Fic: "In Limbo" (Battlestar Galactica)
Title: In Limbo
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Seelix, Cally, Racetrack
Pairings: none
Genre: gen
Spoilers: up to season 4, episode 3
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 4600
Status: one shot, finished
Author's Note: written for galpalficathon for the prompt "Racetrack, Seelix, and Cally / baby-sit"
Summary: After surviving an apocalypse, moral ambiguity is a luxury.
-
Seelix really frakking wished that she could take Racetrack's advice and just not care about any of the damage her bird took on. Except every time there was a ding on her Viper or she saw some other idiot blasting out the right rear thruster, she got frakking pissed thinking of how much extra time that was going to take to clean up. So frak yeah, she wasn't focused enough. But she was still flying, and that was enough.
When she got out of the Viper, being extra careful to avoid the parts that were sparking, Seelix's eyes were raw and she could barely hear Racetrack yelling. Which was an accomplishment considering how loud she could bellow. "The frak, nugget!" Seelix caught in the middle. "What the frak kind of unfocused pile of lousy flying was that?"
Seelix hadn't slept in 19 hours and she had a good 20 minutes of work before she could get in her rack and her fingers were shaking. "That's Thursday, Sir," she replied. It was always better to not mention how her knees felt like they would give out, they might end up taking her off rotation or shoving stims down her throat. Let the other lazy nuggets think she was slacking, she didn't care.
"Tomorrow you will go out and and you will not fly like you've just gotten off of a weeklong bender, Hardball," Racetrack growled, and switched to another target. Seelix could hear Figurski snickering from 2 birds over, or that might be that he got a nice view of Racetrack's ass. Either way, Seelix was ignoring him.
Her toes were aching, piloting was really frakking strenuous. She made sure that she was hidden behind a bird before gasping for breath. "Hey," Cally said from hidden in the supply closet.
"Hey, Cally," Seelix gasped. There was the sort of loud squeak behind them that signaled something bad and they both winced together. "Frakking Nuggets can't deal with engaging the brake safety right," she grumbled.
"I hear you," Cally sighed, checking parts from her checklist. "You've gotta get some sleep though, Seelix. It's okay if you need to take some rack time instead of watching Nicky tomorrow."
But that wasn't going to happen, 'cause she'd been planning on taking Nicky for weeks. "Of course I'm taking the runt," Seelix laughed, "I've got the extra toys laid out and everything." She didn't look too hard for the gratefulness on Cally's face, but Cally was always good on her favors. Seelix started moving slowly out of the flight deck and towards her rack.
"Just don't let him into the booze," Cally smiled, inspecting a blown fusebox. "He should be at least 3 before he gets into the hard stuff."
"Yeah," Seelix said. She didn't bother to say goodbye or anything like that. Her shoulders were shaking with fatigue and her feet felt heavy and she was going to see Cally tomorrow anyways.
And frak, flight suits were really frakking heavy.
-
Seelix is really tight with Cally. Cally's probably the best friend she's got, since back on Kobol. Seelix doesn't think about Kobol a lot, but she thinks about it enough. Back on New Caprica, the cold would make her leg ache where it was shot. It aches in the same spot when she's in the cockpit.
But she doesn't think about what happened on Kobol when her leg aches, except to remember the firefight when Cally dragged her out. It's easier not to think about Tarn and Socinus and what happened to Crashdown.
She only talked to Cally about it once, while the Chief was still on Pegasus and they thought he'd be executed. She doesn't like to think about Cally that way, with her eyes all wide and pleading. Crashdown was an idiot jock. It's almost easy to forget about the hike through the forest and the burns and the aching and Socinus crying out whenever they hit a bump.
It's just that Kobol was very green, and wet, and full of cylons. They lost a lot of good men down there. Seelix was shot in the leg in a firefight on the way out, and then she went back to Galactica.
Cally dragged her out of there and saved her life, so that's good for something. Good for more than one thing, really. And watching her kid wasn't that bad.
Even for the couple of weeks after Cally and the Chief were in the sickbay after the airlock. That almost didn't count, since she should've been in there too. She did that for the hours she spent outside, watching them fight and lose oxygen.
In times like these, when it's after the end of the world and every day is just about survival, every ally is a good one. Seelix didn't expect to make friends, but Cally's a good one. The free booze is just the icing. Well, since there was no icing, everybody had taken to saying free booze instead of icing. So the free booze was just the free booze.
They know each other's weak spots. They know about Kobol and New Caprica and the airlock. And about working on birds and dealing with cylons. A nice thing to have. Figurski thought they were doing each other, but he was just a harmless old perv.
They were friends; they didn't ever braid each other's hair.
-
Seelix paced down the halls with Nicky, holding him on her hip. Nicky loved looking at the doorways and fixtures and he was always quieter when he was moving. Seelix had been doing it for probably 2 hours, but her legs hadn't started to get tired and the bunks probably still had the game of strip triad going on. The Chief would probably kill her if he found out that Nicky had accidentally seen Racetrack's boobs.
It was almost nice, kind of rhythmic, just walking and listening to Nicky gurgle. Every once and a while she would switch hips and wipe the drool from her shoulder, but she just walked laps from the flight deck to the CIC to the sickbay to the crew quarters and back, using all of the side hallways and avoiding the hatch combings. She knew how to deal with Nicky the best after she had to take him after the airlock.
