Cape Canaveral, FL | August, 1958 | 05:28
Six weeks had passed from the last time Kara Thrace had been at the Cape. She'd learned one hell of a lot about Earth in that short amount of time; waiting tables was often hard work, but it was a great way to keep her fingers on the pulse of happenings at Patrick Air Force Base as everyone from tourists to locals to the military families themselves passed through Cocoa Beach for one reason or another. She was even beginning to look and act like a native Floridian - during the hot summer, she'd gained a deep golden tan topped with permanently sunburnt cheeks, unlearned how to drive tooling around on straight, level roads on Al's motorcycle, and experienced a mounting dislike for people who were not from Florida. Other than those concessions to nativism, though, she led the same sort of solitary life she'd led in Delphi. Kara had taken a room in the inn where she worked, rarely socialized, and spent all her time learning the ins and outs of the base by any means necessary.
Aside from the general routine of life on a military base (something she already knew plenty about), Kara had picked up the fact Earth’s endeavor to go to space was indeed in its fledgling stage. Even if she’d spent her time simply watching television (almost laughably quaint compared to what she’d been used to on Caprica), she’d have gleaned that much - not to mention the fact the entire planet seemed swept up in it. Almost daily during her shifts, she heard some bit of news or another from NASA, and in Cocoa, NASA devotion was something of a religion. She also learned plenty about the politics of the place just from listening for tidbits about the space program. Here, countries fought with more vehemence than all the twelve colonies did. Overcrowding, Kara presumed - there were too many opposing ideologies to exist in such a small place. It was little wonder no one from Earth had yet stepped foot on the moon so close, if this had been the Caprica, it would have been close enough for a day’s shopping excursion.
One thing she hadn’t heard about, though, was Lieutenant Albert Calavicci. Normally, that wouldn’t have surprised her as most military personnel were just nameless, faceless protectors, but around here, those destined for space (the queerly named ‘astronauts’) were celebrities. She assumed Al was still in training and therefore had little time for photo opportunities or interviews, but still, she’d have liked to see him just once if only to know he was doing well. Her greatest fear was that, thanks to her and their little misadventure, he’d been knocked down to some desk jockey position and he’d never get to see the stars he dreamt of. She’d convinced herself that wasn’t the case, though, if only to keep him off her mind. After all, she had her pen in too many inkpots to get distracted for too long.
Kara had done a little legal research and plenty of not-so-legal reconnaissance work, and had begged, borrowed, and stolen to collect the most vital parts of her plan. She kept everything from plans to maps to spare airplane parts in a rented storage garage in Titusville. It was a larger city than Cocoa, and there, people paid a lot less attention to her. As an extra precaution, she always took a cab or a bus to the town, leaving the bike parked at the inn. A blonde in trousers stood out enough in this strangely backward place - if she rode in on the flashy motorcycle, she’d undoubtedly attract the wrong sort of attention. But late Friday night in August after a particularly grueling shift, she left Cocoa on the bike toting everything she wanted to take with her; she did not intend to return.
Her first stop was the garage. She collected what she needed, including the ill-gotten schematic of Patrick AFB. She’d gotten out of one drunk pilot that there was an off-limits hangar on the base, and Kara was sure if anything remained of her bird, it’d be there. She wasn’t stupid enough to let herself believe she’d be able to fly the thing out of Patrick, but if anything salvageable was left, she knew she could repair it given even a little time. She was likely deluding herself to think she could fashion a viable faster-than-light drive on her own, but if she could just get the parts and get the hell out of there with something with wings and an engine, well, she’d take care of fabrication and repairs in some little remote part of the United States. At least, that was if she didn’t get shot down attempting such an escape. There was no use worrying, though. She needed to do this, and she needed to do it now. The waiting was killing her, and even though she could probably remain on Earth, building a life for herself, trying to forget the people she loved and lost, she just couldn’t live without flying. Kara would rather die than remain grounded.
So she bundled what she’d picked up and departed Titusville, heading for the base. There were many checkpoints on the way, but she’d forged herself a passable enough fake to get through the first few on the bike, and just before the final guardhouse, she parked the motorcycle in a copse of sad-looking pines, stowing the keys with their seashell keyfob in one of the compartments. She prayed to any gods still listening the note she’d asked another waitress to send a few days after she’d gone found Calavicci before someone else found the bike, but if not… well, it was just another thing she couldn’t worry about.
