The Quick and the Dead (The People Got a Lotta Nerve Remix), Part I
Title: The Quick and the Dead (The People Got a Lotta Nerve Remix), by kappamaki33
Summary: Just living is not enough. Racetrack’s life on the Astral Queen after the mutiny.
Characters: Racetrack, Narcho, Skulls, Seelix, and Hoshi
Pairings: Gen
Beta Thanks: Thanks to lorrainemarker for beta’ing!
Warnings: Violence, death, and non-explicit talk of past rape.
Original Story: Aftermath, by millari
Notes: Title taken from the Book of Common Prayer and from a Neko Case song. Thank you, millari, for writing such a wonderful story to work with. My biggest problem remixing was that every time I went back to your original fic to check something, I’d not only have to read all of it again, but it made me cry all over again as well!
The Quick and the Dead (The People Got a Lotta Nerve Remix)
Racetrack shivered uncontrollably. It wasn’t from fear-she was one of the most seasoned combat veterans left alive, for frak’s sake, and anyone who hadn’t killed those raw nerve endings by now was long dead. The shower had been frakking freezing, and droplets still fell from her hair down her chest and back, slid down her nose, caught on her eyelashes.
It was silly, but Racetrack was disappointed when, instead of an orange jumpsuit, the guard handed her back the pants and underwear she’d been wearing when they shipped her over to the Astral Queen. It made sense, but it felt like she deserved new clothes in recompense for the shivering humiliation of being “processed.”
The guards told her to keep the line moving, so all she could do was clutch the clothing to her chest and stumble along still naked into another room. This one looked like a locker room, only without lockers. The only things in the room were a few rows of benches and some hooks on the wall, just as spartan as the showers had been. It wasn’t exactly polite to stare at people when they were naked-even on Galactica, there was an unspoken rule that you didn’t give people once-overs in the head unless you were planning on doing something about it-but the need for something familiar overwhelmed Racetrack’s general willingness to follow the rules.
There were a lot of people she didn’t recognize. She’d had no idea Felix had risked recruiting so many civilians. She saw a few Marines, though they were hard to recognize as such until they got dressed in their black pants and t-shirts again. Even then it wasn’t easy; their faces looked so different without the helmets shading their brows anymore. She saw Redwing on the far side of the room, too far away to go over to him just for comfort. Everyone was silent. Guards were still watching.
She laid her clothes on the bench and dressed. Once she had her underwear on and was trying to find a way to cinch her pants so they would fit (they’d taken away her belt), she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, fist cocked, until she saw it was Narcho.
“Shh,” he said quietly, even though she hadn’t said anything. Her heart was still beating too fast. Narcho sat down on the bench beside her as he slowly put on his socks. “You okay?” he whispered.
“Fine,” she whispered back.
“What about Skulls?”
Racetrack shivered. The empty hangar deck was cold, she was stripped down to her bra, and she hadn’t thought to pull her flight suit sleeves back on when she pulled off her tanks. It was too late now, because she’d have to stop applying pressure to the bullet wound high on Skulls’ chest to do it.
She wasn’t afraid. But the old mantra of assume you’re already dead; just make sure Hell isn’t gonna be lonely rang hollow as her friend’s-frak it, her brother’s-life bubbled up between her fingers.
“Frak,” Skulls coughed more than said. “Always knew a Cylon would get me in the end, but never thought it’d be on our home turf.”
“Shut the frak up. That’s not true.”
“Funny time to be arguing about whether or not Starbuck is a toaster, don’t you think?”
Normally, Racetrack would have smacked him for telling such an awful joke. “I mean you’re not dying, you frakwad. I outrank you, and as your CAG, I’m ordering you not to die.”
Skulls smiled with gritted teeth. “Gaeta’s promoting you, huh? ‘Bout time somebody did.”
Racetrack shifted her fingers a little, trying to fold another edge of her tanks over the wound, where the blood had soaked through. Skulls groaned sharply at the movement. She stopped.
“If you’re going to force me to live, then I wish the man Connor said he’d send for me would get his ass down here already,” Skulls said. “Could use a nice shot of morpha.”
Racetrack swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Last I saw him, two of Connor’s men had found a clear route to the infirmary and were taking him there.” She stared at what was left of her pile of clothing. “They didn’t give me a shirt.”
“What?” Narcho asked.
