Fic: Mathematics: Getting Lucky (4/10)
Series Title: Mathematics
Segment Title: Getting Lucky (4/10)
( Part 1) ( Part 2) ( Part 3)
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gaeta/Eight, implied Caprica/Baltar and (unrequited?) Gaeta/Baltar
Series Summary: Scenes from New Caprica. It was such a simple equation: Felix+Eight=valuable, effective death lists. But the math never remains that uncomplicated, once life gets factored in.
Part 4 Summary: Felix has a very lucky day. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a good day: good luck and back luck are both luck, after all. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Spoilers: Through “Face of the Enemy” Webisodes
Disclaimer: I do not own BSG or any of the characters described herein. These works are for fan appreciation and entertainment only, and I do not benefit financially from them.
Series Notes: So, this is my first-ever fic. It’s going to be a ten-part series when I’m done. I wanted to impose some sort of structure on the story to make it a bit more challenging-and also to help me develop an overall framework-so each vignette has some connection to its number, in descending order from 10 to 1. The connection to the number is more obvious in some than in others, but it served its purpose as a structural framework.
Part 4 Notes: Well, I think I managed to pile all the things I’m uncomfortable about writing into one fic: gore, senseless death, sex (though it’s still pretty vague), and a fairly sober Baltar. As much as I love the character, I’ve had trouble pinning down Baltar’s voice. Maybe that’s in part because he’s such a chameleon, taking on whatever persona best suits his chances at survival? Or maybe because I’m seeing Gaius through Felix’s eyes for a change, whereas in the show we always saw Gaius from Gaius’s perspective, Head Six and all? Another part was pretty hard to write, too-I think you’ll be able to guess which part from reading.
ETA: I should probably include links when characters allude to myths, shouldn't I? Felix gets a few stories his mother told him jumbled together in his mind at the end: in my mind, it's mostly Daphne and Apollo, with blood-to-flower myths like Adonis-to-Anemone and Hyacinth and beloveds-to-entwined trees myths like Baucis and Philemon and the later Arthurian legend of Tristam and Isolde.
This segment is brought to you by the lucky number 7, which relates to the very ambiguous luck Felix had on a particular day, and more concretely to Doral’s unusual method of counting.
Mathematics: Getting Lucky
Felix had put off asking President Baltar for signatures on a collection of bills and executive orders as long as he could. When he finally bit the bullet and dragged himself into the President’s office, Felix was pleasantly surprised to find the President not only fully dressed and sitting upright in the chair behind his desk but also, amazingly, relatively sober.
“Ah, Mr. Gaeta,” the President said, barely looking up as he lit a fumarello cigarette. “I’m almost out of these, and I can’t convince any of the Cylons to add them to our provisions list. Is there some way you could get hold of some for me?”
Felix was annoyed that the President still didn’t know the difference between a Chief of Staff and an errand boy, but he couldn’t afford to irritate the President until he got the signatures. “Well, I don’t have the authority to acquire provisions through…eminent domain the way the Cylons do,” Felix said, doing his best to gloss over his disapproval with euphemisms, “so I would likely have to look outside the mainstream market.”
“Oh, of course you’ll have to go to the black market,” said Baltar, waving his hand through the little cloud of smoke accumulating around the cigarette tip. “It’s not as if it matters, Felix. If one of the NCPs is stupid enough to bring charges against you, this office will simply make them go away.” Baltar smiled a little bit. Felix could tell the President was thrilled to have an opportunity to act as if he had some actual power for a change.
“I’ll take care of it, then, Mr. President. But first, I have a few things for you to look over and sign.”
Baltar’s shoulders slumped when Felix placed the stack of papers in front of him. Baltar had never liked this part of the presidency, the tedium of the paperwork, even under the best of conditions. Before, Felix had often had to alternately coddle, cajole, and bribe Gaius with means Felix would rather not think of as being a part of the lawmaking process to get the man to pay attention to and sign bills, but now Felix was too godsdamned tired to put up a fight. Luckily, the President seemed too tired to want to play games as well; he merely sighed and flipped through the papers, looking at them only long enough to find the signature blanks and put his pen to them.
“If you’re curious, you’re signing into law a new ration distribution schedule, modified curfew rules, a compensation package for farmers who lost their fruit crop to the blight, and some minor amendments to several public health and safety codes.”
The President waved off Felix’s comment. “Yes, fine. I trust your judgment, Felix.” He signed the last page and handed the papers to Felix. “Oh, before you go, you might as well take this one. Where did Doral leave it…” The President hunted around on his desk until he found a thin packet of papers. He flipped to the last page and looked for his pen again.
“Doral? Wait, Mr. President, what is that?” Felix leaned over Baltar and flipped back to the front page. “NCP recruitment regs…what is this?”