They walked by the babysitting quarters and Nicky waved, getting the girls in charge to wave back.
Someday, Seelix would get Nicky in the flight deck for real, maybe in a miniature little orange jumpsuit and let him see all the tools in the storage locker. Nicky loved his Dad's old blunted tools and going around clanking things.
They passed Racetrack in the halls and Racetrack glared, turning around and running after them. She called, "What did I say about getting some rack time, Nugget?"
"Just babysitting for the Chief, Sir," Seelix said, continuing to walk. "Nicky likes to be carried around."
"You are supposed to be focused in the cockpit," Racetrack grumbled, "If your stealth formation isn't flawless tomorrow, I'm gonna have you doing push ups on the flight deck."
"Yes, Sir," Seelix grumbled and turned to the next side hallway. Racetrack looked like she'd follow her, but Helo walked by and she got distracted.
Nicky was supposed to go back in 2.5 hours, and there was a lot of walking left to do. He could probably have a nap in an hour if she timed it right. "C'mon, Nicky," Seelix sighed. "Let's go see the sights some more." She didn't use baby talk with him; Seelix figured that the kid already had enough to cry about.
To entertain herself, Seelix counted all of the dead light bulbs on the way from the crew quarters to the flight deck. 38.
-
Seelix was 20 minutes into learning a complicated piloting maneuver, something that was going to involve barrel rolls that Starbuck had invented, when she went to adjust her thrusters and there was a 7 second lag. The frakking viper had busted the frakking rear electrical buffer panel, and she had about 35 minutes before it would blow. "This viper's broken, I'm going in for an emergency landing," Seelix grumbled into the comm.
It took her 3 tries with the busted thrusters to land properly, and by the time she was out of the cockpit the Chief was waiting. "What's the problem, Ensign," he smiled, teasing her. "Was your helmet on too tight?"
"The front thruster is lagging and the indicator won't go on," Seelix called. "I think it's the rear electrical buffer acting up." Old vipers had all kinds of technical problems and everybody was told to be careful.
It was. Seelix was good at diagnosing that kind of stuff. The Chief had Cally run out to the supply closet to get a spare. "We can rewire this one," The Chief said, idly examining the engine. "You avoided a blowout, good one."
By the time the new buffer panel was halfway installed, Racetrack had landed her Raptor and was ready to start yelling. The Chief cut her off before she got 3 words out. "Busted electrical buffer, would've blown, we're replacing it and the old part can be salvaged. It was the right call." If it were Starbuck, she would've rolled her eyes, but Racetrack just nodded.
"Hardball, a busted viper means you're not going to be able to fit into this training rotation," Racetrack said, climbing back inside her Raptor and holding her helmet in her hands. "At the rate the other nuggets are going, we'll be doing it again tomorrow."
Seelix took off her helmet and spent the rest of the rotation replacing faulty fuel lines.
-
"I'm going to talk with Apollo," Racetrack from inside the showers. "You're the only one of my pilots that has to keep working on the deck on the off hours."
"Part of the agreement, even if it's informal," Seelix said, making sure to keep her eyes down. Just because Racetrack had no modesty didn't mean that Seelix had to share it. "I wouldn't brave Apollo for it."
Apollo wasn't likely to do anything. He didn't do much at all once Starbuck died. It was bad enough having Longshot moping in the cockpit, but Apollo walked around like he owned all of the grief everywhere. Like the other pilots didn't miss Starbuck and her bad jokes and cigar. He was turning into a crotchety son of a bitch, and now there was no Starbuck to snap him out of it.
"Still," Racetrack said, wrapping herself in a towel. "You're not half-bad and I don't want you burning out." Seelix didn't suck, and that made her better than at least half of her class.
Racetrack was alright, aside from her thing for Helo. The man had some good arms, but he was a toasterfrakker. Nobody teased her about it. They didn't have much in common.
Probably Racetrack would be one of the Old Man's favorites in a few months after he finished grieving Starbuck. There were always a few of them, and now he was missing one. Most everybody wanted the Old Man to like them, to be able to counsel him or something like that. Racetrack would probably be next, the Admiral liked his flight instructors.
The Old Man liked Cally, enough to know her name and seek her out in the halls. He gave her shorter brig time and visited her in the sickbay sometimes. But in the end, all it ended up meaning was when the Chief was helping with the labor union, he put Cally up against the bulkhead and threatened a Pegasus.
Most of the time, it was better to be unknown. Seelix avoided the Adamas whenever she could.
-
A few days after babysitting, Cally stopped over at the nugget's quarters with a bottle of the Chief's best rotgut. Seelix wasn't the second most popular nugget after Anders for nothing. She kicked ass in triad and she always had the best booze.
It wasn't anything special or especially weird to see Cally there, smiling. Sometimes Cally would loosen up and tell some jokes. For someone so small, she had an unbelievably filthy mouth when she tried. They saw each other around sometimes, not a whole lot now that Seelix was flying.
"Anytime you need me again, just let me know," Seelix said, taking the bottle. She knew things were tense between Cally and the Chief, she had eyes. Hopefully the alone time did them good.
"Thanks again," Cally said, moving to sit next to Seelix on the rack. "You liking piloting okay?"
Cally had known that she wanted to fly since Seelix did. "Yeah," she said, smiling. "The showers are better." They both laughed for a little bit. Seelix hadn't wanted to fly because she loved the cockpit, she had just wanted to kill some cylons. You can't do that working on the birds and both of them knew it.
