Prompt Fic: The Patron Saint of Lost Causes (prompt by lls_mutant)
Title: The Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Characters: Hoshi, Narcho, Adama, Tigh, Lee, Racetrack, Helo, and though Gaeta isn't present, he's still a major part of the story
Rating: PG-13, for one gruesome line
Summary: What happens when even hope is gone? Reflections on Raptor 718's disappearance.
Notes: Thank you to my betas, puszysty and
lls_mutant. Based on
lls_mutant's prompt of Adama's reaction to Raptor 718 going missing, and it expanded out from there.
The Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Narcho could see Hoshi hovering just outside his bedsit. He was a little surprised at how uncertain Hoshi looked about coming in.
“Hey, what’re you doing down here in Cottle’s dungeon?” Narcho called out, breaking the ice for him.
Hoshi looked relieved. He walked in and stood beside Narcho’s bed. “Just asking Cottle about something. What about you? I should’ve known if there was a training accident or a bad landing.”
There was something odd about how easy and yet also how awkward face-to-face conversations with Hoshi were. He was the sort of guy you felt like you knew a lot better than you actually did. It probably came from Hoshi working the comm station, Narcho reasoned, all that talking back and forth with the pilots over the wireless. Though he’d preferred it when Dee “whispered sweet nothings” in his ear, as the Viper jocks liked to say, pilots tended to develop a sort of brotherly affection for almost everybody who called them home.
Narcho groaned as he shifted on the bed. “I slipped on a patch of loose dirt on Earth. Fell down an embankment, threw out my back. I thought it was back to normal, but I bent over to pick up my helmet this morning, and-definitely not normal.” Narcho snorted. As a Viper pilot, he’d spent his fair share of time in the infirmary, but this was by far the least sexy injury he’d ever had. “We’re getting too old for this shit, aren’t we?”
That elicited a much smaller smile from Hoshi than Narcho had expected. “Yeah, we are.” Hoshi gripped the rail on Narcho’s bed and stared at Narcho’s knees. “The trail Raptor came back. The forty-eight hours are up.”
Narcho swore to himself softly. He had been half-way hoping that Hoshi had come down to the infirmary with Gaeta in tow and that he was just shy about it, even though all the pilots already knew about the two of them without having to be told. Surely he would have looked happier, had that been the case, but at the same time, he hadn’t looked like a man in mourning when he’d walked over to Narcho’s bed.
Narcho put a hand on Hoshi’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I need a pilot’s advice.” Hoshi shrugged off the comforting touch and set his jaw. “What do I say to the brass to get them to give me a Raptor for a search and rescue mission?” Narcho sighed and let his head fall back. Hoshi pressed on anyway. “Look, I know I’ve only got one shot at convincing them, but I don’t know how to present a plan to them that they’ll actually buy into.”
Hearing that calm voice he’d gotten so used to over the comm so desperate now was downright strange. “Gods-”
Hoshi kept going. “Everyone keeps telling me, ‘they’ll come back, they know where the Fleet is.’ But Narcho, they must’ve gotten the wrong coordinates to begin with, so we can’t assume they’ll find us here. But Felix is the best jump calculator alive, and if anyone can get them back at least close to those last coordinates that we know they know, it’s Felix.”
“And Shark and Easy are both great pilots,” Narcho added, doing his best not to sound exasperated. “You know the reason why we only leave a trail Raptor for forty-eight hours. If something’s so broken that not even Shark and Easy and Gaeta can fix it and get home by then, it’s probably not something they can fix at all.” He left the or whatever’s broken already killed them that should have gone at the end of that sentence unspoken. They both knew it was there. “I know it’s hard to accept, even harder because you don’t have any control over the situation-you want to be there for ‘em, but…”
Uncomfortable silence hung heavily over them for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, Hoshi said quietly, “I heard Sandman and Two-Bit didn’t make it back from the Hub. I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah,” Narcho said, turning his face away. They were his people; he was their squadron leader. Narcho had been scheduled to head over to the baseship with the final group of nuggets, the one group that had been scheduled to arrive there thirty minutes after it jumped away. His men had had to go into battle without him.
“Gods, there aren’t many of us old Pegaus die-hards left, are there?” Hoshi mused.
Narcho went through the roster of his original squadron on Pegasus in his mind. Sandman, Pony-Boy, Freebie, Nike, Hex…it dawned on him that he was the only one left now. It hit him like a punch to the gut.
“We really are getting too old for this.” Narcho shook his head and closed his eyes. It wasn’t a good idea, and he’d likely regret even having been involved, but it wasn’t as if those sorts of considerations had ever stopped him from doing much before. “Tell Colonel Tigh you want a Raptor and a pilot, and you can handle ECO. Adama’s not back in the CIC yet, right?”
Hoshi’s eyes were bright. He leaned in expectantly. “Not with any regularity, no.”
