TM #165 - Night
It's pretty much the worst feeling in the world, as far as I'm concerned.
It's the middle of ship's night, and if you're unlucky, you're warm in your rack. If you're really unlucky, you're not alone. Unlucky because that'll be right when the alarm klaxons start wailing and someone on the speaker is shouting about "Condition One". You can't just wake up, you've got to jump to your feet and hit the deck running, as if you weren't just in the middle of something close to a coma after working yourself ragged on your actual shift. Haul on your uniform or your flight suit or whatever and out the hatch you go.
The scramble isn't that bad, really. It's the fact that when I do it, I'm either leaving behind my wife and child or I'm leaving that child with someone else to watch while both of her parents run towards the trouble.
I suppose, though, it goes with the territory. We're Colonial officers, and like Sharon said, it's our job, and we do it.
But what about when there's no alarms, no Condition One? What about when there's nothing shouting for attention except people who no one wanted to pay attention to anyway? That's what I was wondering- or maybe should have been wondering, since instead of questioning myself about it, I was pulling on my boots and buckling on my sidearm. Then again, I suppose Sharon was doing the questioning for me.
I wish that I'd had a good explanation to give her, some solid, logical reason why I was running out of our quarters, hell-bent on helping out a bunch of people who wouldn't- and still wouldn't- help themselves. Sure, I kept saying it was because the Sagittaron's didn't ask for themselves. Mrs. King had come to me because she honestly believed that Dr. Roberts was killing people, and had just gotten his lousy hands on Dee.
But I guess the real answer is that it felt like the right damn thing to do. And the truth is that every time this happens to me, every time I'm on the other side- how did Col. Tigh put it? "On the outside, looking in"? Each and every time, I'd swear on a stack of Scrolls that it's the right frakking thing to do.
Not the smart thing, not the safe thing. Hell, not even the sane thing most of the time.
The right thing. So I guess there'll be more of the same to come. More standing up when I should sit down, more making noise when I ought to be quiet. More nights putting on my boots to do the right thing when I ought to be laying in bed.
Don't see me wising up anytime soon.
Capt. Karl "Helo" Agathon
Battlestar Galactica
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