New Fic: Edge
Edge (1/?)
Author: Lurker2209
Spoilers: Through S3 and some oblique references to Razor
Rating: PG-13, for now.
Characters/pairings: Lots of OC’s, L/K (be patient, very patient!)
Timeline: About 13 years after the Second Exodus, this goes AU somewhere after Rapture, although the rest of S3 did or will happen, just differently.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Ron who generously lets us play in his universe.
Summary: For years the fleet has wandered in the wilderness and one girl has wandered from placement to placement.
A/N: My current beta is wonderful (thanks Rob) but not terribly familiar with BSG, so if anyone would like to beta future installments, that would be wonderful.
Edge
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the Earth abideth for ever. -Ecclesiastes
Part 1: Orphans
Orphans still have memory, and love, and dreams: What happens when you take those away, too? -Jacob, Razor Recap, Television Without Pity
I didn’t realize where I was running until I got there. I suppose it only made sense that I ended up in the Chrion’s expansive hangar bay. I was running and this was the only real exit.
Orderly lines of people and machinery forced me to stop, to think. And I found I could. Old patterns guided my thoughts and hands as I reached into my pocket for the knife. Click. I still remembered how to think without feeling.
Click. I scanned the crowd, following lines of industry, skipping the dangerous looking freight loaders, the efficient passenger transports. I needed a transport that took cargo and passengers, and wasn’t too picky about either.
Click. The blade caught my reflection; warped as it was, it saw the trail of blood and tears down my face. I couldn’t go anywhere looking like this.
Click. Tracing my way back to the closest head was hard when I hadn’t really seen where I’d been going. I’d been too sloppy. The cold water cleared my head a little. I wet my sleeve and dabbed it over my chin and swollen nose. Maybe I could pass for 16 with my hair up. I reached back to try, but my left arm hung useless at my side. And it hurt like Hades! Was it broken? I didn’t know, but I had to hide it, had to keep anyone from seeing it, had to get away from this whole godsforsaken ship.
Back in the hangar, I pushed through the passengers and the workers, too desperate to hide, to scheme. I picked the first dilapidated pile of bolts I saw without too many people clustered around it.
“Hey stop, what’re you doing here?” A rough looking man grabbed my arm.
“Looking for a ride.”
“You don’t look 16.”
“No.” I admitted.
“Parents?”
“Dead.” It was mostly true.
“We don’t take system runaways.” He turned to march me off, and I reached into my pocket, past the knife for the stash of stolen bills I’d once hidden under Kore’s mattress. I pushed her baby face from my mind as I shoved the half the results of six months of petty theft into his hands. His eyes widened. He straightened and counted the crumpled New Colonials and finally jerked his head towards the transport. “Get on, lock yourself in the head and keep quiet.”
So I did. The shuttle was cramped and dirty; the head made my stomach turn. I hated it. I couldn’t run here where there was nothing to do but think. Click. Click. Click.
The lone FleetSec officer came and went. Gravity lessened and returned. Finally I heard a tap at the door. The captain returned to the small cockpit. I found a place to sit on a broken instrument panel.
“Where are we going?” I asked, planning again.
“Around the fleet. I’ve gotta stop at the Monarch, the Pyxis, the Carillian Trader, the Gideon. I could leave you there. It’s been a government ship since Meeker got shot by that fanatic.”
“Sure,” I said. The handful of government ships were havens for squatters and addicts who couldn’t pay the rents demanded by private captains. It was a good place to disappear.
I tried not to sleep as we weaved through the fleet. The captain might realize he didn’t have all my money. He might think he did and no one would care if I simply disappeared out an airlock. But there were long waits in holding patterns before we could land, longer waits to unload cargo, load more and depart again. So I dozed off between a bale of algae protein bars and a pallet of cheap bamboo canvass shoes from the Faru Sadin’s most recent manufacturing run. It was an uneasy sleep, between the anxiety and the pain that almost brought tears every time I bumped my arm.
I roused myself enough to look through the thick glass at the front of the cockpit when we sat at the edge of the fleet, waiting to board the Monarch. The stars were different; we’d jumped away from the cylons yesterday. They were still wrong, more wrong than they’d been before. I expected that. They’d been getting worse and worse ever since…Gods! I was as frakking crazy as my caseworker thought.
Finally, we landed on the Gideon. The Captain waved me under a tarp covering a pallet of barrels full of dandelion-root coffee. I squeezed into the center and watched through a rip in the tarp as my pallet was unloaded and carted to a storage hold. The haulers left for the next load and I slipped into the corridor behind them. It was empty, signs every 5 or so meters proclaimed this deck as restricted. I looked for panels with loose screws. After two electrical access ports, I heard footsteps and the hum of a cart approaching and ducked into the third panel I’d opened, tugging it shut with my good hand. It was a ventilation shaft that quickly narrowed so I waited for the footsteps to pass, clicking the knife until they’d came and passed again.
