BSG Fic: "Back to Earth" (1/8)
Watch me! I'm bearing fic!
Title: Back to Earth (1/8)
Pairings: Helo/Gaeta, eventually Helo/Sharon. Can be read with the occasional Gaeta/Baltar undertones if you're so inclined.
Genre: It's a gen story overall but with some slash and het b-plot. So it's kind of a gen hybrid. Decide for yourself if that's to your liking.
Rating: PG-13 for some sex, PTSD, bad language in the face of danger and, ya know, people killing robots.
Characters: Gaeta, Helo and Athena (minor characters are Anders, Dualla, Zarek and Hot Dog as well as some Eights and Sixes)
Spoilers: all the way up to 4.10
Beta: done by ebuchala. Thank you very much!
Summary: The Cylons find the fleet just when all high-ranking personnel is off ship. Galactica's b-team has to execute a rescue mission but Gaeta is depressed, Helo feels guilty, something's going on with Sharon, and everybody knows the plan is suicide anyway.
Chapter summary: Everybody looks at Gaeta.
Author's note: I'm currently getting the equivalent of my master degree. My first exam is coming up and the last one is in December. So I can by no means say how often I'll be able to update. It might take long. It might go fast. Depending on how much distraction I need from studying and on how much I need to home in on German verse (it's a bit confusing, switching languages like that). So there's no telling. Sorry. :-)
Felix had to suppress the urge to hit his console.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm down. He knew he was being irrational. He knew Galactica was just being old and slow as she’d always been old and slow, so there wasn’t a reason to get angry at all. Still. He felt like he had to snap at somebody, uncoil that tight knot of anger in his chest and stop hurting already.
Get a grip, Felix ordered himself, all too aware that Dee was watching him from her station. Most likely she wasn’t the only one. He should just be glad that Tigh and Adama weren’t here, having gone planetside with the President for the Gemonese settlers’ dedication ceremony. Not that Felix understood why they bothered. Earth was just a pile of dust, after all. Really, it was just a matter of time until the Cylons showed up. Felix almost snorted, forcing his fingers to go back to typing. Cottle said he was depressed.
Funny how he didn’t feel that different from before.
“Dradis contact, sir,” Hoshi remarked, caution in his voice. Not turning around, Felix pressed his lips together. “It’s raptor 558 back from patrol.”
“Asking for permission to land,” Dee added, dutifully waiting for confirmation.
Felix held his eyes trained to the screen. “Permission granted.” That was Athena and Helo’s patrol, he remembered, the only senior pilots who weren’t busy wasting fuel in a viper flyby. And thinking of Helo just set him on edge again. Helo was one of many subjects Felix didn’t want to think about ever again.
He knew that he really needed to be relieved. Phantom pain throbbing in his knee interspersed with fatigue pervaded his bones from sitting for too long. Something kept Felix from handing command over to Dee, though. Pride, probably. If there was any left. He wasn’t too sure about that these days.
Getting back to work, Felix finally managed to concentrate. He barely looked up when another Dradis alert interrupted the quiet. Just a second later he knew something was wrong though, Hoshi not having spoken up yet. When the lieutenant did, he sounded stunned.
“Oh frak. Dradis contact, sir! It’s the Cylons! Two raiders on Dradis!”
Felix twisted around on his chair, suppressing a hiss when his thigh protested soundly. Forcing himself to concentrate, he struggled up. “Tell the fleet to jump.” The order snapped out of him before the news even registered. Quiet watches or not, he’d been doing this for five years. Dreamt of it sometimes, actually. “Launch ready fighters, and get Captain Agathon up here. Now.” Because he so didn’t need to be responsible, not if the Cylons had found them while everybody important was away.
Frak, everybody was, weren’t they? Fear welling up, Felix reached for his crutches, cussing when he misjudged, one of them hitting the ground. Alghee was at his side then, though, putting an arm around his waist. Suppressing the new wave of anger, Felix thanked him with a nod and maneuvered down to the command table with a one-legged jump. Alghee handed him the crutch and Felix stabilized himself, staring at the Dradis monitors. Hoshi rushed past him, action stations alert ringing in the air.
The blips of two raiders were closing in on Galactica. And this was bad, Felix realized how truly bad this was. People were still delusional enough to believe that the Cylons wouldn’t come, that they couldn’t because this was Earth and that if they came, it would take them longer than just ten days to do so. The mere fact that Adama had left the cripple navigator in command of Galactica really said it all.