“Yeah. Talk to Tigh. Find a pilot who’s off-duty and willing to volunteer for it before you even go to Tigh. Try Helo or Racetrack. If there weren’t Cylons on board, I’d say try Athena, but she’s so wrapped up in making sure she shows how much she isn’t one of them…leave her as a last resort. And don’t give Tigh any sort of timeframe, because no matter what it is, he’ll just cut it in half. Other than that, you probably know Tigh better than I do, so as to what to say to him…go with your gut, I guess.”
That got a genuine smile out of Hoshi. “Thanks, Narcho. Just-thank you.”
Narcho watched as Hoshi marched out of the infirmary, his new purpose and hope readable even in his posture. Noel mused to himself that he used to be the kind of person who would’ve done something crazy like that. What had changed? Was he really that old?
And then it hit Narcho: he didn’t have anybody left that he’d go off on a mad, hopeless mission for anymore.
~~**~~**~~
Saul turned down the drink Bill offered him as he gave himself a refill. This was getting bizarre, Saul noted, and very, very old. Then again, Saul knew as well as anybody that drying out a drunk wasn’t something that happened overnight. He’d always loved Bill like a brother, but for the first time, Saul was realizing just how good a friend to him Bill had been for putting up with Saul’s never-ending cycle of this kind of crap.
“So if you didn’t come for a drink, what are you doing here?” Bill said, turning back to the star maps and charts covering his desk.
“Time’s up for the trail bird. No sign of Raptor 718.”
“Frak,” Bill muttered, taking a drink. “Don’t suppose you Cylons have any better way of tracking down lost birds?”
Saul gritted his teeth, but Bill wasn’t looking. How the hell would I know that? he wanted to say, except he did know that the Cylons didn’t have any way to help, because Hoshi had already called over to the baseship and asked. “No. No such luck,” Saul said.
Bill took another drink. “Two pilots, a mechanic, and our best navigator.” He didn’t set the glass down when he was done, just rested it against his chin. “Not that nav matters all that much anymore. Not like we’re going anywhere in particular.” Saul noticed for the first time that the star maps and charts under Bill’s elbows had Gaeta’s handwriting all over them, along with another neat hand that was most likely Baltar’s. He was looking at the path to Earth.
Frankly, Saul had had it up to his neck with Bill’s crap. He wanted to remind him that no matter where they were going, they still had to avoid jumping into stars, but with Bill back in this mood, Saul knew that wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
“There were two whole months after the attacks where you didn’t have a frakking clue where we were going, before you and the President found that map on Kobol. We did all right then. Now’s not any different.” The Old Man’s shoulders caved in a little more. Even Saul had to admit that that wasn’t true. He added more softly, “How’s Laura?”
Bill snorted, the noise echoing strangely off the glass. “She won’t speak to me. Won’t even open the door to her quarters.”
Saul finally accepted that there was no good way of leading up to it, so he said it bluntly. “Lieutenant Hoshi proposed mounting a small search and rescue mission, just one Raptor that’d go out and take one last look around for ‘em. I don’t know what the chances are it’ll work, but I’m inclined to agree that we might as well give it a shot.”
Bill continued on as if he hadn’t even heard him. “You were right. I shouldn’t have gone after her.” He took a drink and set the glass down, then spun it idly, watching the light play off it and refract patterns onto the charts.
Saul sunk into the chair across from the desk. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for Earth, Bill. No more than she should.”
Bill shook his head. “You don’t get it. If I hadn’t stayed behind, the baseship wouldn’t have found the Fleet again. If the baseship hadn’t found the Fleet, she would’ve died there, thinking we’d gone on to find Earth. She could’ve died believing her people had made it home. And now, she’s going to…”
Saul waited, hoping Bill would finish the sentence and at least get it out in the open, but he apparently couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Who knows what would’ve happened differently,” Saul finally said. “The both of you are wrong now. That’s what counts.”
Saul had hoped that would get some kind of reaction out of Bill-even if it was an angry one, that was better than this-but Bill merely picked up his magnifying glass, pretended to examine a star cluster, and muttered, “You do whatever you think is best.”
Saul realized that, although he’d handed the stars back over, the Old Man was still abdicating his position as much as Roslin was. It was a risk, and if it backfired, Hoshi would have every right to hate Saul, but he had to try. “No. You’re gonna tell the Lieutenant your decision, one way or the other. He’s one of your men. Some of those kids on the missing bird are your people. They deserve that much from you.”
“Fine,” Bill spat. “Where is he?”
“I ordered him to get some rack time while I discussed it with you. So, most likely, he’s waiting outside.” Saul crossed the room and opened the hatch, and, just as he expected, Hoshi snapped to attention where he had been standing across the corridor.
“Come in, son. The Admiral has something to say to you.”
Hoshi stepped in, and Saul closed the hatch behind him. Hoshi held his back ram-rod straight as he stood in front of Bill’s desk. He was trying so hard to be professional, but try as he might, the look that Saul had seen flit across the man’s face when he’d said the name ‘Felix’ wouldn’t go away anymore. Bill looked up from his charts. He blinked. Saul knew he saw it, too.
