FIC: Not Where I Belong, Part 4
Title: Not Where I Belong, Part 4
Author: lls_mutant
Fic Summary: Tory might have pulled her from the launch tube, but Cally's life still felt like it was over. Everything she loved was gone, or at the very least, changed to something that she hated.
Chapter Summary: There are consequences to Earth, but no one seems to want to pay them.
Warnings: Suicidal thoughts (Cally), suicide (not Cally)
Pairings: Canon pairings, Galen is important in the story, but it's more gen.
Author's Notes : What Nicky retcon? Also, although I changed a few events to suit our purposes, most of this universe follows canon… just with Cally alive.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The room was dark, lit only by candles, and there was a smell of incense. There was no body like there might have been back on the Colonies- the damage done by the gun was sickening, and there were no resources to make Hoshi's face look even close to how it had looked before. A flag lay over the table in the center, ready to be folded and presented when the time came.
Cally was sitting in front row. It seemed strange given how short a time she'd actually known Hoshi, but when she'd entered the front two rows were largely empty, despite the number of people in the room. Dee had frantically gestured to her, and Cally had taken the empty seat next to her.
Gaeta was sitting on the other side of Dee, staring blankly in front of him even as the priest talked. His face was empty, but he clung to Dee's hand so tightly that his fingers were leaving imprints. Cally saw Dee wince once, but she didn't protest; just kept her eyes fixed forward. Her mouth was turned down in frown, and there was a small line between her eyes.
The priest was droning; Cally had been hoping to find peace in his words, but it completely eluded her. She just kept staring at that table with the flag, wishing that if she closed her eyes and just hoped hard enough, Hoshi would be sitting on her other side, warm and solid and comforting.
She didn't realize how lost in her own thoughts she was until the noise of Gaeta trying to stand startled her out of them. He was struggling to his feet- well, his foot and his prosthetic- with Dee's assistance, although he didn't actually acknowledge that she was helping him. He made his way to podium, his dress grays neatly buttoned and contrasting sharply with the uneven cut where he'd removed the cloth from the pants.
He swallowed hard and gripped the podium. "Forgive me if I keep this short," he said, and his voice was surprisingly even. "I know many of you in the room knew Louis Hoshi much longer than I did, as he served on the Pegasus for over ten years before the Pegasus ever found the Galactica. And maybe I'm not the one who should be speaking, as I only knew Louis in the last year of his life. But although our time together was too short, I thought he would be in my life for much longer, and I…" his voice broke, and he looked down at the podium and took a deep breath. "I hope you will forgive my presumption.
"I wish I could say that Louis died happy, but we all know he didn't. I wish he'd been closer to that family he'd always wanted, to that home he was constantly searching for, but every time he made a step towards that dream, I- it pulled away. Home was the one thing he wanted, and home was the one thing…" Gaeta's voice broke again, and Cally's heart broke with it.
"I think there was a time…" Gaeta continued into the silence, "I think there was a time when he almost had it. When he had the hope of Earth, and even… even when it wasn't said, he had love. He was loved. But that hope, that time, it was taken from him, and he should have had something else to catch him. He should have had something else- some other hope- anything to look towards. Something strong enough to pull him through. But he was left with nothing and I…" He took a breath and lifted his chin. "I know how he felt. All of us… when we lose that thing that matters, when we lose that hope… we're all left with nothing." His eyes met Cally's for a moment, and she realized that she was trembling and tears were streaking her race.
"I'm not a religious man. I never have been, although I know Louis was. I hope he's right. I hope he's there on the other side, and that he's found everything he's searching for. Gods, I hope he's right, but even if he's not, I hope he has peace. Because for frak's sake, he left little enough of it behind."
The priest waited for Gaeta to say more, but apparently that was it. He fumbled for his crutches and made his way back to his place beside Dee, his eyes focused on the wall so he wouldn't have to look at anyone. The priest cleared his throat. "Is there anyone else who has something that they would like to say?"
Silence, and then one of the Pegasus soldiers raised his hand. Cally recognized him as Abel Thornton, a bridge officer who Hoshi had mentioned many times. He took the podium, and with what truly looked like a glare at Gaeta, began a eulogy of his own.
Thornton's eulogy was obviously more what everyone expected. The lines of worry, confusion, and anger faded from the priest's face, and this time, Cally heard the occasional sounds of weeping in the gathering. Next to her, Dee relaxed and wiped her eyes. But the words slid right over Cally, not touching her despite their apparent sincerity. She sat the rest of the service in silence.
There was an almost palpable relief in the room when the priest uttered the final prayer. The tension broke, and people stood up to pay their respects. Cally was about to go around Dee to get to Gaeta when someone caught her arm. She turned and instinctively yanked her arm out of Colonel Tigh's hand.
Tigh noticed, and his good eye widened, but he didn't comment on it. Instead, he looked over at where Gaeta was still sitting, his head bowed. "Tell me so I don't make a frakking fool of myself," Tigh said softly, "were they lovers?"
"Yes."
Tigh nodded, and his face seemed to take on an extra element of compassion. "Thank you, Cally," he said, and then straightened up as he went to speak to Gaeta. Cally watched him, wondering what he thought he could possibly say, when he was one of the ones that had led them to Earth in the first place. If those frakkers had only-
As if summoned by her thoughts, Galen appeared beside her. "How are you doing?"
Cally glared up at him. "We're at a funeral. How do you think I'm doing?"
Galen sighed. "I'm sorry, Cally," he said, and Cally realized he was ignoring her outburst and going ahead with a pre-planned speech. "I know he was a good friend to you these past few months, and I'm really sorry for your loss."
"Thank you," she said stiffly.
"Listen," Galen said, "I'm probably not the one who should tell him this, so could you let Gaeta know that Baltar is planning on saying a few prayers for… what?" he asked.
"Baltar is planning on saying a few prayers?" Cally asked incredulously. "Baltar??
"Yeah. Look, I've been meaning to tell you that I've been going to his services, but the time just never seemed right. I haven't taken Nicky and I… what?"
"Baltar is planning on saying prayers for Gaeta's dead lover," Cally said. "Forgive me if I keep my frakking mouth shut about the stupidest idea I've heard all day, because a funeral isn't the place to say what I really think."
Galen blinked, and then she saw the pieces click together. "Okay," he sighed. "Maybe it's not a good idea to tell Gaeta?"
"You think?" Cally asked acridly.
"Frak," Galen sighed. "This is not how this was supposed to go. I just wanted…" Cally kept her gaze locked on him. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about your friend. I wasn't looking for a fight."
"Yeah, well." Cally looked around helplessly. "I should go say something to Gaeta."
"Yeah."
"Are you going to?" Cally asked pointedly.
Galen shifted, his hands shoved in his pockets. "Don't know if I'm the person he wants to see right now."
"You could say-"
"Say what? 'Sorry your lover shot himself because the place we led you to was a nuclear wasteland? And hey, while I'm at it, remember when I tried to toss you out the airlock? Good times, weren't they?' Trust me, Cally. I might not be the last person that Gaeta wants to see right now, but I'm in the top ten. I came her for you."
"Galen-" Cally closed her eyes.
"Go talk to Gaeta," Galen said. He patted her shoulder awkwardly, and then walked away.
Cally watched him go, and then turned back around to go talk to Gaeta. She had to wait; Vice President Zarek was talking to him. His voice was low and sympathetic, and his eyes were extremely kind and compassionate. Cally remembered seeing them together a few times on New Caprica, heads together and intent on whatever discussion they were having. She noticed that Roslin wasn't even in the room. Instead, it was Dee standing by the Admiral's side, talking awkwardly to him. Both of them kept casting dark glares at Zarek, who didn't seem to notice.
Zarek finally moved away to talk to some of the Pegasus crew, and Cally approached Gaeta. Much to her shock, Gaeta struggled out of his chair and met her with a hug. She hugged him back awkwardly at first, and then relaxing. When the pulled apart, Gaeta's eyes were wet.
"I'm so sorry," Cally whispered.
Gaeta hadn't completely let go of her; one of his hands was still on her shoulders. He cupped the back of her head gently. "Thank you. So much. Not just for what you said, but for being there for him when I couldn't."
His words were correct for the situation, and his voice was steady. But the hand on the back of Cally's head was hot and heavy¸ and Gaeta's eyes burned with a grieving intensity that bored through her and into her own soul. She swallowed hard.
I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have stopped him. I wish you could have stopped him, and then he'd still be here. I wish… I wish…. Her throat closed tightly around the words she desperately wanted to say, and some small part of her thought it was for the best, because those words would only hurt both of them worse. Instead, she just nodded.
They pulled fully apart from each other, and Cally sensed that Gaeta did so reluctantly. She was saved by Dee approaching and taking Gaeta's elbow, helping him to sit.
"I'll see you around," she told Gaeta awkwardly. She looked around to see if there was anyone else she should say something to, but the truth was she didn't want to. She just wanted to get out of here.
***
She found herself in the Remembrance Hallway. If something ever happens to me, can you make sure that they use that picture on the wall? The one of me and Felix? He'd asked her that right before he shot himself.
Cally hadn't brought the picture with her- it still hung in the locker waiting to be emptied. And looking at the faces of people who had died against their will, she wasn't sure she wanted to see it ever again.
***
Raptor 718 was just for transport now. It was sitting to the side of the hangar bay, dented and dinged. Cally climbed inside it, heedless of the dress she was wearing, and pulled her knees up to her chest and cried.
She was still crying when Danielle found her there, crept in and sat beside her, and wrapped her arms around her, rocking her as she sobbed. Cally leaned into her shoulder, holding on tight.