Two or three tries later, I found a shaft with a ladder and slowly inched my way down, trying to cling to both the rungs and the bag with my last few precious belongings with my good hand. Dizziness force me to stop, somewhere in the darkness between the decks. I waited for it to pass, but it didn’t. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay here, so stepped down another rung, hand sliding along the side of the ladder. Then another rung, and then another. And then I slipped. I felt the wall of the shaft at my back, sliding until I hit a metal floor.
I was dead. I was sure of it. I couldn’t breathe, but I could still move so I reached into my bag for the statue of Artemis. As my fingers closed around the familiar carved stone, I gasped. Maybe I was alive; maybe the gods had spared me. My chest now hurt too, and my right ankle, but I could breathe.
“Artemis Philomeirax” I whispered. The screws in the panel behind me held firm, so I crept around the shaft where the ladder continued down through a low ceilinged passage. It ended about two meters later, with a tangle of wires and holes in the back wall. Whatever this shaft was supposed to access had been ripped out and put to use elsewhere. No one would come here. I clutched my bag and the knife and fell into another fitful sleep.
***
For a few minutes I thought the lines moving on the floor were part of a jumbled dream, but the steady echoing tap pulled me fully away. The lines were shadows cast by a light steadily moving up towards me. Frack! Just what I needed, someone else discovering this abandoned maintenance shaft. I gripped my knife unsteadily in my right hand. If he was hurrying, he might continue up without seeing me. He scrambled through the hole in the floor. My hand shook, and the knife caught the light for a second. He paused.
“Is someone there?”
I held my breath, tried to make my grip tighter. He paused, then pointed his light down my passage. The light blinded me and I bit my lip, trying not to be sick as my head protested. I remembered the interloper and struggled to reopen my eyes. He finally pointed the light away from me and around my small foxhole.
“Room for two in here?” he asked.
I waved the knife. He eyed it, then looked briefly at my face. It was an empty threat and he knew it.
“How about I just stay over here.” He settled himself about a meter away from me. Maybe he didn't want a fight, even an easy one. If he would only leave me alone for a few hours, then my stiff ankle and rolling stomach would cooperate with movement. We sat there for a few minutes, watching each other uncertainly in the dim light. The spots in my vision cleared and I took in his features. His hair was dark, his skin paler, although not as light as mine. He had a big nose and a wide mouth and large round eyes, like his whole face was a size too big for his head. Tattoos traced down both his arms, although he was about my age, maybe a little older, but certainly not yet 16.
“You've got an algae bar.” So much for leaving me alone. I must have filched it from the bale on the transport, but I couldn’t remember doing it. “I can fix your arm if you give me half of it.”
“My arm?” I glanced down at my side. My shoulder hurt like Hades and I couldn't even move it. It had to be broken, and this kid didn't look like a doctor.
“It's doesn't look broken, just dislocated.” At my blank look, he explained. “The ball on your arm has come out of the socket on your shoulder. I think I can pop it back in.”
I watched skeptically as he moved closer, blade palmed in my hand. He bent over me, attention focused not on the algae bar, but on my shoulder. Even weak as I was, I could stab him like this. He was close and distracted. But instead I let him feel the bones of my shoulder, wincing as he squeezed a painful spot.
“Yep, dislocated. It'll hurt, really hurt, but I can pop it back in. A real doc would give you a shot of morpha first, but...”
He trailed off. We both knew I wasn’t getting any drug. Even if my remaining cash was enough to get a shot of morpha or the stronger, illegal Ace from some dealer on this ship, I would be a fool to entrust it to this boy. I was probably a fool to let him touch me.
“Go ahead.” I set my jaw. He braced one hand on my shoulder, one on my upper arm. It felt like he was trying to rip my arm all the way off, and then everything went black.
I came to with a light in my eyes and that boy’s hand holding one of my lids open. I didn’t think I’d been out long, but a few minutes was long enough for him to do any number of things.
“Hey, easy, easy.” And the reassuring voice only panicked me. I wasn’t going to let anyone calm me down in hopes I wouldn’t fight back. I groped around with my right arm for my knife. I needed the knife.
He found it first.
“This is nice,” he said, turning it over in his hand. “Pre-holocaust. You lift it?”
“It was a gift.” I said with a wry smile that belied the truth. I would fight him for that knife. I wasn’t sure I even could fight, but at least now I could move my arm.
“You didn’t tell me I was going to pass out,” I grumbled, trying to decide when to make my move.
“You didn’t tell me you’d hit your head,” he chided. “Your pupils are sluggish but responsive, so it’s a minor concussion. Hungry?” he asked. I shook my head, too sick to eat. He took the ration bar, cut right through it and the paper wrapping and then wiped my knife on his pants.
“Tastes as wonderful as always.’ He took a bit, folded the knife and placed it gently in my palm. I clutched it reflexively. “Thank-you.”
“Thank-you,” I said slowly. “For my arm. I don’t even know your name.”
“Simon Abdera."
“Petra. Petra Thrace.”
TBC