They had protocols for this, of course. They jumped when this happened, no matter if there were people planetside or not. Except that Adama wasn’t on board and you didn’t just leave without your commander... oh frak.
“Ready fighters are on their way,” Dee said tersely. “They’ll make contact in one minute.”
Redwing and Longshot were calling in over the wireless. Not their best shots but sufficient for a scouting patrol. They’d shoot the raiders down alright. And two minutes from now, when these raiders didn’t return home the Cylons would know something was up. They sure wouldn’t assume their raiders had just snuck off for a little R&R. There would be basestars jumping into Earth orbit any minute.
“The fleet jumped away, sir.” Hoshi hopped up to the FTL station. “Galactica jump prep is completed.” Everybody had moved through the routine nicely, swiftly and at any other point in time it would have irked Felix, everything going so damn smoothly (everything except him). Now, it looked like he had finally found something that distracted him from his personal life. Or the lack thereof.
They couldn’t seriously consider jumping, could they? He couldn’t possibly have Galactica...
Where the frak was Helo when he needed him for once?
“You take the left one, I’ll take the right one!” Redwing was shouting at Longshot on the wireless. “Do it by the numbers, Ensign!”
It had to be easy to be a pilot, in some ways. In a viper, you never had to wait.
“Charge!” rumbled Redwing and with sick satisfaction, Felix watched one of the blips flicker and vanish from Dradis, knowing that from now on, they’d stay dead at least. Redwing whooped.
“Second raider is down,” Longshot reported, and the second blip was gone.
Just waiting for Felix’ okay, Dee ordered them back home. Hands tightening around the handles of his crutches, he stared at the screen.
He knew how you did it by the book. He’d frakked up his life by doing it by the book after all, but he had an idea that for this case especially, the book didn’t hold all the answers. If they jumped now and came back later, a whole Cylon fleet would be expecting them. The Old Man and the XO were down planetside. Most senior pilots were down planetside, and the only reason Felix would be acting XO in a scenario like this was because by now, he was easily the most senior lieutenant to ever have served in the Colonial Fleet.
The president was down there and she was terminally sick.
Baltar is down there somewhere.
Felix grabbed the crutches so hard that it hurt.
What the frak was keeping Agathon?
Dee behind him: “Vipers are back home, sir.”
In the corner of his eye, Hoshi’s hand was hovering over the jump control switch. “Sir?”
“Wait.”
Feeling every pair of eyes on CIC glued to him, realizing that none of them knew what to do either Felix suddenly felt himself grow calm. Every single person in this room was scared shitless about this choice, this attack, and happy as hell that they had him to make that call for them. But it wasn’t that difficult. If they lost their command crew now, all bets were off, true. If they stayed, though... if they stayed, they were dead.
With detachment, Felix remembered New Caprica, comparing. There were about 500 settlers down on Earth. It must have been a bit like this a year ago, too, except this time around Felix was in charge, and wasn’t that just one cosmic joke?
The Dradis alarm started screeching. Hoshi confirmed the contact.
Face hard, Felix was still staring at the screen. He felt like he was made of ice, lost leg throbbing somewhere far away.
“A basestar has jumped into sensor range at point six, six, oh...”
Chief Tyrol was down there, too, he remembered, sticking close to the few of the allied Cylons who’d insisted on going down.
“... correcting. Two basestars have jumped into range.”
“Sir?” Dee sounded scared.
It was basic math really, and it was simple, too. As CO, Felix was responsible for the whole fleet. There were about 500 people down on Earth plus the visitors from Galactica and the Quorum, and there were 39000 defenseless people waiting to be protected at the emergency jump coordinates. If that wouldn’t add up for the Old Man... well. Felix smirked. If there was one thing he was better at than Adama, it was probably math, he thought ironically.
He just had to hope that Adama would actually survive and get an opportunity to dress him down.
“Mr. Hoshi,” Felix ordered, noticing to his own surprise that his voice didn’t waver. “Execute jump!”
Hoshi confirmed. The sound of approaching and halting footsteps belatedly registering, Felix looked up to the CIC doorway. Helo was standing frozen in place, staring up at the Dradis screen, taking it all in. For a second, his eyes flickered away and met Felix’. And Helo didn’t call back the order, he didn’t even open his mouth. Felix saw he knew he couldn’t.
“Executing jump in three... two... one...”
Automatically, Felix grabbed the command table to hold himself up.
Galactica jumped.