Felix picked up the packet and started reading. His jaw dropped. “They want to let felons from the Astral Queen now serving out their sentences in the detention center join the NCP? They can’t be serious! How could you even think of signing this?”
“The Cylons argue that they need more manpower to maintain order and that the population at large isn’t cooperating with their recruitment efforts,” Baltar said, rubbing his forehead and closing his eyes. “Security is not my area of expertise, so I thought it wise to defer to their judgment.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Felix, still flipping through the packet, horrified by the names he saw on the list of willing prisoners. “How can they-” He flipped the page again and saw something that didn’t belong: a list of times and civilian addresses alongside NCP deployment plans. The next page was the same thing, but the following pages went back to information on NCP recruitment.
He took a better look at the out-of-place pages. Oh my gods. They were detailed plans for a series of nighttime raids on targeted civilian residences for the purpose of ferreting out hidden weapons caches. The first round of raids were set for two nights from then. These sheets had apparently been stapled in with the executive order by accident. Gods bless the Threes and their terrible secretarial skills, Felix thought.
“Did you even read this before deciding to side with the Cylons on it?” Felix shot at the President, trying to buy himself some time to think of a way to walk out of the room with the document so he could smuggle the information out. If the President signed the order and Felix didn’t turn it in, the Cylons would probably figure it out and come looking for the order, so Felix knew he needed a different approach.
Baltar looked far more hurt by his comment than Felix had thought he would. “Of course I read it! Do you really think I’m that irresponsible, Felix, that I wouldn’t even glance at what the Cylons were asking me to sign my name to? I know you think I’m an incompetent leader, and perhaps you’re right, but I am not so, so…reckless with where I place my trust as that.”
Felix felt a stab of betrayal in a place he didn’t think Gaius could reach him anymore. Felix knew he was lying; if he’d read the order, he would have seen the misplaced raid plans, too. Felix pushed that feeling down inside himself.
“Mr. President, please don’t sign this,” Felix pleaded, hoping he still knew how to stroke Gaius’s ego in just the right place. “I know you can’t fight every battle against the Cylons, but choose to fight this one. This plan-it’s so utterly stupid and dangerous that if you took a stand, you might actually win, Gaius. Just throw the order away, and I’ll type up a new proposal to rebut this idea.”
Baltar sighed. “Felix, your naïveté is becoming quite tiresome.” He stubbed out the fumarello in his ashtray a little more violently than necessary. “If I don’t give them what they want, what do you think the Cylons will do, Felix? Do you think Doral and Cavil will simply say, “all right, Mr. President, we’ll make do with the human police force we already have’? Would Centurions really be preferable to humans, no matter who they are?”
“But we have to try. I know you, Gaius, and I know when choose to put your mind to something-”
Baltar stood up and leaned toward Felix over his desk. “When will you people understand that I have no choice!” he cried, pounding his fist on the desk. “I haven’t had a choice since the day the Cylons landed, not a real one. There was nothing I could do but surrender, and everything since then has merely been the inevitable consequence of that moment. I am their prisoner as much as the people locked up in detention are, unlike you.”
“What?”
“Yes, unlike you, Felix.” There was something incongruous about Gaius’s expression and his speech; he eyes seemed more sad than angry. “I am trapped here, because there’s not a human on the outside that wouldn’t celebrate my death, and not a Cylon on the inside who’d lift a finger to protect me if I defected and disrupted the legitimacy of their government now. But you, Felix-any night, you could have walked out of here and never come back, hid with your friends or the Resistance. If you’re so hell-bent on choosing to do the right thing, Felix, why are you still here?”
They heard the sound of someone moving on the other side of the room. Felix and Baltar both looked over Baltar’s shoulder at the same time and saw Baltar’s Six standing in the doorway to the President’s bedchamber. Felix could tell from her facial expression that she’d been listening for awhile; she looked at Gaius with an expression that mirrored exactly the way Felix felt about him.
It looked to Felix as though Baltar had lost his train of thought. He stared at his Six for a long time, then looked into Felix’s eyes with an intensity and desperation that made Felix glance away.
Baltar straightened up. “You want me to make a choice, Felix? All right then, I’ll make a choice.” Baltar held up the NCP order and ripped it in half, then ripped it in half again, and again, and again, until it was little more than large confetti. He threw the scraps in the wastebasket beside his desk. “Mark my words, it will do no good, but there’s my choice,” he said, pointing at the garbage and looking a little bit more pleased with himself than his words belied.
Then the Six was beside Gaius, and Felix could read from the look on her face the real meaning of what had just happened. She was proud of him for acting like he had a spine. Baltar had been putting on at least the last act of this show for her. Felix felt sick, but he didn’t want to think about why.
“You should really take some time off, Mr. Gaeta,” President Baltar sniffed as the Six snaked her arm around his. “You look like death warmed over.”