***
"Felix is finally asleep," Dee sighed, collapsing into a chair in Joe's. "Thank the Gods."
"Is he crying a lot?" Racetrack asked, a furrow of surprise between her eyebrows.
"No, that's the thing," Dee said. "Except for when it happened, I haven't seen him cry yet. I wish he would. But he just… he just stares bitterly."
Cally exchanged glances with Danielle. Danielle smiled at her encouragingly, like she thought the outburst in the Raptor had helped. The thing was, it hadn't. Cally looked down at the table. She wished she could say that it had.
Caroline sighed heavily. "That's rough on him, though. Gods, can you imagine? I mean, I get that Hoshi broke. Half this frakking ship- hell, half this frakking fleet is ready to break. But to know that you aren't enough to live for-"
"It doesn't work like that," Cally interrupted sharply, looking up. "He didn't do it to hurt Gaeta."
"I didn't say he did," Caroline retorted. "But it's got to feel that way to him anyway."
"You know it does," Dee said sourly. "Felix basically said as much in his eulogy."
Cally saw the airlock in her mind, as clear as if she was back in there. She shook her head angrily. "It's not what he meant," she insisted viciously.
"Cally…" Danielle said carefully.
Seelix cleared her throat. "The thing is," she said, "whether it hurt Gaeta or not, Gaeta was right about one thing. Hoshi should have felt like there was something else- like we could find some other sort of future."
"What sort of future?" Caroline demanded, taking a deep swallow of her drink. "Even if we find a habitable planet, the Ones, Fours, and Fives could come along and…" she made an explosion noise, expanding her hands. "Earth was the best shot we had at having a defense against that."
"They should have had another plan, rather than just some fake-"
"Earth wasn't fake! It was real!"
"Stop," Dee ordered tiredly. "Come on, guys. It's been a long few days for all of us. Let's just… can we just not talk about it?"
Seelix and Caroline glared at each other for a long moment, and Caroline relented first. "All right. Let's just drop it." Racetrack touched Seelix on the shoulder, and Danielle looked fixedly at her drink. Cally looked over at the bar, remembering the night she'd first met Hoshi there.
Do you like Galactica? she had asked him.
No. But what choice do I have? Those frakking toasters nuked everything else, and now the only thing that made this frakked up ship tolerable is gone, so… no. I can't stand it.
She could hear his voice in her head, as clearly as the day he'd spoken. And she knew she couldn't hate him for what he'd done, because if it wasn't for one of those frakking toasters, she would have done the exact same thing- just not over Earth.
***
"It's a virus," Cottle declared.
Cally bounced Nicky on her knee. -Nicky wasn't thrilled about being stripped down to his diaper and poked and prodded, but the blistered rash necessitated it. "Are you sure it's not an allergic reaction?" she asked desperately.
"To what?"
"The algae mash."
"We tested that a month ago. That rash was eczema. This time he's got the blisters. That's a viral infection. I can give you some salve for the pain, but otherwise, he's just got to ride this out."
"Frak," Cally sighed. "Sorry. It's just… my shifts and…"
"Yeah, I know," Cottle said. "But he'll be fine. If his fever spikes any higher, bring him back. You've got acetaminophen in your quarters, right?" Cally nodded. "One teaspoon every four hours to six hours. Give him liquids, keep him calm… you know the drill."
"Thank you, sir," Cally said with a sigh, wishing there had been something more that he could do. "Come on, Nicky," she said, hoisting him onto her hip. "Let's go get some sleep."
Cottle scribbled something on a pad. "Give this to Ishay," he said. "She'll get you the salve."
"Thanks." Cally accepted the prescription, and then with Nicky on her hip, worked here way through the infirmary.
She found Ishay examining Gaeta's stump. The sight turned Cally's stomach- the stump was raw and red and bleeding. She looked away hurriedly, and retreated backwards, pretending that she hadn't gotten as close as she had.
"You need to stay off it more," Ishay was admonishing Gaeta.
"I can't," Gaeta said. "If I stay off it… I can't. I need to keep busy."
"Then keep busy from a wheelchair," Ishay said firmly. She softened. "I know you're having a hard time, Felix, and I'll do what I can. But it's not just that the prosthetic doesn't fit right. It's that you shouldn't even be on a prosthetic yet."
Gaeta looked down, his lashes moving rapidly. Then he took a deep breath and looked up, steady and even. "If everything was as it should be, a lot of things would be different. We'd be on Earth, Louis would be alive, and we wouldn't have Cylons in command positions."
"Guess so." Ishay heaved a sigh. "Wait right here. I'll get you a new salve." She turned and saw Cally waiting. "Did you need something as well?"
Cally handed her the prescription, and Ishay was off with a short nod. "I'm sorry," she told Gaeta as Ishay left. "I didn't mean to intrude."
"No. It's all right," Gaeta said. He looked down at his ruined leg with a sour expression. "Not like I'm not getting used to it."
"How are you?" Cally asked, mainly to make conversation more than anything else.
Gaeta shrugged. "Can't complain," he said, and he gave the most sardonic smile Cally had ever seen. "Mainly because no one would listen if I did." He sighed heavily. "I'm sorry. I'm just not having a good day."
"No, I understand," Cally said.
"Yeah," Gaeta sighed. "You would. I meant it at the funeral, by the way. Louis talked about you a lot." He hesitated, his eyes darting back and forth to see if anyone was listening. "He told me you told him about the Chief and Tory and Tigh." Cally nodded, and Gaeta sighed again. "Frak, I wish I'd been here to help you guys out. Maybe between the three of us we could have convinced the Admiral… with enough evidence we could have made him see…. But I guess I had Cylon problems of my own."
"Sounds like it."
He looked at her sharply. "Did Louis tell you?"
"About what?"
"That it was Anders that shot me." Cally's eyes widened, and Gaeta kind of deflated. "I don't think it was because he was a Cylon," he admitted. "But still, you'd never know it from the way he's walking around, right? If I'd shot him, I'm pretty sure I'd be plotting coordinates from the brig."
Cally struggled to be fair. "They let you out after you stabbed Baltar."
Gaeta snorted. "That was Baltar," he said with no small amount of disdain, and Cally had to admit he had a point. "Besides, they needed me for the trial. Or they needed my credibility," he corrected.
Cally was about to say something when Ishay returned. She pressed a small tube into Cally's hand. "Put this on the blisters," she instructed. "It should help. If he has any sort of adverse reaction or the rash gets worse, come back immediately." Cally nodded, and Ishay handed Gaeta the jar she was holding. "You get this, but you're also about to get a long lecture on the needs of a recent amputee. Specialist, unless you have a good twenty minutes to listen to us argue, you might want to leave." Despite the firmness in Ishay's tone, her eyes were warm.
"Yes, sir," Cally agreed, and then patted Gaeta on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself," she told him. "Come on, Nicky. Let's go get you sorted out."
She left the infirmary, soothing Nicky. But her conversation with Gaeta bothered her, not because she didn't believe him about Anders and brig times, but because even though she didn't want to… she did.
***
"Cally. Can I get your help?"
"What's wrong?" Cally asked as Galen came striding towards her. She was finding that she had a hard time calling him Chief. It was easy with Laird, but Chief as applied to Galen was a whole different person in Cally's mind. It was hard to remember those days when he'd been something of a mentor to the younger deck crew members, and Cally really didn't want to.
"It's the jump drives on the Galactica," Galen said. "Dee said that last time we jumped she noticed a delay in the RCP relay. I want to run a diagnostic on it."
Cally looked at the Viper she was trying to repair and sighed. "Yes, sir."
"Hope it's nothing major," Galen said. "Our spare parts supply is pretty much gone."
"Same with our duct tape," Cally muttered.
He stared at her incredulously and then burst out laughing. "Come on," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, and just for a moment it did feel like those days so long ago, before the Cylons even attacked. "Let's go see if maybe she could just use a good hard kick."
As they made their way out of the hangar deck, Brooks stopped him.
"I'm headed over to the Zephyr to fix their oxygen scrubber," he told them. "Do either of you have a spare five sixteenths hex wrench? Mine snapped last week."
Galen shook his head, but Cally put her toolbox down and rummaged through it. "Get that one back to me," she warned him darkly. "I need it."
"Will do." He saluted, and then hustled over to where the shuttle would be waiting.
"You don't think you're going to need that one?" Galen asked.
Cally smiled mischievously. "Don't tell, but I have two."
Galen affected shock. "You've been holding out on us!" He laughed a bit, but the laughter petered out and the warm feeling of closeness drifted away. Although this time, it didn't leave Cally with that burning, angry emptiness inside. The anger was still there, but it was a dull, persistent ache, and she could bear it.
Galen opened the causeway, and Cally followed him in. He flipped open a casing, and Cally knelt down beside him.
"Okay," he said. "Hook the ohmmeter up. Let's see what's wrong with our girl here."
"You can't just plug in to yourself?" Cally asked.
Galen glared at her. "You've seen me naked. Any place you can suggest where I could stick a plug?" Cally opened her mouth, and Galen held up his hand. "Don't say it," he groaned. "I set myself up for that."
"You'd think you'd learn," Cally muttered cheerfully. She cleaned the meter's connections on her jumpsuit and began to hook up.
Dee's voice came over the PA system. "Action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship."
"Now there's some luck! Watch the relay, Cally!" Galen called, and as the jump drives began to spool up, they both stared intently at the relay.
"Jump!" Galen whispered, and Cally felt that familiar sensation twisting her stomach. She glared at the relay until her eyes burned, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"Frak," Galen sighed. "It looked fine. Let me see that." He took the ohmmeter from her, scrolling through to look at the data. "Whatever Dualla's hearing, it's not the relay," he finally said. "I want to talk to Gaeta, see if the ship jumped all right and if we're where we're supposed to be."
