Chapter 35
Karmic Justice Part I
The identity of the man who attempted to assassinate Laura Roslin during a trip to Sovana for the dedication of a new school was never established. Only a few people in the military and the civilian government ever knew that the shooter had been positively identified almost immediately as Aaron Doral. The information was withheld since the autopsy provided positive proof that Doral was a Cylon.
-Bartell, History of the Second Cylon War
.
Kara didn't know how long she and Lee and Laura would have stood together by her father's bed if a silver-haired woman in a dark pants suit and white jacket hadn't come into the room. She gestured to them and they walked into the hall where she said to Laura.
"I've spoken with Dr. Bilosa. I understand the news is encouraging."
Laura wiped under her eyes with a tissue while Kara used the sleeve of her black turtleneck and Lee used the sleeve of his uniform.
"Yes, these are tears of joy for all of us," Laura said. "John and his daughter have been separated for several years due to no fault of theirs. Their reunion was very touching." She turned to Lee and Kara. "This is Dr. Tess Corin. She's been very kind to me. Dr. Corin, this is John's best friend, Lee Adama and John's daughter, Kara Thrace."
Dr. Corin held out her hand. Lee shook it and then Kara.
"I've had some breakfast brought up for you," she said to Laura, "Oatmeal, toast, fruit and hot tea. You need to eat. I insist."
"Thank you," Laura said.
"I didn't know there were others here or I would have had more sent."
"That's all right," Lee said. "We'll go to the cafeteria. After we eat, I'm taking Laura back to Caprica City. As soon as John can be moved, we'd like to take him back, too." Lee looked at Laura. "The President is insisting you come back."
"I'm not leaving my father," Kara said. "I'm going to stay."
Laura said, "I thought you would. I don't think that will be a problem, do you Dr. Corin?"
"Not at all."
"Come on Carrie…Kara," Lee said. "I'm never going to get used to calling you by your real name. Let's go get something while Laura eats her breakfast. Where is the cafeteria?"
Dr. Corin pointed down the hall. "Take that elevator to the first floor and turn left. Go to the end of the hall and follow the signs."
They got on the elevator.
"I don't like elevators," Kara said.
"You don't like sitting with your back to the door, either."
"No."
"Carrie…Kara. I'm going to have your name tattooed on your forehead. Otherwise I'll call you Carrie from now on."
"I'll still answer to Carrie. Sometimes I think of myself as Carrie."
The elevator opened on the first floor and they got off. "It's your own damned fault, you know. I wouldn't have this problem if you'd told me the truth from the beginning."
They found the cafeteria and started through the serving line.
Kara said, "We talked about this last night on the way up here. I'm sorry, Lee. I should have told you. I should have told you the first night we were together, but I didn't think I would ever see you again so at the time it didn't matter. And then as more time went by, it just got harder and harder to figure out a way to do it. It's really not that important now, anyway."
"It's important to me."
"It's just a name. I'm still me. It doesn't change who I am."
"Yes, it does. Don't you understand? Carrie Warner is twenty years old now. You're sixteen. Don't you see the difference?"
"No," Kara said. "I don't. What difference does a couple of years make?"
"There's a lot of difference between sixteen and twenty as it applies to us."
"I don't think of myself as sixteen. I've told people I'm nineteen, almost twenty for so long I've started believing it myself. Don't you see that Carrie Warner can go places and do things that Kara Thrace can't. Carrie Warner can get a credit card in her name. Carrie can walk into a bar and order a beer. Carrie can hold down a job like I've got. But that doesn't matter now because as soon as Jack finds out, he's going to fire me."
"Why? You're old enough to get a driver's license in your own name now."
"Our insurance says you've got to be at least eighteen to ride a motorcycle for the company. So I'm going to lose my job."
"You won't need to work. John will take care of you."
"I want to work. I love riding that bike," Kara said in an anguished voice.
"John will buy you a bike."
"You just don't get it. I love what I do. I'm helping people."
"You can go to the Academy in a year."
"I wish I could go this year. That's the only thing I'd give up riding the bike for."
"You're too young."
"Is that in a rulebook somewhere? Jared told me about a kid from his middle school who went to college when he was fourteen. Why couldn't I go to the Academy at seventeen? I'll be seventeen in August. Then I could go to Flight School the next year when I'm eighteen. My dad learned to fly a Viper when he was eighteen."
Lee shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you can. Is that what you want to do?"
"That's exactly what I want to do. I want to go to the Academy with Karl and Maggie. Well, not with Maggie so much, but with Karl."
"What about if I check into it when I get back to Caprica City?"
"You'd do that for me?"
"I'll do that for you."
"I already owe you big time for getting me up here. How am I ever going to repay you?"
"I don't expect you to repay me…Kara." Lee smiled at getting her name right. "Besides, when John finds out what we did, I'm a dead man, anyway. A long time ago he told me that any man who touched you before you were eighteen is dead."
"How's he going to find out? Are you going to tell him? I'm not going to tell him."