Bill looked down again, making a show of writing something in the margins of a star map. “Lieutenant Hoshi, the Colonel tells me you have a plan for a search and rescue mission.”
Hoshi took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I-”
“I didn’t ask you in to hear the details, Lieutenant,” the Old Man cut him off. “I assume Colonel Tigh has already vetted the practical side of the mission. What I want to know…” He paused, took off his glasses, and looked Hoshi in the eye. Saul didn’t know where this was going, but wherever it was, he knew it wasn’t good. “Chances are you’re not going to find anything. And even if you do, at this point, chances are you’re not going to like what you find. Are you prepared for that?”
Hoshi didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, I am, sir.”
“You’re not,” Bill said simply, turning back to his charts. Hoshi’s face fell, but he didn’t say a word. “But I also know no one’s gonna convince you otherwise. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” Hoshi saluted and glanced at Saul uncertainly.
Saul nodded. “Make the call down to the LSO, tell him there’s been an emergency change to the flight schedule,” he said. He only knew he’d interpreted the situation correctly when Bill didn’t say anything.
Hoshi started breathing again. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Saul could tell it was all he could do to keep from running to the hatch.
“Which one of them is it?” Bill asked after the hatch clanged shut behind Hoshi.
“Gaeta,” Saul answered. “A little surprised we didn’t notice it before, but they’ve both always been kind of reserved by Galactica standards, especially around the brass.”
Bill rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I did notice before.” Saul furrowed the brow over his good eye, the way he’d learned to so that a look of confusion wouldn’t set his eye patch askew. “They were very discreet on duty-and you’re at somewhat of a disadvantage at catching things out of the corner of your eye-but I knew. Somehow I just forgot it.”
Bill looked more troubled by that than he had been by the news about Raptor 718, but Saul found something almost heartening in that concerned expression.
“Who’s running CIC?” Bill asked.
“Helo’s in there right now,” answered Saul. “Hoshi was up for the next shift, but I’ll be covering for him.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bill said, rising from his desk. “Have Jaffee send in some coffee.” He put his hand to his forehead. “Lots of it.”
“I’m on it, Admiral,” Saul said. He wanted to add, welcome back, but thought better of it, fearing he might be speaking too soon.
~~**~~**~~
“Racetrack, looks like you’re my chauffer today, huh?” Lee said, still struggling to find a way to make the fact that he didn’t have wings anymore less awkward. Apparently, humor wasn’t it. “Where’s Skulls?”
Racetrack looked up from her pre-flight check. “Oh, sorry, didn’t Lieutenant Rinson tell you? The shuttle to Colonial One’s gonna be delayed about an hour. Hardball and Wingnut are covering it.”
Lee hopped onto the wing and walked inside the Raptor when Racetrack turned back to the pilot console to continue her check. “Then what are you up to?”
“Search and rescue,” Racetrack said in a clipped voice.
“Racetrack, I uploaded some updated star charts for that sector into this, if you want to transfer them into the nav-sir.” Hoshi apparently didn’t notice Lee until he’d clambered onto the Raptor. As soon as he did, though, Hoshi snapped to attention out of habit. Lee could tell it took everything he had to resist the automatic compulsion to salute.
“Thanks, Hoshi,” Racetrack said, taking the disk from his hand.
Lee was still catching up. “What search and rescue?”
“Raptor 718,” Hoshi said, looking at Lee incredulously, as if he couldn’t believe anyone could be thinking about anything else.
“The Raptor that missed the jump. That was Raptor 718?” Neither Racetrack nor Hoshi responded. “Racetrack, isn’t Raptor 718 the one with the frakked CO2 scrubbers? That’s why they reserved that one for shuttle runs, right?”
“We have no way to calculate exactly how long their air will last,” Hoshi said coolly. “No one did any pre-flight diagnostics to determine how the scrubbers were actually performing, and there are lots of variables that affect how long six people can make any amount of air last.”
Lee shook his head and was about to say, even so, but Hoshi jumped in again before he could form the words. “Plus, it’s very plausible that they fixed the scrubbers themselves by now. There was a mechanic on board, after all, and Felix isn’t bad at doing repairs like that himself.”
Lee gave Hoshi a good, long look, and his expression made everything click. He and Gaeta were still together. That surprised Lee. After the two had had a screaming match in his and Dee’s quarters one evening after Gaeta's pre-trial interview with the prosecutor-a fight that surpassed any argument he’d ever had with Dee or Starbuck and maybe even a little worse than a few he’d had with his father-Lee had assumed that Baltar’s trial had killed that relationship. Of course, he hadn’t kept track of them after Dee left. Apparently, they’d mended whatever the problem had been, and if Hoshi’s expression was any indication, gotten pretty serious in the past few months.
Hoshi was about to say something more, but Racetrack must have sensed that things had the potential to get ugly in a hurry. “Hey, Hoshi, go track down Skulls and have him get you a flight suit. Thumper’s off-duty. His should fit you.”