"I don't know if Gaeta's on shift," Cally said. She knelt down and started testing connections, just in case. "That was Dee's voice."
"Dualla, Gaeta, whoever. Just tell me where the ship is," Galen grumbled. He strode over to the hatch and heaved it open. "I'll be right back. I need to get to a phone."
"You do that," Cally said, absorbed in her work. She barely heard the hatch close.
It felt good in here. The room was nice and cool, and it was silent. Cally systematically tested each connection, noting the results as she worked. She barely even noticed the hatch opening back up.
"Well," Galen sighed, "we're where we're supposed to be. I guess we'll just keep an eye on it." He sighed. "Thing is, these drives are only going to last so long. They've been pushed past what they were ever intended for."
Cally really, really didn't want to think of the implications of that, so she focused on packing her tools back up. "Are we done here, then?"
"Yeah. We're done." Galen sighed. Cally wondered if he was going to attempt some other conversation, something more personal, but he looked tired. Instead, he hauled himself to standing. "Nicky doing okay?" he asked her.
"He's back to normal. Doc said the virus wouldn't last long," Cally said. She shifted her toolbox awkwardly. "I think he's looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."
"Yeah? Good. Me, too." Galen opened the door and they started back to the hangar bay. "Hey, Cally? How would you feel about me taking him to Baltar's services sometime?"
"You're asking?" Cally said, although it was more a rhetorical question. She thought about it. "I don't know," she finally admitted.
"They're not like what you'd think," Galen said. He paused, cleared his throat. "You could come with me first," he suggested. "See what they're like."
"Let me think about it."
"Let you think about it? It's not a categorical no?"
"It's not a yes, either," Cally reminded him firmly. "Just give me time to think."
"All right. If you want, I can- hey. What's going on?"
The deck didn't look abnormal. Mechanics were working on birds, working at presses, trying to make parts. But there was something… Cally felt it, too. An undercurrent of worry.
"Where's Laird?" Galen demanded. He spotted him and headed over, and Cally followed. "Laird!" Galen barked. "What's going on?"
"You haven't heard?" Laird asked.
"Would I be asking if I had?" Galen said, rolling his eyes.
"We jumped."
"I knew that," Galen said, and a pit began to grow in Cally's stomach.
"I wasn't finished," Laird said. "When we jumped, Raptor 718 was in transit. They jumped, too. But they never showed up at the new coordinates."
"Frak." Galen swore hard. "That's the one with the frakked PC12N chip, isn't it?"
"Yup."
Cally's mouth was dry, but she asked the question anyway. "Who was on it?"
Laird consulted a list. "Shark and Easy of course, two Eights, and Lieutenant Gaeta. And Brooks."
"Oh, frak," Galen sighed, but Cally couldn't say a thing.
***
She went down to check that night, but the Raptor was still missing. "We checked at both sets of coordinates," Hot Dog reassured her. "But there's nothing at either one. Not a clue as to where they could be. You have any idea where they might have jumped to? Chief said something about a chip being fried?"
"The bigger the jump, the greater the chance for malfunction," Cally said.
"Oh. Frak."
"Yeah. Frak."
***
Dee slammed her fork down. "That's it," she announced to the table. "I've had it."
"Had it with what?" Caroline asked, eyeing her warily.
"It's been two days," Dee said. "Two days, and that Raptor still isn't here. And no one is out there looking!"
"We haven't got the first idea where it could be," Danielle protested. "That's the problem. How are you supposed to find a Raptor in space with no clues?"
"We could try," Dee said. She turned to face Racetrack. "Listen. If I go to the Colonel and the Admiral over this, I think I can get them to listen. Especially the Admiral. If I can get him to agree to it, will you pilot me?"
"I can do that," Racetrack said, swallowing her bite of algae. "You sure you want to do this, Dee?"
Dee's face was set. "Felix has been my best friend for years," she said. "I'm not going to let him die without a fight. He's done so much for this Fleet. We should at least try to look for him. He deserves that."
There was a silence. And then, "I'll definitely pilot," Racetrack said. She smiled mirthlessly. "After all, I seem to be good at finding things."
"I hope you can get them to listen, Dee," Seelix said.
Cally just looked at her plate.
***
"I need to you to help me take inventory," Galen informed her a few hours later.
Why me? Cally wanted to complain, looking around the deck at all the other people that Galen could order to help him. But she had to hold her tongue. "Fine, sir," she said dully.
Galen raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment. Cally heaved a sigh and picked up the clipboard that was sitting on the tool bench and followed. As they crossed the hangar bay, she saw Dee and Racetrack, suited up and climbing into Racetrack's Raptor. Something about that turned her stomach, but Galen began talking.
"The Old Man wants to know exactly what we've got in terms of spare parts," he said conversationally. "Throughout the Fleet."
"Don't we have records of that?" Cally asked.
"Yeah, but this is different." A small smile played on the edges of Galen's mouth. "The Cylons on the basestar have offered to upgrade our FTL drives."
"What?" Cally stopped in her tracks.
Galen sighed exasperatedly. "Oh, come on, Cally. You've seen the state of Galactica's drives. We were just down there the other day looking at that relay, remember?"
"And it was fine," Cally said icily.
"But something's still up with the FTL drive. You know that."
"And the solution is to ask the Cylons to fix it?" Cally was incredulous. She shook her head angrily. The other day they had been warm and friendly. Cally should have known that that was a lie, just like everything else had been.
"Well, last time I checked, I'm a Cylon myself. A fact you know all too well."
"Well, there's something I don't get," Cally heard herself saying. Galen gave her that exasperated, go-ahead sort of gesture. "If you're a Cylon, why the frak were you Resistance on New Caprica?"
"Oh, so now you're finally asking that?" Galen demanded. "After all this time?"
"Just answer the question,"" Cally snapped.
"I don't know! Okay? I've been telling everyone that from the beginning. I don't know. God," he muttered. "I thought you had gotten to the point maybe I could talk to you like a normal human being, but man, I was wrong. Let's just do this, okay?"
Everything in Cally desperately wanted to fight against Galen on this one. If she could do what she wanted, she'd throw the clipboard down and storm away, refusing to have any part of this. But that wasn't an option. "Fine," she muttered, pushing her hair back behind her ear. "Let's go, sir."
***
"Clear the deck!" It was Tigh shouting, just as Cally came on to her shift. "Everyone, clear the deck!" He glanced around, and caught a few eyes. "You, you, and you," he ordered, pointing to Vireem, Cally, and Laird. "You three stay. Everyone else, out!"
Cally refused to even glance at Vireem, but she looked over at Laird, who shrugged. The landing bay began to empty, and she saw a pair of Raptors taxiing in, one pulling the other. Her heart lifted at the sight. "She found them!" she said breathlessly.
"Excuse me?" Laird asked.
"That's 718, isn't it?" Cally almost laughed in her relief. "Dee and Racetrack went looking for it, and they found it!" She waved as Dee jumped out of Racetrack's Raptor, but Dee didn't see her.
Medics entered the hangar bay, wheeling a gurney with them. The joy she'd felt turned into a heavy, cold dread. Tigh was striding forward, and Dee had climbed into the Raptor. In minutes Dee appeared again, Gaeta's arm around her neck as she struggled to help him off the Raptor.
"Frak me," Vireem said, and for once, Cally agreed with him. Gaeta's lips were blue, and he was covered with blood. Tigh hurried forward, but a medic pushed him out of the way and they brought the gurney closer. They got Gaeta settled wheeled him to the infirmary, Dee holding Gaeta's hand.
"Why just Gaeta?" Laird asked. "Weren't there other people in the Raptor?" No one answered.
Tigh climbed up and looked into the Raptor, and pulled out hurriedly. When he turned back to them, his face was white and his mouth was working funny, and Cally had the impression he was trying to keep from vomiting.
"What's going on?" Cally asked Racetrack as she joined them.
"I don't know," Racetrack said, and she looked just as pale as Tigh, "but Gaeta said that the rest of them were dead."
Tigh came over, clearing his throat. "All right," he told them. "We've got four bodies in there, and a hell of a lot of blood and guts. It's our job to get this Raptor cleaned and functioning again, and to keep our mouths shut while we do it. We'll get the whole story out of Gaeta when he can talk."
As long as she lived, Cally would never, ever forget the first moment she stepped into that Raptor. The blood, the smell, the bodies of people she knew, killed with slashes and stabs. And a scalpel, dark and bloody, lying on the floor. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away and never look back. Racetrack swallowed hard, and even Vireem looked completely repulsed. The only one who seemed unaffected was Laird.
It was gruesome work. The bodies alone would have been bad enough, but the smell was overpowering in the small Raptor, and there was blood in places there shouldn't have been blood, in crevices and splattered over the ECO keyboard. The one console had shorted out, and there was blood dried into the fabric of the pilots' seats. And there was the awful moment when she found her hex wrench on the top of Brooks' bucket of tools. Several times, Cally felt the gorge rise in her throat, but she kept working, grimly determined.
The worst of it was over and she was taking apart the ECO's keyboard, trying to get the blood out from between the keys when Cottle looked into the Raptor. "Colonel," he said. "Gaeta's awake."
"Good," Tigh grunted, and then looked back at the others. "You three stay here. And no one comes on this deck yet, got it? I'll be back soon." He followed Cottle out of the Raptor.
"Frakking toaster," Vireem growled. He looked around the Raptor and tossed his rag down. "Frak this. I need to get out of this thing."
"The Colonel said don't go anywhere," Laird reminded him.