"You won't have to. Believe me. It won't take him long to figure it out. Be honest with your dad, Kara. I'll just have to take the consequences. The last thing we need is you lying about something else. Save your lies for your resistance buddies."
"Don't you worry about me and my dad," Kara said hotly. "I'll handle my dad."
"I'm sorry I'm going to miss those fireworks. You really think John is going to be a pushover? You think he's going to be so glad to see you that you'll be able to get away with anything?"
"You know him a lot better than I do." Kara picked at her toast. "I don't really know him at all."
"Something tells me you're going to get to know him really well soon. What are you going to do about the resistance?"
"I'm going to get out. I'll have to if I want to go to the Academy."
"You can do that? I thought you told me you were in it for life."
"I thought so, too, but I just found out that somebody really high up got out. If he can do it so can I."
"I hope you're right. We'd better get back upstairs. I'm expected to be on my way back to Caprica City with Laura soon."
They rode the elevator back up to the eighth floor.
"Do you forgive me for lying to you?" Kara asked him.
Lee grinned. "Maybe by the time you're eighteen I will have."
Laura was dressed in her suit when they got back to the room. She was sitting by the bed holding John's hand just like she had been when they first arrived, but her head wasn't on the mattress. She stood up, leaned over the bed and kissed him gently on the forehead.
Even though he was still deep in the drug-induced sleep, she said to him, "I'll be back to get you when the doctor will release you to travel." She motioned for Lee and Kara to follow her into the corridor. "I've talked to Dr. Corin. She's fine with Kara staying here. She'll have food trays brought up if you don't want to go to the cafeteria by yourself. She's going to arrange for a cot to be placed in an empty office down the hall so you can sleep. You can use the staff break room and showers until John is moved to a room with a private bathroom."
"That's really nice of her," Kara said.
Lee looked at Kara. "You'll be okay up here by yourself?"
"I'm not by myself. My father is here. I'll be fine. I've been taking care of myself for a long time." Impulsively she hugged him tightly. "Thank you…for everything."
Lee held her stiffly for a moment, aware that Laura was watching them, and then he gave in to the hug. He couldn't help it. Over Kara's shoulder his eyes met Laura's and he realized that just as Kara had figured out something about her, Laura had just intuited something about them. Her gaze held both surprise and concern.
He and Laura didn't talk about it until they were in the Raptor and had lifted off.
"Does John have any idea?" She asked him.
"John knows I met a girl. He doesn't have a clue that it's Kara. I didn't have a clue that she was Kara until last night. I thought her name was Carrie Warner and that she had just turned twenty."
"How serious is your relationship?"
"We're not going to have a relationship. She's sixteen years old."
"Before you realized she was sixteen, though, you had an intimate relationship?"
"Yes. And John's going to kick my ass. This may come between him and me."
"It shouldn't. You didn't know."
"I hope he sees it that way. I don't want him taking it out on Kara, either. He's got to understand what she went through and why she was using a fake ID. I just came down hard on her for lying about who she is and here I am defending her."
"I don't want to interfere in their effort to build a father-daughter relationship, but if necessary, I'll talk to John." She smiled. "Occasionally John listens to me."
"What are you and John going to do?" Lee ventured. "It's none of my business, but are you going to get married?"
"If he asks me," Laura said and smiled. "I don't own a shotgun."
Lee grinned. "He probably does."
Later as Laura slept, Lee thought about Kara again. What was he going to do? Sixteen was the age of consent on Caprica. He hadn't broken the law, but he still felt like he'd done something morally wrong. And yet…the last time he'd been with her had been so incredibly good. They had connected on so many levels and not just the physical one. He had even been able to rationalize being apart because in a way he didn't believe it. Something in him had believed they would find a way to see each other despite her ties to the resistance.
And then to find her at his door the previous night and to find out that she wasn't Carrie Warner after all, to find out that she had lied to him from the beginning. It had been a blow he was still dealing with. On the way up to Sovana, she had told him that her use of Carrie's identity had started merely as part of her struggle to find a job. She told him that she had gotten caught up in the lie, unable to see a way to go back to her real identity until circumstances had forced her to do it.
She had even told him that despite having slept with him, she had been afraid to trust him with her secret because of his connection to the military. To Lee, trust was at the heart of every worthwhile relationship. Were they going to be able to overcome this very basic issue?
Maybe he was making too much of it. She felt something for him. He knew she did because she'd risked her life to warn him when he was in Sovana. She wouldn't have done that if she didn't care.
Thinking about her now filled him with confusing and contradictory emotions. She was an enigma. On the one hand she was tough and mature, holding down a hard job and living on her own. She was sensual, too, and wise beyond her years. Yet on the other hand he'd heard her voice when she'd talked to her father. It was a child's voice. Hey Daddy. It's Kara. She was a child-woman, beautiful and tough and at the same time, young and vulnerable.
