That Frakking Music

Chapter IV

The first job on Cally Henderson's itinerary this afternoon was a repair up on F-Deck. Laura Roslin had reported a problem with her lights first thing this morning and, though she wasn't president anymore, the Chief thought it wise to respond sooner rather than later. Cally didn't mind, it made a change from the exhaustive maintenance they'd been performing on the old Battlestar - not much of a change, but a change that got her out of Galactica's oily innards all the same. Though perhaps she shouldn't be so quick to complain: half the deck-gang had been out patching up civvie ships since the Cloud 9 disaster and they never stopped bitching about it. Cally, however, had little sympathy. It couldn't get any worse than the time she'd been sent over to the Astral Queen, the prison ship, and ended up biting off a man's ear, and getting shot for it. Now that was a shitty assignment. Short of someone coming back less a limb, she was unimpressed by their trials and tribulations.

'Maintenance request?' she said brightly when the hatch swung open, though her smile faded a little at the answering grimace of annoyance. She got the impression that this was more due to her chipper demeanour than her presence in and of itself though.

'It's over here,' said Roslin and Cally stepped inside, putting down her tool-box to examine the damage. The candlelight, whilst romantic, didn't provide nearly enough light and she pulled her torch out of her belt to make up the difference. 'The blue ones,' said Laura needlessly, for Cally could see the severed wires for herself.

'Did you try to fix this yourself?' asked Cally, surprised to find the panel open and suddenly noticing Roslin's bandaged hand.

'I was trying to fix something,' said Laura evasively, sitting down on the unmade bunk, one leg tucked up under her. Cally spotted the blankets and pillow on the sofa and wondered for a moment if she'd been sleeping there. It looked like it - but why would she, when she had a perfectly good bunk? 'How long is this going to take?'

Cally shrugged easily, 'Not long. Just need to strip back the wires and patch them. I'm gonna have to cut main power to this section first though.'

'In your own time,' she said, though it somehow sounded more like 'Why weren't you finished five minutes ago?'

'I have to get authorisation to shut off the power,' Cally explained, hastily pulling the phone from the wall. If the rumours were true and the ex-president was not in full possession of the plot at present, she didn't fancy hanging around.

She surreptitiously glanced around, looking for signs of scattered marbles in Roslin's quarters while she waited for someone to find the chief. There wasn't a single defaced picture of Baltar on the walls, no dartboard with his face for a target, no evidence but her slightly frayed appearance that she might have let things go to pot since arriving aboard Galactica. She'd even go so far as to say Roslin's quarters were, well, boring. She appeared to have made no attempt to personalise the place but it was neat and clean, nothing psychotic so far as she could see. She finally desisted in her amateur surveillance attempts when Laura seemed to grow suspicious of her interest.

Permission to shut off the power was quickly granted once Chief Tyrol had been tracked down and Cally headed down the corridor to the switch-box, plunging thirty metres of corridor and the rooms lining it into partial or total darkness. A habitant of one of these rooms soon stuck his head out to see what was going on.

'Just effecting a minor repair, sir. Power will be restored in about ten minutes,' she said to the man she vaguely recognised as a marine. He nodded and disappeared again.

Another voice stopped her dead before she was halfway back to Roslin's room. 'Specialist Henderson.'

Frak. 'Yes sir,' she snapped, turning to address the admiral, whose quarters also happened to be within the temporary blackout zone, not that she'd expected him to be there at this time of day.

'What's the problem?' he asked, tucking his glasses into his breast-pocket.

'Just a couple of busted wires, sir. I'll have it fixed in no time.'

'What do you mean 'busted wires'?' he asked.

Cally rubbed her neck uncomfortably, having figured out that Roslin was responsible but not liking to say as much. She was a former president for frak's sake - and not just a little intimidating.

'Specialist?' demanded Adama.

She sighed, admitting, 'They look like they've been cut, sir.'

'Sabotage?' he asked, obviously not understanding her reticence to report such a thing, especially this close to the CIC.

'Not exactly, sir.'

The Admiral looked around again, noting the extent of the black-out and clearly asking himself what - or who - was located in this section. 'You've got to be kidding me,' he muttered darkly, heading straight for Roslin's room. Cally wasn't sure if she should follow or not till her dilemma was neatly solved by Adama's slamming of the hatch behind him. Moments later she could hear raised voices but not what they were saying. All she knew was that she wouldn't like to be in Roslin's shoes right now; the admiral sounded pissed.

'- could have killed yourself!'

'Right now, chance would be a fine thing!' Laura shot back, her head throbbing.

'This is not a frakking joke,' seethed Bill, furious with her not for the damage to his ship but the damage to herself, which she had waved in front of him just moments ago as proof that she had already been punished enough for her transgression. 'Of all the stupid, reckless - what the hell were you thinking?'

'Oh I don't know, what possible reason could I have for wanting to cut off the power to certain equipment in this room at five-thirty in the morning?' she snapped sarcastically.

'This has got to stop,' he said, voice at a more normal volume yet retaining its firmness.

'Precisely what I was thinking.'