"I'm not. But I'm getting out of this Raptor."
Laird sighed. "I can't say I blame him," he said. "Looks like we're about done in here anyway." He followed.
Cally wasn't going to argue. Being stuck in close quarters with Vireem was pretty high on her list of things she didn't want to do, and she relaxed just a little as they left. She was almost done with the ECO station when something caught her eye.
She leaned forward and spotted a small piece of paper, wedged into a tight crevice. She carefully pulled it out and wiped it off. It was a photo, and the faces hit her hard. It was the photo of Hoshi and Gaeta that she'd seen in Hoshi's locker. Somehow, she just knew that this was the same copy.
"Hey," Racetrack said from the pilot's seat, noting Cally's stillness. "You all right, Cally?"
"Yeah. I just found this." Cally held it up so Racectrack could see. Racetrack hoped over the seat and into the back so she could see better.
"Frak," Racetrack said. "It must have fallen out of Gaeta's pocket when he took off his jacket to put his flight suit on." She studied the picture better. "Good picture," she said. "Hard to believe he did what he did, looking at that."
"Not really," Cally said. "Sometimes, when something like that happens… I can't explain it."
"You don't really need to."
Cally glanced at her sharply. "You ever try it?" she asked.
Racetrack snorted. "For the first year after the attacks, almost every time I got in my Raptor I hoped like hell that one of those toasters would shoot me down. Not the same thing, I guess, but yeah. It just seemed like dying would be easier than dragging myself through another day on this ship. What about you?"
"After I found out Galen was a toaster," Cally said.
That disturbed Racetrack. "I didn't know that," she said, and Cally realized why she was disturbed.
"I knew before everyone else did," she reassured her. "About Galen and Tigh and Tory. We weren't close then."
"Frak! Cally, why didn't you tell the Admiral?"
Cally shrugged. "At the time, I would have asked you if he would have believed me," she said bitterly. "Now, I guess the better question is would it matter? Now he knows they're all toasters, and they're still in their jobs."
"Yeah," Racetrack said. "Guess so."
"Henderson! Edmondson! Get out here!" they heard Tigh calling.
"Great," Racetrack muttered, but she slid out of the Raptor. Cally took one last look at the picture before she slipped it into the pocket of her jumpsuit and followed.
Tigh was waiting for them; his face set in its usual angry expression. "We got the story out of Gaeta," he began as Cally and Racetrack approached. "Seems that something went wrong with the Raptor, some technobabble about subparticles and flipped data bits. I don't know about any of that, but the Raptor jumped beyond the red line. Which would have been fine, except that there was only so much air in the Raptor. Gaeta said that one of the Eights did the calculations and began killing off the others. She was going to kill him, too, until he killed her in self-defense."
"Should have known," Vireem began. "Frakking-"
"Shut your mouth," Tigh ordered him before Vireem could so much as say another word. "If Gaeta's telling the truth, she killed another Cylon first."
"Is Gaeta telling the truth?" Laird asked, sounding more curious than anything else.
Tigh sighed heavily. "Not sure," he admitted. "But if you'd asked me before I saw this bloody mess, I would have said that the last person to kill three humans would be Felix Gaeta. It's not really in him."
"It's always the quiet ones," Laird said with a shrug, something flashing in his eyes.
"Yeah, well, the Old Man believes him," Tigh said. "You all got that? The Old Man believes that what happened in that Raptor is the Eight went crazy because of oxygen depravation and killed them all, and Gaeta stopped her. That's the official version of events, and if I hear that any of the four of you said anything different, there's gonna be hell to pay. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now finish up. I'm going to open the deck back up and get this place moving again."
"I am not getting back in that Raptor," Vireem said as Tigh walked away.
"No, you're going over to get started on the fuelings. Cally, finish up, will you?" Laird was already moving on, headed to a new problem. Cally wondered if the sight of that Raptor had touched him at all.
She climbed back into the Raptor, staring around again. She'd spent days inside this damned Raptor, trying to get it to work.
With an angry, sudden motion, Cally grabbed a wrench and brought it down as hard as she could on the ECO console.
"Cally!" Racetrack ducked in, blocking the wrench before Cally could swing it again. "Cally! Stop! What the frak?"
"This was my fault," Cally snarled. "This damn Raptor… it should have been junked!"
"What are you talking about?" Racetrack asked. She managed to get the wrench out of Cally's hands.
"It was my call to put this Raptor on Fleet traffic," Cally said. "I knew the PC12N chip was fried. I knew this could have happened. But I made the call, and I-"
Racetrack sighed. "Okay. You need to get out of here. You're not the one to blame for this, okay? And this is me saying this, Cally." She grabbed Cally's shoulders and made her look at her. "I just lost two friends today, okay? I'm angry as hell, and I'm not blaming you for a perfectly reasonable call. There are other ways…" Racetrack's jaw hardened. "We should have been looking for them right away. You want to blame someone? There's a better reason that we didn't find them in time and stop this from happening. Not because you put a Raptor onto Fleet traffic only status, but because we waited two frakking days to look for that Raptor in the first place! Frak it!" She let go of Cally and slammed her hand against the side of the Raptor, hard enough to make the sound ring in their ears.
"And now, it's another funeral. Do you know how sick I am of funerals? Pilots are dying left and right, being shot down and being killed because our equipment is too frakking old! And when I have to stand up there and talk about Easy and how she died, what am I gonna say? That she died because a frakking toaster killed her with a scalpel while she was trapped in a Raptor? Apparently not, because apparently, we're not gonna talk about that! We're going to play nice with the genocidal robots now, because the Admiral's best friend IS one! It's disgusting. The whole frakking thing is disgusting." She fell back, sitting on the floor, crying.
Just a week ago Cally had been in this Raptor, doing the same exact thing when Danielle had found her. She sat down beside Racetrack now, rubbing her shoulders and wishing she could remember what Danielle had said to her then. But then, whatever she'd said, it hadn't really helped. Nothing could right now.
***
It took Cally a while to even work up the guts to approach Gaeta, and then after that, it took her a while to find him. He'd already been discharged from the infirmary, and was apparently back at work. "Doesn't seem to matter that this was supposed to be a vacation for him," Ishay said when Cally asked. "I convinced Tigh to get him off the ship because with all the reminders of Louis and the little recovery he's had on that leg, but a fat lot of good that did." She looked as angry as Cally felt.
She finally found Gaeta late that night, at Joe's bar, sitting at a table by himself in a corner. She could understand why he was alone- he radiated such a dark bitterness that it was even hard for her to walk over. But she took a deep breath and did.
"Can I join you for a minute?" she asked.
"Can't stop you," he said. "Can't stop much of anything." But he used his good leg to push the other chair out for her.
Cally sat, and then had no idea what to say. So she decided just to go for broke. "I'm sorry," she said.
Gaeta blinked at her. "Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry about the Raptor. I knew that the PC12N chip was fried and…" she stopped as Gaeta's eyes narrowed, and she held her breath for a long minute. She realized that the man looking at her might look like Gaeta, but he was someone she had never met before.
It was an impression that only lasted a moment. Gaeta shook his head, and then leaned forward. "Don't feel guilty about something you can't control," he said. "You know what happens when you try to take responsibility for things you can't control? You get frakked, that's what. People use it against you, and then you get frakked." He sat back. "I'm sorry, too. You knew Brooks, right?"
"Not well. He came over from the Pegasus and…" Cally shrugged. "Speaking of Pegasus people… I found this." She took out the picture and slid it across the table to Gaeta. "You must have dropped it."
"Yeah. Thanks." The expression his face as he looked at the picture made Gaeta look very young all of a sudden, despite the gray in his hair and the dark circles under his eyes. "I keep meaning to put it on the Remembrance Hall, you know? But I keep feeling like maybe if I don't…"
"Maybe he won't really be dead?"
"Something like that," Gaeta sighed. "Gods, nothing makes sense anymore. Everything's upside down. Louis is dead, people are fighting each other on the ships, the President is nowhere to be seen, and the Cylons are the Admiral's new best friends. Or old ones." He played with his drink. "It's insane."
"Can't argue with you there," Cally agreed. "At least when I found out Galen was a Cylon, I divorced his ass."
"Thought that might be why."
Cally rubbed her forehead. "I know that he had nothing to do with New Caprica. The frakked up thing is he was the best thing about New Caprica. And he and Tigh and Anders… they were blowing up skin jobs left and right. But at the same time, he's connected to them somehow. And the fact we don't know how… that scares me." Gaeta nodded and lit two cigarettes, and then handed one to her. Cally took it gratefully. "But still… I just remember that time when I was in the detention center. I still have nightmares about that."
"Did they torture you?" Gaeta asked, looking sick.
"Not that they knew," Cally said. "But I was nursing Nicky, and I was so scared that he would die without me. Literally. He was only three months old- what the frak was he supposed to eat? And I just remember sitting there in the cell pumping with my fingers because I had to keep my milk supply going, and it frakking hurt… and then that bitch Boomer walked in and started getting all superior about how she was so happy for Galen, and how they'd talked about having children some day. And all I could think was how much she was lying, because if she was really so happy and she was really so at peace with it, she would have let me go so I could feed Galen's baby. But she didn't even ask." She snorted. "It sounds silly, but-"
"No," Gaeta said, shaking his head. "It doesn't sound silly at all." He glanced at his watch. "Listen, have you got some time? If you do, I'll buy you a drink."
"I should be buying you one," Cally said. "After everything you've been through."
Gaeta grinned. "How about this- I'll buy the first round, and you buy the second?"
"Sounds good to me." Cally managed her first real smile of the day.
"Good." Gaeta smiled back. "I have the feeling you and I have a lot to talk about."
