingy gray streaks on her blouse. Diana looked up to me, jaw slack, then grabbed the cup once again, finishing off the rest of the water, getting most of it in her mouth.
"Diana," I asked her. "Did-did you see Caffrey--Jim Caffrey on the Gideon? He was supp--"
"Yes."
I waited for more to come, behind her abrupt reply, but she just sat, letting the water drip from her mouth. I refilled her cup, then wet a paper towel.
"You want to clean your face?"
Her brow furrowed, staring at the soaked towel, then at me, as if she didn't understand. I slid my chair a little closer, told her to look at me, and she did.
I tilted her chin up, surprised that she just let me, and started wiping under her eyes, around her cheeks. Grime lifted, making her look even more sickly in the harsh overhead lights.
"Now, where did you see Caffrey? Was he okay?"
"Airlock. He…"
She turned her head away, chugged more from the cup. This time it sloshed over her knuckles as a trembling hand laid the cup down.
I took both her hands in mine, and she let me. Her head was bowed, as if she was ashamed. I took the wet paper towel and wiped her forehead, around her temples.
"What did he do, Diana?"
Her lips barely moved this time. She just stared at both of her hands, which sat limp in my fingers.
"He gave me. . . his seat."
I tilted her chin up, making her eyes meet mine. Was he okay? Was he still alive? I forced myself to stay the course.
Marines cutting through a ship's hull wouldn't facilitate more incoming shuttles until they left. But I couldn't see Caff not having a plan "B."
"His seat? Did he catch another shuttle? Did he say--"
"There is no other shuttle!"
Her dirt-smeared features sprang to a terrible life, and all the fear behind her cold gray eyes gushed forth, as she clutched my shirt, pulled me so close our noses bumped for an instant.
"Okay…okay…Diana--"
"He gave me the last seat! He saw me and threw me on the frakking ship! I had no godsdamned choice!"
She still held my shirt, white-knuckled, as her face fell and she shook her head.
"I h-had no choice. I didn't want to let him do it. I didn't want to let him."
My jaw worked, but nothing came out. I sorted my jumbled thoughts, unable to tear my gaze away from hers. I gently pried her fingers off me, held them above her lap.
"I'm. . . I'm sorry, Jay. I'm so sorry--"
"You don't have anything to be sorry about. Look, he can take care of himself. When he gets back, we'll figure out what's happening next."
Mangan and Toby returned with Joe Pinklon, our nurse, who carried his medical bag. Trailing behind was Milt Jeffers, who, as always, was compelled to take over the situation.
"Krenzik, get up and let Pinklon take a look at her." Then he nodded toward Diana, who just gaped at him. "Miss Thalyka, by order of Captain Stengler, you are under the protection of the Lady of Libron II and her crew as long as you see fit. Fill us in after the nurse looks you over."
Diana looked over to me, mouth open, shaking her head. I slid out of the chair and Pinklon sat down, unzipped his bag, and revealed a thermometer.
"Okay Miss," he said. "Stick this under your tongue."
CiC stood for Command Information Center on New Castle freighters like the Lady. It was really just a convenient euphemism for "cramped in cockpit." The closeness felt more oppressive now, surrounded by Captain Stengler, Jeffers, and Mangan--all eyes on me.
"All she told me was that Caff gave her his seat on the last ride out. After that, it's what we knew already."
Stengler shook his head. "This is crazy." He looked over to our comm officer, seated at his console, listening intently to his headset. "Any further word yet from the Gideon, Mr. Mitchell?"
He simply shook his head in return, and resumed his vigil over the chatter.
Stengler cleared his throat.
"The moment Mangan brought this… situation to our attention, I decided that we will not throw the Secretary to the wolves. But we need more information, obviously. We're stuck in limbo until morning, at least."
Limbo was how long Diana had to stay on an IV drip, lying in our infirmary, which was just another convenient euphemism for Room With Bed and Pills. Pinklon finally kicked me out, after he told Diana to change into a hospital gown. She was dehydrated, and apparently hadn't slept for days. I could see Caff looking into her dirty face, shoving through the hatch over her adamant protests. He wouldn't leave her to Tigh's goon squad. Never. Would he be able to hide out? Would he want to?
Mangan interjected: "When are we gettin' word about what happened?"
"We have Mitchell on the horn, already. Other than that, there's not much we can do. No word from Bertrand, nothing yet from the Prometheus, either," Jeffers said. He took a deep breath. "Besides, we need to know what set this all off. She's the only one that can tell us."
There it was, the only reason I was in on this cockpit meeting.