Lee realized at that moment, despite all of the issues they still had and despite her age, that he was in love with her. No matter what happened in the future, Lee Adama loved Kara Thrace and he was going to have to deal with it. He was going to have to deal with the issue of trust. He was going to have to deal with John and the inevitable way Lee's feelings for Kara were going to test their friendship to the limit. There was no way they could avoid being around each other now, but they couldn't have a physical relationship. He could look, but he couldn't touch and knowing how much he wanted her, that was going to be hell.
...
Kara sat sleeping by her father's bed with her head on the side just as Laura Roslin had done. She was vaguely aware that nurses came into his room and checked on him. Once she heard them whispering. She heard one say her name and separated for three years.
Then the room was quiet once more and she slept, deep and dreamless, for much of the morning. Like Lee, she too had gone the whole night without sleep. When she woke up it was slowly, almost as if she had been drugged like her father. Her face was turned toward the foot of the bed. She felt something moving gently on the back of her head. She finally realized it was her father's hand. He was very lightly stroking her hair.
Slowly she sat up, yawned and smiled. "Hey, Daddy," she said almost shyly.
"Hey, baby." His eyes were focused on her, but she could tell he was still under the influence of the painkiller. "I was afraid if I wasn't touching you that you would disappear."
"No, I'm really here." She took his hand. "See?"
He closed his eyes and then opened them. "Was Lee here?"
"Earlier. He had to take Laura back to Caprica City. President's orders, but they're coming back later this week and we're going to take you back, too."
"How did you get here?"
"Lee brought me in a Raptor. His father did whatever he had to do to make it happen."
"How do you know Lee?"
She started to tell her father she had met Lee at Zeno's one night and then she remembered that she had promised Lee not to lie.
"It's a really long story."
He just barely managed a smile. "Does it look like I'm going somewhere anytime soon? I think I've got time to listen to a really long story."
Kara took a deep breath. "I met him on the job."
"Yours or his?"
"Both."
Her father closed his eyes and drifted for a few moments before he opened them and looked at her again. "So what do you do? Work in a store somewhere in Caprica City? Or is it a restaurant? The detective I hired to find you is leaning toward a restaurant. I said no, you'd be working in a skateboard store."
"You're both wrong. I deliver medications...meds we call them to hospitals and clinics. I do emergency deliveries on a motorcycle. I work for a man named Jack Fisk. He runs MediFirst."
"You ride a motorcycle?"
"Yep."
He tried to grin but grimaced slightly in pain instead. "My daughter rides a motorcycle just like her old man used to. I hope you're more careful than I was."
"I'm always careful."
"So you met Lee on the job? Was he at a clinic or a hospital?"
"No. He was at his job." She could tell her father was trying to stay awake and process her evasive answers. "Why don't you rest and not try to talk, Daddy?"
He ignored her. "Where did you learn to ride a motorcycle?"
"That's a long story, too."
John's eyes met hers and focused. "I thought we'd already covered the fact that I don't have to be anywhere anytime soon."
"Maybe it would be easier if I started at the beginning. It will make a lot more sense if I start with the night Tom Zarek took you away."
And it will take a lot longer to get to the part about meeting Lee.
"Okay. I like that. Start at the beginning." He closed his eyes.
"How long have you known Lee?"
John didn't answer her right away and she realized that he was drifting again. But he had processed her question. A minute later he said, "I've known Lee for three years."
Kara remembered what Tom Zarek had told her, that they had been intercepted by a battlestar after leaving Caprica. She remembered Lee telling her he had been on his father's battlestar the Galactica when the Cylons attacked.
"When you were leaving Caprica was it the Galactica that intercepted you?"
He opened his eyes. "That's right. I tried to get Bill to let me come back for you, but he couldn't let me go. And then they Cylons attacked, and I was stuck on the ship for another three days. By the time I got back to the airfield, you were gone. Where did you go, baby?"
The effort of saying that many sentences had left him struggling for breath.
"Stop talking…please just stop talking for a minute. Let me talk. Me and Karl waited in the woods close to the airfield for four days and then I thought…I knew that Zarek had killed you. I knew you would have come back for me if you were alive. And then on the fourth night we saw a Viper fall from the sky. It was miles away. We didn't know it was a Viper until we found it, but I thought maybe it was you coming back because it came down through the atmosphere like we did. Karl and I walked all night. The pilot was dead. He'd been shot through the chest."
"Lords of Kobol, you saw something like that?"
Kara could tell her father was struggling not only with the physical pain but with what she had just told him. She squeezed his hand. "Daddy, I'm not going to tell you any more right now. Just relax. Please. That's enough for now. We'll talk later. I'm okay. I'm tough like you and my mom. Besides, that night, all of that night and the next day seems like a dream to me now. I don't ever think about it anymore."
Without realizing it she had placed her hand against her black turtleneck and over the ring she wore on the chain around her neck, the dead pilot's ring. She thought about her promise to Lee to tell the truth and amended her last sentence.
"I hardly ever think about it anymore."
...
