Chapter 3
Choosing a Career
Prior to the beginning of the Second Cylon War the Colonies prided themselves on their military and its readiness to handle anything that might happen. After the surrender, the military came under criticism by the public for the very thing it had been commended for earlier. Wartime acts of sacrifice and heroism were forgotten in the rush to place blame for the loss of eleven of the twelve colonies.
- Bartell, History of the Second Cylon War
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Lee Adama was seventeen years old when the Cylons returned with a rain of death and destruction for humanity.
The beginning of the summer before his senior year of high school found him seriously thinking about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. When he graduated he would either go to the Academy and pursue a career as a pilot or go to Caprica University and then on to law school.
If he chose the former career, he would follow in the footsteps of his father who had been a Viper pilot in the First Cylon War, a hero who didn't wear all the medals he had earned and who was now commanding a battlestar. If he chose the latter career, he would follow his paternal grandfather into the courtroom.
At the moment both careers held an attraction for him. He had not even considered the possibility yet that he could do both. His father had failed to mention to him that on the law staff of the Admiralty Judge Advocate there were several pilots, on both active and inactive duty status. His grandfather had failed to mention it for a similar but opposite reason.
His father was naturally pushing him toward a career in the military. His grandfather wanted him to choose a law career. His mother had so far remained neutral although Lee thought he could tell she favored the law if only because it would earn him a better living and keep him at home when he chose to marry and start a family. The only reason she would not come out directly with her choice was that she despised her father-in-law.
At various times in his life Lee had heard her refer to Joseph Adama as a snake, a fox, a weasel and an unscrupulous whore. After spending some time with his grandfather that summer watching some of his courtroom tactics, he understood the first three. He finally decided that what his mother meant by the last one had something to do with the selling of one's soul instead of one's body.
He eventually understood, too, why neither one of his father's parents cared much for his mother.
His parents were officially separated now, but Lee couldn't tell the difference. His father had been mostly absent for the majority of Lee's seventeen years, certainly during the years of his life that Lee could remember.
His mother was doing fine now. During his formative years however, there were dark times, times when she sank into depression and the bottle. For the most part her abuse had taken the form of emotional and physical neglect. Sometimes it became verbal. Rarely did it involve hitting. That took too much energy.
What he remembered most about her dark moods were the seemingly endless days when he got himself and his younger brother Zak ready for school, packed their lunches, and walked to the school transport stop while his mother slept off the night before. Often when they got home in the afternoon she was still in her pajamas, hair not combed, staring mindlessly at the television. There was usually an open bottle on the table beside her.
When his father was home, however, she managed to pull it all together. It was like living in two different worlds. As he got older Lee thought about telling his father what life was like when he was gone, but finally decided that if his father really cared, he would be there more often. If his father really cared, he would do something to make their lives better.
Yet he still respected Bill Adama for what he had achieved with his career.
Lee escaped into the world of his schoolbooks, pushing himself hard to achieve on an academic level, on the ball field, by running for student council. He was liked by almost everyone, but was unable to form close friendships. He shared almost nothing of himself with anyone, of who he truly was.
He was a precocious toddler, a cute young boy who grew into a better-looking teenager with the promise already there of the handsome man he would become. From the eighth grade onward he always had a girlfriend. That same year his grandmother Evelyn told her husband, "That boy is going to break more hearts than should be allowed." His grandfather repeated the remark to him with a wink, which Lee took to mean that he agreed. He felt it was another way of his grandfather telling him to be a good boy, just not too good.
His grandmother's prediction would no doubt have come true to a much greater extent had Lee been a different type person. He never chose a girlfriend based on looks alone or the fact that she was pursuing him. He valued brains in a girl, if not above beauty, then definitely on an equal footing. Later he would come to value other traits as well, like courage and loyalty to friends and the strength to make a tough decision and stand by it.
He tended to have one girlfriend at a time, never starting to date another until he had officially broken up with the current one, or she had broken up with him, which was more often the case. When he broke up with someone it was because he discovered they didn't have enough in common. When one broke up with him he usually heard something about lack of commitment and putting too many other things first…other things meaning schoolwork or sports or one of the many extracurricular activities with which Lee filled his life.
What none of his girlfriends ever knew about were the Friday nights he spent helping his mother and Zak clean the house because his father was coming home the next day.