"You're going in there, and you're going to get as much information out of her as you can," Stengler said. His glare, his newly found seriousness made my throat go dry. "Don't press too hard. It's not an interrogation. You have a rapport with her, though, and you can use that to get her talking. More than anyone else here could, at any rate."
I looked over to Mangan, who just silently met my eyes, all business.
Jeffers leaned over, poked my chest. "And if Pinklon gives you any shit, you just tell him this came from the Captain."
I must have done a poor job of hiding my concern, the impending pressure that made this cramped space all the smaller. Stengler gave me a forced, kindly smile.
"Just a few minutes, Krenzik. We just want a little more information before she's on her feet, in the morning."
She was on her feet, apparently, for almost a week already. What did they expect? I thought about wiping the dirt from her face, seeing the hard lines and the darkness that encircled her eyes. I just wanted to wait, but it was laid out for me to get the job done. I felt as if Stengler wanted me to repair a vid monitor with only a hammer and duct tape.
"I'll do my best Cap'n."
Stengler patted me on the shoulder as Jeffers spun the wheel on the hatch.
"Good man! Come back in about half an hour and give us a report."
Pinklon was a soft-spoken, mild individual, with his red hair pulled back in a ponytail. He went against his usual personality traits as soon as I opened my mouth.
"No way in hell, Jay. That's my patient and she needs rest. She's dehydrated, exhausted and--"
"And you can go tell that to Stengler," I hissed. "I just need a few minutes. I don't want to upset her any more than you do."
He threw his hands up, and sat on the exam table behind him.
"Fine. Good luck waking her up, though. She's probably asleep, by now."
I parted the antiseptic green curtain surrounding the Lady's only hospital bed.
Diana lay facing me, on her left side, huddled underneath the covers. Only her face, and left arm, with the IV's needle going into her wrist, protruded from the little ball she was in. I squatted next to her, and paused. Every bit of me wanted to be anywhere but here, to just walk out, and let her gain some measure of fitful rest. But I had a job to do.
My fingers gently brushed a lock of hair out of Diana's face, revealing features that held a sense of peace that no one could find any longer, except in sleep. I smiled a little. At least some color was coming back into her cheeks.
"Diana?"
Nothing. I touched her shoulder, gently shook. She moaned, stirred, then was still again.
I shook harder this time, wincing, as if she would crumble like old paper.
"What is it now," she murmured, before her eyelids peeled open. She squinted looking at me, then saw her pillow, the lights, and the tube coming out of her arm. The weight that left Diana in sleep returned with her memory.
"Did-did you find out if Caffrey is okay?"
I shook my head, and couldn't help but smile a little. Her first thoughts were of others, even on the brink of exhaustion, on the run from a madman.
"No word, yet. I don't want to bother you any more than I have to Diana, okay? But we need to know how you ended up on the Gideon, and why."
She sighed, turned onto her back, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes with her free hand.
"The government was still around, sort of, after the they took the President away..." She rose on one elbow, blinked, then let her head sink back into the pillow.
"I told Tigh I needed to meet with a captain to mediate a dispute with another ship, or he would have to deal with it himself. I was off Colonial One when he declared martial law."
She swallowed hard, looked over to me. " I...just ran, then. I just boarded a shuttle to anywhere, and another, and another, and another. I don't even know for how many days. By the time I reached the Gideon...I just couldn't go any further."
I leaned in, and didn't try to fill the silence. After all, saying "Okay! That's great, but…" wasn't a good transition, not after hearing that. Tigh was ready to kill over tylium. What would he do if he found out his runaway prisoner was here?
"Okay, Diana, but I need to know what happened before. Why did Adama storm Colonial One?"
She just looked at me, shook her head.
"Because she broke their agreement."
I was afraid she would wall herself off, but not so soon. She pursed her lips, drew her right hand against her chest and turned on her side again, toward me.
"I feel tired, Jay, I need to sleep," the softness of her words didn't match the hard glare in her eyes.
"I have to know. We have to know, okay? What agreement? All we know is that after their Raider jumped away, marines boarded your ship, overthrew the government. Then a raptor jumps in, and says they destroyed a basestar, nearby. What's going on?"
She unsteadily sat up, leaning forward. Her eyes narrowed, gaining a little of the spark that was missing since she arrived, emaciated at our airlock.
"They had an agreement. Military decisions to him, everything else to her. But she asked one of the pilots to take the Raider, take it to Caprica...to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, after he had refused to let her use it."