Frak, she was not going to cry over a frakking shirt. “I took off my tanks to stop the bleeding. After they got Skulls, I just zipped my flight suit back up over my bra.” She felt her voice shaking. Gods, her wings. Even a month after she passed basic flight, she’d said she felt naked whenever she didn’t have them. “They took away my flight suit. I don’t have a shirt. Or shoes.”
“They took mine, too,” Narcho said. Even though he was still only whispering, Racetrack could feel he meant more than he was saying, too. “They gave me different shoes, though.” He looked at her for a moment, thinking. “Hold up a sec. It won’t fix everything, but…it’s something.” He pulled off his dark top tank and handed it to her, keeping his light under tank for himself.
She accepted it silently but gratefully. The arm openings were so big that her bra stuck out underneath, and it pulled too tightly across her breasts, but it would work.
She didn’t have much time to think about it, anyway, because a guard announced over the speakers that it was time to move out. They didn’t form up into a line this time; they were a jumbled mass of bodies shuffling toward a narrow door at the other end of the room. Narcho hooked his finger through a belt loop on the back of Racetrack’s pants so they wouldn’t get separated.
Racetrack felt bile rising in her throat when she stepped through the doorway. The summer between high school and academy, she had worked at a slaughterhouse. The rows upon rows of cells made out of chain-link fence-cages-housing the residents of the Astral Queen looked far too much like the cattle holding pens. She’d figured there would be several floors inside, but it looked like at least most of the cells were all on one level. Catwalks skirted around and crisscrossed over the cellblocks several meters above. Guards with Marine-like protective gear but mismatched uniforms ambled down the raised walkways, rifles in hand.
The worst of it was, it was so quiet. The inmates were all staring at them through the chain links, barely murmuring amongst themselves.
“Racetrack!” Skulls called out far too loudly. He towered above most of the crowd, but it took him a long time to push his way through to get to her. “I was hoping they hadn’t got you, but…Gods, it’s good to see you.”
She couldn’t help it; she pulled Skulls into a hug. She stopped when he drew in his breath sharply.
Skulls gingerly touched his chest and said in explanation, “The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked, but it’s still pretty raw.” Narcho learned from Racetrack’s mistake and just patted Skulls on his good shoulder.
“What’re you frakkers in here for?” someone in the cells called out. “You throw coffee at some of Adama’s Marines?”
The cellblock echoed with laughter. Skulls stiffened beside Racetrack. He hadn’t been in on the Gideon Massacre, but he and Tomcat had shuttled over the Marine unit sent to “clean up” afterwards. She’d heard Skulls tell her the story enough times to know it was no joke to him.
Without tearing his eyes off the cells, Skulls muttered, “I got your back.”
Racetrack snorted. It was…sweet, she guessed, but the sister-brother dynamic between them had always been firmly older-sister, younger-brother. “Well, that’s nice, but considering a well-positioned snuggle can bring you to your knees right now, what with that bullet wound-”
Skulls turned and looked her in the eye. “I got your back,” he repeated slowly. It was weird, seeing Skulls this serious. It made the unreality of the whole situation hit home. “Remember, when Cally….” He didn’t need to finish the sentence, even though it had happened years ago. “I’ve got your back.”
“Likewise,” Racetrack answered, serious now.
Racetrack was just about to turn around to get Narcho’s attention when one of the guards yelled down, “Quit standing around like frakking sheep and find a frakking empty bunk!”
All hell broke loose in the cells as the crowd wended its way through. On an intellectual level, Racetrack knew it was mostly a combination of boredom and posturing, but the fact that the people making obscene gestures and hollering things that she couldn’t tell if they were jokes or threats…these were the people she was going to be living with for most likely the rest of her life. ‘The rest of her life’ had always seemed so short when she was flying. Not anymore.
Narcho tried to break ranks when one of the prisoners propositioned him in a much nastier way than the other dozen or so inmates who’d done so. Racetrack caught his arm and pulled him back.
“Let me go!” Narcho spat, fists still clenched as he twisted in her grip. “If we don’t show we can’t be frakked around with right now, it’ll only get worse.”
Skulls said, “If we don’t find empty bunks right now before they’re all taken, you’re going to end up being roomies with that frak, or worse.” Then something caught Skulls’ eye, and he craned his neck over the crowd. “Is that Seelix?”