Hoshi nodded, looking a little relieved at having an excuse to leave. He jumped off the wing.
With Hoshi gone, Lee didn’t feel a need to hold back any longer. “Racetrack, this is useless, and you know it. I am deeply sorry for Hoshi, I really am, but this Fleet does not have the resources for somebody to go jump around at random looking for one man’s lover who’s most likely already dead.”
“Gods, Apollo, you sound like such a politician,” Racetrack said in a way that conveyed that she saw politicians as being on the same rung as Baltar’s cult members and used-car salesmen. “There’s two pilots-two of your old pilots-missing, too.”
“I know that,” Lee said, already regretting his outburst. He could hear Romo chastising him for overstating his case, yet again. “My point is, sometimes we lose people, and most of the time, there’s nothing we can do about it. Unless they were damned lucky, they’re probably out of air.”
“You know what, Apollo? Maybe I’m sick of not being able to do anything about it,” Racetrack said, slamming the console between the pilot and co-pilot seats up and standing, staring him down, hands on her hips. “And you do not get to preach to me like I’m some dumb nugget. You made your choice. Save your speeches for the Quorum.” She turned and threw herself back into the pilot chair. She muttered, “Like you’re one to talk anyway. We didn’t have frak for resources back when you wouldn’t call off the search for Starbuck, either. She was supposed to have run out of air, too.”
“Yeah, well I was wrong then.”
Racetrack sat stock-still for a moment, then turned to Lee, looking him calmly in the eyes. “So it was wrong. Would you change it?”
Lee had no response to that.
“That’s all I’m saying.” Racetrack turned back to the controls and set back to work prepping for the mission.
~~**~~**~~
Helo didn’t want to be at Joe’s, but he couldn’t go home and face Sharon again-or rather not face her again, since she wouldn’t even look at him.
The bar was fairly well-populated for that early in the day, but the old bridge bunny table stood conspicuously empty. Hoshi had clearly abdicated the table after Gaeta died, and the few junior CIC crew left had silently followed his lead, but for some reason, nobody else could bring themselves to sit there.
Hoshi was sitting by himself at the bar, idly fingering his glass more than actually drinking. Helo hadn’t come there looking for Hoshi, but as soon as he saw him, he knew that was who he needed to talk to.
“I’ll have one-uh, one, I guess,” Helo said to the bartender as he leaned on the bar next to Hoshi.
“Weird, isn’t it, only having one kind of alcohol left in the universe,” said Hoshi morosely, taking a sip of his drink. He winced. “Especially since it tastes like paint thinner.”
“Need a refill?” offered Helo.
“No.”
The bartender brought Helo his drink, and they were silent for awhile, Helo still not sitting down. He was starting to wonder if maybe this was a bad idea. He’d never known Hoshi all that well. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and they had sort of been friends when the Galactica and Pegasus had been orbiting New Caprica, since there weren’t all that many people left in the Fleet. But maybe too much had changed since then.
Finally, Hoshi sighed. “Look, I don’t know what to say. ‘We’ll find her’-‘I’m sorry for your loss’-‘I’m praying for your daughter,’ which I would, but knowing my luck, I’d probably jinx it if I did. I don’t know. It’s horrible, and it’s not fair. That I know.”
“That’s-I don’t know, either,” Helo said, shrugging and shaking his head in desperation. “Sharon’s already given up. And a part of me knows that she’s probably right. But if she’s not, and I…I don’t know how long you’re supposed to hang on to that hope.”
Hoshi looked at Helo out of the corner of his eye, sympathetic, but still gauging him. “You’re asking the wrong guy,” he said.
He knocked back the last of his drink and set the glass on the bar, but as he was turning to go, Helo spoke again. “If you had it to do over again, would you do it, even if there had been as little hope for Felix as there is for Hera?” Hoshi didn’t turn, but he did stop. “I mean, I know it’s hard for you to look at it that way, since you found him in time…”
Hoshi turned. His smile was infinitely sad. “I didn’t find him in time, Helo.” The smile flattened into a hard line, and his eyes looked very far away. “Whatever happened on that Raptor …I still don’t know if it was just witnessing all those murders, or if she did something else to him, or…I’ll never know. All I know is he wasn’t the same man who got on that Raptor.”
Sharon’s words were ringing in Helo’s ears. Cavil will dissect her like a science project. He’ll cut her up into little pieces to try to figure out how she works. There will be nothing but pieces for us to find.
Helo flinched when Hoshi started talking again. His face had softened. “There was this one moment, though… When Racetrack brought him back from the Raptor, and I was trying to clean him up and make sure he wasn’t bleeding, he looked at me. He looked at me, and he put his hand to my cheek, and he said, ‘thank you.’” Hoshi looked at Helo. “I can’t explain why or how, but for that one moment, I thought, maybe he’s still there.”
“One moment,” Helo repeated, almost as a question.
“Yeah.” Hoshi nodded. He sighed and stood up straight. “Get a Raptor. If Athena’s still given up, I’ll be your ECO. There’s your answer.”