Cally twisted a little, rubbing her side. She'd been having problems with the old gunshot wound since going through the airlock. Seelix wrapped an arm around Cally's shoulders, and it was so easy to do that when Cally was so tiny. Everybody did it, it was just what you did with her. "I'm okay," Cally sighed. "Really. I should probably go pick up Nicky now, though."
Seelix hid the booze under her pillow and walked Cally out. "Thanks for the booze," Seelix said, hugging her.
"Of course," Cally said, and left.
Seelix didn't really see her again for a couple of weeks, but they both knew that things were going to get crazy.
-
Getting in after a good landing, Seelix took a few seconds and just sat in the cockpit letting her muscles lose some tenseness before taking her helmet off.
When she got out, Racetrack and Cally were pretending to argue. Racetrack got like that sometimes when she was hungover, and the strip triad game had gone until 3 hours before the rotation. Cally was under Racetrack's Raptor, fixing the wiring on the panel that lead to the artillery release, and Racetrack was sitting on the edge of the exit with her legs dangling off. "Don't you mess with me, Specialist," she shouted. "I've done hard time."
"My time's been harder," Cally laughed, and the panel sparked at her fingers.
"Ooh, I'd forgotten about that one," Racetrack replied. "How accommodating did you find the Astral Queen anyways?"
"Tasty," Cally returned. "You'd like it there, they've got some great vacation packages." Seelix had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
"I guess you got some secret prison tattoos then, Specialist Lazy?"
"In the brig, I did," Cally returned. "I got a portrait of your mom right on my ass. The Chief kisses it every night."
From across the room, Athena made a big show of looking insulted, getting Helo to pull her away from the area. Like it wasn't hard enough having a cylon in the flight deck that looked just like Boomer. It was only her fault that she had Boomer's memory and what happened to Boomer was none of Athena's business.
Boomer had shot the Old Man and she had it coming, and that was the end of it. And Athena could just get the stick out of her ass.
As far as Seelix was concerned, even if Athena had turned good when she found Helo on Caprica and didn't do anything bad from then on, she'd still willingly blown the Colonies to pieces and helped kill billions of humans. Having a freaky mutant kid didn't change that, and she was only pretending to be human because she liked Helo's cock so much. Seelix looked at her and saw all of her family dead, and all of the families of everybody on the Galactica nuked to death. You don't just forgive that.
So Seelix hates cylons, everybody knows it. Everybody with sense, that is. It's old news, and it's not like hating cylons effects her job performance or anything like that. When she was still a deckhand, she worked on Athena's Raptor like she worked on everybody else's. She tolerates them and does her job and then goes back to her rack like everybody else.
When she calmed down and looked back over at Racetrack, Cally had moved to another Raptor and Racetrack was making eyes doe eyes at Helo. And she had wasted 4 perfectly good sleeping minutes doing nothing in the flight deck. So Seelix decided to stop wasting time and get to the showers. If the cylon on the flight deck made her lose concentration, it wasn't anybody's fault but her own.
-
Everybody was talking about the Baltar trial and Seelix just didn't frakking care.
She was with him on Kobol and it was obvious that he was completely nuts even back then. And everybody on Galactica knew how he used to talk to himself in the halls. So the guy was crazy and shouldn't have been president.
He put them on New Caprica, he didn't guard them from the cylons and when they came, he just surrendered. Baltar let them kidnap the girls and build the prisons and take innocent people and throw them in prison. He signed a death warrant letting them kill every important person they could find. Some people said that he'd been shacking up with one of the blonde cylons on planet.
So yeah, Seelix wanted him dead. But she didn't really care. The Gods had punishment for everyone that deserved it, and he deserved it. Seelix was ready to stop the discussion already.
If there was proof, then he'd be thrown out the airlock same as the other collaborators.
Seelix remembers the circle. She doesn't regret it.
She doesn't really think about it a lot, sometimes when she goes past Jammer's flight tube or whenever she goes out it, which isn't often. Sometimes she has dreams about him, too, the look on his face right before the vent opened. But that doesn't really matter. Jammer had to die because he was a collaborator. He chose to put the mask on and go be a cylon henchman, and he chose all that.
Seelix just handed it down. She would've done it for anybody, anybody at all. Even Cally, if she'd done it. It wasn't personal. So Jammer was her friend, he betrayed her and the Colonies. It wasn't like she dreamed about him a lot; it wasn't like she regretted it.
They were in a war, and people that collaborated with the cylons were a security liability and didn't deserve to live, and it was that simple.
-
Everybody seems to forget about how much New Caprica sucked, even a lot of the people that were there.
Well, Cally doesn't, but Cally has a good memory. Cally spent most of the time down there pregnant and terrified for Nicky, in between getting thrown into prison for no reason and an attempted execution for no reason. Sometimes Cally would sit up in the tent, back when the cylons first came and the Chief didn't want her left alone so the old deck crew would take shifts, and she would just stare and rub her jaw. She didn't ever do it in front of the Chief, 'cause she didn't want him to feel guilty, but everybody could tell that it ached in the cold. People used to give her pieces of root to suck on. Or when they were hiding in the caves. Cally remembers all that, even though they don't really talk about it.
But New Caprica frakking sucked. It was cold and rainy and everything was drizzly all the frakking time. The fire never got hot enough and the tents were cramped and there were cylons patrolling down the streets, people stolen in the middle of the night, and all kinds of frakking shit. It was a frakking shithole.