She skirted the ragged treeline leeward toward the ocean. When she reached the calm, quiet beach, she kept low behind the shallow dunes, approaching the final guardhouse from behind. As she knew from listening carefully, there was a single guard on two-hour watch between one and three in the morning, and the man had to phone in regular reports every quarter hour, so she had a narrow but not unmanageable window to perform the necessary task of rendering the man unconscious. Gripping the heavy Browning pistol she’d gained in a less-than-legal manner in a sure hand, she watched and waited for the soldier to sight up and down the road into the base, then around the house. He lifted the receiver, filed a quick report, then resumed doing nothing. As she drew closer, she could see he was such a young man, probably no older than eighteen, and she felt sorry for what she had to do. Still, needs must, and Kara was used to doing things she didn’t want to do.
She closed the last few feet crouched low. When she crept around to the guard’s door, she sprang up, brandishing in the pistol with two hands. The poor kid’s face blanched, but he still went for his revolver. Noble of him, Kara thought, but she could hardly spare him now. “Hold it right there, kid,” she growled. “Hands on your head.” He hesitated, looking for a split second like he was going to try something heroic, but thought better of it. Even before his hands touched his head, Kara struck him with the handle of the pistol, swiped his keys, turned them in the lock to disengage the alarm, and opened the final gate. Keeping the keys and knocking over a few things so the kid would look like he’d gone down fighting, she proceeded on through. She knew the way by rote, but she consulted her schematic as she ran along the fence, then turned and began to zigzag through recently-erected Quonset huts and permanent hangars alike until she found the one she was looking for.
It was an unremarkable building, painted a utilitarian gray, but to Kara, it may as well have been the resplendent Oracle of Delphi. She jimmied the lock and slipped inside, finding a few ghostly looking hulks under sheeting, spare parts and tools scattered around, and half-finished projects complete on tables around the room. This was a bird chop-house the likes of which Kara had seen before, and for a moment, she just breathed in the comforting fug of sweat, metal, and machine grease. Gods, how she’d missed that aroma.
Of course, Kara didn’t really have the time to stand around, basking in nostalgia, so she began searching for anything familiar. She didn’t have long to look as it turned out. In the center of the room, partially uncovered, sat what remained of her beautiful Viper. What hadn’t been sacrificed to the ground during her disastrous re-entry and miraculous crash-landing had been stripped. All that remained were its bones and thousands of pieces and parts scattered around it on the cement floor. Despite the veritable holocaust, Kara couldn’t help grinning - it was plain to her that no one had been able to make heads or tails of much of anything. Her grin faded a bit as she realized she wasn’t going to be taking much of her bird with her, though, so she stepped away from the Viper hesitantly and began dragging sheets off the other damaged planes in the hangar.
All told, there were about six and a half birds there, and if mended properly, there might have been two viable for flight. She chose the plane requiring the least repairs, a broken-down old mid-engine fighter with a front prop. She could tell in its day, it had been a gorgeous plane, but it was lacking in anything even remotely resembling the turbocharged engine she’d need to break atmosphere. The shape, as well, was all wrong, but those things could be overcome. Hadn’t she singlehandedly piloted a Raider back to Galactica once? And that thing hadn’t even had appreciable controls, just sinew and something like blood.
Kara rolled up her sleeves both literally and metaphorically and set to work, using as little light as she could, careful of the amount of noise she was making. Both made even the simplest fixes slow-going, but by the time the sun was beginning to stream through the hangar’s upper windows, she had herself a mostly-able bird. It would be one hell of a thing to try to test it for flight on its first go, but she didn’t have any choice. As with her daredevil escape from that terrible moon, she was only going to get one chance to do this, and it had to work.
She gathered up what she’d need to retrofit the plane with an FTL-drive and secured it behind the cockpit. She still had no idea where she’d get the power to break atmosphere, but those concerns were too much to think on at the moment. For her part, it was going to be all she could do to get out the hangar doors and up into the air. The rest, she hoped, would come later.
Without a proper flightsuit or even the assurance she’d have enough oxygen to sustain anything longer than a twenty-minute flight, Kara bravely climbed into the cockpit. She wanted to maneuver as close as she could to the doors, so when she opened them, she could be down the runway before anyone thought to chase her. Just as she laid her hands on the stick and began basic pre-flight, her good luck ran out. The door opened, and below, she could hear exclamations of surprise. She hunkered down in the seat, sliding almost to the floor, but it was no good. The mechanics who’d turned up to pick up wherever they’d left off the night before spotted the fully-functional plane right off.
“Holy shit, Carl! Lookit that! The Airacobra looks like she’s been reborn over night.”
A laugh answered the first voice. “Don’t be an idiot. Strickland musta left it uncovered last night.”