As soon as he heard the door to the President’s bedchamber click shut, Felix dug his hands into the garbage can. He thanked the gods that it had been relatively empty before Baltar had thrown in the remains of the NCP order. He stuffed the scraps into his pants pockets and jacket pockets and then ambled back to his office as casually as he could while trying to hide the odd bulge of his pockets with the way he held his arms.
Just as Felix was reaching in for the shreds of paper and mentally cursing Gaius for having done such a thorough job of tearing them up, he jumped at the sound of a soft knock on his office door.
“Hey. Are you busy right now?” a Sharon said-he couldn’t be sure yet if it was Eight-as she slid in and closed the door behind her.
“Uh, no, I’m fine. Can I help you?”
“It’s about that project we’ve been working on…I’m going to be taking care of some of the finishing touches this evening, and I thought maybe we could discuss it afterwards, if you’re still up for sharing that bottle of Aquarian wine you’ve got stowed away.”
“Sure, Eight,” Felix said. “I’ll be there, and you come whenever you’re finished.”
Eight smiled and left, closing the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Felix went to the door and locked it, muttering curses at himself for having been so stupid not to have done that in the first place. He couldn’t afford to start getting sloppy now, especially now that the Resistance contact was depending on him, even requesting specific information, and now that Eight was depending on him, too. Carelessness wouldn’t just get himself killed anymore.
Felix sat down heavily at his desk, jammed his hands into his pockets, and pulled them out, bringing the NCP report confetti out with them and scattering the bits all over his desk. He braced his elbows on the desk and held his head in his hands as he stared at the jumble of paper. He’d been keeping his other Resistance work, his dead-drop work, a secret from Eight. A part of him wished she’d barged in a few seconds later, and then she would have seen and he probably would have just told her and gotten it out in the open. It would have been nice to have one person he didn’t have to lie to, even if they were merely lies by omission. Maybe she wouldn’t approve of it, but she was hardly in a position to rat him out to the other Cylons as a traitor-not that he’d take her down with him out of spite, but she couldn’t be sure of that. She might even want to help, though Felix doubted that as well. Eight wasn’t afraid of getting caught trying to free wronged humans, but Felix got the feeling Eight wasn’t comfortable doing things that fell in a moral gray area, like smuggling out information that the Resistance would likely use to stage attacks on Cylons.
Felix was even becoming a little leery of the implications of their work. He understood that the Resistance had to take down targets that would genuinely hurt the Cylons-that didn’t bother him. But given the faith Eight had in him, he was ambivalent about some of the names he’d given her for the second list, like Raymond Carran, who was supposedly responsible for hiding guns in the school without even Laura Roslin’s knowledge, and Sara Troy, the ex-Galactica explosives expert whom everyone had always thought was a bit of a sadist, the kind of person who bragged about the horrible things she’d done to frogs and stray cats when she was young. Nobody deserved to be trapped in the hellhole the Cylons had created, but Felix had to admit that if the world weren’t so frakked up, some of the Resistance members probably should and would have been in prison.
Felix picked a few scraps of paper up in his hands to examine them better, and he sighed. “So the world is upside-down. What else is new?” he muttered to himself. “Either way, looks like I’ve got some work to do.”
~~*~~*~~
Felix finished taping the two important pages back together about ten minutes before the Cylons would expect him to leave for the night, and it was only then that he realized how tricky it was going to be to get the information out of Colonial One. There was too much to memorize that quickly, even for him. Even at the busiest hour at the checkpoint, the guards would look closely enough at his file folders to notice two ripped-to-hell-and-reassembled documents and give them a closer look. Felix considered telling the Cylons he needed to work overtime so he could copy the information onto fresh paper, but that would likely draw more attention to himself, and the guards would go over his things much more thoroughly if he left later, when they wouldn’t be inundated at the checkpoint with human and Cylon workers changing shifts. Hiding it in his office and dealing with it the next day was far too dangerous; Felix could tell from the way objects on his desk were slightly rearranged some mornings that someone was searching his office on occasion.
Since his choices were to hide it on his person or tear it all up again, Felix decided to chance it. He folded the papers carefully and slipped them in his sock. He never would have tried smuggling something into Colonial One that simply, but security wasn’t nearly as tight going out of the compound, usually just a cursory pat-down and pocket-check and a look through his battered briefcase.
“Well, best I can do,” Felix sighed to himself, pulling his shoe back on. “Hope it’s worth it.”