Lee brought the Raptor in for a perfect landing. Laura was awake by then. Bill was waiting for them. Lee saw the relief on his father's face as the door opened and his father saw Laura. He helped her off the Raptor. Lee suddenly wondered if he knew about the baby. How would Bill feel if he knew Laura was having John's baby?
The more Lee thought about that the weirder it seemed. Hadn't John been the one who had preached responsibility for birth control to him? Hadn't John said that was his number one rule? What had caused him to break his own number one rule? Lee knew that John would probably say that it was none of his business, but one day Lee knew he was going to give John hell about getting caught, if nothing else but to see John try to talk his way out of it. That is if John was still speaking to him. That is if John hadn't already killed him over what he and Kara had done.
Lee signed the post-flight check list and handed it back to a ground crewman before he exited the ship. The Raptor would soon be towed back to a hangar. They'd had their usual Cylon escort, but the Raider had not landed. It had veered off instead and made for the basestar which sat always in a low, geosynchronous orbit over Caprica City. The basestar hung above them like the proverbial sword of Damocles, clearly visible through low-powered binoculars. Lee knew that the Cylons wanted the citizens of Caprica always aware of how close they were to annihilation.
"Hi, Dad," Lee said.
His father glanced over. "Good landing, son. You really are a fine pilot."
"Thank you."
"I know it's Saturday, but we need to go see Major Parker. Wait for me."
Lee walked a short distance away while his father continued talking to Laura. He saw Bill take her hand and squeeze it before he walked with her to the four Marines who were waiting to escort her to her apartment.
Bill caught up with him and they walked to his father's waiting car. The driver opened the door and they got into the back seat. "How did John react to seeing his daughter?" Bill asked.
"He realized it was her, but the doctor had given him something for pain. He was out within a minute of seeing her. She stayed in Sovana with him."
"So Laura told me. How is it that you know her? Kara, right?"
"Kara." Lee saw how easy it would be to lie and say they had met at Zeno's, but he also knew how hypocritical that would make him. "She rides a motorcycle on her job. I met her when she came in for questioning."
"You haven't questioned motorcycle riders in over a month. Are you telling me you kept her identity from John for a month?"
Lee knew his explanation was not going to go over well. He tried to slant it more in Kara's favor. "She's too young to get a job riding a motorcycle and she really needed the work. She was using a fake ID when I met her. It happens a lot," he added.
"But you figured it out?"
"She confessed last night," Lee said hoping his father would let it go. "Why are we going to see Major Parker?"
"I've got to make my usual report to the President. He declared martial law in Sovana this morning. The attempt on Laura's life was the last straw for him. I've got to get information from Parker and Darren. I'm very interested in hearing what Darren has to say."
Their driver pulled up in front of the building that housed the interrogators' offices. He got out and opened the door. "Is Agent Darren back in Caprica City?" Lee asked.
"No, he's going to join us via a teleconference link from Sovana."
As they started up the steps, one of the MPs from the front gate drove up in a jeep and asked them if they would deliver a small package to Major Parker. Lee took it and looked at the return address. It came from Agent Darren.
Lee punched his security code into the key pad and they entered the front door. Since it was Saturday, no one was sitting at the front desk. The building was quiet and deserted. They climbed the steps to the second floor and went to Major Parker's office.
Parker stood as soon as Bill entered. "Good morning, sir."
"Have a seat," Bill said. "Let's not stand on protocol today."
"How's your friend?" Parker asked Lee.
"Better than he was yesterday at this time."
"Have you heard from Darren?" Bill asked.
"I was waiting for you to get here to complete the link. Darren is standing by." He gestured to two chairs he had pulled up in front of his desk. He sat down. "Everything on this link is scrambled so the picture won't be perfectly clear, but it will be good enough."
When the picture came up on Parker's computer screen and they saw Darren, they all exchanged greetings. Darren quickly got to his news. "This wasn't the resistance. The shooter was Aaron Doral."
"What?" Parker and Bill said in unison.
"Who?" Lee asked.
"I recognized him as soon as I saw the autopsy photos. Then I went to see the body to make absolutely certain."
"You've made a mistake," Bill said matter-of-factly. "It couldn't have been him. I saw Aaron Doral going into Cavil's office earlier this morning."
"It's his twin, then."
"A Cylon," Parker and Lee both said at the same time.
"How many others know about this?" Parker asked.
"No one so far. He was a bloody mess when he was brought in. One of the Marine sharpshooters got him through the eye. He took several other bullets to the head. I know they're only hard rubber with a plastic core, but they did a lot of damage to his face."
"How can you be sure it's Doral then?" Bill asked.
"He sat beside me for forty-five minutes in Laura Roslin's office one afternoon recently while he grilled her about her affair with Gallagher. I'm sure it's him."
"Shouldn't we at least try to confirm that with DNA?"
"We got something better than DNA," Darren said. "He's got silica pathways in his brain. He's also got a data port under the skin of one arm. I stayed until the medical examiner completed the autopsy."
"You're absolutely certain it's Aaron Doral," Bill said. "We can't afford to make a mistake. I've got to take this information to the President."