Kara heard footsteps cross the concrete and she frantically searched for the Browning. Damn her arrogance for thinking she was in the clear! She’d just located it when she saw a shadow fall across her.
“Carl, you’re never gonna believe what’s up here,” the first man said, incredulous. Kara knew she was good and caught, so she lifted her gaze to the startled looking man looming over her. He blinked at her, uncomprehending for a moment, then shouted down, “It’s a goddamn woman!”
Aside from the general routine of life on a military base (something she already knew plenty about), Kara had picked up the fact Earth’s endeavor to go to space was indeed in its fledgling stage. Even if she’d spent her time simply watching television (almost laughably quaint compared to what she’d been used to on Caprica), she’d have gleaned that much - not to mention the fact the entire planet seemed swept up in it. Almost daily during her shifts, she heard some bit of news or another from NASA, and in Cocoa, NASA devotion was something of a religion. She also learned plenty about the politics of the place just from listening for tidbits about the space program. Here, countries fought with more vehemence than all the twelve colonies did. Overcrowding, Kara presumed - there were too many opposing ideologies to exist in such a small place. It was little wonder no one from Earth had yet stepped foot on the moon so close, if this had been the Caprica, it would have been close enough for a day’s shopping excursion.
One thing she hadn’t heard about, though, was Lieutenant Albert Calavicci. Normally, that wouldn’t have surprised her as most military personnel were just nameless, faceless protectors, but around here, those destined for space (the queerly named ‘astronauts’) were celebrities. She assumed Al was still in training and therefore had little time for photo opportunities or interviews, but still, she’d have liked to see him just once if only to know he was doing well. Her greatest fear was that, thanks to her and their little misadventure, he’d been knocked down to some desk jockey position and he’d never get to see the stars he dreamt of. She’d convinced herself that wasn’t the case, though, if only to keep him off her mind. After all, she had her pen in too many inkpots to get distracted for too long.
Kara had done a little legal research and plenty of not-so-legal reconnaissance work, and had begged, borrowed, and stolen to collect the most vital parts of her plan. She kept everything from plans to maps to spare airplane parts in a rented storage garage in Titusville. It was a larger city than Cocoa, and there, people paid a lot less attention to her. As an extra precaution, she always took a cab or a bus to the town, leaving the bike parked at the inn. A blonde in trousers stood out enough in this strangely backward place - if she rode in on the flashy motorcycle, she’d undoubtedly attract the wrong sort of attention. But late Friday night in August after a particularly grueling shift, she left Cocoa on the bike toting everything she wanted to take with her; she did not intend to return.
Her first stop was the garage. She collected what she needed, including the ill-gotten schematic of Patrick AFB. She’d gotten out of one drunk pilot that there was an off-limits hangar on the base, and Kara was sure if anything remained of her bird, it’d be there. She wasn’t stupid enough to let herself believe she’d be able to fly the thing out of Patrick, but if anything salvageable was left, she knew she could repair it given even a little time. She was likely deluding herself to think she could fashion a viable faster-than-light drive on her own, but if she could just get the parts and get the hell out of there with something with wings and an engine, well, she’d take care of fabrication and repairs in some little remote part of the United States. At least, that was if she didn’t get shot down attempting such an escape. There was no use worrying, though. She needed to do this, and she needed to do it now. The waiting was killing her, and even though she could probably remain on Earth, building a life for herself, trying to forget the people she loved and lost, she just couldn’t live without flying. Kara would rather die than remain grounded.
So she bundled what she’d picked up and departed Titusville, heading for the base. There were many checkpoints on the way, but she’d forged herself a passable enough fake to get through the first few on the bike, and just before the final guardhouse, she parked the motorcycle in a copse of sad-looking pines, stowing the keys with their seashell keyfob in one of the compartments. She prayed to any gods still listening the note she’d asked another waitress to send a few days after she’d gone found Calavicci before someone else found the bike, but if not… well, it was just another thing she couldn’t worry about.
She skirted the ragged treeline leeward toward the ocean. When she reached the calm, quiet beach, she kept low behind the shallow dunes, approaching the final guardhouse from behind. As she knew from listening carefully, there was a single guard on two-hour watch between one and three in the morning, and the man had to phone in regular reports every quarter hour, so she had a narrow but not unmanageable window to perform the necessary task of rendering the man unconscious. Gripping the heavy Browning pistol she’d gained in a less-than-legal manner in a sure hand, she watched and waited for the soldier to sight up and down the road into the base, then around the house. He lifted the receiver, filed a quick report, then resumed doing nothing. As she drew closer, she could see he was such a young man, probably no older than eighteen, and she felt sorry for what she had to do. Still, needs must, and Kara was used to doing things she didn’t want to do.