'That's enough,' he warned her. 'I know you're having a hard time-'

'Oh give me a break,' she huffed, rolling her eyes.

'What do you think I'm trying to do?'

'I think you're trying to salve your own conscience,' she answered, though the question had been rhetorical.

'What am I supposed to feel guilty about?'

She hissed, turning away as if to say, 'You know exactly what you've done'.

'Say it,' he challenged. He wanted to hear her say it.

'You let Baltar and Zarek take the election!' she shouted, pivoting back to face him.

'Baltar and Zarek won the election, you mean,' he corrected her. She seemed to keep forgetting that bit.

'Settling on this planet is going to get us all killed,' she said with certitude.

'You don't know that.'

'Of course I know that,' she answered acerbically, clearly questioning her former estimation of his intelligence. 'You think the cylons have really stopped looking for us? "Sorry for destroying everything you held dear, have a nice life"? One day they're going to find us, Bill, it's only a matter of time and when that day comes you're going to look back and you're going to regret this - if you get the chance.' For an instant, only an instant, he saw the despair behind her condemnation of him and in that moment Bill realised the chokehold this possibility had on her.

'You think we're not already drawing up emergency evacuation plans? Doing everything we can to protect the people on the surface?'

'Protect?' she laughed incredulously, though there was no humour in her expression. 'You really think you could evacuate twenty or thirty thousand people in the time it would take for ten baseships to jump into orbit and nuke the settlement from space? You're out of your mind.'

'Sometimes you just have to do the best you can.'

'Well, the best you could have done was look the other frakking way!' she yelled, filled again with that bitter helplessness, wanting to hit him, smash that cool façade of certainty and shake the truth out of him: he didn't really believe any of that bullshit, in no possible reality was this going to be alright.

'It's over, Laura!'

'It wasn't 'over' when you decided I wasn't fit to be president. Funny how you had no problem having me arrested over a cylon raider but you're perfectly willing to stand by and watch Baltar and Zarek run this fleet right into the ground.'

'You want a repeat performance of what happened last time I declared martial law?' he answered and she could tell that whatever resolve was keeping him from laying into her was starting to crack.

'You never thought I was fit for the job, you couldn't wait to take over,' she knew that this was only half true but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

'Hey I wasn't the one who broke our agreement!'

Hook, line and sinker.

'So much for forgiveness…' she said softly. 'It's not quite what you bargained for at the time is it? I mean, I imagine it's easier to forgive someone you know is dying rather than someone you might have to live with.'

Bill looked stung. Laura had struck a nerve and though he believed his next words with every fibre of his being, they seemed to ring a little hollow with the blood thundering in his ears. 'I meant what I said back then. What is this? I thought we left all this behind on Kobol.'

'Admit it, you only forgave me because you felt sorry for me. You found out I had cancer and you felt bad for locking a sick woman up and you felt sorry for me. That's why you were so quick to forgive me.'

Laura seemed determined to mine the full potential of the nerve she'd found, whilst Bill found himself wondering how the hell had they gotten onto this. 'Trust me I'm not the kind of guy who forgives someone just 'cause they're dying.'

She surveyed him doubtfully. 'You're all heart, Bill. Ever since you got shot, you just can't help yourself. You can't just get on with it. You seem determined to go down in history as this great and good man but it won't matter what kind of man you were when there's nobody left to remember.'

'That's enough,' he ordered (and it was an order), looking so menacing for a moment that Laura actually obeyed. 'I'm done talking about this,' he stated unequivocally. 'Now you have three options and three options only - I'm doing the talking now,' he said, the moment she opened her mouth to protest. 'Option one: Agree to be outside that hatch at five-thirty tomorrow and I'll have Specialist Henderson come back in and complete your repairs. Option two: Don't agree. Sit here in the dark. I've got time.'

'And 'option'three?' she asked, folding her arms defensively.

'Leave,' he said. 'I don't want that but if you're so determined to do this, to let this thing eat you up, I'm not sure I want to watch that. I'm not sure I can.'

Laura looked down at the floor, struck temporarily speechless, trapped between what she believed to be an entirely justifiable desire to be alone and a vision of herself in a year's time, still locked in this room, hair wild, clothes stained, surrounded by presidential news clippings and raving about Baltar and Zarek and this frakking planet. Still raving, she corrected herself.

'I'm not asking for much, Laura,' said Bill softly, taking advantage of her momentary lapse into silence.

'And what are you asking for, exactly?' she questioned and he realised that he hadn't actually gotten around to telling her that part yet. Well, she hadn't given him much of a chance till now.

Laura barely slept at all that night; her conscience smote her. This in itself was not new, but the reason was. She'd gone too far with Bill earlier, said a lot of stupid hurtful things. She'd finally succeeded in making him feel just a little bit as bad as she did but she felt far from victorious as she lay in her bed reliving it. What had she been thinking? Dredging up the past, deliberately trying to hurt him. There was no excuse, none at all…

Which was why - unfortunately - she would be exactly where he'd told her to be the next morning. Not that she was going to tell Bill why. Let him think it was for want of working lights and a quiet life; she hadn't entirely forgiven him for successfully appealing to her better nature yet.