"I'm going to show you several of the autopsy photos. You two take a look at them and tell me what you think. Like I said, his face is damaged, but I think you can tell. Hang on just a minute while I get them on the display."
"Seven humanoid Cylon models," Bill said. "Cavil, Simon and Natasi we know about. Then there's the male that Laura got the letter about, possibly D'Anna Biers, and a mysterious young woman that John's ex-girlfriend saw at Baltar's lab. And now Doral. I wonder how many more there are?"
They heard Darren's voice. "What do you think?"
They stared at the screen. Lee looked also, but since he had never met Aaron Doral and had never seen any photographs of him, he couldn't offer an opinion.
The photos were grainy and gruesome.
"Damn," Bill finally said.
"Darren's right," Parker said. "That's Aaron Doral. How do you think we should handle this?"
Bill answered him. "I want to talk to the President. It's just possible that the best way to handle it is to play dumb and leave the shooter a John Doe. Then we start watching Doral here in Caprica City. He may lead us to others."
"What if he's a sleeper?" Lee asked. "What if he hasn't activated yet? If he doesn't know he's a Cylon, what good will it do to watch him?"
Bill almost exploded. "I'll tell you why we're going to watch that son of a bitch. One of him tried to kill Laura. Since he failed, maybe the one here will activate and make an attempt. The gods only know how many more of them there might be elsewhere."
"I hadn't thought about that," Lee said. "You're right."
Bill picked up the phone. When the person on the other end answered, he said, "Adama here. Let me speak to the President." While he waited he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said. "This all goes back to Cavil. I'll bet my career on it. He's been gunning for Laura since she stood up to him over the refugees. That fiasco out at the university last month was just another attempt to get her and now this failed attempt."
"A Cylon with a grudge," Parker mused. "Makes him seem almost human, doesn't it?"
...
A young woman wearing scrubs like the other nurses on the ICU came into the room. Kara was sitting by the bed watching her father sleep.
"Wouldn't you like to get something to eat? You've been in here all day. I'm going to the cafeteria for dinner. I won't be gone but twenty-five or thirty minutes. Come on and go with me. That will give the others time to check your father's incisions, and they'll bathe him, too. He'll feel better."
Kara looked at her father. "Okay."
"I'm Layne Ishay," the young woman said. "We heard you hadn't seen your father in three years. Is that true?"
"We got separated the night he brought me from Picon."
"I'd love to hear your story. Oh, and you need to turn off your cell phone. Sometimes they interfere with the wireless telemetry of the monitors."
"No problem," Kara said. "I couldn't do anything about it if somebody called anyway."
When they got back from the cafeteria, John was awake. Kara could tell he was in pain, but he wouldn't press the button on his morpha pump. "I've been sleeping all day. I want to talk to you."
"Ten minutes," she said. We'll talk ten minutes and then you'll take some painkiller.
"We'll talk thirty minutes."
"Twenty and then I get up and walk out if you won't take something."
"Deal," he grimaced and tried to smile. "You know it only hurts when I breathe. Where did you go after you found the Viper?"
"Me and Karl found a little stone house. We lived there until late winter of the next year."
"With someone?"
"The old couple who lived there had killed themselves. He had shot her and then himself. He even shot their dog. They were in a shed. They'd been dead a couple of days. We burned it with them inside since it was…way too gross to bury them."
She looked at her father and saw tears forming in his eyes. "Is everything that happened to you that bad?"
"No. Living at that little stone house was…actually it was fun sometimes. We had a garden and I learned to shoot rabbits with a slingshot and Karl got to be a good cook. We went fishing. And I didn't have to go to school, but I did start reading a lot. The old couple had a lot of books. We were warm and we were never hungry. Everything was fine until the end of the winter. There was an ice storm and a tree fell on the power lines and we lost the electricity. But some soldiers came soon after that and took us to the refugee camp so that turned out okay, too."
He squeezed her hand as one of the tears made a slow track from the outer corner of his eye down his cheek. "I am so proud of you. A lot of adults wouldn't have survived what you did."
"I couldn't have done it without Karl. I would have been lost without him, although we almost got into a huge fight when I shot the first rabbit. We talk about it sometime now and laugh. We were ready to beat each other up over a stupid rabbit."
The green eyes fastened on hers. "All that time you were alone with Karl, did the two of you ever…you know what I'm asking."
"Gross, Dad. No way. He's my best friend. We don't think of each other like that so get that out of your mind."
"What about Hugh Connelly?"
Kara's eyes opened wide. "How do you know about Hugh Connelly?"
"Through Laura. I met him a couple of weeks ago. Did anything happen with him?"
"I'm not going to talk about that with you. It's none of your business."
"What the hell do you mean it's none of my business? I'm your father."
"That doesn't mean you have a right to know everything about me. Some things are personal. Besides, after what you did you've got a damned lot of nerve asking me that kind of question."
"What does that mean…after what I did? What did I do?"