On to Part 5
Author: lls_mutant
Fic Summary: Tory might have pulled her from the launch tube, but Cally's life still felt like it was over. Everything she loved was gone, or at the very least, changed to something that she hated.
Chapter Summary: There are consequences to Earth, but no one seems to want to pay them.
Warnings: Suicidal thoughts (Cally), suicide (not Cally)
Pairings: Canon pairings, Galen is important in the story, but it's more gen.
Author's Notes : What Nicky retcon? Also, although I changed a few events to suit our purposes, most of this universe follows canon… just with Cally alive.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The room was dark, lit only by candles, and there was a smell of incense. There was no body like there might have been back on the Colonies- the damage done by the gun was sickening, and there were no resources to make Hoshi's face look even close to how it had looked before. A flag lay over the table in the center, ready to be folded and presented when the time came.
Cally was sitting in front row. It seemed strange given how short a time she'd actually known Hoshi, but when she'd entered the front two rows were largely empty, despite the number of people in the room. Dee had frantically gestured to her, and Cally had taken the empty seat next to her.
Gaeta was sitting on the other side of Dee, staring blankly in front of him even as the priest talked. His face was empty, but he clung to Dee's hand so tightly that his fingers were leaving imprints. Cally saw Dee wince once, but she didn't protest; just kept her eyes fixed forward. Her mouth was turned down in frown, and there was a small line between her eyes.
The priest was droning; Cally had been hoping to find peace in his words, but it completely eluded her. She just kept staring at that table with the flag, wishing that if she closed her eyes and just hoped hard enough, Hoshi would be sitting on her other side, warm and solid and comforting.
She didn't realize how lost in her own thoughts she was until the noise of Gaeta trying to stand startled her out of them. He was struggling to his feet- well, his foot and his prosthetic- with Dee's assistance, although he didn't actually acknowledge that she was helping him. He made his way to podium, his dress grays neatly buttoned and contrasting sharply with the uneven cut where he'd removed the cloth from the pants.
He swallowed hard and gripped the podium. "Forgive me if I keep this short," he said, and his voice was surprisingly even. "I know many of you in the room knew Louis Hoshi much longer than I did, as he served on the Pegasus for over ten years before the Pegasus ever found the Galactica. And maybe I'm not the one who should be speaking, as I only knew Louis in the last year of his life. But although our time together was too short, I thought he would be in my life for much longer, and I…" his voice broke, and he looked down at the podium and took a deep breath. "I hope you will forgive my presumption.
"I wish I could say that Louis died happy, but we all know he didn't. I wish he'd been closer to that family he'd always wanted, to that home he was constantly searching for, but every time he made a step towards that dream, I- it pulled away. Home was the one thing he wanted, and home was the one thing…" Gaeta's voice broke again, and Cally's heart broke with it.
"I think there was a time…" Gaeta continued into the silence, "I think there was a time when he almost had it. When he had the hope of Earth, and even… even when it wasn't said, he had love. He was loved. But that hope, that time, it was taken from him, and he should have had something else to catch him. He should have had something else- some other hope- anything to look towards. Something strong enough to pull him through. But he was left with nothing and I…" He took a breath and lifted his chin. "I know how he felt. All of us… when we lose that thing that matters, when we lose that hope… we're all left with nothing." His eyes met Cally's for a moment, and she realized that she was trembling and tears were streaking her race.
"I'm not a religious man. I never have been, although I know Louis was. I hope he's right. I hope he's there on the other side, and that he's found everything he's searching for. Gods, I hope he's right, but even if he's not, I hope he has peace. Because for frak's sake, he left little enough of it behind."
The priest waited for Gaeta to say more, but apparently that was it. He fumbled for his crutches and made his way back to his place beside Dee, his eyes focused on the wall so he wouldn't have to look at anyone. The priest cleared his throat. "Is there anyone else who has something that they would like to say?"
Silence, and then one of the Pegasus soldiers raised his hand. Cally recognized him as Abel Thornton, a bridge officer who Hoshi had mentioned many times. He took the podium, and with what truly looked like a glare at Gaeta, began a eulogy of his own.
Thornton's eulogy was obviously more what everyone expected. The lines of worry, confusion, and anger faded from the priest's face, and this time, Cally heard the occasional sounds of weeping in the gathering. Next to her, Dee relaxed and wiped her eyes. But the words slid right over Cally, not touching her despite their apparent sincerity. She sat the rest of the service in silence.
There was an almost palpable relief in the room when the priest uttered the final prayer. The tension broke, and people stood up to pay their respects. Cally was about to go around Dee to get to Gaeta when someone caught her arm. She turned and instinctively yanked her arm out of Colonel Tigh's hand.
Tigh noticed, and his good eye widened, but he didn't comment on it. Instead, he looked over at where Gaeta was still sitting, his head bowed. "Tell me so I don't make a frakking fool of myself," Tigh said softly, "were they lovers?"
"Yes."
Tigh nodded, and his face seemed to take on an extra element of compassion. "Thank you, Cally," he said, and then straightened up as he went to speak to Gaeta. Cally watched him, wondering what he thought he could possibly say, when he was one of the ones that had led them to Earth in the first place. If those frakkers had only-
As if summoned by her thoughts, Galen appeared beside her. "How are you doing?"
Cally glared up at him. "We're at a funeral. How do you think I'm doing?"
Galen sighed. "I'm sorry, Cally," he said, and Cally realized he was ignoring her outburst and going ahead with a pre-planned speech. "I know he was a good friend to you these past few months, and I'm really sorry for your loss."
"Thank you," she said stiffly.
"Listen," Galen said, "I'm probably not the one who should tell him this, so could you let Gaeta know that Baltar is planning on saying a few prayers for… what?" he asked.
"Baltar is planning on saying a few prayers?" Cally asked incredulously. "Baltar??
"Yeah. Look, I've been meaning to tell you that I've been going to his services, but the time just never seemed right. I haven't taken Nicky and I… what?"
"Baltar is planning on saying prayers for Gaeta's dead lover," Cally said. "Forgive me if I keep my frakking mouth shut about the stupidest idea I've heard all day, because a funeral isn't the place to say what I really think."
Galen blinked, and then she saw the pieces click together. "Okay," he sighed. "Maybe it's not a good idea to tell Gaeta?"
"You think?" Cally asked acridly.
"Frak," Galen sighed. "This is not how this was supposed to go. I just wanted…" Cally kept her gaze locked on him. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about your friend. I wasn't looking for a fight."
"Yeah, well." Cally looked around helplessly. "I should go say something to Gaeta."
"Yeah."
"Are you going to?" Cally asked pointedly.
Galen shifted, his hands shoved in his pockets. "Don't know if I'm the person he wants to see right now."
"You could say-"
"Say what? 'Sorry your lover shot himself because the place we led you to was a nuclear wasteland? And hey, while I'm at it, remember when I tried to toss you out the airlock? Good times, weren't they?' Trust me, Cally. I might not be the last person that Gaeta wants to see right now, but I'm in the top ten. I came her for you."
"Galen-" Cally closed her eyes.
"Go talk to Gaeta," Galen said. He patted her shoulder awkwardly, and then walked away.
Cally watched him go, and then turned back around to go talk to Gaeta. She had to wait; Vice President Zarek was talking to him. His voice was low and sympathetic, and his eyes were extremely kind and compassionate. Cally remembered seeing them together a few times on New Caprica, heads together and intent on whatever discussion they were having. She noticed that Roslin wasn't even in the room. Instead, it was Dee standing by the Admiral's side, talking awkwardly to him. Both of them kept casting dark glares at Zarek, who didn't seem to notice.
Zarek finally moved away to talk to some of the Pegasus crew, and Cally approached Gaeta. Much to her shock, Gaeta struggled out of his chair and met her with a hug. She hugged him back awkwardly at first, and then relaxing. When the pulled apart, Gaeta's eyes were wet.
"I'm so sorry," Cally whispered.
Gaeta hadn't completely let go of her; one of his hands was still on her shoulders. He cupped the back of her head gently. "Thank you. So much. Not just for what you said, but for being there for him when I couldn't."
His words were correct for the situation, and his voice was steady. But the hand on the back of Cally's head was hot and heavy¸ and Gaeta's eyes burned with a grieving intensity that bored through her and into her own soul. She swallowed hard.
I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have stopped him. I wish you could have stopped him, and then he'd still be here. I wish… I wish…. Her throat closed tightly around the words she desperately wanted to say, and some small part of her thought it was for the best, because those words would only hurt both of them worse. Instead, she just nodded.
They pulled fully apart from each other, and Cally sensed that Gaeta did so reluctantly. She was saved by Dee approaching and taking Gaeta's elbow, helping him to sit.
"I'll see you around," she told Gaeta awkwardly. She looked around to see if there was anyone else she should say something to, but the truth was she didn't want to. She just wanted to get out of here.
***
She found herself in the Remembrance Hallway. If something ever happens to me, can you make sure that they use that picture on the wall? The one of me and Felix? He'd asked her that right before he shot himself.
Cally hadn't brought the picture with her- it still hung in the locker waiting to be emptied. And looking at the faces of people who had died against their will, she wasn't sure she wanted to see it ever again.
***
Raptor 718 was just for transport now. It was sitting to the side of the hangar bay, dented and dinged. Cally climbed inside it, heedless of the dress she was wearing, and pulled her knees up to her chest and cried.
She was still crying when Danielle found her there, crept in and sat beside her, and wrapped her arms around her, rocking her as she sobbed. Cally leaned into her shoulder, holding on tight.
***
"Felix is finally asleep," Dee sighed, collapsing into a chair in Joe's. "Thank the Gods."