I saw the Arrow of Apollo, once, on a high school field trip to Caprica. It sat on a white porcelain hand, in a glass case at the Museum of the Colonies. Scripture said it could show the way to Earth. It was one of our oldest known artifacts. Was the President losing it? Why was it so important to go back to Caprica for that?
"The arrow? But--"
Diana cut me off. There was no trace of weakness in her voice, then, as if she had dropped by on another diplomatic visit.
"When she did he called her. They argued and he told her he was 'terminating her Presidency'! As if that's even legal! They argued more. And then he started jamming us, and--"
"Okay, but why would she--"
"And he sent armed marines to board the ship! Weapons out!"
Joe parted the curtain.
"Jay, come on. I know the Captain has his orders but we have a sick woman here--"
Diana just kept going and pushed herself up to a seated position, the sheet and blanket piling around her waist.
"She thinks it will lead us to Earth, if she takes it to the Tomb of Athena on Kobol--"
"Kobol?" The word burst forth so loud it echoed in the room. Pinklon just stood in tight-lipped silence, hanging on her next words.
"Like," I continued. "In the Scrolls? As in 'Life here began out there?'"
She slumped onto her back, turned her head away.
"Yeah, like that."
My face grew hot, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I rarely went to Temple, except when my parents had dragged me with them, and I barely listened in Sunday School. But to hear that we were one jump away from the possible birthplace of the Gods, of all of us, made my heart pound. I didn't know how they could be sure, but a habitable world in this universe of gas giants and desolate rocks was still a beautiful thing beyond words.
Then I remembered the first announcement from Galactica. Adama had said he was taking us to Earth, that its classified location was a guarded secret, all these millennia the Colonials thrived in back our system. I wasn't so sure what was true then, and what wasn't. Earth was a myth. Even many religious scholars dismissed it as allegory or fable. Then I met the man who saved us, and he handed me back my only picture of my mother, amidst the throngs at the Wall. I gave him my fear, and despair, and he left me with hope, all with one look into his steel-blue eyes. He knew where we were going, so. . .
I looked back at Pinklon, who shrugged. Evidently, she was well enough in his eyes to lay it out on the table for us, so I edged my chair closer, and leaned against the metal bedrail. I had to ask the hardest question since I wondered "what next," after jumping beyond the Red Line.
"Diana?"
She didn't move, staring at the opposite wall. The tendons in her long neck were taut, and jumping a little.
"Diana, wh-why would the President need the Arrow of Apollo if we already know where we're going?"
She sighed, as if she was pointing out an obvious thing even a baby could understand.
"Because we don't know where we're going. Because. . . we never did."
The slender lump she made under the covers trembled, a little, and she balled the sheets within clenched fists. I knew what was coming now. I knew how I had built a foundation on mud and sand. So did she, behind a failing idealism that was chipping away, ever since she confided her rubberstamp endorsement of Gaius Baltar, and marines stormed her ship. I rose, leaning white-knuckled against the railing.
"Look at me," I told her. Diana just lay there, still. She had tried to face everything that came her way head on. I wasn't about to let to let her duck now. I had to see her eyes, when she answered this time. I would see her eyes when she answered me.
"I said look at me!"
I felt Pinklon's hand on my shoulder, I brushed it away. She was just fine. If she could still keep a secret after being driven to the brink, she could let it go, job be damned. This was about survival now, not diplomacy.
I expected her to snap around, sit up again, crackling with renewed fury. Instead, Diana merely turned her head, slowly, back to me. If she hadn't been dehydrated, tears would have been forming in the corners of her eyes, which gave me nothing but a sense of her shame.
We both knew what I was about to ask, and what she would tell in return. But it had to be said, to have the palpable reality of the spoken word.
"There's no Earth, is there?"
"She believes there is... now. But. . . " her voice grew thin, matching the weakness of her body, but her eyes never wavered from mine, and I saw every bit of her sorrow, and the confusion I felt. "No. There isn't. I'm sorry. He said there was, and the President went along with it. I'm so. . .sorry."
"Why? Why lie?" I could see why they may have done it. We needed something more than just to survive. The lukewarm acceptance of the Earth plan still wasn't enough to keep us from tearing at one another.
"Because...It provided hope. It provided the people a reason to live. That first week, even..."
"I can see why they did it. Not everybody bought it. Why you?"
Just weeks ago, she questioned her very code of ethics, her reasons for doing her job, just for endorsing a weak Vice President, yet she held this, the darkest secret in the fleet, with fervor. I didn't know if I was angry at Diana, or if I felt sorry for her.
A sparkle of defiance glinted in her eyes, lifting a fraction of her sorrow away.