Some of the pilots, dumb jocks that never went down to the surface talk about how they'd like to go back there to get some rest. If Starbuck were there, she'd smack them in the face, Starbuck was always good for that. They say New Caprica like it was a vacation and not a shithole that they were stuck on, crawling with cylons, waiting to get slaughtered. And watching the kids get coughs that just wouldn't go away, and how people that weren't healthy got pneumonia and only half of them lived. Like it was something good.
Galactica was busy as frak and Seelix didn't ever want to leave it. She'd get in her Viper and shoot down some cylons, and then she'd go back where it was safe and warm and there were no cylons patrolling the halls and waiting in every corridor. She didn't have to be afraid to go to sleep. She'd take the 3 consecutive patrols any day.
Salty was lucky that Seelix didn't have a short frakking temper, that was for sure.
If they ever made it to Earth, the rivers had better literally flow with milk.
-
But it's different being a pilot, getting out in the black and spending hours out there. Defending the Fleet means something different, the way the stress all pooled in her back and down through everywhere. Seelix felt all coiled up and tense, and more than once she found herself ready to slug Racetrack or about to scream at the deckhands.
She wasn't an intuitive pilot, she knew that. Seelix had been good with machines when she was a kid, it got her a scholarship out of her hick town and get her in the Colonial Fleet. She was better at fixing than even Cally, but Cally got most of the jobs 'cause her hands were so tiny. She was useful.
Seelix was useful flying, too. Eventually she'd go on patrols that didn't come up empty and she'd get the chance to blow up some Raiders. She was a decent pilot, and she didn't really get nervous before flying. She'd never barfed.
The 18 hour long shifts didn't matter, and neither did the shaking in her fingers that wouldn't quit, and neither did the aches in her knees and elbows. She was protecting the Fleet.
And somewhere along the line the stress probably started to get to her, and before she knew it she was sometimes thinking of herself as Hardball like that was her real name. And she was playing triad with the pilots instead of with the deck crew. No strip triad though, she had some frakking standards. And she was talking with Racetrack more than Cally and she had a few of her own obnoxious pilot jokes.
Everybody had to make sacrifices for the good of humanity. This one didn't even feel like a sacrifice.
-
Funny thing about the apocalypse was that nobody remembered to pack enough underwear. It was the item that was most bet upon, especially if someone had a mostly new pair kicking around. A few months into life after the attacks, Seelix had learned to go with men's underwear whenever and that helped her a hell of a lot. Laundry was still frakking unpredictable.
Pilots always got the best stuff from the fleet, like the new hand-sewn panties and the best-tasting portions of algae. And it was a good frakking thing that rotgut made algae taste better, or half the fleet would be anorexic.
Seelix and Racetrack were sitting around drinking and getting ready for Hot Dog to come back with another deck when Cally showed up. The good thing about Cally was, most everybody liked her. Nobody but Helo and Athena really had a beef with her, and those two stayed to themselves, and Cally was married to the Chief and everybody liked him too.
It was fine to have her show up in the Pilot's quarters, especially when she was carrying booze. "Cally," Racetrack called. (Nobody could remember ever calling Cally anything but Cally. Seelix couldn't even remember Cally's old last name.) "Is that booze? Do I have to make out with you right on top of this table?"
Cally nodded, getting hair in her face. She looked like she'd lost more weight and there were big deep circles under her eyes. "I'd start puckering, but this is for Seelix."
"Hardball, old buddy," Hot Dog called from across the room. "You know you love me. How about we come to a mutually beneficial booze-sharing agreement?" It wasn't the first time Hot Dog wanted to frak her and get half of her booze, he thought he had a way with the ladies but he actually really frakking sucked at it.
"Girls only," Seelix called. "So if you're willing to chop off your cock, by all means..." Hot Dog grabbed his crotch in mock protest and stomped to the other side of the room. Racetrack couldn't hold back the snort. "Thanks, Cally. Have a drink with us."
Cally sat quietly at the table between them, rolling her eyes. "Nicky's not due to be picked up for another few hours, but I don't know how long I can spend in the company of pilots."
"Aww," Racetrack said, pulling out a shot glass. "We're not really that bad. We do regularly save your ass, after all."
Cally was actually a really funny drunk, she got all giggly and started to lean into everybody. And Racetrack was always a good sport, and they ended up playing probably 15 hands before Cally got up with 4 pairs of underwear, Salty's dogtags, and all of Racetrack's spare booze.
It was a good night. Racetrack got to get drunk, Seelix got more booze, and Cally got to forget that the Chief was out drinking and have her own party. A pretty frakking good night. And Hot Dog's girly whining about his lost underwear was just the free booze.
-
And then Starbuck came back and shit got crazy.
She didn't have time in between all the flying and the death, by the time Seelix remembered to talk to Cally, she was dead.
She wasn't guilty or anything, mostly just hollow. She went to the funeral and lit a candle and visited Cally's picture in the Rememberance Hall. On her way back, she saw one of Nicky's stuffed bears next to the airlock where Cally did it. She wished really frakking hard that she could just not care, but she couldn't. So Cally was the closest thing to her best friend, but it wasn't the end of the world.
Seelix went out flying and killed some toasters in Cally's honor, and then she got very, very drunk.