Racetrack let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Seelix was standing outside one of two empty cells that were side-by-side, and she was shouting down any civvie who even looked like they were considering taking one of the bunks. The three made their way over to her.
“Seelix! Glad you’re-” Skulls started to say, but Narcho enveloped her in a tight embrace before Skulls could finish. Skulls gave Racetrack a look of, “Are they together? How’d the rumor mill miss this?” Racetrack shook her head. She was pretty sure Narcho had been with some guy from the engine room lately.
Seelix looked almost as happy to see Narcho as he was to see her. “When I heard they had you down in the airlock, I was sure-”
“It was where they caught me, not where they took me,” Narcho said. “I don’t think they wanted to waste the bullets on a frak like me.”
“But you were Gaeta’s XO,” Seelix pressed.
Racetrack noticed the crowd was starting to thin out as people found empty bunks. “Saving this for anybody in particular?” she interrupted, pointing at one of the cells Seelix had been guarding.
“Figured I’d save it for the first people I saw that I half-way trusted. It’s all yours,” Seelix said.
They didn’t need to discuss it; Skulls and Racetrack took one cell, and Seelix and Narcho took the other. Racetrack staked her claim on the top bunk, and Skulls crawled gingerly into the lower one. There wasn’t much else in the cell to claim: just a sink, a toilet, and a shelf, all open to the view of the Gods and everyone through the chain-link fencing that comprised the cell walls. At least that meant they could see Seelix and Narcho in their cell.
Seelix and Narcho were both sitting on the lower bunk in their cell, which was pushed up against the other side of the “wall” that Skulls and Racetrack’s bunks were against as well. They hooked their fingers through the links and rested their forearms and foreheads against the fence. Racetrack climbed down and sat beside Skulls to join the conversation.
“You see anybody else?” Seelix asked them quietly.
“Redwing,” Racetrack said. “I think he’s in another cellblock.”
“Two-Bit and Ape Man were in the infirmary when they took me away,” Skulls said. “If they make it, I assume they’ll end up here eventually.”
“Anybody see Connor? Gunny Hanson? Yeti?” Seelix’s questions were all met with head-shakes and shrugs. “Maybe they’re not dead. Maybe the brass doesn’t even know some of them were mutineers.”
“Oh, frak. Gunny Maddox,” Skulls said out of nowhere.
“He wasn’t in on it, was he?” Narcho asked.
Racetrack followed Skulls’ gaze. “Looks like he was.”
On the other side of the aisle, about five cells down, a tall kid in Marine garb with stunning brown eyes was curled up on a bunk, bawling his heart out.
“Frak,” Narcho said. “Who the hell pulled him in on this?”
Skulls shook his head. “I can’t believe Gaeta would keep Hoshi out of it but rope in Maddox. At least Hoshi’s decision would’ve probably been half-rational and only half-lovesick.”
Seelix’s brow furrowed. “What the frak are you talking about?”
“You remember the Frak Pool, betting on who’d hook up, right?” Racetrack explained. Seelix nodded. “Well, that sobbing mess right there is the reason why I made so many cubits off Gaeta getting together with Hoshi.”
“You have to admit, Hoshi looked like quite the dark horse up against a twenty-something Marine with pretty eyes and perfect abs who worshiped the ground Gaeta walked on,” Narcho said.
Racetrack smirked. She was going to cling to the odd normalcy of gossiping as long as she could. “This might come as a surprise to you, Narcho, but there are guys who don’t think exclusively with their dicks.”
Narcho rolled his eyes at her. “No, I just didn’t realize that Gaeta had a thing for older men when I placed my bet.”
Skulls got up from the bunk and walked over to the far corner of the cell. “Hey, Ryan!” he called out. “You okay? If you’re hurt, I think they’ve got a medic on staff here.”
Maddox sat up, raised his tear-streaked face to Skulls, and shook his head.
“Who’s your roomie, Ryan?” Skulls asked.
“Don’t have one.”
“Okay, then. Talk to me.”
“He’s dead,” Maddox choked.
“I know,” Skulls said, voice soothing. Of course, they didn’t know for sure, but barring a miracle, there was really no other way this story could end for Felix.