"Is he crying a lot?" Racetrack asked, a furrow of surprise between her eyebrows.
"No, that's the thing," Dee said. "Except for when it happened, I haven't seen him cry yet. I wish he would. But he just… he just stares bitterly."
Cally exchanged glances with Danielle. Danielle smiled at her encouragingly, like she thought the outburst in the Raptor had helped. The thing was, it hadn't. Cally looked down at the table. She wished she could say that it had.
Caroline sighed heavily. "That's rough on him, though. Gods, can you imagine? I mean, I get that Hoshi broke. Half this frakking ship- hell, half this frakking fleet is ready to break. But to know that you aren't enough to live for-"
"It doesn't work like that," Cally interrupted sharply, looking up. "He didn't do it to hurt Gaeta."
"I didn't say he did," Caroline retorted. "But it's got to feel that way to him anyway."
"You know it does," Dee said sourly. "Felix basically said as much in his eulogy."
Cally saw the airlock in her mind, as clear as if she was back in there. She shook her head angrily. "It's not what he meant," she insisted viciously.
"Cally…" Danielle said carefully.
Seelix cleared her throat. "The thing is," she said, "whether it hurt Gaeta or not, Gaeta was right about one thing. Hoshi should have felt like there was something else- like we could find some other sort of future."
"What sort of future?" Caroline demanded, taking a deep swallow of her drink. "Even if we find a habitable planet, the Ones, Fours, and Fives could come along and…" she made an explosion noise, expanding her hands. "Earth was the best shot we had at having a defense against that."
"They should have had another plan, rather than just some fake-"
"Earth wasn't fake! It was real!"
"Stop," Dee ordered tiredly. "Come on, guys. It's been a long few days for all of us. Let's just… can we just not talk about it?"
Seelix and Caroline glared at each other for a long moment, and Caroline relented first. "All right. Let's just drop it." Racetrack touched Seelix on the shoulder, and Danielle looked fixedly at her drink. Cally looked over at the bar, remembering the night she'd first met Hoshi there.
Do you like Galactica? she had asked him.
No. But what choice do I have? Those frakking toasters nuked everything else, and now the only thing that made this frakked up ship tolerable is gone, so… no. I can't stand it.
She could hear his voice in her head, as clearly as the day he'd spoken. And she knew she couldn't hate him for what he'd done, because if it wasn't for one of those frakking toasters, she would have done the exact same thing- just not over Earth.
***
"It's a virus," Cottle declared.
Cally bounced Nicky on her knee. -Nicky wasn't thrilled about being stripped down to his diaper and poked and prodded, but the blistered rash necessitated it. "Are you sure it's not an allergic reaction?" she asked desperately.
"To what?"
"The algae mash."
"We tested that a month ago. That rash was eczema. This time he's got the blisters. That's a viral infection. I can give you some salve for the pain, but otherwise, he's just got to ride this out."
"Frak," Cally sighed. "Sorry. It's just… my shifts and…"
"Yeah, I know," Cottle said. "But he'll be fine. If his fever spikes any higher, bring him back. You've got acetaminophen in your quarters, right?" Cally nodded. "One teaspoon every four hours to six hours. Give him liquids, keep him calm… you know the drill."
"Thank you, sir," Cally said with a sigh, wishing there had been something more that he could do. "Come on, Nicky," she said, hoisting him onto her hip. "Let's go get some sleep."
Cottle scribbled something on a pad. "Give this to Ishay," he said. "She'll get you the salve."
"Thanks." Cally accepted the prescription, and then with Nicky on her hip, worked here way through the infirmary.
She found Ishay examining Gaeta's stump. The sight turned Cally's stomach- the stump was raw and red and bleeding. She looked away hurriedly, and retreated backwards, pretending that she hadn't gotten as close as she had.
"You need to stay off it more," Ishay was admonishing Gaeta.
"I can't," Gaeta said. "If I stay off it… I can't. I need to keep busy."
"Then keep busy from a wheelchair," Ishay said firmly. She softened. "I know you're having a hard time, Felix, and I'll do what I can. But it's not just that the prosthetic doesn't fit right. It's that you shouldn't even be on a prosthetic yet."
Gaeta looked down, his lashes moving rapidly. Then he took a deep breath and looked up, steady and even. "If everything was as it should be, a lot of things would be different. We'd be on Earth, Louis would be alive, and we wouldn't have Cylons in command positions."
"Guess so." Ishay heaved a sigh. "Wait right here. I'll get you a new salve." She turned and saw Cally waiting. "Did you need something as well?"
Cally handed her the prescription, and Ishay was off with a short nod. "I'm sorry," she told Gaeta as Ishay left. "I didn't mean to intrude."
"No. It's all right," Gaeta said. He looked down at his ruined leg with a sour expression. "Not like I'm not getting used to it."
"How are you?" Cally asked, mainly to make conversation more than anything else.
Gaeta shrugged. "Can't complain," he said, and he gave the most sardonic smile Cally had ever seen. "Mainly because no one would listen if I did." He sighed heavily. "I'm sorry. I'm just not having a good day."
"No, I understand," Cally said.
"Yeah," Gaeta sighed. "You would. I meant it at the funeral, by the way. Louis talked about you a lot." He hesitated, his eyes darting back and forth to see if anyone was listening. "He told me you told him about the Chief and Tory and Tigh." Cally nodded, and Gaeta sighed again. "Frak, I wish I'd been here to help you guys out. Maybe between the three of us we could have convinced the Admiral… with enough evidence we could have made him see…. But I guess I had Cylon problems of my own."
"Sounds like it."
He looked at her sharply. "Did Louis tell you?"
"About what?"
"That it was Anders that shot me." Cally's eyes widened, and Gaeta kind of deflated. "I don't think it was because he was a Cylon," he admitted. "But still, you'd never know it from the way he's walking around, right? If I'd shot him, I'm pretty sure I'd be plotting coordinates from the brig."
Cally struggled to be fair. "They let you out after you stabbed Baltar."
Gaeta snorted. "That was Baltar," he said with no small amount of disdain, and Cally had to admit he had a point. "Besides, they needed me for the trial. Or they needed my credibility," he corrected.
Cally was about to say something when Ishay returned. She pressed a small tube into Cally's hand. "Put this on the blisters," she instructed. "It should help. If he has any sort of adverse reaction or the rash gets worse, come back immediately." Cally nodded, and Ishay handed Gaeta the jar she was holding. "You get this, but you're also about to get a long lecture on the needs of a recent amputee. Specialist, unless you have a good twenty minutes to listen to us argue, you might want to leave." Despite the firmness in Ishay's tone, her eyes were warm.
"Yes, sir," Cally agreed, and then patted Gaeta on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself," she told him. "Come on, Nicky. Let's go get you sorted out."
She left the infirmary, soothing Nicky. But her conversation with Gaeta bothered her, not because she didn't believe him about Anders and brig times, but because even though she didn't want to… she did.
***
"Cally. Can I get your help?"
"What's wrong?" Cally asked as Galen came striding towards her. She was finding that she had a hard time calling him Chief. It was easy with Laird, but Chief as applied to Galen was a whole different person in Cally's mind. It was hard to remember those days when he'd been something of a mentor to the younger deck crew members, and Cally really didn't want to.
"It's the jump drives on the Galactica," Galen said. "Dee said that last time we jumped she noticed a delay in the RCP relay. I want to run a diagnostic on it."
Cally looked at the Viper she was trying to repair and sighed. "Yes, sir."
"Hope it's nothing major," Galen said. "Our spare parts supply is pretty much gone."
"Same with our duct tape," Cally muttered.
He stared at her incredulously and then burst out laughing. "Come on," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, and just for a moment it did feel like those days so long ago, before the Cylons even attacked. "Let's go see if maybe she could just use a good hard kick."
As they made their way out of the hangar deck, Brooks stopped him.
"I'm headed over to the Zephyr to fix their oxygen scrubber," he told them. "Do either of you have a spare five sixteenths hex wrench? Mine snapped last week."
Galen shook his head, but Cally put her toolbox down and rummaged through it. "Get that one back to me," she warned him darkly. "I need it."
"Will do." He saluted, and then hustled over to where the shuttle would be waiting.
"You don't think you're going to need that one?" Galen asked.
Cally smiled mischievously. "Don't tell, but I have two."
Galen affected shock. "You've been holding out on us!" He laughed a bit, but the laughter petered out and the warm feeling of closeness drifted away. Although this time, it didn't leave Cally with that burning, angry emptiness inside. The anger was still there, but it was a dull, persistent ache, and she could bear it.
Galen opened the causeway, and Cally followed him in. He flipped open a casing, and Cally knelt down beside him.
"Okay," he said. "Hook the ohmmeter up. Let's see what's wrong with our girl here."
"You can't just plug in to yourself?" Cally asked.
Galen glared at her. "You've seen me naked. Any place you can suggest where I could stick a plug?" Cally opened her mouth, and Galen held up his hand. "Don't say it," he groaned. "I set myself up for that."
"You'd think you'd learn," Cally muttered cheerfully. She cleaned the meter's connections on her jumpsuit and began to hook up.
Dee's voice came over the PA system. "Action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship."
"Now there's some luck! Watch the relay, Cally!" Galen called, and as the jump drives began to spool up, they both stared intently at the relay.
"Jump!" Galen whispered, and Cally felt that familiar sensation twisting her stomach. She glared at the relay until her eyes burned, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"Frak," Galen sighed. "It looked fine. Let me see that." He took the ohmmeter from her, scrolling through to look at the data. "Whatever Dualla's hearing, it's not the relay," he finally said. "I want to talk to Gaeta, see if the ship jumped all right and if we're where we're supposed to be."