The outbound line at the checkpoint wasn’t quite as long as usual for that time of day, but there was far more nervous chatter among those waiting than normal as they stood on the stretch of open sand between Colonial One and the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Cylon quarter of the city. Felix craned his neck to see what was going on farther up the line that had everyone so concerned. Four NCPs with heavy weaponry were manning this side of the checkpoint, flanked by two Centurions. Unsettling, but not unusual. Then Felix saw a Doral and a D’Anna walking down the line, Doral pointing at each person. This was new. It took him awhile, but Felix figured out that Doral was counting, pulling every seventh person out of the line and sending them to a curtained-off area over to the side of the line, where more NCPs and another Doral waited.
Frak. Felix started counting down the line from the last person that Doral had sent over to the additional search station and started breathing again when he figured out he was a one, not a seven. He had calmed himself by the time Doral came near him.
“Two, three, four…” Doral chanced to look up at that moment and saw Felix. Doral paused, looked at the line, and quirked an ugly grin.
“Five...” he pointed at the man three people in front of Felix. “Six,” Doral said, laying his hands on the shoulders of the woman directly in front of Felix and her ten year-old son with her to emphasize he was counting them as one. “And seven,” he said, staring at Felix with a perfectly innocent smile on his face.
“My lucky day, huh?” Felix said, stepping out from the line. Much to Felix’s chagrin, the Doral told the D’Anna to continue counting without him and walked alongside Felix to the shorter line waiting for the secondary search.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t think it was necessary to separate a child from his parent without any real suspicion and merely because of arbitrary numbering,” Doral said. “I just wanted to assure you, Mr. Gaeta, that we are doing our best to be fair and evenhanded in implementing our new security protocols, but we’re also tempering that impartiality with some…human compassion, just as you’ve been advising us to do.” Doral was trying hard to keep the glee from breaking through his professional façade, but Felix knew it was there.
“Well, good for you,” said Felix. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to look casual. “So, random strip searches now, too, huh? You’re that hard up for entertainment?”
Felix was hoping Doral might just haul off and punch him-at least then he’d have an excuse to go back inside Colonial One for first aid and get rid of the papers in his sock-but the comment did no more than make Doral’s face twitch.
“Oh, no, just a secondary pat-down, a little bit more thorough examination of people’s bags. Only the most suspicious people and a few random selectees get a full strip-search. You know, just to make sure nobody thinks they can get away with being a mole, keep people honest.”
Felix couldn’t suppress a sigh. He could tell from the tone of Doral’s voice that he was going to have to get used to taking his clothes off before going home from work, at least so long as Doral was in charge.
Felix’s mind raced as he stood at the end of the short line outside the curtained cubicle. When he’d decided on this plan, he’d figured that, worst-case scenario, he could pretend to be removing a rock from his shoe, get the paper, and eat it if it looked like he was going to be searched. But he’d have bend down and fiddle with his sock to do that, and Doral was still hanging around too closely, rambling to him about how surprisingly trainable the NCPs were and gloating.
Then something caught the Doral’s attention, and he started jogging back toward the main security lines. “What the frak…”
Felix didn’t look to see what distracted Doral. He was too busy digging in his sock for the paper, trying to take advantage of the diversion and knowing that Doral would likely return in a few moments to frak with him some more. He’d just managed to get hold of the paper-
Felix didn’t so much hear the explosion as feel it, like a blow to the back of his head. He felt like he was sinking into black, thick liquid that smelled of sulfur. All he wanted to do was sleep…
The screams snapped his eyelids open.
The incoming checkpoint was on fire, but that really wasn’t the worst of it. The Doral was dead; Felix could see, even from several meters away, that a piece of metal debris had caught the Cylon in the forehead. Too many bodies to think about. Red streaks and pools everywhere. Stray body parts. Felix sat up and felt for his own legs-still there, still moving, good. He stood up, wobbling, and staggered toward the outbound checkpoint.
Felix remembered the lesson on guerilla tactics from officer training school. He remembered the report Anders had given to the military about the Caprica Resistance’s methods. The medical crew would be all-Cylon, since Cottle’s hospital was all the way on the other side of Tent City and the detention center infirmary was so close. It was a brilliant set-up. Felix knew he only had a few minutes. There would be a second bomb.
The woman who had been in line in front of Felix, who should have been pulled out for the secondary search, was dead, or at least close enough that nothing Felix did would make a difference. The boy who had been with her, however, was not. Felix could see the child squirming underneath his mother’s body, which had likely protected him from most of the shrapnel.
He only had to think for a moment. He ran to them, rolled the body off the boy, and scooped him up in his arms. Felix felt something sticky when he pressed the boy’s side to his body-the boy’s right arm must be bleeding pretty badly, he thought, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it. He ran to the gate. Only one NCP was still guarding the exit, and she seemed just as dazed as the boy Felix held was.
The guard made a feeble attempt to stop Felix, stepping out in front of him. “Gotta get him to Cottle, now,” Felix panted. The guard nodded and let him pass. Then he ran.
He didn’t even flinch when he heard the second explosion behind him. He just ran.