“No, I saw him,” Maddox pressed. That made Racetrack and the others sit up and take notice. “After they caught me, they came down the line and said they had a job. That if we took it, we’d be forgiven. We could go back to the way things were.” Racetrack’s stomach churned. “I raised my hand. They took me down to the airlock, gave me back my gun. Then I saw the two chairs, and…” Maddox started to sob again. “I couldn’t do it. They took me out of the firing line and put me outside, and I saw Felix and Zarek walk in, heard…. Then they sent me in to get the chairs. They didn’t want to space the frakking chairs….” Maddox completely lost it after that. Skulls sat back down, knowing there was nothing more he could do.
“Adama’s either a vindictive bastard or a frakking blind moron,” Narcho muttered. “I don’t know which is worse.”
“The Old Man I knew never would’ve done something like that to Maddox,” Racetrack said.
Seelix said, “Yes he would have. He did. He threatened Tyrol with putting Cally and half the deck crew up against the bulkhead and blowing our brains out. Or didn’t the pilots ever hear about that one?”
All four of them jumped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. “How does he know Zarek’s really dead?” the occupant of the cell on the other side of Skulls and Racetrack’s cell asked.
Racetrack was grateful when Narcho shortened the story. “He was there. We were all there.”
The prisoner looked interested. “You were on Zarek’s side?”
“You’re looking at a good chunk of ex-Commander Gaeta’s senior staff,” Narcho said with a rueful snort.
The inmate stood up, shaking his head and smiling. “I’d shake your hands, but it’s about five minutes ‘til lock-down, and I don’t want to get stuck in somebody else’s cell for the night. Wait, here-” He fumbled in his pocket, then pulled out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He squashed the pack a little to get it through the chain link and into Skulls and Racetrack’s cell. “Housewarming present.”
Racetrack and Skulls looked at one another, then back at Seelix and Narcho, trying to figure out if this was some sort of trap. Finally, Racetrack shrugged, picked up the pack, and pulled out cigarettes for each of them. The inmate had a light and was awkwardly poking it through a chain link before Racetrack could even ask.
“So all you new arrivals were with Zarek, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll get the word out, and everybody’ll straighten their act up with you,” he said.
“Thanks,” Skulls said, completely befuddled.
Racetrack passed a lit cigarette back to Seelix, then took the next for herself. The smoke burned her throat when she inhaled. She hated the feeling, but she didn’t cough. She told herself she was only doing it to be polite, but it did cross her mind that shortening her life a little didn’t sound like such a bad deal anymore.
“Were you a political prisoner, like Zarek?” Seelix asked. Racetrack silently conceded that that was a good guess for why this guy was so weirdly friendly. He looked about the same age as Zarek, skinny but with wiry muscles, a tattoo peeking out from under one sleeve of his jumpsuit, and scraggly brown hair combed back from his forehead.
The man laughed. “No. Drug dealer and addict. The worlds ending was the best thing that ever happened to me. Cut off my supply.” He winked at Racetrack. “Tough to stay addicted to something that doesn’t exist anymore. Plus, Zarek taught me a thing or two about addictions. They cost you a lot, especially in here. Me personally, not so much maybe, since I’m one of the go-to guys if you want to get something from the outside-for a price. But he taught me how dangerous it was to need things, because it makes it so easy for others to hold power over you.” That did sound a lot like Zarek. The man continued, “Anyway, we all had a lot of respect for Zarek. He’s the one who got rid of the guards and forced Adama to let us govern ourselves. Well, at least for a while.” The man glared up at the catwalk.
“When did the guards come back?” Racetrack asked, already pretty sure of the answer.
The man snorted a laugh. “Before Zarek’s body was even cold, by the sounds of it. I’m sure the official line is they need to control you new arrivals, but that’s bullshit. Adama and Roslin sent scumbag crime bosses over here when we didn’t have official guards, but now they think we can’t handle flyboys and knuckledraggers practically programmed to follow orders? No offense. Anyway, nobody blames you for that. Everybody knows it’s all because the minute the guy holding their asses to the fire to keep that promise was gone…” He snapped his fingers.
Racetrack wasn’t sure that was all true-if the people he’d sent here were dangerous enough as a group to almost take over Galactica, she imagined Adama had plenty to fear from leaving them to their own devices on the Astral Queen-but she could definitely see how it could easily look that way to the inmates.
“Sorry, I got so carried away I forgot to introduce myself. Remy. Like I said, I’d shake, but I’m pretty sure our doors are locked by now.”