He listened to some of the other guys talk about hooking up and scoring and a variety of other, often cruder, ways in which they bragged about having various forms of sex. Lee never bragged about having any kind of sex because he wasn't having it. Sex to him was something you shared with someone you really cared about. And you sure as hell wouldn't broadcast it to the entire student body or even to the guys in the locker room.
With his current girlfriend he felt he like he had finally gotten everything right. She was on the swim team and his co-captain on the debate team. She had already been accepted on a full scholarship to a prestigious private university with plans to eventually become a doctor in biomedical engineering. And she was like him in that schoolwork came first for her.
Her hair was cut fairly short and she rarely wore makeup. She was not what most of the other guys considered hot, but she had a natural, athletic blond beauty that Lee found irresistible. Smart and competitive yet independent, she was the type of girl who appealed to him most.
He actually wanted them to take the next step in their relationship and have sex but she held back. At the end of their junior year, she told him that she was seriously thinking about it. The reason she gave for her hesitation was the summer study program in which she was participating on Gemenon. She said she wanted to stay focused. Lee accepted her decision and looked forward to the beginning of their senior year in the fall. With the conceit of youth he was sure he already knew what her decision would be.
He sometimes felt his brother Zak, younger by two years, was mixed-up with his real brother at the hospital. From the time he was a toddler, Zak was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky kid. The word serious was not in his vocabulary. He studied only when he had to in order to pass a test. Nothing seemed to bother him. He was athletic and had a lot of friends. He was always upbeat and never got down about anything. It was like all of life's troubles just bounced right off him.
Zak wasn't exactly irresponsible, but he was much less responsible than Lee. Then again why should Zak take any responsibility? He had Lee to do it for him.
Zak was also the one who was close to their mother, who always made allowances and excuses for her behavior, who always hugged her and spent time with her, who was the only one of them who could tell her that he loved her.
Zak was the one who found her the evening that she either intentionally or accidentally, depending on who he believed, overdosed on sleeping pills and booze. She couldn't remember any of it, or claimed she couldn't, and their father later vowed to her doctor that it was an accident. Fourteen-year-old Zak was the one however who realized that there was something wrong with the way she was breathing and got Lee who had the presence of mind to call an emergency medical transport before he called his grandfather.
Fortunately his mother's doctor realized that accident or not, Carolanne Adama needed help. He arranged for a stay in a rehab facility. For six weeks Lee and Zak stayed with their grandparents. At the age of sixteen Lee finally had his first taste of a stable home environment, of good meals always put on the table at the same time each evening, of someone who asked him questions about what he was doing in school and of a married couple who actually talked to one another every day because they lived in the same house.
It was there that he learned the truth about his parent's marriage. He had gone to the kitchen to get some milk late one evening and was quietly going back down the hall when he heard Joseph and Evelyn talking in the den. He knew he shouldn't have stopped to listen, but after the first sentence, nothing could have dragged him away.
"I told Bill it was a mistake to marry her," his grandmother said. "Carolanne was having problems even then and now just look at her. I wish…oh how I wish he hadn't been such a pig-headed fool. You and I both know the other one would have been so much better for him."
Lee heard his grandfather sigh in exasperation. "We've talked this issue to death in the last few days. What's done is done. Hashing over the past isn't going to solve anything. I offered to help Bill start divorce proceedings, but he told me to stay out of it so we're going to stay out of it."
But Evelyn persisted. "Bill never loved Carolanne the way he loved the other one and she loved him. She never married. What more proof do you need?"
"Yes, Bill loved her, but you're forgetting who her father was. He put a stop to it. Our son wasn't the one he had envisioned for his daughter. Taking her to her debutante dance was one thing, marrying her was another. And she did marry. She just never took her husband's name. It didn't last long…barely over a year. Besides, what choice did Bill have with Carolanne? Lee was already on the way. Our son is an honorable man. He always has been. He was never the sort of man who could walk away from a mistake even if he was drunk the night he made it. He finally admitted that to me...being drunk. Part of it was the war and what he'd been through, but most of it was because he couldn't have the woman he loved. So he did what countless other men have done and slept with the next girl who caught his eye."
"But the next girl wasn't Laura and she never will be," his grandmother said. "Poor Bill. If only he hadn't been so proud when she kept calling and writing. If only he'd talked to her. She came to see me after she went back to the university. Did I ever tell you that?"