She closed the last few feet crouched low. When she crept around to the guard’s door, she sprang up, brandishing in the pistol with two hands. The poor kid’s face blanched, but he still went for his revolver. Noble of him, Kara thought, but she could hardly spare him now. “Hold it right there, kid,” she growled. “Hands on your head.” He hesitated, looking for a split second like he was going to try something heroic, but thought better of it. Even before his hands touched his head, Kara struck him with the handle of the pistol, swiped his keys, turned them in the lock to disengage the alarm, and opened the final gate. Keeping the keys and knocking over a few things so the kid would look like he’d gone down fighting, she proceeded on through. She knew the way by rote, but she consulted her schematic as she ran along the fence, then turned and began to zigzag through recently-erected Quonset huts and permanent hangars alike until she found the one she was looking for.
It was an unremarkable building, painted a utilitarian gray, but to Kara, it may as well have been the resplendent Oracle of Delphi. She jimmied the lock and slipped inside, finding a few ghostly looking hulks under sheeting, spare parts and tools scattered around, and half-finished projects complete on tables around the room. This was a bird chop-house the likes of which Kara had seen before, and for a moment, she just breathed in the comforting fug of sweat, metal, and machine grease. Gods, how she’d missed that aroma.
Of course, Kara didn’t really have the time to stand around, basking in nostalgia, so she began searching for anything familiar. She didn’t have long to look as it turned out. In the center of the room, partially uncovered, sat what remained of her beautiful Viper. What hadn’t been sacrificed to the ground during her disastrous re-entry and miraculous crash-landing had been stripped. All that remained were its bones and thousands of pieces and parts scattered around it on the cement floor. Despite the veritable holocaust, Kara couldn’t help grinning - it was plain to her that no one had been able to make heads or tails of much of anything. Her grin faded a bit as she realized she wasn’t going to be taking much of her bird with her, though, so she stepped away from the Viper hesitantly and began dragging sheets off the other damaged planes in the hangar.
All told, there were about six and a half birds there, and if mended properly, there might have been two viable for flight. She chose the plane requiring the least repairs, a broken-down old mid-engine fighter with a front prop. She could tell in its day, it had been a gorgeous plane, but it was lacking in anything even remotely resembling the turbocharged engine she’d need to break atmosphere. The shape, as well, was all wrong, but those things could be overcome. Hadn’t she singlehandedly piloted a Raider back to Galactica once? And that thing hadn’t even had appreciable controls, just sinew and something like blood.
Kara rolled up her sleeves both literally and metaphorically and set to work, using as little light as she could, careful of the amount of noise she was making. Both made even the simplest fixes slow-going, but by the time the sun was beginning to stream through the hangar’s upper windows, she had herself a mostly-able bird. It would be one hell of a thing to try to test it for flight on its first go, but she didn’t have any choice. As with her daredevil escape from that terrible moon, she was only going to get one chance to do this, and it had to work.
She gathered up what she’d need to retrofit the plane with an FTL-drive and secured it behind the cockpit. She still had no idea where she’d get the power to break atmosphere, but those concerns were too much to think on at the moment. For her part, it was going to be all she could do to get out the hangar doors and up into the air. The rest, she hoped, would come later.
Without a proper flightsuit or even the assurance she’d have enough oxygen to sustain anything longer than a twenty-minute flight, Kara bravely climbed into the cockpit. She wanted to maneuver as close as she could to the doors, so when she opened them, she could be down the runway before anyone thought to chase her. Just as she laid her hands on the stick and began basic pre-flight, her good luck ran out. The door opened, and below, she could hear exclamations of surprise. She hunkered down in the seat, sliding almost to the floor, but it was no good. The mechanics who’d turned up to pick up wherever they’d left off the night before spotted the fully-functional plane right off.
“Holy shit, Carl! Lookit that! The Airacobra looks like she’s been reborn over night.”
A laugh answered the first voice. “Don’t be an idiot. Strickland musta left it uncovered last night.”
Kara heard footsteps cross the concrete and she frantically searched for the Browning. Damn her arrogance for thinking she was in the clear! She’d just located it when she saw a shadow fall across her.
“Carl, you’re never gonna believe what’s up here,” the first man said, incredulous. Kara knew she was good and caught, so she lifted her gaze to the startled looking man looming over her. He blinked at her, uncomprehending for a moment, then shouted down, “It’s a goddamn woman!”