Kara knew she should stop. She knew it. But she was so intent on diverting her father's attention from her and Hugh Connelly that she went on. "Not just you. You and Laura both. After what you two did, you've got a damned lot of nerve questioning me."
"Laura and I are adults. There's a big difference. And I see you've still got that smart mouth."
"Yeah, well Laura isn't so smart and neither are you. Otherwise she wouldn't be knocked up right now."
She hadn't meant to say it exactly like that. She really had not meant to say it that way.
The look on her father's face was comical. She actually saw the moment he realized what she had just said. He shut his eyes and shook his head slightly. When he opened them he looked at the ceiling for a moment. It wasn't until he finally looked back at her that Kara realized he didn't know. Laura had said she'd told him, but it hadn't registered.
"Are you trying to tell me…no, there's no way. She said she couldn't get pregnant and I believed her." He lay very still for a moment. "Damn."
Kara felt sick. "I'm going to go get something to drink. Laura said she told you. I thought you knew. I really thought you knew. She's going to kill me. She is so going to kill me."
Her father's grip on her hand was a lot stronger than she thought it could be. "Not until we finish what you just started. Laura told you she's pregnant before she told me?"
"I guessed when she started puking her guts up this morning. She's been having morning sickness. I asked her if you'd knocked…if you'd gotten her pregnant and she said you had. I didn't mean to tell you like this. I really thought you knew."
Again the look on her father's face was comical. "How does she feel about it? What did she say?"
"We didn't talk about it, okay. That's between you and her."
"Did she seem like she was upset?"
"She was so upset that she sat by your bed holding your hand all night. When Lee and I got here early this morning she was sleeping with her head on the mattress."
"She was here all night?"
"All night. The only reason she went back to Caprica City is that the President ordered her to. She's going to charter a flight and take you back as soon as the doctor up here says you can be moved."
"A baby." He grinned suddenly and then grimaced in pain.
"Take the medicine or I'm leaving." Her father pressed the button on the morpha pump. His body relaxed, the pain lines on his face smoothed out, the grin returned. She squeezed his hand. "Maybe I'm going to get that brother after all."
"It'll be a girl," her father said as he drifted off, but he was still grinning. "Another smart-mouthed little girl who will give me hell." And then he said something that Kara didn't understand. He said, "That's another good example of karmic justice."
...
Lee forgot about the small package that the MP had handed him to give to Major Parker until he was leaving the major's office. His father was staying behind to wait for the President to call him back. Lee took the parcel out of his pocket and handed it to the major.
Parker looked at it blankly for a moment and then said, "This is the chip from the newsman's camera. He's the only one who managed to get any record of what happened. Why don't you take it and look at it while we wait. I don't think Darren's guys saw anything on it that warranted following up, but he sent it to us for a look, too."
Lee took the package to his desk and opened it carefully. He plugged the chip into the docking station on his computer and opened the software that let him view it. The short clip was less than two minutes in length. The cameraman had been standing facing the steps of the ship. John was near the left-hand side of the frame. The edge of the luggage carrier was barely visible as it was driven up beside them. The camera focused on Laura as she descended the steps. She really did have nice legs. John glanced back at her and then suddenly stepped in front of her. Then the bullets struck John and he went down. The Marine nearest Laura grabbed her and pulled her to the tarmac. The image began to jump as the cameraman started running backward. The Marines were firing their weapons. The gunman was hit multiple times and also went down, but there was never a clear shot of his face. One of the Marines approached and put his hand over the camera lens. That was it. The entire sequence had taken eighty-seven seconds.
As hard as it was to watch his friend get shot, Lee played the clip several more times. He played it in slow motion. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but something seemed slightly off. He copied the short clip onto the hard drive of his computer and opened it in software that let him digitize the images. Then he was able to change the perspective and look at what happened from Laura's point of view and John's point of view.
It took him half a dozen times before he saw what he thought was off about the assassination attempt. He didn't see it until he viewed it from John's perspective. He could see only the edge of the luggage carrier. John had been able to see all of it, and John had obviously seen Doral walk around the back of the carrier. That's what was off. John had stepped to the left in front of Laura a full three seconds before the pistol had been visible in the Doral's hand. Had it been intuition or had John known what was going to happen beforehand...or was the software simulation wrong?
Lee deleted the video from his hard drive. He removed the chip from the docking station and put it back in the envelope and locked the envelope in his desk drawer. Monday he would give it to Major Parker and tell him that he hadn't noticed anything unusual on it either, nothing worth following up. If Parker looked at it and eventually found what he had, then they would deal with the consequences when it happened.
...
Sunday morning the doctor had John moved from the Intensive Care Unit to what he called the IMC or Intermediary Care Unit. The room was larger and had a window and a phone. It also had its own bathroom with a shower.
The staff let John rest for an hour after the move and then had him sitting in a comfortable chair for nearly an hour.