"You said she wanted to know why Bill wouldn't answer her letters or talk to her."
"Poor girl. If Bill hadn't already made the mistake with Carolanne, I'd have insisted he at least talk to Laura. She deserved that much from him. I don't care how her father felt about what happened."
His grandfather sighed again. "After that incident with her father, I tried to tell Bill to be patient and give the situation some time. Laura was only nineteen at the time. He expected far too much of her. He's just so damned stubborn and impatient. And you're right, way too much pride and in too much of a hurry to prove himself. I sometimes wonder if his career wasn't as much an effort to show her and her father what he could do. To show them he would have made her a worthy husband."
"I know he would never have married like he did if he hadn't made the mistake with Carolanne. I honestly think he would have gotten over his stubborn pride and waited for Laura to finish her education."
"You're probably right. But what's done is done. We can't change the past. And we do have two fine grandsons."
"Yes, sometimes the gods will give us a blessing despite everything…the proverbial silver lining to an otherwise bad marriage."
Lee didn't wait to hear any more. He turned around and took the milk back to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. He felt too sick to drink it. It was weeks before he could look in a mirror and not think of the word mistake.
Is that why his father was never home? Was it because he viewed his marriage and his children, especially him, as a mistake? And who was Laura? He couldn't ask his grandparents without revealing that he'd been eavesdropping. And he definitely couldn't ask his father. He could imagine several ways his father might react, and none of them were worth it.
Even as he internalized the pain of his beginnings, Lee tucked away the other bits of information as well. For the first time in his life, much of his parents' behavior made some sense to him.
He began to wish that Joseph Adama has been his father. He could sit and listen to his grandfather tell stories about the law and some of his more interesting clients for hours. The only thing that bothered Lee was the fact that many of the ones his grandfather successfully defended were guilty of the crimes of which they had been accused and should have been found so by a jury and punished. Most of the time, though, his grandfather got a not guilty verdict and another criminal walked free.
Lee had strong ideals and the belief that the law should be applied equally to everyone. He felt that there should be one system for all, rich or poor, Caprican or Sagittaron or Tauron. His grandfather told him that in theory he was right, but that he would never be a successful attorney if he practiced that way. Lee later decided that maybe the key to what his grandfather meant by successful was measured in winning cases, not in true justice.
Six weeks after her overdose, Carolanne Adama came home from rehab with some medication for her depression and the counselor's suggestion that she either get a job or find some type of volunteer work to occupy some of her time. She chose the latter and within several months of starting to volunteer at the Caprica Museum of Natural History, she had a new friend, the curator who was a widower only a few years older than his father. She asked Bill for a formal separation and he reluctantly agreed. Lee refused to think about the fact that her new friend was probably also her lover.
…
Lee spent the first four weeks of his seventeenth summer at his grandparent's house, going every day to court or to his grandfather's law office with him. He ran errands and fetched coffee, but more importantly he watched and listened to everything going on around him. His grandfather let him sit in as he and his legal assistants discussed strategy and other aspects of his clients' defense. At the end of the month Lee was fairly certain that he was going to choose the law as a career.
His father asked only for equal time. Due to his rank as a commander, he was able to get permission from Fleet Headquarters on Picon to allow Lee to spend several weeks on his battlestar, the Galactica. Although Lee didn't think he was going to change his mind, he was nevertheless excited about the prospect of spending time on the ship.
When he was younger, maybe ten or eleven, his father had several times taken him to the Caprica Airbase and let him sit in a Viper. Even at that young age, Lee felt the excitement of the cockpit, felt a yearning to fly, but it was a yearning that gradually submerged in him as other pursuits and other goals came to occupy his dreams.
He found though that as the weekly personnel transport took him farther from Caprica and closer to the Galactica his former yearning was coming back. Pursuing a career in the law began to diminish in importance to him. The result was that by the time he was actually on board, he was as confused as he had been at the start of the summer.
His father put him up in a small two-bunk guest quarters close to his own. Lee had wanted to stay with the pilots, but the commander simply said no, without an explanation, obviously expecting Lee to understand why.
He gave Lee assignments every day because he wanted his son to get a good feeling for what life was like on a battlestar at all levels. Lee knew that he was supposed to do whatever the person he was observing asked him to do. Thus during the first week he mopped floors, helped stock shelves in the ship's store and helped load the massive dishwashers that cleaned their plates and utensils with steam and only a small amount of recycled water.