She hesitated before she spoke. “I’m Racetrack,” she said. There was something more comfortable about giving out a callsign rather than a name, like she was holding a part of herself apart and safe from the weird world she’d just entered.
“Skulls,” Skulls said, following her lead.
“Awful funny names,” Remy said.
“They’re callsigns,” Narcho added. “Trust me, if you knew Skulls’ real name, you’d understand why he preferred his callsign. I’m Narcho, and this is Hardball.”
“No, it’s not. This is Diana Seelix,” Seelix said. Racetrack had always struggled at referring to Seelix by her callsign after so many years of knowing her as a knuckledragger, but she doubted this choice was for her convenience. “We’re not pilots anymore, Noel. We’re nothing.”
Narcho laid a hand on her shoulder, but Seelix flinched away angrily and crossed over to the other side of the cell, busying herself at the sink. The remaining three stood looking at Remy awkwardly, not sure what to do now.
Remy just shrugged and settled onto his bunk, staring more at the cigarette smoke curling up toward the ceiling than at them. “Welcome to the Astral Queen.”
~*~*~
Racetrack startled awake, reaching automatically for a sidearm that wasn’t there.
“Frak! Somebody help!” a voice far down the row of cells yelled. It was pitch dark, except for the dull red glow of the few emergency lights that dotted the hull high above the cells, up on the guards’ catwalks.
“What is it?” another voice hollered. Racetrack could hear Skulls shifting on the bunk below her.
“I think there’s something wrong with the guy in the next cell,” the first voice said. “You know that weird, loud noise? It came from his cell. And there’s something…it’s too dark to see what, but there’s something not right about it.”
“Whose cell is it?” Racetrack heard Narcho call out. She swung her legs over the bunk, ready to help. Skulls caught her ankle and gave it a friendly squeeze, a signal of both “I’m here” and “we should stay out of this.” Racetrack stilled.
“Don’t know. A Marine, I think,” the voice said.
Racetrack’s eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that she at least thought she saw Narcho stand in the cell beside hers. “Hey! Warden!” he yelled up at the catwalk. “We got a situation down here!”
She heard a snort from the cell on the other side of hers. “Don’t waste your voice. The guards didn’t give a shit about us back when they were getting paid. They sure as hell aren’t gonna start now,” Remy said.
Narcho ignored him and kept yelling for help for another fifteen minutes. Finally the long-time inmates, annoyed, yelled at Narcho enough to shut him up. Racetrack listened to him and Seelix talk quietly about what might be up and which cell he might be talking about, but Racetrack didn’t join in. She had counted down the cell block in her mind as soon as the yelling had started, and she had a pretty good idea what had happened.
That still didn’t prepare her for what she saw when the lights blinked on early in the morning.
“Oh, frak,” Skulls muttered. “Poor kid.”
It was an odd thing to say, but Racetrack was glad Skulls had said it so she didn’t have to.
Ryan Maddox’s boots drifted back and forth about six inches from the floor, like his body was blowing in some gentle breeze that nobody else could feel. He’d made the noose out of his bed sheet.
The guy from the night before in the cell next to Maddox’s started freaking out. “Frak! Frak! That’s, just-come on, guys, get him down!” he yelled vaguely upward.
Narcho looked up with more focus and caught the eye of a guard on the catwalk above them, who was leaning against the rail. “Hey! A little help down here?” The guard stared back impassively. “Oh, come on! Treat the kid with a little human decency.”
The guard smirked, flicked a cigarette butt down into Narcho’s cell, and walked away.
“Welcome to the Astral Queen and its famous hospitality,” Remy said, turning over on his cot, away from the sight of Maddox’s body.
Two hours. The guards let Maddox hang there for two hours before they finally opened all the cell doors, so someone could get in and lay his body at rest. The guards took the body away while the rest of the cell block was in the mess for lunch. Remy told them the guards would’ve flushed it out an airlock, no funeral, no ceremonies.
Racetrack felt stupid for not having realized it earlier. Adama may not have lined them up for the firing squad, but none of their fates were going to be any different from Felix’s. There was just going to be more shit in between before each of them finally got to that same ending.
~*~*~
Racetrack’s second full day aboard the Astral Queen was uneventful. A guard shoved algae bars through the chain links in the cell, and that was breakfast. Some time later (she missed her watch more than anything, except maybe her shoes-someone else had gotten to Ryan Maddox’s boots first), the locks buzzed and the doors of all the cells on the block swung open.