Characters: Hoshi, Narcho, Adama, Tigh, Lee, Racetrack, Helo, and though Gaeta isn't present, he's still a major part of the story
Rating: PG-13, for one gruesome line
Summary: What happens when even hope is gone? Reflections on Raptor 718's disappearance.
Notes: Thank you to my betas, puszysty and
lls_mutant. Based on
lls_mutant's prompt of Adama's reaction to Raptor 718 going missing, and it expanded out from there.
The Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Narcho could see Hoshi hovering just outside his bedsit. He was a little surprised at how uncertain Hoshi looked about coming in.
“Hey, what’re you doing down here in Cottle’s dungeon?” Narcho called out, breaking the ice for him.
Hoshi looked relieved. He walked in and stood beside Narcho’s bed. “Just asking Cottle about something. What about you? I should’ve known if there was a training accident or a bad landing.”
There was something odd about how easy and yet also how awkward face-to-face conversations with Hoshi were. He was the sort of guy you felt like you knew a lot better than you actually did. It probably came from Hoshi working the comm station, Narcho reasoned, all that talking back and forth with the pilots over the wireless. Though he’d preferred it when Dee “whispered sweet nothings” in his ear, as the Viper jocks liked to say, pilots tended to develop a sort of brotherly affection for almost everybody who called them home.
Narcho groaned as he shifted on the bed. “I slipped on a patch of loose dirt on Earth. Fell down an embankment, threw out my back. I thought it was back to normal, but I bent over to pick up my helmet this morning, and-definitely not normal.” Narcho snorted. As a Viper pilot, he’d spent his fair share of time in the infirmary, but this was by far the least sexy injury he’d ever had. “We’re getting too old for this shit, aren’t we?”
That elicited a much smaller smile from Hoshi than Narcho had expected. “Yeah, we are.” Hoshi gripped the rail on Narcho’s bed and stared at Narcho’s knees. “The trail Raptor came back. The forty-eight hours are up.”
Narcho swore to himself softly. He had been half-way hoping that Hoshi had come down to the infirmary with Gaeta in tow and that he was just shy about it, even though all the pilots already knew about the two of them without having to be told. Surely he would have looked happier, had that been the case, but at the same time, he hadn’t looked like a man in mourning when he’d walked over to Narcho’s bed.
Narcho put a hand on Hoshi’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I need a pilot’s advice.” Hoshi shrugged off the comforting touch and set his jaw. “What do I say to the brass to get them to give me a Raptor for a search and rescue mission?” Narcho sighed and let his head fall back. Hoshi pressed on anyway. “Look, I know I’ve only got one shot at convincing them, but I don’t know how to present a plan to them that they’ll actually buy into.”
Hearing that calm voice he’d gotten so used to over the comm so desperate now was downright strange. “Gods-”
Hoshi kept going. “Everyone keeps telling me, ‘they’ll come back, they know where the Fleet is.’ But Narcho, they must’ve gotten the wrong coordinates to begin with, so we can’t assume they’ll find us here. But Felix is the best jump calculator alive, and if anyone can get them back at least close to those last coordinates that we know they know, it’s Felix.”
“And Shark and Easy are both great pilots,” Narcho added, doing his best not to sound exasperated. “You know the reason why we only leave a trail Raptor for forty-eight hours. If something’s so broken that not even Shark and Easy and Gaeta can fix it and get home by then, it’s probably not something they can fix at all.” He left the or whatever’s broken already killed them that should have gone at the end of that sentence unspoken. They both knew it was there. “I know it’s hard to accept, even harder because you don’t have any control over the situation-you want to be there for ‘em, but…”
Uncomfortable silence hung heavily over them for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, Hoshi said quietly, “I heard Sandman and Two-Bit didn’t make it back from the Hub. I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah,” Narcho said, turning his face away. They were his people; he was their squadron leader. Narcho had been scheduled to head over to the baseship with the final group of nuggets, the one group that had been scheduled to arrive there thirty minutes after it jumped away. His men had had to go into battle without him.
“Gods, there aren’t many of us old Pegaus die-hards left, are there?” Hoshi mused.
Narcho went through the roster of his original squadron on Pegasus in his mind. Sandman, Pony-Boy, Freebie, Nike, Hex…it dawned on him that he was the only one left now. It hit him like a punch to the gut.
“We really are getting too old for this.” Narcho shook his head and closed his eyes. It wasn’t a good idea, and he’d likely regret even having been involved, but it wasn’t as if those sorts of considerations had ever stopped him from doing much before. “Tell Colonel Tigh you want a Raptor and a pilot, and you can handle ECO. Adama’s not back in the CIC yet, right?”
Hoshi’s eyes were bright. He leaned in expectantly. “Not with any regularity, no.”