~~*~~*~~
Continue on to the second half...
Segment Title: Getting Lucky (4/10)
( Part 1) ( Part 2) ( Part 3)
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gaeta/Eight, implied Caprica/Baltar and (unrequited?) Gaeta/Baltar
Series Summary: Scenes from New Caprica. It was such a simple equation: Felix+Eight=valuable, effective death lists. But the math never remains that uncomplicated, once life gets factored in.
Part 4 Summary: Felix has a very lucky day. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a good day: good luck and back luck are both luck, after all. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Spoilers: Through “Face of the Enemy” Webisodes
Disclaimer: I do not own BSG or any of the characters described herein. These works are for fan appreciation and entertainment only, and I do not benefit financially from them.
Series Notes: So, this is my first-ever fic. It’s going to be a ten-part series when I’m done. I wanted to impose some sort of structure on the story to make it a bit more challenging-and also to help me develop an overall framework-so each vignette has some connection to its number, in descending order from 10 to 1. The connection to the number is more obvious in some than in others, but it served its purpose as a structural framework.
Part 4 Notes: Well, I think I managed to pile all the things I’m uncomfortable about writing into one fic: gore, senseless death, sex (though it’s still pretty vague), and a fairly sober Baltar. As much as I love the character, I’ve had trouble pinning down Baltar’s voice. Maybe that’s in part because he’s such a chameleon, taking on whatever persona best suits his chances at survival? Or maybe because I’m seeing Gaius through Felix’s eyes for a change, whereas in the show we always saw Gaius from Gaius’s perspective, Head Six and all? Another part was pretty hard to write, too-I think you’ll be able to guess which part from reading.
ETA: I should probably include links when characters allude to myths, shouldn't I? Felix gets a few stories his mother told him jumbled together in his mind at the end: in my mind, it's mostly Daphne and Apollo, with blood-to-flower myths like Adonis-to-Anemone and Hyacinth and beloveds-to-entwined trees myths like Baucis and Philemon and the later Arthurian legend of Tristam and Isolde.
This segment is brought to you by the lucky number 7, which relates to the very ambiguous luck Felix had on a particular day, and more concretely to Doral’s unusual method of counting.
Mathematics: Getting Lucky
Felix had put off asking President Baltar for signatures on a collection of bills and executive orders as long as he could. When he finally bit the bullet and dragged himself into the President’s office, Felix was pleasantly surprised to find the President not only fully dressed and sitting upright in the chair behind his desk but also, amazingly, relatively sober.
“Ah, Mr. Gaeta,” the President said, barely looking up as he lit a fumarello cigarette. “I’m almost out of these, and I can’t convince any of the Cylons to add them to our provisions list. Is there some way you could get hold of some for me?”
Felix was annoyed that the President still didn’t know the difference between a Chief of Staff and an errand boy, but he couldn’t afford to irritate the President until he got the signatures. “Well, I don’t have the authority to acquire provisions through…eminent domain the way the Cylons do,” Felix said, doing his best to gloss over his disapproval with euphemisms, “so I would likely have to look outside the mainstream market.”
“Oh, of course you’ll have to go to the black market,” said Baltar, waving his hand through the little cloud of smoke accumulating around the cigarette tip. “It’s not as if it matters, Felix. If one of the NCPs is stupid enough to bring charges against you, this office will simply make them go away.” Baltar smiled a little bit. Felix could tell the President was thrilled to have an opportunity to act as if he had some actual power for a change.
“I’ll take care of it, then, Mr. President. But first, I have a few things for you to look over and sign.”
Baltar’s shoulders slumped when Felix placed the stack of papers in front of him. Baltar had never liked this part of the presidency, the tedium of the paperwork, even under the best of conditions. Before, Felix had often had to alternately coddle, cajole, and bribe Gaius with means Felix would rather not think of as being a part of the lawmaking process to get the man to pay attention to and sign bills, but now Felix was too godsdamned tired to put up a fight. Luckily, the President seemed too tired to want to play games as well; he merely sighed and flipped through the papers, looking at them only long enough to find the signature blanks and put his pen to them.
“If you’re curious, you’re signing into law a new ration distribution schedule, modified curfew rules, a compensation package for farmers who lost their fruit crop to the blight, and some minor amendments to several public health and safety codes.”
The President waved off Felix’s comment. “Yes, fine. I trust your judgment, Felix.” He signed the last page and handed the papers to Felix. “Oh, before you go, you might as well take this one. Where did Doral leave it…” The President hunted around on his desk until he found a thin packet of papers. He flipped to the last page and looked for his pen again.
“Doral? Wait, Mr. President, what is that?” Felix leaned over Baltar and flipped back to the front page. “NCP recruitment regs…what is this?”