The guards told everyone to line up, so they did. They were assigned “chores”: Skulls still couldn’t lift because of the bullet wound, so he got shower-cleaning duty; Narcho was being an insolent ass to everyone, guards and prisoners alike, so he got stuck with the sanitation crew; and Seelix and Racetrack were sent down to fix rickety pipes right outside the engine room, even though Racetrack still didn’t have any shoes. The work was hard, and loosening rusted bolts made her muscles ache.
They got a quick break for lunch before being sent back to work for six or so more hours, then a longer break for dinner in the mess. Then they were herded back into the cellblocks, though the cell doors were kept open for a while. Remy gave Narcho a deck of cards as another “housewarming gift,” so the four of them played for a while until Skulls begged off to go to sleep early. The three of them kept playing until another inmate told them it was almost time for lock-down. They went back to their cells, washed up, talked a little while longer, and then went to bed at lights-out.
As she stared up at the ceiling she couldn’t actually see because it was so pitch-black, Racetrack thought about how she should be angrier and antsier about all this than she was. The day had been long and hard and, what should have been worst of all, downright boring. When she’d been flying, boredom had been the thing she hated most, even more than the Cylons some days. She hated waiting in the ready room, pacing back and forth until the call came down from CIC to actually let them do something. By all rights, this day should’ve felt as frustrating and nerve-wracking as eighteen hours waiting for the call to action stations.
That’s when it hit her: the difference was, she wasn’t waiting for anything anymore. There was something relieving about that, she felt.
But in her dreams that night, she was flying.
~*~*~
The guards never talked to them unless it was absolutely necessary. That was why everyone jumped when one called down from the catwalk, “Which one of you is Meg Edmondson?”
Narcho laid his cards down and locked eyes with her across the bunk they were using as a table. She could tell the same questions and worries were racing through his head, though he looked more scared about them than she did.
Racetrack leaned back and called up calmly, with that little bit of insubordinate venom she’d learned from Felix, “Why the frak do you care?”
“You got a visitor,” the guard said.
She saw the mirror of her own doubt and confusion on Narcho’s face. She flicked her gaze at the rest of the hall and noticed lots of prisoners were staring at her and the guard. It appeared this sort of thing didn’t happen very much.
“The kind I got a choice of whether or not I want to see them?” Racetrack yelled back.
“Just get your ass over to the aft stairwell,” the guard said. When Narcho rose along with Racetrack and was about to follow her out of the cell, the guard snapped, “You sure as hell don’t look like a ‘Meg Edmondson’ to me, so sit the frak back down.”
Narcho gave Racetrack an apologetic little nod, then raised his hands in something between surrender and a shrug and went back into Racetrack and Skulls’ cell.
Racetrack held her head high and maintained her pilot swagger as she walked down the cellblock to the stairs. Two guards met her at its base, one with a rifle trained on her, one with manacles. Her escort walked her a little too quickly up the stairs, making her stumble when she tried to extend her stride past the limits of the chains. The pattern of the grating hurt the soles of her feet. They led her out of the cellblock area down a small, closed-off hall. She didn’t have the energy to be scared of who or what might be behind the hatch the guards opened for her, then closed behind her.
The room was dingy and tiny, made even smaller by the floor-to-ceiling chain-link fencing that divided it in half. Two plastic chairs, one on each side, faced each other through the fence. The chair on the opposite side was occupied.
Louis Hoshi stood when she walked in. That stupid little gesture of respect damn near made her cry. She smiled hard instead.
“How are they treating you, Meg?”
“Louis! What the frak are you doing here?”
He smiled back at her. Racetrack really was happy to see Louis. He wasn’t Dee, but she’d always liked his mixing competence with a sense of humor when he was on comm., and he had a calm and gentleness that you just didn’t see much in the military outside of infirmary crew, let alone in Pegasus guys. For some reason, he’d automatically taken to calling her ‘Meg,’ and unlike with pretty much everyone but her mom, Racetrack had let him.
She felt really bad about all the times she’d good-naturedly joked with Louis about him being a cradle robber, though, because he looked like he’d aged five years since she’d taken him out on the SAR mission for Felix just a few short weeks ago. Then again, Felix had looked a decade older than he really was the last time she’d seen him in CIC, struggling with his cane at the command table.
“Are they treating you okay?” Louis asked.