The next day, she got out of her rack and went on rotation, same as ever.
-
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Seelix, Cally, Racetrack
Pairings: none
Genre: gen
Spoilers: up to season 4, episode 3
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 4600
Status: one shot, finished
Author's Note: written for galpalficathon for the prompt "Racetrack, Seelix, and Cally / baby-sit"
Summary: After surviving an apocalypse, moral ambiguity is a luxury.
-
Seelix really frakking wished that she could take Racetrack's advice and just not care about any of the damage her bird took on. Except every time there was a ding on her Viper or she saw some other idiot blasting out the right rear thruster, she got frakking pissed thinking of how much extra time that was going to take to clean up. So frak yeah, she wasn't focused enough. But she was still flying, and that was enough.
When she got out of the Viper, being extra careful to avoid the parts that were sparking, Seelix's eyes were raw and she could barely hear Racetrack yelling. Which was an accomplishment considering how loud she could bellow. "The frak, nugget!" Seelix caught in the middle. "What the frak kind of unfocused pile of lousy flying was that?"
Seelix hadn't slept in 19 hours and she had a good 20 minutes of work before she could get in her rack and her fingers were shaking. "That's Thursday, Sir," she replied. It was always better to not mention how her knees felt like they would give out, they might end up taking her off rotation or shoving stims down her throat. Let the other lazy nuggets think she was slacking, she didn't care.
"Tomorrow you will go out and and you will not fly like you've just gotten off of a weeklong bender, Hardball," Racetrack growled, and switched to another target. Seelix could hear Figurski snickering from 2 birds over, or that might be that he got a nice view of Racetrack's ass. Either way, Seelix was ignoring him.
Her toes were aching, piloting was really frakking strenuous. She made sure that she was hidden behind a bird before gasping for breath. "Hey," Cally said from hidden in the supply closet.
"Hey, Cally," Seelix gasped. There was the sort of loud squeak behind them that signaled something bad and they both winced together. "Frakking Nuggets can't deal with engaging the brake safety right," she grumbled.
"I hear you," Cally sighed, checking parts from her checklist. "You've gotta get some sleep though, Seelix. It's okay if you need to take some rack time instead of watching Nicky tomorrow."
But that wasn't going to happen, 'cause she'd been planning on taking Nicky for weeks. "Of course I'm taking the runt," Seelix laughed, "I've got the extra toys laid out and everything." She didn't look too hard for the gratefulness on Cally's face, but Cally was always good on her favors. Seelix started moving slowly out of the flight deck and towards her rack.
"Just don't let him into the booze," Cally smiled, inspecting a blown fusebox. "He should be at least 3 before he gets into the hard stuff."
"Yeah," Seelix said. She didn't bother to say goodbye or anything like that. Her shoulders were shaking with fatigue and her feet felt heavy and she was going to see Cally tomorrow anyways.
And frak, flight suits were really frakking heavy.
-
Seelix is really tight with Cally. Cally's probably the best friend she's got, since back on Kobol. Seelix doesn't think about Kobol a lot, but she thinks about it enough. Back on New Caprica, the cold would make her leg ache where it was shot. It aches in the same spot when she's in the cockpit.
But she doesn't think about what happened on Kobol when her leg aches, except to remember the firefight when Cally dragged her out. It's easier not to think about Tarn and Socinus and what happened to Crashdown.
She only talked to Cally about it once, while the Chief was still on Pegasus and they thought he'd be executed. She doesn't like to think about Cally that way, with her eyes all wide and pleading. Crashdown was an idiot jock. It's almost easy to forget about the hike through the forest and the burns and the aching and Socinus crying out whenever they hit a bump.
It's just that Kobol was very green, and wet, and full of cylons. They lost a lot of good men down there. Seelix was shot in the leg in a firefight on the way out, and then she went back to Galactica.
Cally dragged her out of there and saved her life, so that's good for something. Good for more than one thing, really. And watching her kid wasn't that bad.
Even for the couple of weeks after Cally and the Chief were in the sickbay after the airlock. That almost didn't count, since she should've been in there too. She did that for the hours she spent outside, watching them fight and lose oxygen.
In times like these, when it's after the end of the world and every day is just about survival, every ally is a good one. Seelix didn't expect to make friends, but Cally's a good one. The free booze is just the icing. Well, since there was no icing, everybody had taken to saying free booze instead of icing. So the free booze was just the free booze.
They know each other's weak spots. They know about Kobol and New Caprica and the airlock. And about working on birds and dealing with cylons. A nice thing to have. Figurski thought they were doing each other, but he was just a harmless old perv.
They were friends; they didn't ever braid each other's hair.
-
Seelix paced down the halls with Nicky, holding him on her hip. Nicky loved looking at the doorways and fixtures and he was always quieter when he was moving. Seelix had been doing it for probably 2 hours, but her legs hadn't started to get tired and the bunks probably still had the game of strip triad going on. The Chief would probably kill her if he found out that Nicky had accidentally seen Racetrack's boobs.
It was almost nice, kind of rhythmic, just walking and listening to Nicky gurgle. Every once and a while she would switch hips and wipe the drool from her shoulder, but she just walked laps from the flight deck to the CIC to the sickbay to the crew quarters and back, using all of the side hallways and avoiding the hatch combings. She knew how to deal with Nicky the best after she had to take him after the airlock.
They walked by the babysitting quarters and Nicky waved, getting the girls in charge to wave back.