“Yeah. Talk to Tigh. Find a pilot who’s off-duty and willing to volunteer for it before you even go to Tigh. Try Helo or Racetrack. If there weren’t Cylons on board, I’d say try Athena, but she’s so wrapped up in making sure she shows how much she isn’t one of them…leave her as a last resort. And don’t give Tigh any sort of timeframe, because no matter what it is, he’ll just cut it in half. Other than that, you probably know Tigh better than I do, so as to what to say to him…go with your gut, I guess.”
That got a genuine smile out of Hoshi. “Thanks, Narcho. Just-thank you.”
Narcho watched as Hoshi marched out of the infirmary, his new purpose and hope readable even in his posture. Noel mused to himself that he used to be the kind of person who would’ve done something crazy like that. What had changed? Was he really that old?
And then it hit Narcho: he didn’t have anybody left that he’d go off on a mad, hopeless mission for anymore.
~~**~~**~~
Saul turned down the drink Bill offered him as he gave himself a refill. This was getting bizarre, Saul noted, and very, very old. Then again, Saul knew as well as anybody that drying out a drunk wasn’t something that happened overnight. He’d always loved Bill like a brother, but for the first time, Saul was realizing just how good a friend to him Bill had been for putting up with Saul’s never-ending cycle of this kind of crap.
“So if you didn’t come for a drink, what are you doing here?” Bill said, turning back to the star maps and charts covering his desk.
“Time’s up for the trail bird. No sign of Raptor 718.”
“Frak,” Bill muttered, taking a drink. “Don’t suppose you Cylons have any better way of tracking down lost birds?”
Saul gritted his teeth, but Bill wasn’t looking. How the hell would I know that? he wanted to say, except he did know that the Cylons didn’t have any way to help, because Hoshi had already called over to the baseship and asked. “No. No such luck,” Saul said.
Bill took another drink. “Two pilots, a mechanic, and our best navigator.” He didn’t set the glass down when he was done, just rested it against his chin. “Not that nav matters all that much anymore. Not like we’re going anywhere in particular.” Saul noticed for the first time that the star maps and charts under Bill’s elbows had Gaeta’s handwriting all over them, along with another neat hand that was most likely Baltar’s. He was looking at the path to Earth.
Frankly, Saul had had it up to his neck with Bill’s crap. He wanted to remind him that no matter where they were going, they still had to avoid jumping into stars, but with Bill back in this mood, Saul knew that wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
“There were two whole months after the attacks where you didn’t have a frakking clue where we were going, before you and the President found that map on Kobol. We did all right then. Now’s not any different.” The Old Man’s shoulders caved in a little more. Even Saul had to admit that that wasn’t true. He added more softly, “How’s Laura?”
Bill snorted, the noise echoing strangely off the glass. “She won’t speak to me. Won’t even open the door to her quarters.”
Saul finally accepted that there was no good way of leading up to it, so he said it bluntly. “Lieutenant Hoshi proposed mounting a small search and rescue mission, just one Raptor that’d go out and take one last look around for ‘em. I don’t know what the chances are it’ll work, but I’m inclined to agree that we might as well give it a shot.”
Bill continued on as if he hadn’t even heard him. “You were right. I shouldn’t have gone after her.” He took a drink and set the glass down, then spun it idly, watching the light play off it and refract patterns onto the charts.
Saul sunk into the chair across from the desk. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for Earth, Bill. No more than she should.”
Bill shook his head. “You don’t get it. If I hadn’t stayed behind, the baseship wouldn’t have found the Fleet again. If the baseship hadn’t found the Fleet, she would’ve died there, thinking we’d gone on to find Earth. She could’ve died believing her people had made it home. And now, she’s going to…”
Saul waited, hoping Bill would finish the sentence and at least get it out in the open, but he apparently couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Who knows what would’ve happened differently,” Saul finally said. “The both of you are wrong now. That’s what counts.”
Saul had hoped that would get some kind of reaction out of Bill-even if it was an angry one, that was better than this-but Bill merely picked up his magnifying glass, pretended to examine a star cluster, and muttered, “You do whatever you think is best.”
Saul realized that, although he’d handed the stars back over, the Old Man was still abdicating his position as much as Roslin was. It was a risk, and if it backfired, Hoshi would have every right to hate Saul, but he had to try. “No. You’re gonna tell the Lieutenant your decision, one way or the other. He’s one of your men. Some of those kids on the missing bird are your people. They deserve that much from you.”
“Fine,” Bill spat. “Where is he?”
“I ordered him to get some rack time while I discussed it with you. So, most likely, he’s waiting outside.” Saul crossed the room and opened the hatch, and, just as he expected, Hoshi snapped to attention where he had been standing across the corridor.
“Come in, son. The Admiral has something to say to you.”
Hoshi stepped in, and Saul closed the hatch behind him. Hoshi held his back ram-rod straight as he stood in front of Bill’s desk. He was trying so hard to be professional, but try as he might, the look that Saul had seen flit across the man’s face when he’d said the name ‘Felix’ wouldn’t go away anymore. Bill looked up from his charts. He blinked. Saul knew he saw it, too.