--> Chapter 2
Feedback would make me very happy. :)
Title: Back to Earth (1/8)
Pairings: Helo/Gaeta, eventually Helo/Sharon. Can be read with the occasional Gaeta/Baltar undertones if you're so inclined.
Genre: It's a gen story overall but with some slash and het b-plot. So it's kind of a gen hybrid. Decide for yourself if that's to your liking.
Rating: PG-13 for some sex, PTSD, bad language in the face of danger and, ya know, people killing robots.
Characters: Gaeta, Helo and Athena (minor characters are Anders, Dualla, Zarek and Hot Dog as well as some Eights and Sixes)
Spoilers: all the way up to 4.10
Beta: done by ebuchala. Thank you very much!
Summary: The Cylons find the fleet just when all high-ranking personnel is off ship. Galactica's b-team has to execute a rescue mission but Gaeta is depressed, Helo feels guilty, something's going on with Sharon, and everybody knows the plan is suicide anyway.
Chapter summary: Everybody looks at Gaeta.
Author's note: I'm currently getting the equivalent of my master degree. My first exam is coming up and the last one is in December. So I can by no means say how often I'll be able to update. It might take long. It might go fast. Depending on how much distraction I need from studying and on how much I need to home in on German verse (it's a bit confusing, switching languages like that). So there's no telling. Sorry. :-)
Felix had to suppress the urge to hit his console.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm down. He knew he was being irrational. He knew Galactica was just being old and slow as she’d always been old and slow, so there wasn’t a reason to get angry at all. Still. He felt like he had to snap at somebody, uncoil that tight knot of anger in his chest and stop hurting already.
Get a grip, Felix ordered himself, all too aware that Dee was watching him from her station. Most likely she wasn’t the only one. He should just be glad that Tigh and Adama weren’t here, having gone planetside with the President for the Gemonese settlers’ dedication ceremony. Not that Felix understood why they bothered. Earth was just a pile of dust, after all. Really, it was just a matter of time until the Cylons showed up. Felix almost snorted, forcing his fingers to go back to typing. Cottle said he was depressed.
Funny how he didn’t feel that different from before.
“Dradis contact, sir,” Hoshi remarked, caution in his voice. Not turning around, Felix pressed his lips together. “It’s raptor 558 back from patrol.”
“Asking for permission to land,” Dee added, dutifully waiting for confirmation.
Felix held his eyes trained to the screen. “Permission granted.” That was Athena and Helo’s patrol, he remembered, the only senior pilots who weren’t busy wasting fuel in a viper flyby. And thinking of Helo just set him on edge again. Helo was one of many subjects Felix didn’t want to think about ever again.
He knew that he really needed to be relieved. Phantom pain throbbing in his knee interspersed with fatigue pervaded his bones from sitting for too long. Something kept Felix from handing command over to Dee, though. Pride, probably. If there was any left. He wasn’t too sure about that these days.
Getting back to work, Felix finally managed to concentrate. He barely looked up when another Dradis alert interrupted the quiet. Just a second later he knew something was wrong though, Hoshi not having spoken up yet. When the lieutenant did, he sounded stunned.
“Oh frak. Dradis contact, sir! It’s the Cylons! Two raiders on Dradis!”
Felix twisted around on his chair, suppressing a hiss when his thigh protested soundly. Forcing himself to concentrate, he struggled up. “Tell the fleet to jump.” The order snapped out of him before the news even registered. Quiet watches or not, he’d been doing this for five years. Dreamt of it sometimes, actually. “Launch ready fighters, and get Captain Agathon up here. Now.” Because he so didn’t need to be responsible, not if the Cylons had found them while everybody important was away.
Frak, everybody was, weren’t they? Fear welling up, Felix reached for his crutches, cussing when he misjudged, one of them hitting the ground. Alghee was at his side then, though, putting an arm around his waist. Suppressing the new wave of anger, Felix thanked him with a nod and maneuvered down to the command table with a one-legged jump. Alghee handed him the crutch and Felix stabilized himself, staring at the Dradis monitors. Hoshi rushed past him, action stations alert ringing in the air.
The blips of two raiders were closing in on Galactica. And this was bad, Felix realized how truly bad this was. People were still delusional enough to believe that the Cylons wouldn’t come, that they couldn’t because this was Earth and that if they came, it would take them longer than just ten days to do so. The mere fact that Adama had left the cripple navigator in command of Galactica really said it all.