At the end of the week his father had him to dinner in his quarters instead of the officer's mess where he usually ate, and they talked privately for the first time that week. Lee naturally wanted to spend more time with the pilots, but his father was saving that for his last week. The second week, he told Lee, was going to be spent with his communication officers, in the CIC and with Colonel Saul Tigh, his Executive Officer or XO. Lee finally understood his father's plan. The commander was showing him every single level that made the Galactica a smoothly functioning battlestar.
"What do you think so far?" Bill asked his son.
Lee had to admit, "I never had any idea how much work it takes to keep a ship like this functioning. Or how many people."
His father smiled and nodded. "I want you to see, son, that a battlestar is more than just its pilots. It's a small city. And don't worry. You're going to get to spend your last week on board with the pilots. They're not gods, Lee. They're ordinary men and women who happen to have learned a particular skill. You'll probably be sick of pilots by the time you leave."
"I don't think so. Is there any chance I could maybe fly with one of them?"
"I'll see to it that you get to go out in a Raptor, but we don't have any two-seater Vipers on board. Those are the trainers you start with in Flight School…if that's the decision you make."
The phone in his father's quarters suddenly began buzzing, a series of short repeating bursts.
Bill got up, went over to it and listened intently. The expression on his face rapidly changed from one of relaxed amusement to frowning concern. "I'm on my way."
"Is something wrong?" Lee asked.
"Several strange reports have come into Fleet Headquarters on Picon, a loss of communications with one of the outer systems. Scheduled flights from that system are no longer arriving. I'm on my way to the Command Information Center where I spend a lot of my time. We call it the CIC."
"Can I come, too?"
"Come on. Just remember to watch silently and don't get in the way."
By the time they got there more messages had come in, a steady stream now. Lee found a spot where he was out of the way and watched his father do what he did best, command a battlestar.
Two hours later they knew the worst had happened. The Colonies were under attack by a force that had not been positively identified as Cylon, but assumed to be. Finally a message was relayed to Picon from the Battlestar Solaria just before her destruction over Leonis in the Helios Beta system. Definitely Cylons, nine basestars, one of them massive, its Raiders equipped with nukes. The capital of Luminere and several other cities had taken hits by nuclear weapons. Cylon Heavy Raiders were landing thousands of a new model centurion with built-in firepower. A massive genocide of the planet's humans was in progress.
Over the next few days the Colonies fell one by one to the Cylon war machine until there were only two left, Picon and Caprica. It was by listening carefully to his father and Colonel Tigh and several of the other officers that Lee realized Gemenon had been destroyed. His girlfriend was still on Gemenon. He managed to make it to a bathroom before he threw up. He couldn't make himself go back to the CIC until the next day.
If his father guessed by Lee's puffy eyes that he had been crying, the commander never said anything or asked why and Lee never told him. He wasn't sure his father would care, and besides, the commander had enough to deal with.
The Galactica was preparing to go to Picon when new orders came. The twelve battlestars already over Picon were going to stop the massive nuclear killing machine. When the commander relayed the news to his officers in the CIC, he sadly said the last words of the message…at all cost.
Lee waited until his father stood alone for a few moments before he asked him if that meant what he thought it did.
Bill nodded. He was as close to tears as Lee had ever seen him.
"Son, if I could get you back to Caprica now with your mother and Zak, I would. But I can't. All air traffic on and off Caprica is limited to strictly necessary now, mostly refugee ships from the other colonies, and I can't spare a ship to take you. We've just been ordered there to protect it."
"At all cost?" Lee asked.
His father nodded again. "Depending on the outcome of what happens above Picon, we'll either stand a chance or we won't. If our battlestars succeed in destroying their nuclear basestar, hopefully we'll know before the end of tonight. But we'll know for certain if they fail because we'll be facing the Cylon's killing machine. Then I don't guess it really matters where any of us are. It will be the end of the human race."
Lee stood there, too choked up to speak as he thought of his girlfriend dead already on Gemenon and of his mother and Zak on Caprica.
Bill put his hand on Lee's shoulder and squeezed. He seemed to understand exactly what his son was thinking. "I love them, too, Lee. I love my family, your mother and you and Zak."
The wait for news about the destruction of the nuclear basestar began. Finally late that night the Atlantia managed to transmit a one-word message before she and all of Picon went silent.
Success.