"I don't know if Gaeta's on shift," Cally said. She knelt down and started testing connections, just in case. "That was Dee's voice."
"Dualla, Gaeta, whoever. Just tell me where the ship is," Galen grumbled. He strode over to the hatch and heaved it open. "I'll be right back. I need to get to a phone."
"You do that," Cally said, absorbed in her work. She barely heard the hatch close.
It felt good in here. The room was nice and cool, and it was silent. Cally systematically tested each connection, noting the results as she worked. She barely even noticed the hatch opening back up.
"Well," Galen sighed, "we're where we're supposed to be. I guess we'll just keep an eye on it." He sighed. "Thing is, these drives are only going to last so long. They've been pushed past what they were ever intended for."
Cally really, really didn't want to think of the implications of that, so she focused on packing her tools back up. "Are we done here, then?"
"Yeah. We're done." Galen sighed. Cally wondered if he was going to attempt some other conversation, something more personal, but he looked tired. Instead, he hauled himself to standing. "Nicky doing okay?" he asked her.
"He's back to normal. Doc said the virus wouldn't last long," Cally said. She shifted her toolbox awkwardly. "I think he's looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."
"Yeah? Good. Me, too." Galen opened the door and they started back to the hangar bay. "Hey, Cally? How would you feel about me taking him to Baltar's services sometime?"
"You're asking?" Cally said, although it was more a rhetorical question. She thought about it. "I don't know," she finally admitted.
"They're not like what you'd think," Galen said. He paused, cleared his throat. "You could come with me first," he suggested. "See what they're like."
"Let me think about it."
"Let you think about it? It's not a categorical no?"
"It's not a yes, either," Cally reminded him firmly. "Just give me time to think."
"All right. If you want, I can- hey. What's going on?"
The deck didn't look abnormal. Mechanics were working on birds, working at presses, trying to make parts. But there was something… Cally felt it, too. An undercurrent of worry.
"Where's Laird?" Galen demanded. He spotted him and headed over, and Cally followed. "Laird!" Galen barked. "What's going on?"
"You haven't heard?" Laird asked.
"Would I be asking if I had?" Galen said, rolling his eyes.
"We jumped."
"I knew that," Galen said, and a pit began to grow in Cally's stomach.
"I wasn't finished," Laird said. "When we jumped, Raptor 718 was in transit. They jumped, too. But they never showed up at the new coordinates."
"Frak." Galen swore hard. "That's the one with the frakked PC12N chip, isn't it?"
"Yup."
Cally's mouth was dry, but she asked the question anyway. "Who was on it?"
Laird consulted a list. "Shark and Easy of course, two Eights, and Lieutenant Gaeta. And Brooks."
"Oh, frak," Galen sighed, but Cally couldn't say a thing.
***
She went down to check that night, but the Raptor was still missing. "We checked at both sets of coordinates," Hot Dog reassured her. "But there's nothing at either one. Not a clue as to where they could be. You have any idea where they might have jumped to? Chief said something about a chip being fried?"
"The bigger the jump, the greater the chance for malfunction," Cally said.
"Oh. Frak."
"Yeah. Frak."
***
Dee slammed her fork down. "That's it," she announced to the table. "I've had it."
"Had it with what?" Caroline asked, eyeing her warily.
"It's been two days," Dee said. "Two days, and that Raptor still isn't here. And no one is out there looking!"
"We haven't got the first idea where it could be," Danielle protested. "That's the problem. How are you supposed to find a Raptor in space with no clues?"
"We could try," Dee said. She turned to face Racetrack. "Listen. If I go to the Colonel and the Admiral over this, I think I can get them to listen. Especially the Admiral. If I can get him to agree to it, will you pilot me?"
"I can do that," Racetrack said, swallowing her bite of algae. "You sure you want to do this, Dee?"
Dee's face was set. "Felix has been my best friend for years," she said. "I'm not going to let him die without a fight. He's done so much for this Fleet. We should at least try to look for him. He deserves that."
There was a silence. And then, "I'll definitely pilot," Racetrack said. She smiled mirthlessly. "After all, I seem to be good at finding things."
"I hope you can get them to listen, Dee," Seelix said.
Cally just looked at her plate.
***
"I need to you to help me take inventory," Galen informed her a few hours later.
Why me? Cally wanted to complain, looking around the deck at all the other people that Galen could order to help him. But she had to hold her tongue. "Fine, sir," she said dully.
Galen raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment. Cally heaved a sigh and picked up the clipboard that was sitting on the tool bench and followed. As they crossed the hangar bay, she saw Dee and Racetrack, suited up and climbing into Racetrack's Raptor. Something about that turned her stomach, but Galen began talking.
"The Old Man wants to know exactly what we've got in terms of spare parts," he said conversationally. "Throughout the Fleet."
"Don't we have records of that?" Cally asked.
"Yeah, but this is different." A small smile played on the edges of Galen's mouth. "The Cylons on the basestar have offered to upgrade our FTL drives."
"What?" Cally stopped in her tracks.
Galen sighed exasperatedly. "Oh, come on, Cally. You've seen the state of Galactica's drives. We were just down there the other day looking at that relay, remember?"
"And it was fine," Cally said icily.
"But something's still up with the FTL drive. You know that."
"And the solution is to ask the Cylons to fix it?" Cally was incredulous. She shook her head angrily. The other day they had been warm and friendly. Cally should have known that that was a lie, just like everything else had been.
"Well, last time I checked, I'm a Cylon myself. A fact you know all too well."
"Well, there's something I don't get," Cally heard herself saying. Galen gave her that exasperated, go-ahead sort of gesture. "If you're a Cylon, why the frak were you Resistance on New Caprica?"
"Oh, so now you're finally asking that?" Galen demanded. "After all this time?"
"Just answer the question,"" Cally snapped.
"I don't know! Okay? I've been telling everyone that from the beginning. I don't know. God," he muttered. "I thought you had gotten to the point maybe I could talk to you like a normal human being, but man, I was wrong. Let's just do this, okay?"
Everything in Cally desperately wanted to fight against Galen on this one. If she could do what she wanted, she'd throw the clipboard down and storm away, refusing to have any part of this. But that wasn't an option. "Fine," she muttered, pushing her hair back behind her ear. "Let's go, sir."
***
"Clear the deck!" It was Tigh shouting, just as Cally came on to her shift. "Everyone, clear the deck!" He glanced around, and caught a few eyes. "You, you, and you," he ordered, pointing to Vireem, Cally, and Laird. "You three stay. Everyone else, out!"
Cally refused to even glance at Vireem, but she looked over at Laird, who shrugged. The landing bay began to empty, and she saw a pair of Raptors taxiing in, one pulling the other. Her heart lifted at the sight. "She found them!" she said breathlessly.
"Excuse me?" Laird asked.
"That's 718, isn't it?" Cally almost laughed in her relief. "Dee and Racetrack went looking for it, and they found it!" She waved as Dee jumped out of Racetrack's Raptor, but Dee didn't see her.
Medics entered the hangar bay, wheeling a gurney with them. The joy she'd felt turned into a heavy, cold dread. Tigh was striding forward, and Dee had climbed into the Raptor. In minutes Dee appeared again, Gaeta's arm around her neck as she struggled to help him off the Raptor.
"Frak me," Vireem said, and for once, Cally agreed with him. Gaeta's lips were blue, and he was covered with blood. Tigh hurried forward, but a medic pushed him out of the way and they brought the gurney closer. They got Gaeta settled wheeled him to the infirmary, Dee holding Gaeta's hand.
"Why just Gaeta?" Laird asked. "Weren't there other people in the Raptor?" No one answered.
Tigh climbed up and looked into the Raptor, and pulled out hurriedly. When he turned back to them, his face was white and his mouth was working funny, and Cally had the impression he was trying to keep from vomiting.
"What's going on?" Cally asked Racetrack as she joined them.
"I don't know," Racetrack said, and she looked just as pale as Tigh, "but Gaeta said that the rest of them were dead."
Tigh came over, clearing his throat. "All right," he told them. "We've got four bodies in there, and a hell of a lot of blood and guts. It's our job to get this Raptor cleaned and functioning again, and to keep our mouths shut while we do it. We'll get the whole story out of Gaeta when he can talk."
As long as she lived, Cally would never, ever forget the first moment she stepped into that Raptor. The blood, the smell, the bodies of people she knew, killed with slashes and stabs. And a scalpel, dark and bloody, lying on the floor. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away and never look back. Racetrack swallowed hard, and even Vireem looked completely repulsed. The only one who seemed unaffected was Laird.
It was gruesome work. The bodies alone would have been bad enough, but the smell was overpowering in the small Raptor, and there was blood in places there shouldn't have been blood, in crevices and splattered over the ECO keyboard. The one console had shorted out, and there was blood dried into the fabric of the pilots' seats. And there was the awful moment when she found her hex wrench on the top of Brooks' bucket of tools. Several times, Cally felt the gorge rise in her throat, but she kept working, grimly determined.
The worst of it was over and she was taking apart the ECO's keyboard, trying to get the blood out from between the keys when Cottle looked into the Raptor. "Colonel," he said. "Gaeta's awake."
"Good," Tigh grunted, and then looked back at the others. "You three stay here. And no one comes on this deck yet, got it? I'll be back soon." He followed Cottle out of the Raptor.
"Frakking toaster," Vireem growled. He looked around the Raptor and tossed his rag down. "Frak this. I need to get out of this thing."
"The Colonel said don't go anywhere," Laird reminded him.
"I'm not. But I'm getting out of this Raptor."