Bill looked down again, making a show of writing something in the margins of a star map. “Lieutenant Hoshi, the Colonel tells me you have a plan for a search and rescue mission.”
Hoshi took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I-”
“I didn’t ask you in to hear the details, Lieutenant,” the Old Man cut him off. “I assume Colonel Tigh has already vetted the practical side of the mission. What I want to know…” He paused, took off his glasses, and looked Hoshi in the eye. Saul didn’t know where this was going, but wherever it was, he knew it wasn’t good. “Chances are you’re not going to find anything. And even if you do, at this point, chances are you’re not going to like what you find. Are you prepared for that?”
Hoshi didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, I am, sir.”
“You’re not,” Bill said simply, turning back to his charts. Hoshi’s face fell, but he didn’t say a word. “But I also know no one’s gonna convince you otherwise. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” Hoshi saluted and glanced at Saul uncertainly.
Saul nodded. “Make the call down to the LSO, tell him there’s been an emergency change to the flight schedule,” he said. He only knew he’d interpreted the situation correctly when Bill didn’t say anything.
Hoshi started breathing again. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Saul could tell it was all he could do to keep from running to the hatch.
“Which one of them is it?” Bill asked after the hatch clanged shut behind Hoshi.
“Gaeta,” Saul answered. “A little surprised we didn’t notice it before, but they’ve both always been kind of reserved by Galactica standards, especially around the brass.”
Bill rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I did notice before.” Saul furrowed the brow over his good eye, the way he’d learned to so that a look of confusion wouldn’t set his eye patch askew. “They were very discreet on duty-and you’re at somewhat of a disadvantage at catching things out of the corner of your eye-but I knew. Somehow I just forgot it.”
Bill looked more troubled by that than he had been by the news about Raptor 718, but Saul found something almost heartening in that concerned expression.
“Who’s running CIC?” Bill asked.
“Helo’s in there right now,” answered Saul. “Hoshi was up for the next shift, but I’ll be covering for him.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bill said, rising from his desk. “Have Jaffee send in some coffee.” He put his hand to his forehead. “Lots of it.”
“I’m on it, Admiral,” Saul said. He wanted to add, welcome back, but thought better of it, fearing he might be speaking too soon.
~~**~~**~~
“Racetrack, looks like you’re my chauffer today, huh?” Lee said, still struggling to find a way to make the fact that he didn’t have wings anymore less awkward. Apparently, humor wasn’t it. “Where’s Skulls?”
Racetrack looked up from her pre-flight check. “Oh, sorry, didn’t Lieutenant Rinson tell you? The shuttle to Colonial One’s gonna be delayed about an hour. Hardball and Wingnut are covering it.”
Lee hopped onto the wing and walked inside the Raptor when Racetrack turned back to the pilot console to continue her check. “Then what are you up to?”
“Search and rescue,” Racetrack said in a clipped voice.
“Racetrack, I uploaded some updated star charts for that sector into this, if you want to transfer them into the nav-sir.” Hoshi apparently didn’t notice Lee until he’d clambered onto the Raptor. As soon as he did, though, Hoshi snapped to attention out of habit. Lee could tell it took everything he had to resist the automatic compulsion to salute.
“Thanks, Hoshi,” Racetrack said, taking the disk from his hand.
Lee was still catching up. “What search and rescue?”
“Raptor 718,” Hoshi said, looking at Lee incredulously, as if he couldn’t believe anyone could be thinking about anything else.
“The Raptor that missed the jump. That was Raptor 718?” Neither Racetrack nor Hoshi responded. “Racetrack, isn’t Raptor 718 the one with the frakked CO2 scrubbers? That’s why they reserved that one for shuttle runs, right?”
“We have no way to calculate exactly how long their air will last,” Hoshi said coolly. “No one did any pre-flight diagnostics to determine how the scrubbers were actually performing, and there are lots of variables that affect how long six people can make any amount of air last.”
Lee shook his head and was about to say, even so, but Hoshi jumped in again before he could form the words. “Plus, it’s very plausible that they fixed the scrubbers themselves by now. There was a mechanic on board, after all, and Felix isn’t bad at doing repairs like that himself.”
Lee gave Hoshi a good, long look, and his expression made everything click. He and Gaeta were still together. That surprised Lee. After the two had had a screaming match in his and Dee’s quarters one evening after Gaeta's pre-trial interview with the prosecutor-a fight that surpassed any argument he’d ever had with Dee or Starbuck and maybe even a little worse than a few he’d had with his father-Lee had assumed that Baltar’s trial had killed that relationship. Of course, he hadn’t kept track of them after Dee left. Apparently, they’d mended whatever the problem had been, and if Hoshi’s expression was any indication, gotten pretty serious in the past few months.
Hoshi was about to say something more, but Racetrack must have sensed that things had the potential to get ugly in a hurry. “Hey, Hoshi, go track down Skulls and have him get you a flight suit. Thumper’s off-duty. His should fit you.”
Hoshi nodded, looking a little relieved at having an excuse to leave. He jumped off the wing.
