TM #169 - Fragile
Things are a lot better these days, but a little more than a year ago? Things were a lot different then.
Even in the best of peacetimes, life aboard a battlestar isn't easy. You're cooped up in a tin can for weeks or months on end without so much as seeing the surface of a planet, let alone anything other than the halls of your ship and the inside of your cockpit, and that's if you're lucky enough to be a pilot. The majority of crew are non-coms and shipboard officers that never see anything but the ship.
Social interactions get weirdly accelerated and distorted, as if time inside a battlestar is compressed down, and life moves at a faster pace than the real world. Scuttlebutt's the worst, of course. You could sneeze in the forward gun battery and two minutes later, the engine room grease monkeys are saying, "Gods bless you." Really bad news travels even faster, like it's got its own Jump engine.
Right around the election and New Caprica, my life aboard Galactica was... well, all right, it wasn't running for my life through forests and sewers on occupied Caprica, but it wasn't fun. I was back among the people I called family, and everywhere I turned, I saw smiles on faces, felt hands clapping me on the back, and listened to them all talk to me and around me as if nothing were different.
But that façade wasn't as thick or as tough as people wanted to think it was. All I had to do was tap it, just a little, and it'd crack. I'd be able to see and hear what they were thinking, and pick up on what they were saying behind my back. I was the toaster frakker, the guy who not only came back from Caprica with a Cylon girlfriend, but a pregnant Cylon girlfriend. They wondered what Sharon had done to me, what kind of machine mojo had gotten me to fall for her.
And those were my friends.
The ones who didn't think very highly of me anymore for what had happened? They didn't bother hiding it. What was fragile about them was the ice I was walking on, every day that I reported for duty. Each time I'd step into CIC to report to the Admiral, I could feel Tigh's stare drilling holes in my back, and he never let up when I turned to face him. I bet if he'd had his way, I'd have been airlocked along with Sharon the second he'd found out what had happened on Caprica between us.
With people like that, I had to watch my step. The footing all around was precarious, and I never knew when I might accidentally touch an especially weak spot. Someone would blow up in my face, or say something about me or Sharon or worse, our baby. And because I couldn't count on anyone's support but her's, at least in the beginning, all I could do was grit my teeth, set my jaw and take it.
Slowly, things got better. The more I was around and acting like the same old Helo they knew, the false smiles changed to real ones and the ground beneath my feet strengthened. More people mustered out to colonize New Caprica and the pressure inside the tin can eased, and it got better. What really turned the tide, of course, was when the Admiral started making regular visits down to Sharon's cell. When the crew realized that good enough for Admiral Adama should be more than good enough for them, the acceptance of us both pretty much locked in.
His acceptance led to everyone else's. That led to Sharon's release and her commission, which led to us having quarters, and the rest is history. And now, except for a couple of notable exceptions, both of whom tend be more irritating these days in their dislike than actually effective, things are pretty good.
But for a while there? Thin ice.
Capt. Karl "Helo" Agathon
Battlestar Galactica
668 Words