Chapter 23: Hold-ups and press conferences

"Commander, three ships still report engine problems," Duella told him. "They can't jump until they've found the faults."

"I take it that's the hold-up?" Reece said urbanely as they walked back in. Tigh had opted to stay behind in the landing bay and try to help. Tamsin had rolled her eyes up and said, "Dear Lord, Tigh and Trace together? I should be able to hear the explosions a parsec away."

"Yes," President Roslyn said. "I won't leave my people behind. The fleet's ready to go otherwise, but..."

"The pace of a fleet is the pace of the slowest ship. It's an age-old problem. Anything we can do to help?"

"No, thank you," Commander Adama said. "How's it going down in the landing pod?"

"They should be done in less than an hour," she said. "Altering the warheads – or swapping them out, when we've got spares to put in – isn't so much time-consuming as tedious. It won't take long to put them back in the racks, either; they were designed to be loaded, unloaded and checked quickly. Sometimes we have to re-arm in a hurry."

"What about your pilots?" Adama asked. "Won't they need to take a break?"

"No," Reece shook her head. "Our suits have food, water and sanitary facilities built in, and if someone needs to sleep one of the crew can go to sleep while the other keeps watch. I think the record for living in a fighter that was functional is about six months, doing that. They'll be fine, it's what they're trained for." Lee Adama remembered Sampson's revelation that Reece was a former fighter pilot; presumably she had done the same on previous occasions. It was hard to imagine her flying, but he could imagine her giving orders in a battle.

"What about you?" He asked. "When was your last meal?"

"Yesterday. Oh, don't worry about me. I can go for days without eating or sleeping if I need to. You get a lot of practice as a combat surgeon."

He looked at her, eyebrows raised. "You sound like my father."

"So long as you don't start sounding like mine, that's alright with me."

"What's your father do?" Roslyn asked.

"At the moment he's doing work evaluating computer software for farm management. He's worked in computers most of his life."

"And your mother?"

"She used to be a professional gambler, but now she only does that part-time, when she gets bored. Mostly she's a professor of classical literature." Tamsin's lips twitched. "She sometimes jokes that at her age, she is a classic, so she's well suited to her subject."

"You have any brothers or sisters?"

"Trace is my foster-sister – she lived with us for six years, and we went through high school and the academy together. I was one of eight kids, four older and three younger. All boys, worse luck."

Lee remembered his brother Zack with pain. "What do they do? Are they military as well, or civilians?"

Reece looked totally blank. "Neither," she said. "They're all dead."

Billy Keikeya came up to the bridge at that point. "Madam President?" He was holding a piece of paper in his hands. Roslyn talked to him for a moment, and then she sighed and slumped a little, taking her glasses off and rubbing her eyes before reading it.

Tamsin watched her carefully.

"Something wrong?" Lee asked.

"How long has she had cancer?" Tamsin asked softly.

"What?" He looked at her in shock.

"I usually batch up vacuum-freeze and battle injuries, oncology's not my field, but I can recognise the symptoms when I see them." She looked at him. "You didn't know?"

"No." He opened his mouth and shut it. "She's never said anything."

"Ah. In that case, I shan't either without good reason."

"You won't?"

"I believe it falls under the heading of doctor-patient confidentiality." Her lips twitched. "Even if I'm not actually her doctor."

"Oh. Thanks." He tried to convince himself she was wrong. "How long have you been a doctor for, anyway?"

Her brow furrowed for a moment. "Ugn – since El Alamo, minus seven – ah, seventy-three years since I got my degree, give or take a few months. I don't pay much attention to the dates any more."

He stared at her. "Seventy-three years?"

"Nice to know I don't look my age any more," She grinned toothily and moved back to the plotting table as Roslyn came back looking tired. "Is something wrong?"

"There's a sort of council, an elected representative from every ship, and they're demanding to know what's going on."

"How do you usually handle it?" Tamsin asked. "I mean, just give them a newsletter, talk to each one, hold a meeting, what?"

"Usually we hold a meeting and they ask questions."

"A press conference," Tamsin said a little incredulously. Roslyn nodded. "Christ. Can't we get away from reporters anywhere?" She slumped back into a bulk-head, rubbing her face. "Alright. I'd better talk to them, then."

"No, that's my job."

"No, it's got to be me. For one thing, I can answer their questions. For another – do you have communications between the ships that isn't completely minimalist? I mean, people have time to chat?"

"Yes," Adama couldn't see where she was going.

"Trace is a truly brilliant fighter pilot, almost unmatched in the interceptor corps, but the only way to get her to stop gossiping is to wire her mouth shut and maybe not even then. I'll bet that within ten minutes of her setting foot on this ship half the deck crew knew we were from Earth, and if you don't do some damage control soon the rumours are going to be flying like shit at a political debate." Roslyn had been taking a sip of water as Tamsin said the last sentence, and she choked in laughter at the unexpectedly accurate description. Billy pounded her back hard to let her breathe again. "So someone's going to have to talk to them. Better to make it me – you're going to have your hands full when we get to Gurconda, but there'll be plenty of trained diplomats to take the load off my shoulders. You won't have that. Besides, you simply don't know enough about us to really answer questions."

She and Billy swapped looks.

"It's a good idea, Madam President," he said quietly.

"Alright. You know how to handle a press conference?"

"I've taken them before."

"You have?" Commander Adama asked in surprise.

"Yeah. Back before we finished up the war, I was stationed for a while on a planet called New Hebrides. It was a major rejuvenation centre, which back then meant we got people with, oh, severed limbs, needing new organs, shattered bones, severe nerve damage, brain damage, that sort of thing. People who needed substantial work and a lot of specialists before they'd be fit to fight again. The military built a big hospital there, and I worked in administration there for a while. I had to take a few press conferences in the process."

"How long is 'a few years'?" Billy asked suspiciously. Tamsin figured he was trying to spare his President's energy by making sure Tamsin knew what she was doing.

"It was a three-year assignment. I left thirty-four years and three promotions later."

"Thirty-four years," He said. "You don't look thirty-four years old. Twenty-nine at most."

"You're off by three and a quarter," Tamsin said, reading the piece of paper he had brought Roslyn as Roslyn slid it across the table to her.

"Years?"

"Centuries."

"You're three hundred and fifty-four years old?" Lee said incredulously.

"Yes," Tamsin said. "I'd guess your years are maybe ten percent longer than ours, but no more than that."

"No one lives that long," Billy said.

"The record is six hundred and eighty-three, and she's still alive."

"I find that hard to believe," William Adama tried to figure out what she could be trying to gain by saying that.

"You can ask her. Her name is Tanya Emerson, she's a professor at the University of New Francisco on Midgard, she's married to a computer systems analyst, she lives on a small farm and owns several sheep, and she has several hundred children."

"You know her?" Lee asked in surprise. It sounded like she did.

"Very well. She's my mother. She's also one of maybe a thousand people alive who are still old enough to remember Earth before the Kangas bombed it. Talking to her is kind of strange if you don't actually know that."

"Six hundred and eighty-three," Roslyn said incredulously. "How can you live so long? How can you be over three hundred?"

"Nothing's killed me yet," Tamsin said. "It seems absolutely wonderful at first glance. I didn't learn differently until a bit after my hundredth birthday. Then I got a crash course in why it really, truly sucks to live a long time. I've never forgotten that."

"Why? What happened?" Lee asked.

"My daughter died." Her lips twitched. "The guy who said time heals all wounds was either lying through his teeth or didn't know what the hell he was on about."

Author's note: Finally! New chapter! More coming, I promise.