With Hoshi gone, Lee didn’t feel a need to hold back any longer. “Racetrack, this is useless, and you know it. I am deeply sorry for Hoshi, I really am, but this Fleet does not have the resources for somebody to go jump around at random looking for one man’s lover who’s most likely already dead.”
“Gods, Apollo, you sound like such a politician,” Racetrack said in a way that conveyed that she saw politicians as being on the same rung as Baltar’s cult members and used-car salesmen. “There’s two pilots-two of your old pilots-missing, too.”
“I know that,” Lee said, already regretting his outburst. He could hear Romo chastising him for overstating his case, yet again. “My point is, sometimes we lose people, and most of the time, there’s nothing we can do about it. Unless they were damned lucky, they’re probably out of air.”
“You know what, Apollo? Maybe I’m sick of not being able to do anything about it,” Racetrack said, slamming the console between the pilot and co-pilot seats up and standing, staring him down, hands on her hips. “And you do not get to preach to me like I’m some dumb nugget. You made your choice. Save your speeches for the Quorum.” She turned and threw herself back into the pilot chair. She muttered, “Like you’re one to talk anyway. We didn’t have frak for resources back when you wouldn’t call off the search for Starbuck, either. She was supposed to have run out of air, too.”
“Yeah, well I was wrong then.”
Racetrack sat stock-still for a moment, then turned to Lee, looking him calmly in the eyes. “So it was wrong. Would you change it?”
Lee had no response to that.
“That’s all I’m saying.” Racetrack turned back to the controls and set back to work prepping for the mission.
~~**~~**~~
Helo didn’t want to be at Joe’s, but he couldn’t go home and face Sharon again-or rather not face her again, since she wouldn’t even look at him.
The bar was fairly well-populated for that early in the day, but the old bridge bunny table stood conspicuously empty. Hoshi had clearly abdicated the table after Gaeta died, and the few junior CIC crew left had silently followed his lead, but for some reason, nobody else could bring themselves to sit there.
Hoshi was sitting by himself at the bar, idly fingering his glass more than actually drinking. Helo hadn’t come there looking for Hoshi, but as soon as he saw him, he knew that was who he needed to talk to.
“I’ll have one-uh, one, I guess,” Helo said to the bartender as he leaned on the bar next to Hoshi.
“Weird, isn’t it, only having one kind of alcohol left in the universe,” said Hoshi morosely, taking a sip of his drink. He winced. “Especially since it tastes like paint thinner.”
“Need a refill?” offered Helo.
“No.”
The bartender brought Helo his drink, and they were silent for awhile, Helo still not sitting down. He was starting to wonder if maybe this was a bad idea. He’d never known Hoshi all that well. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and they had sort of been friends when the Galactica and Pegasus had been orbiting New Caprica, since there weren’t all that many people left in the Fleet. But maybe too much had changed since then.
Finally, Hoshi sighed. “Look, I don’t know what to say. ‘We’ll find her’-‘I’m sorry for your loss’-‘I’m praying for your daughter,’ which I would, but knowing my luck, I’d probably jinx it if I did. I don’t know. It’s horrible, and it’s not fair. That I know.”
“That’s-I don’t know, either,” Helo said, shrugging and shaking his head in desperation. “Sharon’s already given up. And a part of me knows that she’s probably right. But if she’s not, and I…I don’t know how long you’re supposed to hang on to that hope.”
Hoshi looked at Helo out of the corner of his eye, sympathetic, but still gauging him. “You’re asking the wrong guy,” he said.
He knocked back the last of his drink and set the glass on the bar, but as he was turning to go, Helo spoke again. “If you had it to do over again, would you do it, even if there had been as little hope for Felix as there is for Hera?” Hoshi didn’t turn, but he did stop. “I mean, I know it’s hard for you to look at it that way, since you found him in time…”
Hoshi turned. His smile was infinitely sad. “I didn’t find him in time, Helo.” The smile flattened into a hard line, and his eyes looked very far away. “Whatever happened on that Raptor …I still don’t know if it was just witnessing all those murders, or if she did something else to him, or…I’ll never know. All I know is he wasn’t the same man who got on that Raptor.”
Sharon’s words were ringing in Helo’s ears. Cavil will dissect her like a science project. He’ll cut her up into little pieces to try to figure out how she works. There will be nothing but pieces for us to find.
Helo flinched when Hoshi started talking again. His face had softened. “There was this one moment, though… When Racetrack brought him back from the Raptor, and I was trying to clean him up and make sure he wasn’t bleeding, he looked at me. He looked at me, and he put his hand to my cheek, and he said, ‘thank you.’” Hoshi looked at Helo. “I can’t explain why or how, but for that one moment, I thought, maybe he’s still there.”
“One moment,” Helo repeated, almost as a question.
“Yeah.” Hoshi nodded. He sighed and stood up straight. “Get a Raptor. If Athena’s still given up, I’ll be your ECO. There’s your answer.”