Disclaimer: I do not own Battlestar Galactica, or any of the characters of Galactica. All I own are my ideas and theories.
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4.
"Hot Dog! You gonna fold yet??" Racetrack challenged him from the other side of the table, as Redwing, Two Times, and Freaker, already having folded, egged him on.
"No frakkin way." Over to the side, a bunch of the new pilots were laying bets on the contestants.
"Don't you rooks have anything better to do?" asked Narcho from his own game with Gonzo, Showboat, and Skulls.
"Betting is actually worth it now that Starbuck…" Seelix trailed off as the whole room went silent. Starbuck and Apollo's deaths had become a sensitive topic among all the pilots, especially given the fact that their deaths may well have saved a good portion of the fleet. Finally Racetrack broke the silence.
"Okay frak it. Fold." She threw down her cards, and headed for the hatch. As she pulled it open, she saw a small blinking light from the corner of her eye, and then the world went to hell.
o0o
As he sat in his quarters, a half empty bottle beside him, and a full glass in his hand, he thought he heard the dulled sound of an explosion, but immediately dismissed it as the memories that had been playing over in his head for the past few weeks. If there was a problem Saul would…no not Saul. Helo. Helo would deal with it. Helo would tell him if there was something wrong. It was probably just something echoing down the corridors. Everything seemed to echo of late. The Galactica's corridors seemed too quiet without her voice, always pitched just a little too loudly, echoing through them. Without their voices, bickering, flirting, arguing. But always together. It was nothing but his imagination. Slightly comforted by this thought, he took another sip, before he was jarred from his slightly dazed state by the ringing of the telephone.
"What is it?" he asked harshly, though the effect was ruined with the slight slurring of his words.
"Sir," It was Dee. "You'd better come down here."
"What is it, Dee?"
"Well, sir, there seems to have been some kind of explosion in the pilots' rec room. We've got dead and wounded" He heard the catch in her voice, but couldn't respond. All he could think about was the death. The senseless death.
o0o
"Once again, we are charged with the solemn duty to return the bodies of our own to the universe from which the lords of Kobol brought them to us." The priest standing before the gathering was not Elosha, but she reminded him of the woman who had become Laura's advisor in religious matters before the trip down to Kobol. "The burdens of this life are with us but a short time. For their time was too short, but we take comfort in knowing their lives were willingly given in service to all of us." His children had given their lives to save the fleet. But Galactica was a family. And all the dead were his children. And they had all died such a senseless death. One he was sure none of them would have imagined for themselves. "We honour them for that. And thus, it falls upon us to repent our sins and with the help of the lords of Kobol, make our own lives worthy of that gift. And now, we commit their bodies to that from which we were all made. Secure in the knowledge that we will be reunited with them, in a better world to come. So say we all."
"So say we all," echoed through the hangar deck, as he walked through the twelve bodies of the dead. He picked up their dogtags, committing their names to memory as he did so. Marcia "Showboat" Case. Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson. Hamish "Skulls" McCall. Eammon "Gonzo" Pike. Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza. Noel "Narcho" Allison. Paolo "Redwing" McKay. Ricky "Two Times" Richardson. Mei "Freaker" Firelli. Diana "Hardball" Seelix. Dana "Darkwing" Anderson. Jeff "Foobar" Foo. Twelve more of his family dead. Four injured, two of them badly enough that it was unlikely they would ever fly again. He stepped out of the launch bay as the doors began to shut on the twelve bodies.
He looked back and saw how small the crew was compared to when they first set out on this journey to Earth. Back when Earth was only a hope; only something for people to strive for. They had lost so many. Galen Tyrol stood in the crowd with his son in his arms, his wife a victim of suicide. Sam "Longshot" Anders stood alone too. He knew that the man had always loved Kara. Had known exactly who she was and had loved her unconditionally. Probably would have stepped aside if she and Lee were still alive. But they weren't. And now to add to the former pyramid star's burden, four members of his nugget group were dead too. One in the battle of the nebula as it had been dubbed, and three in the recent explosion. He looked for other familiar faces – faces that had been there from the beginning, but there were so few. Captain George "Catman" Birch, given another chance at being CAG by virtue of being one of the highest-ranking officers left after the death of Captain Case, stood with the other pilots. Their faces were all blank. Emotions hidden with military precision. But their eyes told the story of the losses they had endured.
He turned, and saluted sharply. He heard the sound of their boots echoing through the hangar bay as those behind imitated him. And the bodies floated out the airlock, to float forever in emptiness.
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A/N: Huge thanks go out to Mariel3 and Afoo. Thanks to both of you for taking a couple seconds to press that nice little button. It is much appreciated. So sorry this took so long to post. I went through a lot of ideas for this chapter before I got this draft written. So I hope you like it. If you've actually read it up to here, then please just take a couple more seconds to press that button and type in a couple words. Thanks a lot in advance. And even if you don't comment, thanks for taking the time to read.