One of the nurses explained to Kara that the sooner he was sitting up and moving around, the less the chance of blood clots and pneumonia. Kara understood the danger of pneumonia since many of the flu victims had succumbed to a form of pneumonia. The same nurse also explained that they would have him on his feet the next day and walking a short distance down the hall. Her father was fine with that. Kara could tell he already wanted to get out of the hospital.
The doctor had also reduced the amount of morpha he was getting. Kara understood that, too, even thought she didn't want her dad in pain. He wasn't sleeping nearly as much and Kara had gone on with her story, telling him little bits at a time and finding out what he had done during those three years, too.
Inevitably, though, she got to the part about finding the ancient stone altar in the woods and meeting Hugh Connelly. She told him the truth, even the part about the near-rape by the two older boys and how Hugh had saved her.
"Hugh didn't mention that part. I was rough on him about you. I was afraid he'd taken advantage of you."
"He was never anything but nice to me. Sometimes he'd come watch me and Karl play soccer on one of the camp teams."
"He kissed you, though, didn't he?"
"Yes, he kissed me and I kissed him back. He asked me first. I told him it was okay."
"He told me nothing had happened between you and him, but I knew he was lying."
"Nothing did happen. We kissed. End of story. And it was just as much my fault as it was his, okay?"
"You were what, fourteen years old when it happened? He took advantage of you."
"I lied to him about my age. He's hot and good-looking and I was trying to impress him. I told him I was seventeen. It wasn't his fault. Why are you so hung up on my sex life, anyway? I've already told you it's none of your business."
"What do you mean your sex life? You're sixteen years old. You're too young to have a sex life."
"Did you have a sex life when you were sixteen?"
"When I was sixteen I was working my ass off on a fishing trawler on Virgon's north sea."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I'm not going to either."
"Then I'm not going to answer yours."
"Kara. I'm your father. I love you. I just want to protect you."
Kara took a deep breath and then another. She was on the verge of really losing her temper. And then she thought about what they had both been through. Finally she said. "Okay, you want the truth, I'll tell you the truth because you aren't going to let it rest until I do, and then we aren't going to talk about it anymore. I just won't tell you any names. Do you agree? I tell you and then we drop it because it's done. You can't change it and neither can I."
"Is this going to really make me angry?"
"Probably."
He thought about it for a long time before he said, "Let's drop it. You're right. And Laura was right when she said what's done is done. If you kissed Hugh Connelly or even made out with some guy before now, I don't want to know. We can't change it. We wipe the slate clean and start from right now. Agreed?"
Kara smiled. She'd gotten off easy. "Agreed."
The phone in her father's room rang. Kara answered.
"Hey, Lee."
"How's John?"
"He's doing much better. They moved him out of the ICU."
"I know. I called the nurses' station and they transferred me."
"How was your flight back to Caprica City yesterday?"
"Fine."
She grinned. "How's Laura? I'm sure my father wants to know."
"Give me that phone," John said. "Please."
"Lee, my dad wants to talk to you. I'm going to hand the phone to him."
"All right. I'll talk to you later. I'm glad John's better."
John came on the line. "Hey, Lee."
"You sound better. Not as hoarse."
"I want to thank you for bringing Kara up here and then getting Laura back to the city."
"Don't mention it. As soon as your doctor releases you to travel, Laura is going to charter a ship and come get you. I'm going to ride along, too."
"I think he's going to release me next Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to try to pin him down. He said a lot depends on me. I can promise you I want out of here."
"How's Kara doing?"
"She's doing fine. We're getting reacquainted. She was just telling me about life in the camp. About some of the people she met there."
"I'll look forward to hearing all about it. John, I've got a couple of questions to ask you about the shooting, but it can wait until I see you."
"Lee, I've tried to remember. I've really tried, but I can't remember the shooting. I even asked the doctor. He said it's not uncommon after something traumatic like that not to have any memory of it."
"What's the last thing you do remember?"
"Landing in Sovana."
"Okay. We'll still talk sometime. I'll call you again tomorrow night."
Lee hung up and went back out onto the patio with his father.
"How's John?" Bill asked.
"He sounds a lot better than he did yesterday morning."
"That's good."
"Dad, I need to ask you something about John. Do you think…I'm not really sure how to ask this…do you think he could have some kind of inside track with…I don't know…information that wouldn't be available to the average person?"
"Are you asking me if I think John is in the resistance?"
Lee breathed a sigh of relief. His father had said it, not him. "I guess that's what I'm asking."
"John's been in the resistance for the last two and a half years."
"You knew that and you didn't do anything about it?"
His father seemed amused. "I'm surprised he didn't tell you, as close as you two are."
"No…he never…I didn't have a clue."
"On second thought, I'm not surprised. John would never have risked compromising you like that. Not with the kind of job that you have."
"But he told you? He didn't mind compromising you?"
"He's kept me informed of what the resistance has been up to in Caprica City so I guess you could say he's been working for me, too. Anything the resistance has done in Caprica City in the last two years I've known about ahead of time, sanctioned missions anyway. Some of the missions we even planned together. A lot of the things they stole from Cylon shipments, the electronics and phones, have ended up with people who are helping me and my plan. John and I are in agreement about how much they can safely do."