Felix picked up the packet and started reading. His jaw dropped. “They want to let felons from the Astral Queen now serving out their sentences in the detention center join the NCP? They can’t be serious! How could you even think of signing this?”
“The Cylons argue that they need more manpower to maintain order and that the population at large isn’t cooperating with their recruitment efforts,” Baltar said, rubbing his forehead and closing his eyes. “Security is not my area of expertise, so I thought it wise to defer to their judgment.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Felix, still flipping through the packet, horrified by the names he saw on the list of willing prisoners. “How can they-” He flipped the page again and saw something that didn’t belong: a list of times and civilian addresses alongside NCP deployment plans. The next page was the same thing, but the following pages went back to information on NCP recruitment.
He took a better look at the out-of-place pages. Oh my gods. They were detailed plans for a series of nighttime raids on targeted civilian residences for the purpose of ferreting out hidden weapons caches. The first round of raids were set for two nights from then. These sheets had apparently been stapled in with the executive order by accident. Gods bless the Threes and their terrible secretarial skills, Felix thought.
“Did you even read this before deciding to side with the Cylons on it?” Felix shot at the President, trying to buy himself some time to think of a way to walk out of the room with the document so he could smuggle the information out. If the President signed the order and Felix didn’t turn it in, the Cylons would probably figure it out and come looking for the order, so Felix knew he needed a different approach.
Baltar looked far more hurt by his comment than Felix had thought he would. “Of course I read it! Do you really think I’m that irresponsible, Felix, that I wouldn’t even glance at what the Cylons were asking me to sign my name to? I know you think I’m an incompetent leader, and perhaps you’re right, but I am not so, so…reckless with where I place my trust as that.”
Felix felt a stab of betrayal in a place he didn’t think Gaius could reach him anymore. Felix knew he was lying; if he’d read the order, he would have seen the misplaced raid plans, too. Felix pushed that feeling down inside himself.
“Mr. President, please don’t sign this,” Felix pleaded, hoping he still knew how to stroke Gaius’s ego in just the right place. “I know you can’t fight every battle against the Cylons, but choose to fight this one. This plan-it’s so utterly stupid and dangerous that if you took a stand, you might actually win, Gaius. Just throw the order away, and I’ll type up a new proposal to rebut this idea.”
Baltar sighed. “Felix, your naïveté is becoming quite tiresome.” He stubbed out the fumarello in his ashtray a little more violently than necessary. “If I don’t give them what they want, what do you think the Cylons will do, Felix? Do you think Doral and Cavil will simply say, “all right, Mr. President, we’ll make do with the human police force we already have’? Would Centurions really be preferable to humans, no matter who they are?”
“But we have to try. I know you, Gaius, and I know when choose to put your mind to something-”
Baltar stood up and leaned toward Felix over his desk. “When will you people understand that I have no choice!” he cried, pounding his fist on the desk. “I haven’t had a choice since the day the Cylons landed, not a real one. There was nothing I could do but surrender, and everything since then has merely been the inevitable consequence of that moment. I am their prisoner as much as the people locked up in detention are, unlike you.”
“What?”
“Yes, unlike you, Felix.” There was something incongruous about Gaius’s expression and his speech; he eyes seemed more sad than angry. “I am trapped here, because there’s not a human on the outside that wouldn’t celebrate my death, and not a Cylon on the inside who’d lift a finger to protect me if I defected and disrupted the legitimacy of their government now. But you, Felix-any night, you could have walked out of here and never come back, hid with your friends or the Resistance. If you’re so hell-bent on choosing to do the right thing, Felix, why are you still here?”
They heard the sound of someone moving on the other side of the room. Felix and Baltar both looked over Baltar’s shoulder at the same time and saw Baltar’s Six standing in the doorway to the President’s bedchamber. Felix could tell from her facial expression that she’d been listening for awhile; she looked at Gaius with an expression that mirrored exactly the way Felix felt about him.
It looked to Felix as though Baltar had lost his train of thought. He stared at his Six for a long time, then looked into Felix’s eyes with an intensity and desperation that made Felix glance away.
Baltar straightened up. “You want me to make a choice, Felix? All right then, I’ll make a choice.” Baltar held up the NCP order and ripped it in half, then ripped it in half again, and again, and again, until it was little more than large confetti. He threw the scraps in the wastebasket beside his desk. “Mark my words, it will do no good, but there’s my choice,” he said, pointing at the garbage and looking a little bit more pleased with himself than his words belied.
Then the Six was beside Gaius, and Felix could read from the look on her face the real meaning of what had just happened. She was proud of him for acting like he had a spine. Baltar had been putting on at least the last act of this show for her. Felix felt sick, but he didn’t want to think about why.
“You should really take some time off, Mr. Gaeta,” President Baltar sniffed as the Six snaked her arm around his. “You look like death warmed over.”