They had protocols for this, of course. They jumped when this happened, no matter if there were people planetside or not. Except that Adama wasn’t on board and you didn’t just leave without your commander... oh frak.
“Ready fighters are on their way,” Dee said tersely. “They’ll make contact in one minute.”
Redwing and Longshot were calling in over the wireless. Not their best shots but sufficient for a scouting patrol. They’d shoot the raiders down alright. And two minutes from now, when these raiders didn’t return home the Cylons would know something was up. They sure wouldn’t assume their raiders had just snuck off for a little R&R. There would be basestars jumping into Earth orbit any minute.
“The fleet jumped away, sir.” Hoshi hopped up to the FTL station. “Galactica jump prep is completed.” Everybody had moved through the routine nicely, swiftly and at any other point in time it would have irked Felix, everything going so damn smoothly (everything except him). Now, it looked like he had finally found something that distracted him from his personal life. Or the lack thereof.
They couldn’t seriously consider jumping, could they? He couldn’t possibly have Galactica...
Where the frak was Helo when he needed him for once?
“You take the left one, I’ll take the right one!” Redwing was shouting at Longshot on the wireless. “Do it by the numbers, Ensign!”
It had to be easy to be a pilot, in some ways. In a viper, you never had to wait.
“Charge!” rumbled Redwing and with sick satisfaction, Felix watched one of the blips flicker and vanish from Dradis, knowing that from now on, they’d stay dead at least. Redwing whooped.
“Second raider is down,” Longshot reported, and the second blip was gone.
Just waiting for Felix’ okay, Dee ordered them back home. Hands tightening around the handles of his crutches, he stared at the screen.
He knew how you did it by the book. He’d frakked up his life by doing it by the book after all, but he had an idea that for this case especially, the book didn’t hold all the answers. If they jumped now and came back later, a whole Cylon fleet would be expecting them. The Old Man and the XO were down planetside. Most senior pilots were down planetside, and the only reason Felix would be acting XO in a scenario like this was because by now, he was easily the most senior lieutenant to ever have served in the Colonial Fleet.
The president was down there and she was terminally sick.
Baltar is down there somewhere.
Felix grabbed the crutches so hard that it hurt.
What the frak was keeping Agathon?
Dee behind him: “Vipers are back home, sir.”
In the corner of his eye, Hoshi’s hand was hovering over the jump control switch. “Sir?”
“Wait.”
Feeling every pair of eyes on CIC glued to him, realizing that none of them knew what to do either Felix suddenly felt himself grow calm. Every single person in this room was scared shitless about this choice, this attack, and happy as hell that they had him to make that call for them. But it wasn’t that difficult. If they lost their command crew now, all bets were off, true. If they stayed, though... if they stayed, they were dead.
With detachment, Felix remembered New Caprica, comparing. There were about 500 settlers down on Earth. It must have been a bit like this a year ago, too, except this time around Felix was in charge, and wasn’t that just one cosmic joke?
The Dradis alarm started screeching. Hoshi confirmed the contact.
Face hard, Felix was still staring at the screen. He felt like he was made of ice, lost leg throbbing somewhere far away.
“A basestar has jumped into sensor range at point six, six, oh...”
Chief Tyrol was down there, too, he remembered, sticking close to the few of the allied Cylons who’d insisted on going down.
“... correcting. Two basestars have jumped into range.”
“Sir?” Dee sounded scared.
It was basic math really, and it was simple, too. As CO, Felix was responsible for the whole fleet. There were about 500 people down on Earth plus the visitors from Galactica and the Quorum, and there were 39000 defenseless people waiting to be protected at the emergency jump coordinates. If that wouldn’t add up for the Old Man... well. Felix smirked. If there was one thing he was better at than Adama, it was probably math, he thought ironically.
He just had to hope that Adama would actually survive and get an opportunity to dress him down.
“Mr. Hoshi,” Felix ordered, noticing to his own surprise that his voice didn’t waver. “Execute jump!”
Hoshi confirmed. The sound of approaching and halting footsteps belatedly registering, Felix looked up to the CIC doorway. Helo was standing frozen in place, staring up at the Dradis screen, taking it all in. For a second, his eyes flickered away and met Felix’. And Helo didn’t call back the order, he didn’t even open his mouth. Felix saw he knew he couldn’t.
“Executing jump in three... two... one...”
Automatically, Felix grabbed the command table to hold himself up.
Galactica jumped.
--> Chapter 2
Feedback would make me very happy. :)