"Why did I do it? For the same reason. How hard would anyone have fought to live, if they didn't have that hope? How hard would YOU have fought, if you didn't have it? I did it because people need something to fight FOR, something to live for."
I leaned over her, close, until she was virtually swallowed by my shadow. The anger rumbled in my gut. This same woman who was crumbling inside over Baltar, now was sadly proud of what they did.
"You listen to me, Madame Secretary. I don't need some bullshit reason to stay alive."
She grabbed my shirt, and pulled herself up to face me. Her look told me that she thought I wasn't thinking straight.
"Then you'd be the only damn one! And maybe you do and maybe you don't! I saw how deeply touched, how inspired you were, talking about Adama and Earth! You believed, and it made a difference! Everyone needs a reason to live! Everyone!"
She had me. I couldn't say anything to that. I was just like everyone else. I wanted to believe, so it was real. Even against all common sense. I felt Pinklon's hand on my shoulder, as he used the other to ease Diana back down into bed.
"Okay, everyone. I think we've had our fill of startling revelations for the afternoon. You need your rest, Miss Thalyka."
Diana grudgingly let go, and turned away from me as best she could, tethered to her IV drip. I just backed behind the curtain again. Pinklon followed a moment later.
"Well? You get what you needed," he asked me.
I left without another word and returned down the narrow hall, back to CiC, to give the Captain his coveted news. Something as simple as running from certain death held its own labyrinth of deceit and maneuvering. Bertrand had led us into Phelan's black market web, and now, the entire backbone of our dying society was built on lies, all told without a blink of the eye.
We didn't have Earth anymore. When everything else was stripped away, all we had was each other to rely on, and our own personal reasons to face a new day. Stengler called a meeting in the mess hall. I had to tell everyone what Diana told me.
I looked in their eyes, seeing a resigned acceptance in most about the lie of Earth. Mangan smiled and just shook his head. Toby just said "I knew it, I knew it, man." The others, even Nick, were dumbstruck into silence. The whole Arrow of Apollo thing, and Roslin's sudden belief in Earth, piqued, renewed interest, and so much cross-talk that Jeffers had to shut us up twice.
"So where the frak is Kobol?" Briar asked.
I shrugged. "It was probably where the raptor pilot, Boomer, came from when she destroyed a basestar--"
"Before she blew away Adama," Marty yelled.
"That is enough, Samuels," Jeffers snapped. He got up, came around the front of the folding table. "We are missing our foreman, and the military has turned on us. This is what our… guest has told us. And we just have to deal with it. We can bitch about being frakked over, or we can keep on going, and try to found out where Caffrey is while we cover our own asses."
Once again, Milt Jeffers gave a compelling ass-reaming that had little or no impact, as he pointed out the blatantly obvious. He walked up to Mangan and handed him our schedule.
"Get 'em to work, Mangan. We're still patching up from the pump motor incident. And remember, sidearms at all times."
Sidearms at all times. We left Libron one day, several months ago, a bunch of mechanics. We became booze runners, traders, saviors--if you needed something fixed--and now gunslingers.
Shortly after dinnertime, we received no more word from the Gideon, other than that most of the deaths had no confirmed ID's at the time, and the bodies were taken back to Galactica. We wouldn't know for at least twelve hours, according to estimates around the fleet. I hoped wherever Caff was, he was safe. He was smart, tough. He would find a way.
I was about to change into my nightclothes, as others headed to the bathroom with towels and shaving kits in tow, when the intercom signaled a shuttle hard sealing on the aft airlock, adjoining the cargo hold. Mangan told me, Toby, and Coursen to strap on our guns, head up top. It was Zenar, from the Prometheus, but you couldn't be too careful these days.
We helped him bring out two, 3-meter-long steel crates, that were about 1.5 meters deep. He smiled as he told us to open them. Toby let a low whistle escape his lips as the lid came open. I didn't know what they were exactly called, but these were military grade automatic rifles, 15 total, with plenty of 20mm full metal jacket ammo.
"Things are getting pretty hairy. This'll level the playing field."
I looked over our lethal acquisitions, feeling like I carried a squirt gun under my arm. I tested one out, dryfiring and looking through the sights. It wasn't very heavy, but it packed a lot of punch. Just what we needed if Galactica and her mad interim (hopefully) Commander decided to come sniffing around.
Zenar turned to leave.
"By the way," he said. "We hope Caffrey comes back soon. That's straight from Phelan. He's been checking up on every ship he can, but no luck. If he comes back let us know."
I nodded, and we thanked him for our Small Army Starter Set.
We were using the word "if," now. And my heart sank, as I realized it didn't feel wrong.