As soon as he heard the door to the President’s bedchamber click shut, Felix dug his hands into the garbage can. He thanked the gods that it had been relatively empty before Baltar had thrown in the remains of the NCP order. He stuffed the scraps into his pants pockets and jacket pockets and then ambled back to his office as casually as he could while trying to hide the odd bulge of his pockets with the way he held his arms.
Just as Felix was reaching in for the shreds of paper and mentally cursing Gaius for having done such a thorough job of tearing them up, he jumped at the sound of a soft knock on his office door.
“Hey. Are you busy right now?” a Sharon said-he couldn’t be sure yet if it was Eight-as she slid in and closed the door behind her.
“Uh, no, I’m fine. Can I help you?”
“It’s about that project we’ve been working on…I’m going to be taking care of some of the finishing touches this evening, and I thought maybe we could discuss it afterwards, if you’re still up for sharing that bottle of Aquarian wine you’ve got stowed away.”
“Sure, Eight,” Felix said. “I’ll be there, and you come whenever you’re finished.”
Eight smiled and left, closing the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Felix went to the door and locked it, muttering curses at himself for having been so stupid not to have done that in the first place. He couldn’t afford to start getting sloppy now, especially now that the Resistance contact was depending on him, even requesting specific information, and now that Eight was depending on him, too. Carelessness wouldn’t just get himself killed anymore.
Felix sat down heavily at his desk, jammed his hands into his pockets, and pulled them out, bringing the NCP report confetti out with them and scattering the bits all over his desk. He braced his elbows on the desk and held his head in his hands as he stared at the jumble of paper. He’d been keeping his other Resistance work, his dead-drop work, a secret from Eight. A part of him wished she’d barged in a few seconds later, and then she would have seen and he probably would have just told her and gotten it out in the open. It would have been nice to have one person he didn’t have to lie to, even if they were merely lies by omission. Maybe she wouldn’t approve of it, but she was hardly in a position to rat him out to the other Cylons as a traitor-not that he’d take her down with him out of spite, but she couldn’t be sure of that. She might even want to help, though Felix doubted that as well. Eight wasn’t afraid of getting caught trying to free wronged humans, but Felix got the feeling Eight wasn’t comfortable doing things that fell in a moral gray area, like smuggling out information that the Resistance would likely use to stage attacks on Cylons.
Felix was even becoming a little leery of the implications of their work. He understood that the Resistance had to take down targets that would genuinely hurt the Cylons-that didn’t bother him. But given the faith Eight had in him, he was ambivalent about some of the names he’d given her for the second list, like Raymond Carran, who was supposedly responsible for hiding guns in the school without even Laura Roslin’s knowledge, and Sara Troy, the ex-Galactica explosives expert whom everyone had always thought was a bit of a sadist, the kind of person who bragged about the horrible things she’d done to frogs and stray cats when she was young. Nobody deserved to be trapped in the hellhole the Cylons had created, but Felix had to admit that if the world weren’t so frakked up, some of the Resistance members probably should and would have been in prison.
Felix picked a few scraps of paper up in his hands to examine them better, and he sighed. “So the world is upside-down. What else is new?” he muttered to himself. “Either way, looks like I’ve got some work to do.”
~~*~~*~~
Felix finished taping the two important pages back together about ten minutes before the Cylons would expect him to leave for the night, and it was only then that he realized how tricky it was going to be to get the information out of Colonial One. There was too much to memorize that quickly, even for him. Even at the busiest hour at the checkpoint, the guards would look closely enough at his file folders to notice two ripped-to-hell-and-reassembled documents and give them a closer look. Felix considered telling the Cylons he needed to work overtime so he could copy the information onto fresh paper, but that would likely draw more attention to himself, and the guards would go over his things much more thoroughly if he left later, when they wouldn’t be inundated at the checkpoint with human and Cylon workers changing shifts. Hiding it in his office and dealing with it the next day was far too dangerous; Felix could tell from the way objects on his desk were slightly rearranged some mornings that someone was searching his office on occasion.
Since his choices were to hide it on his person or tear it all up again, Felix decided to chance it. He folded the papers carefully and slipped them in his sock. He never would have tried smuggling something into Colonial One that simply, but security wasn’t nearly as tight going out of the compound, usually just a cursory pat-down and pocket-check and a look through his battered briefcase.
“Well, best I can do,” Felix sighed to himself, pulling his shoe back on. “Hope it’s worth it.”
The outbound line at the checkpoint wasn’t quite as long as usual for that time of day, but there was far more nervous chatter among those waiting than normal as they stood on the stretch of open sand between Colonial One and the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Cylon quarter of the city. Felix craned his neck to see what was going on farther up the line that had everyone so concerned. Four NCPs with heavy weaponry were manning this side of the checkpoint, flanked by two Centurions. Unsettling, but not unusual. Then Felix saw a Doral and a D’Anna walking down the line, Doral pointing at each person. This was new. It took him awhile, but Felix figured out that Doral was counting, pulling every seventh person out of the line and sending them to a curtained-off area over to the side of the line, where more NCPs and another Doral waited.