"Even blowing up Dr. Baltar's lab?"
"I didn't approve of that. That's the one thing John did that I asked him not to do, but he has some really strong feelings about what Baltar and crew were doing out there."
Lee was so stunned that for a moment he couldn't say anything. Finally he said, "But you let him do it anyway?"
"I owed him and he promised me they would stop after that. He kept his word. You'll notice that the resistance in Caprica City has been very quiet for the last several months. Sovana is another story, but John's not involved with that radical bunch. Never has been."
"How could John make a promise like that about the resistance?"
"He's near the top, son. He's been next to the top man here in the city for two years, but he's getting out. He told me at lunch several weeks ago that he's getting out. He's doing it because of Laura. After what happened with Cavil at the University last month, John's too afraid that Cavil would somehow tie something the resistance did back to Laura. I'm not sure it matters now, anyway. Laura is resigning."
"Why?"
"She's pregnant with John's child and she's not married. She would never put the President in the position of either asking for her resignation or having to defend her publicly. John should marry her."
"John loves her. I'm sure he'll marry her if she wants him to."
Bill turned up his drink.
"Can I change the subject, Dad? I need to ask you something about the Academy."
"Shoot."
"Is it a rule that you can't attend the Academy until you're eighteen?"
"I don't know. Why do you ask?"
"John's daughter Kara wants to go this fall and she'll only be seventeen."
"That's a question for Colonel Winters. Laura has an inside track with him. Maybe she could find out for you."
"That's a good idea. I'll ask her."
"So Kara wants to go to the Academy."
"She wants to become a Viper pilot like John was."
"I wish we could train pilots faster or train more of them at a time. Well-trained Viper pilots are a big part of my plan."
"Why can't we train more of them?"
"I'm afraid it would alert the Cylons and make them suspicious."
Lee thought about what his father had just said. "I wonder if they would notice an increase of just ten or twenty students per class? Basic flight was one of my smallest classes at the Academy. With a few more good teachers for the classes and simulator training and then a few more instructors in Fight School, there's a chance we could increase the number of pilots by fifty percent."
Bill pondered what Lee had said. "I think I'll talk to Colonel Winters. I'm sure Laura can find the money in her education budget to help us. The problem is finding good Viper pilots to serve as teachers. By the time Conrad Burgher has finished putting students through his Basic Flight class and then his simulator exercises, he's weeded out almost every single student who won't make it through Flight School. We need more like him but I don't know how to find them. I can hardly run an on-line advertisement."
An idea began to form in Lee's mind. He remembered that long-ago night on the Galactica when John had used salt and pepper shakers to show a dozen Viper pilots some of the Cylon's basic moves. He remembered how John had talked to the pilots before their first combat engagement with the new Raiders, how John had talked strategy with some of them on the hangar deck.
Lee finally said to his father. "I don't know how he feels about it, but I know where you might find a good one."
Bill knew immediately who he was talking about. "John loves flying too much, son. I doubt you'd get him on the ground and into a classroom."
"Even if Colonel Winters lets John's daughter go to the Academy a year early in return for John teaching for a year?"
Bill smiled. "There's a lot of your grandfather in you. You would have made a fine attorney. That's exactly the kind of argument he would have come up with. Of course you're taking for granted that John wants his daughter to become a Viper pilot."
Lee smiled, too. "I doubt he'll be able to stop her if that's what she wants. Something tells me that it won't be too long before she has him wrapped around her little finger."
...
"You want to do what?" John asked Kara.
"Go to the Academy this fall and be a Viper pilot like you were."
"You can forget about that right now."
"Why? Why can I forget that right now?" Kara retorted hotly.
"Because the Viper pilots that are being trained now are going against Cylon Raiders one day in the not-too-distant future. I'm not going to let you risk your life like that."
"You did."
"That's different."
"How is it different? You don't think I'd be good enough?"
"I know you'd be good enough. But I didn't have anybody twenty-five years ago. It was just me. I had no family. You've got a family. You've got me and soon you'll have Laura…if she'll marry me, and there's the baby. You've got a family."
"I want to be a Viper pilot," Kara said stubbornly. "You won't be able to stop me as soon as I turn eighteen. I'll do it anyway."
John lay back against the pillow. His breathing was fast and shallow. He was in pain. "I don't want to fight about this, Kara. I'm not up to it right now."
"I'll let you get better and then we'll fight about it."
"Deal," he said. "Let me get better and then we'll fight about it. But the answer will still be no."
"You won't win this one," Kara said smugly. "I'm going to be a Viper pilot and fight the Cylons just like you. It's called karmic justice."
"I should never have told you what that means," John said.
"I'll bet when you were flying your Viper and drinking your whiskey and sleeping with your women, you never dreamed you'd have a smart-mouth daughter one day who would give you hell, did you?"
Her father finally smiled. "No, baby, I never dreamed I'd be that lucky."