Someday, Seelix would get Nicky in the flight deck for real, maybe in a miniature little orange jumpsuit and let him see all the tools in the storage locker. Nicky loved his Dad's old blunted tools and going around clanking things.
They passed Racetrack in the halls and Racetrack glared, turning around and running after them. She called, "What did I say about getting some rack time, Nugget?"
"Just babysitting for the Chief, Sir," Seelix said, continuing to walk. "Nicky likes to be carried around."
"You are supposed to be focused in the cockpit," Racetrack grumbled, "If your stealth formation isn't flawless tomorrow, I'm gonna have you doing push ups on the flight deck."
"Yes, Sir," Seelix grumbled and turned to the next side hallway. Racetrack looked like she'd follow her, but Helo walked by and she got distracted.
Nicky was supposed to go back in 2.5 hours, and there was a lot of walking left to do. He could probably have a nap in an hour if she timed it right. "C'mon, Nicky," Seelix sighed. "Let's go see the sights some more." She didn't use baby talk with him; Seelix figured that the kid already had enough to cry about.
To entertain herself, Seelix counted all of the dead light bulbs on the way from the crew quarters to the flight deck. 38.
-
Seelix was 20 minutes into learning a complicated piloting maneuver, something that was going to involve barrel rolls that Starbuck had invented, when she went to adjust her thrusters and there was a 7 second lag. The frakking viper had busted the frakking rear electrical buffer panel, and she had about 35 minutes before it would blow. "This viper's broken, I'm going in for an emergency landing," Seelix grumbled into the comm.
It took her 3 tries with the busted thrusters to land properly, and by the time she was out of the cockpit the Chief was waiting. "What's the problem, Ensign," he smiled, teasing her. "Was your helmet on too tight?"
"The front thruster is lagging and the indicator won't go on," Seelix called. "I think it's the rear electrical buffer acting up." Old vipers had all kinds of technical problems and everybody was told to be careful.
It was. Seelix was good at diagnosing that kind of stuff. The Chief had Cally run out to the supply closet to get a spare. "We can rewire this one," The Chief said, idly examining the engine. "You avoided a blowout, good one."
By the time the new buffer panel was halfway installed, Racetrack had landed her Raptor and was ready to start yelling. The Chief cut her off before she got 3 words out. "Busted electrical buffer, would've blown, we're replacing it and the old part can be salvaged. It was the right call." If it were Starbuck, she would've rolled her eyes, but Racetrack just nodded.
"Hardball, a busted viper means you're not going to be able to fit into this training rotation," Racetrack said, climbing back inside her Raptor and holding her helmet in her hands. "At the rate the other nuggets are going, we'll be doing it again tomorrow."
Seelix took off her helmet and spent the rest of the rotation replacing faulty fuel lines.
-
"I'm going to talk with Apollo," Racetrack from inside the showers. "You're the only one of my pilots that has to keep working on the deck on the off hours."
"Part of the agreement, even if it's informal," Seelix said, making sure to keep her eyes down. Just because Racetrack had no modesty didn't mean that Seelix had to share it. "I wouldn't brave Apollo for it."
Apollo wasn't likely to do anything. He didn't do much at all once Starbuck died. It was bad enough having Longshot moping in the cockpit, but Apollo walked around like he owned all of the grief everywhere. Like the other pilots didn't miss Starbuck and her bad jokes and cigar. He was turning into a crotchety son of a bitch, and now there was no Starbuck to snap him out of it.
"Still," Racetrack said, wrapping herself in a towel. "You're not half-bad and I don't want you burning out." Seelix didn't suck, and that made her better than at least half of her class.
Racetrack was alright, aside from her thing for Helo. The man had some good arms, but he was a toasterfrakker. Nobody teased her about it. They didn't have much in common.
Probably Racetrack would be one of the Old Man's favorites in a few months after he finished grieving Starbuck. There were always a few of them, and now he was missing one. Most everybody wanted the Old Man to like them, to be able to counsel him or something like that. Racetrack would probably be next, the Admiral liked his flight instructors.
The Old Man liked Cally, enough to know her name and seek her out in the halls. He gave her shorter brig time and visited her in the sickbay sometimes. But in the end, all it ended up meaning was when the Chief was helping with the labor union, he put Cally up against the bulkhead and threatened a Pegasus.
Most of the time, it was better to be unknown. Seelix avoided the Adamas whenever she could.
-
A few days after babysitting, Cally stopped over at the nugget's quarters with a bottle of the Chief's best rotgut. Seelix wasn't the second most popular nugget after Anders for nothing. She kicked ass in triad and she always had the best booze.
It wasn't anything special or especially weird to see Cally there, smiling. Sometimes Cally would loosen up and tell some jokes. For someone so small, she had an unbelievably filthy mouth when she tried. They saw each other around sometimes, not a whole lot now that Seelix was flying.
"Anytime you need me again, just let me know," Seelix said, taking the bottle. She knew things were tense between Cally and the Chief, she had eyes. Hopefully the alone time did them good.
"Thanks again," Cally said, moving to sit next to Seelix on the rack. "You liking piloting okay?"
Cally had known that she wanted to fly since Seelix did. "Yeah," she said, smiling. "The showers are better." They both laughed for a little bit. Seelix hadn't wanted to fly because she loved the cockpit, she had just wanted to kill some cylons. You can't do that working on the birds and both of them knew it.