Laird sighed. "I can't say I blame him," he said. "Looks like we're about done in here anyway." He followed.
Cally wasn't going to argue. Being stuck in close quarters with Vireem was pretty high on her list of things she didn't want to do, and she relaxed just a little as they left. She was almost done with the ECO station when something caught her eye.
She leaned forward and spotted a small piece of paper, wedged into a tight crevice. She carefully pulled it out and wiped it off. It was a photo, and the faces hit her hard. It was the photo of Hoshi and Gaeta that she'd seen in Hoshi's locker. Somehow, she just knew that this was the same copy.
"Hey," Racetrack said from the pilot's seat, noting Cally's stillness. "You all right, Cally?"
"Yeah. I just found this." Cally held it up so Racectrack could see. Racetrack hoped over the seat and into the back so she could see better.
"Frak," Racetrack said. "It must have fallen out of Gaeta's pocket when he took off his jacket to put his flight suit on." She studied the picture better. "Good picture," she said. "Hard to believe he did what he did, looking at that."
"Not really," Cally said. "Sometimes, when something like that happens… I can't explain it."
"You don't really need to."
Cally glanced at her sharply. "You ever try it?" she asked.
Racetrack snorted. "For the first year after the attacks, almost every time I got in my Raptor I hoped like hell that one of those toasters would shoot me down. Not the same thing, I guess, but yeah. It just seemed like dying would be easier than dragging myself through another day on this ship. What about you?"
"After I found out Galen was a toaster," Cally said.
That disturbed Racetrack. "I didn't know that," she said, and Cally realized why she was disturbed.
"I knew before everyone else did," she reassured her. "About Galen and Tigh and Tory. We weren't close then."
"Frak! Cally, why didn't you tell the Admiral?"
Cally shrugged. "At the time, I would have asked you if he would have believed me," she said bitterly. "Now, I guess the better question is would it matter? Now he knows they're all toasters, and they're still in their jobs."
"Yeah," Racetrack said. "Guess so."
"Henderson! Edmondson! Get out here!" they heard Tigh calling.
"Great," Racetrack muttered, but she slid out of the Raptor. Cally took one last look at the picture before she slipped it into the pocket of her jumpsuit and followed.
Tigh was waiting for them; his face set in its usual angry expression. "We got the story out of Gaeta," he began as Cally and Racetrack approached. "Seems that something went wrong with the Raptor, some technobabble about subparticles and flipped data bits. I don't know about any of that, but the Raptor jumped beyond the red line. Which would have been fine, except that there was only so much air in the Raptor. Gaeta said that one of the Eights did the calculations and began killing off the others. She was going to kill him, too, until he killed her in self-defense."
"Should have known," Vireem began. "Frakking-"
"Shut your mouth," Tigh ordered him before Vireem could so much as say another word. "If Gaeta's telling the truth, she killed another Cylon first."
"Is Gaeta telling the truth?" Laird asked, sounding more curious than anything else.
Tigh sighed heavily. "Not sure," he admitted. "But if you'd asked me before I saw this bloody mess, I would have said that the last person to kill three humans would be Felix Gaeta. It's not really in him."
"It's always the quiet ones," Laird said with a shrug, something flashing in his eyes.
"Yeah, well, the Old Man believes him," Tigh said. "You all got that? The Old Man believes that what happened in that Raptor is the Eight went crazy because of oxygen depravation and killed them all, and Gaeta stopped her. That's the official version of events, and if I hear that any of the four of you said anything different, there's gonna be hell to pay. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now finish up. I'm going to open the deck back up and get this place moving again."
"I am not getting back in that Raptor," Vireem said as Tigh walked away.
"No, you're going over to get started on the fuelings. Cally, finish up, will you?" Laird was already moving on, headed to a new problem. Cally wondered if the sight of that Raptor had touched him at all.
She climbed back into the Raptor, staring around again. She'd spent days inside this damned Raptor, trying to get it to work.
With an angry, sudden motion, Cally grabbed a wrench and brought it down as hard as she could on the ECO console.
"Cally!" Racetrack ducked in, blocking the wrench before Cally could swing it again. "Cally! Stop! What the frak?"
"This was my fault," Cally snarled. "This damn Raptor… it should have been junked!"
"What are you talking about?" Racetrack asked. She managed to get the wrench out of Cally's hands.
"It was my call to put this Raptor on Fleet traffic," Cally said. "I knew the PC12N chip was fried. I knew this could have happened. But I made the call, and I-"
Racetrack sighed. "Okay. You need to get out of here. You're not the one to blame for this, okay? And this is me saying this, Cally." She grabbed Cally's shoulders and made her look at her. "I just lost two friends today, okay? I'm angry as hell, and I'm not blaming you for a perfectly reasonable call. There are other ways…" Racetrack's jaw hardened. "We should have been looking for them right away. You want to blame someone? There's a better reason that we didn't find them in time and stop this from happening. Not because you put a Raptor onto Fleet traffic only status, but because we waited two frakking days to look for that Raptor in the first place! Frak it!" She let go of Cally and slammed her hand against the side of the Raptor, hard enough to make the sound ring in their ears.
"And now, it's another funeral. Do you know how sick I am of funerals? Pilots are dying left and right, being shot down and being killed because our equipment is too frakking old! And when I have to stand up there and talk about Easy and how she died, what am I gonna say? That she died because a frakking toaster killed her with a scalpel while she was trapped in a Raptor? Apparently not, because apparently, we're not gonna talk about that! We're going to play nice with the genocidal robots now, because the Admiral's best friend IS one! It's disgusting. The whole frakking thing is disgusting." She fell back, sitting on the floor, crying.
Just a week ago Cally had been in this Raptor, doing the same exact thing when Danielle had found her. She sat down beside Racetrack now, rubbing her shoulders and wishing she could remember what Danielle had said to her then. But then, whatever she'd said, it hadn't really helped. Nothing could right now.
***
It took Cally a while to even work up the guts to approach Gaeta, and then after that, it took her a while to find him. He'd already been discharged from the infirmary, and was apparently back at work. "Doesn't seem to matter that this was supposed to be a vacation for him," Ishay said when Cally asked. "I convinced Tigh to get him off the ship because with all the reminders of Louis and the little recovery he's had on that leg, but a fat lot of good that did." She looked as angry as Cally felt.
She finally found Gaeta late that night, at Joe's bar, sitting at a table by himself in a corner. She could understand why he was alone- he radiated such a dark bitterness that it was even hard for her to walk over. But she took a deep breath and did.
"Can I join you for a minute?" she asked.
"Can't stop you," he said. "Can't stop much of anything." But he used his good leg to push the other chair out for her.
Cally sat, and then had no idea what to say. So she decided just to go for broke. "I'm sorry," she said.
Gaeta blinked at her. "Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry about the Raptor. I knew that the PC12N chip was fried and…" she stopped as Gaeta's eyes narrowed, and she held her breath for a long minute. She realized that the man looking at her might look like Gaeta, but he was someone she had never met before.
It was an impression that only lasted a moment. Gaeta shook his head, and then leaned forward. "Don't feel guilty about something you can't control," he said. "You know what happens when you try to take responsibility for things you can't control? You get frakked, that's what. People use it against you, and then you get frakked." He sat back. "I'm sorry, too. You knew Brooks, right?"
"Not well. He came over from the Pegasus and…" Cally shrugged. "Speaking of Pegasus people… I found this." She took out the picture and slid it across the table to Gaeta. "You must have dropped it."
"Yeah. Thanks." The expression his face as he looked at the picture made Gaeta look very young all of a sudden, despite the gray in his hair and the dark circles under his eyes. "I keep meaning to put it on the Remembrance Hall, you know? But I keep feeling like maybe if I don't…"
"Maybe he won't really be dead?"
"Something like that," Gaeta sighed. "Gods, nothing makes sense anymore. Everything's upside down. Louis is dead, people are fighting each other on the ships, the President is nowhere to be seen, and the Cylons are the Admiral's new best friends. Or old ones." He played with his drink. "It's insane."
"Can't argue with you there," Cally agreed. "At least when I found out Galen was a Cylon, I divorced his ass."
"Thought that might be why."
Cally rubbed her forehead. "I know that he had nothing to do with New Caprica. The frakked up thing is he was the best thing about New Caprica. And he and Tigh and Anders… they were blowing up skin jobs left and right. But at the same time, he's connected to them somehow. And the fact we don't know how… that scares me." Gaeta nodded and lit two cigarettes, and then handed one to her. Cally took it gratefully. "But still… I just remember that time when I was in the detention center. I still have nightmares about that."
"Did they torture you?" Gaeta asked, looking sick.
"Not that they knew," Cally said. "But I was nursing Nicky, and I was so scared that he would die without me. Literally. He was only three months old- what the frak was he supposed to eat? And I just remember sitting there in the cell pumping with my fingers because I had to keep my milk supply going, and it frakking hurt… and then that bitch Boomer walked in and started getting all superior about how she was so happy for Galen, and how they'd talked about having children some day. And all I could think was how much she was lying, because if she was really so happy and she was really so at peace with it, she would have let me go so I could feed Galen's baby. But she didn't even ask." She snorted. "It sounds silly, but-"
"No," Gaeta said, shaking his head. "It doesn't sound silly at all." He glanced at his watch. "Listen, have you got some time? If you do, I'll buy you a drink."
"I should be buying you one," Cally said. "After everything you've been through."
Gaeta grinned. "How about this- I'll buy the first round, and you buy the second?"
"Sounds good to me." Cally managed her first real smile of the day.
"Good." Gaeta smiled back. "I have the feeling you and I have a lot to talk about."
On to Part 5