Frak. Felix started counting down the line from the last person that Doral had sent over to the additional search station and started breathing again when he figured out he was a one, not a seven. He had calmed himself by the time Doral came near him.
“Two, three, four…” Doral chanced to look up at that moment and saw Felix. Doral paused, looked at the line, and quirked an ugly grin.
“Five...” he pointed at the man three people in front of Felix. “Six,” Doral said, laying his hands on the shoulders of the woman directly in front of Felix and her ten year-old son with her to emphasize he was counting them as one. “And seven,” he said, staring at Felix with a perfectly innocent smile on his face.
“My lucky day, huh?” Felix said, stepping out from the line. Much to Felix’s chagrin, the Doral told the D’Anna to continue counting without him and walked alongside Felix to the shorter line waiting for the secondary search.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t think it was necessary to separate a child from his parent without any real suspicion and merely because of arbitrary numbering,” Doral said. “I just wanted to assure you, Mr. Gaeta, that we are doing our best to be fair and evenhanded in implementing our new security protocols, but we’re also tempering that impartiality with some…human compassion, just as you’ve been advising us to do.” Doral was trying hard to keep the glee from breaking through his professional façade, but Felix knew it was there.
“Well, good for you,” said Felix. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to look casual. “So, random strip searches now, too, huh? You’re that hard up for entertainment?”
Felix was hoping Doral might just haul off and punch him-at least then he’d have an excuse to go back inside Colonial One for first aid and get rid of the papers in his sock-but the comment did no more than make Doral’s face twitch.
“Oh, no, just a secondary pat-down, a little bit more thorough examination of people’s bags. Only the most suspicious people and a few random selectees get a full strip-search. You know, just to make sure nobody thinks they can get away with being a mole, keep people honest.”
Felix couldn’t suppress a sigh. He could tell from the tone of Doral’s voice that he was going to have to get used to taking his clothes off before going home from work, at least so long as Doral was in charge.
Felix’s mind raced as he stood at the end of the short line outside the curtained cubicle. When he’d decided on this plan, he’d figured that, worst-case scenario, he could pretend to be removing a rock from his shoe, get the paper, and eat it if it looked like he was going to be searched. But he’d have bend down and fiddle with his sock to do that, and Doral was still hanging around too closely, rambling to him about how surprisingly trainable the NCPs were and gloating.
Then something caught the Doral’s attention, and he started jogging back toward the main security lines. “What the frak…”
Felix didn’t look to see what distracted Doral. He was too busy digging in his sock for the paper, trying to take advantage of the diversion and knowing that Doral would likely return in a few moments to frak with him some more. He’d just managed to get hold of the paper-
Felix didn’t so much hear the explosion as feel it, like a blow to the back of his head. He felt like he was sinking into black, thick liquid that smelled of sulfur. All he wanted to do was sleep…
The screams snapped his eyelids open.
The incoming checkpoint was on fire, but that really wasn’t the worst of it. The Doral was dead; Felix could see, even from several meters away, that a piece of metal debris had caught the Cylon in the forehead. Too many bodies to think about. Red streaks and pools everywhere. Stray body parts. Felix sat up and felt for his own legs-still there, still moving, good. He stood up, wobbling, and staggered toward the outbound checkpoint.
Felix remembered the lesson on guerilla tactics from officer training school. He remembered the report Anders had given to the military about the Caprica Resistance’s methods. The medical crew would be all-Cylon, since Cottle’s hospital was all the way on the other side of Tent City and the detention center infirmary was so close. It was a brilliant set-up. Felix knew he only had a few minutes. There would be a second bomb.
The woman who had been in line in front of Felix, who should have been pulled out for the secondary search, was dead, or at least close enough that nothing Felix did would make a difference. The boy who had been with her, however, was not. Felix could see the child squirming underneath his mother’s body, which had likely protected him from most of the shrapnel.
He only had to think for a moment. He ran to them, rolled the body off the boy, and scooped him up in his arms. Felix felt something sticky when he pressed the boy’s side to his body-the boy’s right arm must be bleeding pretty badly, he thought, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it. He ran to the gate. Only one NCP was still guarding the exit, and she seemed just as dazed as the boy Felix held was.
The guard made a feeble attempt to stop Felix, stepping out in front of him. “Gotta get him to Cottle, now,” Felix panted. The guard nodded and let him pass. Then he ran.
He didn’t even flinch when he heard the second explosion behind him. He just ran.
~~*~~*~~
Continue on to the second half...