Cally twisted a little, rubbing her side. She'd been having problems with the old gunshot wound since going through the airlock. Seelix wrapped an arm around Cally's shoulders, and it was so easy to do that when Cally was so tiny. Everybody did it, it was just what you did with her. "I'm okay," Cally sighed. "Really. I should probably go pick up Nicky now, though."
Seelix hid the booze under her pillow and walked Cally out. "Thanks for the booze," Seelix said, hugging her.
"Of course," Cally said, and left.
Seelix didn't really see her again for a couple of weeks, but they both knew that things were going to get crazy.
-
Getting in after a good landing, Seelix took a few seconds and just sat in the cockpit letting her muscles lose some tenseness before taking her helmet off.
When she got out, Racetrack and Cally were pretending to argue. Racetrack got like that sometimes when she was hungover, and the strip triad game had gone until 3 hours before the rotation. Cally was under Racetrack's Raptor, fixing the wiring on the panel that lead to the artillery release, and Racetrack was sitting on the edge of the exit with her legs dangling off. "Don't you mess with me, Specialist," she shouted. "I've done hard time."
"My time's been harder," Cally laughed, and the panel sparked at her fingers.
"Ooh, I'd forgotten about that one," Racetrack replied. "How accommodating did you find the Astral Queen anyways?"
"Tasty," Cally returned. "You'd like it there, they've got some great vacation packages." Seelix had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
"I guess you got some secret prison tattoos then, Specialist Lazy?"
"In the brig, I did," Cally returned. "I got a portrait of your mom right on my ass. The Chief kisses it every night."
From across the room, Athena made a big show of looking insulted, getting Helo to pull her away from the area. Like it wasn't hard enough having a cylon in the flight deck that looked just like Boomer. It was only her fault that she had Boomer's memory and what happened to Boomer was none of Athena's business.
Boomer had shot the Old Man and she had it coming, and that was the end of it. And Athena could just get the stick out of her ass.
As far as Seelix was concerned, even if Athena had turned good when she found Helo on Caprica and didn't do anything bad from then on, she'd still willingly blown the Colonies to pieces and helped kill billions of humans. Having a freaky mutant kid didn't change that, and she was only pretending to be human because she liked Helo's cock so much. Seelix looked at her and saw all of her family dead, and all of the families of everybody on the Galactica nuked to death. You don't just forgive that.
So Seelix hates cylons, everybody knows it. Everybody with sense, that is. It's old news, and it's not like hating cylons effects her job performance or anything like that. When she was still a deckhand, she worked on Athena's Raptor like she worked on everybody else's. She tolerates them and does her job and then goes back to her rack like everybody else.
When she calmed down and looked back over at Racetrack, Cally had moved to another Raptor and Racetrack was making eyes doe eyes at Helo. And she had wasted 4 perfectly good sleeping minutes doing nothing in the flight deck. So Seelix decided to stop wasting time and get to the showers. If the cylon on the flight deck made her lose concentration, it wasn't anybody's fault but her own.
-
Everybody was talking about the Baltar trial and Seelix just didn't frakking care.
She was with him on Kobol and it was obvious that he was completely nuts even back then. And everybody on Galactica knew how he used to talk to himself in the halls. So the guy was crazy and shouldn't have been president.
He put them on New Caprica, he didn't guard them from the cylons and when they came, he just surrendered. Baltar let them kidnap the girls and build the prisons and take innocent people and throw them in prison. He signed a death warrant letting them kill every important person they could find. Some people said that he'd been shacking up with one of the blonde cylons on planet.
So yeah, Seelix wanted him dead. But she didn't really care. The Gods had punishment for everyone that deserved it, and he deserved it. Seelix was ready to stop the discussion already.
If there was proof, then he'd be thrown out the airlock same as the other collaborators.
Seelix remembers the circle. She doesn't regret it.
She doesn't really think about it a lot, sometimes when she goes past Jammer's flight tube or whenever she goes out it, which isn't often. Sometimes she has dreams about him, too, the look on his face right before the vent opened. But that doesn't really matter. Jammer had to die because he was a collaborator. He chose to put the mask on and go be a cylon henchman, and he chose all that.
Seelix just handed it down. She would've done it for anybody, anybody at all. Even Cally, if she'd done it. It wasn't personal. So Jammer was her friend, he betrayed her and the Colonies. It wasn't like she dreamed about him a lot; it wasn't like she regretted it.
They were in a war, and people that collaborated with the cylons were a security liability and didn't deserve to live, and it was that simple.
-
Everybody seems to forget about how much New Caprica sucked, even a lot of the people that were there.
Well, Cally doesn't, but Cally has a good memory. Cally spent most of the time down there pregnant and terrified for Nicky, in between getting thrown into prison for no reason and an attempted execution for no reason. Sometimes Cally would sit up in the tent, back when the cylons first came and the Chief didn't want her left alone so the old deck crew would take shifts, and she would just stare and rub her jaw. She didn't ever do it in front of the Chief, 'cause she didn't want him to feel guilty, but everybody could tell that it ached in the cold. People used to give her pieces of root to suck on. Or when they were hiding in the caves. Cally remembers all that, even though they don't really talk about it.
But New Caprica frakking sucked. It was cold and rainy and everything was drizzly all the frakking time. The fire never got hot enough and the tents were cramped and there were cylons patrolling down the streets, people stolen in the middle of the night, and all kinds of frakking shit. It was a frakking shithole.
Some of the pilots, dumb jocks that never went down to the surface talk about how they'd like to go back there to get some rest. If Starbuck were there, she'd smack them in the face, Starbuck was always good for that. They say New Caprica like it was a vacation and not a shithole that they were stuck on, crawling with cylons, waiting to get slaughtered. And watching the kids get coughs that just wouldn't go away, and how people that weren't healthy got pneumonia and only half of them lived. Like it was something good.
Galactica was busy as frak and Seelix didn't ever want to leave it. She'd get in her Viper and shoot down some cylons, and then she'd go back where it was safe and warm and there were no cylons patrolling the halls and waiting in every corridor. She didn't have to be afraid to go to sleep. She'd take the 3 consecutive patrols any day.
Salty was lucky that Seelix didn't have a short frakking temper, that was for sure.
If they ever made it to Earth, the rivers had better literally flow with milk.
-
But it's different being a pilot, getting out in the black and spending hours out there. Defending the Fleet means something different, the way the stress all pooled in her back and down through everywhere. Seelix felt all coiled up and tense, and more than once she found herself ready to slug Racetrack or about to scream at the deckhands.
She wasn't an intuitive pilot, she knew that. Seelix had been good with machines when she was a kid, it got her a scholarship out of her hick town and get her in the Colonial Fleet. She was better at fixing than even Cally, but Cally got most of the jobs 'cause her hands were so tiny. She was useful.
Seelix was useful flying, too. Eventually she'd go on patrols that didn't come up empty and she'd get the chance to blow up some Raiders. She was a decent pilot, and she didn't really get nervous before flying. She'd never barfed.
The 18 hour long shifts didn't matter, and neither did the shaking in her fingers that wouldn't quit, and neither did the aches in her knees and elbows. She was protecting the Fleet.
And somewhere along the line the stress probably started to get to her, and before she knew it she was sometimes thinking of herself as Hardball like that was her real name. And she was playing triad with the pilots instead of with the deck crew. No strip triad though, she had some frakking standards. And she was talking with Racetrack more than Cally and she had a few of her own obnoxious pilot jokes.
Everybody had to make sacrifices for the good of humanity. This one didn't even feel like a sacrifice.
-
Funny thing about the apocalypse was that nobody remembered to pack enough underwear. It was the item that was most bet upon, especially if someone had a mostly new pair kicking around. A few months into life after the attacks, Seelix had learned to go with men's underwear whenever and that helped her a hell of a lot. Laundry was still frakking unpredictable.
Pilots always got the best stuff from the fleet, like the new hand-sewn panties and the best-tasting portions of algae. And it was a good frakking thing that rotgut made algae taste better, or half the fleet would be anorexic.
Seelix and Racetrack were sitting around drinking and getting ready for Hot Dog to come back with another deck when Cally showed up. The good thing about Cally was, most everybody liked her. Nobody but Helo and Athena really had a beef with her, and those two stayed to themselves, and Cally was married to the Chief and everybody liked him too.
It was fine to have her show up in the Pilot's quarters, especially when she was carrying booze. "Cally," Racetrack called. (Nobody could remember ever calling Cally anything but Cally. Seelix couldn't even remember Cally's old last name.) "Is that booze? Do I have to make out with you right on top of this table?"
Cally nodded, getting hair in her face. She looked like she'd lost more weight and there were big deep circles under her eyes. "I'd start puckering, but this is for Seelix."
"Hardball, old buddy," Hot Dog called from across the room. "You know you love me. How about we come to a mutually beneficial booze-sharing agreement?" It wasn't the first time Hot Dog wanted to frak her and get half of her booze, he thought he had a way with the ladies but he actually really frakking sucked at it.
"Girls only," Seelix called. "So if you're willing to chop off your cock, by all means..." Hot Dog grabbed his crotch in mock protest and stomped to the other side of the room. Racetrack couldn't hold back the snort. "Thanks, Cally. Have a drink with us."
Cally sat quietly at the table between them, rolling her eyes. "Nicky's not due to be picked up for another few hours, but I don't know how long I can spend in the company of pilots."
"Aww," Racetrack said, pulling out a shot glass. "We're not really that bad. We do regularly save your ass, after all."
Cally was actually a really funny drunk, she got all giggly and started to lean into everybody. And Racetrack was always a good sport, and they ended up playing probably 15 hands before Cally got up with 4 pairs of underwear, Salty's dogtags, and all of Racetrack's spare booze.
It was a good night. Racetrack got to get drunk, Seelix got more booze, and Cally got to forget that the Chief was out drinking and have her own party. A pretty frakking good night. And Hot Dog's girly whining about his lost underwear was just the free booze.
-
And then Starbuck came back and shit got crazy.
She didn't have time in between all the flying and the death, by the time Seelix remembered to talk to Cally, she was dead.
She wasn't guilty or anything, mostly just hollow. She went to the funeral and lit a candle and visited Cally's picture in the Rememberance Hall. On her way back, she saw one of Nicky's stuffed bears next to the airlock where Cally did it. She wished really frakking hard that she could just not care, but she couldn't. So Cally was the closest thing to her best friend, but it wasn't the end of the world.
Seelix went out flying and killed some toasters in Cally's honor, and then she got very, very drunk.
The next day, she got out of her rack and went on rotation, same as ever.
-