He looked so uncomfortable. There was no reason to let him worry about her, especially since there was nothing he could do about any of it anyway. She flopped into the chair as casually as the manacles would allow. “Oh, you know. Lots of exhausting work, shitty food, the occasional card game. Not all that different from Galactica, really.”
Somehow, what she said had the opposite effect on Louis that she’d been going for, making his jaw hang open a little and his brows knit together in concern.
“No, seriously. I’m okay, all things considered,” she reassured him. “This ship was Zarek’s little kingdom for a long time. His name still means a lot here, so they treat us mutineers…kind of like heroes.” That was maybe overselling it a bit. “It’s worth a few extra smokes and a few places forward in the lunch line now and then, anyway.”
“Aren’t you even just the least bit angry?” he asked.
It was a good question. A lot of people still were. Narcho, definitely. Seelix. As for herself, there was still a churning, bitter something that was always there, but it had been there so long that she didn’t actively think about feeling it anymore, like the feel of wearing clothes.
“Sure, I’m angry,” she finally said. “But I was angry before, too-about the Cylons, about losing my family, my home. Where’s that gotten me?” She threw up her hand carelessly, indicating the room. “At least now I don’t have to pretend to have hope when I don’t, just to keep everyone else’s morale up.”
Louis looked stricken. Only then did she realize how that must have sounded to him, the guy who she’d taken on what from any rational point of view was a wild goose chase to look for his missing lover. “At least now I don’t have to act like I think we’re ever going to find a place to be,” she added quickly. “A lot of the people who were locked up in here before the Attacks never expected to see sunlight again, so they never had any hope to begin with. Turns out, that’s kind of liberating.”
Louis sat silent, staring at her with such a lost, defeated expression. Not hopeless, though. No, it was clear as day that Louis Hoshi was a man still imprisoned in the chains of hope.
Holding Louis’s gaze was too much for her, so she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette to give herself a break. Even though she only had three left, she offered Louis one, because he looked like he really needed it. He declined. “I hear they executed Felix,” she said, flicking her eyes up to gauge if that was why Louis was here. It sure looked like it was. “It must be hitting you pretty hard.”
Racetrack saw him blink rapidly and his mouth move without any sound coming out, searching for words. He finally closed his eyes and said, “Nobody talks to me anymore.”
Of all the things she’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them. “On Galactica? Seriously? But you didn’t even know about the mutiny! How can they hold it against you?”
“Meg,” he said quietly, “I was hoping you could tell me why Felix never gave me a chance to join him.”
The image of Ryan Maddox’s boots drifting six inches off the ground burst unbidden into her mind. She didn’t think that was why Felix had kept Louis out, but the thought still wouldn’t go away.
“Would you have?” she asked instead.
He looked away, shoulders folding in on himself. “I don’t know anymore.”
If Louis could hang on to some kind of hope even now, after everything… But now she knew for certain why Louis was there, at least. “Yeah, I don’t think Felix knew, either. I remember being surprised at first that you weren’t in on the plan. I asked him about it once.”
Louis’s head shot up. “What did he say?” The desperation in his voice set her back in her chair.
“McLeay has comms training,” Felix answered. “Given the timing, it’ll take her a while to get to CIC. In the meantime, Gage can handle it well enough.”
“One, Louis is better at comms than both of them, and you know that better than anyone. Though, frankly, a trained monkey would probably be better at comms than Gage,” Racetrack said, leaning in over the table and lowering her voice even more when Hotdog and Top Hat walked behind her. “And two, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Felix sighed and put his hand to his forehead, carefully holding out the cigarette between his fingers so it wouldn’t singe his hair.
“He avoided the question,” Racetrack said.
Louis’s eyes fell with disappointment. If not knowing hurt him that much, well, so much for trying to save him a little pain. “I bugged him about it, though. I told him he should include you, that you guys were a team. You knew I always rooted for you guys to get together, right?”
That actually got a half-smile out of him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “You were making book on us.”
For the first time since she’d been brought to the Astral Queen, Racetrack allowed herself to remember Joe’s. She replayed the memory of a night sometime before the Baltar trial-nothing special about that night in particular, just one she and Skulls had spent kicking Narcho and Anders’s asses at the Pyramid Toss game. Beating Mr. Caprica Buccaneer at anything involving a pyramid ball was bound to draw an audience: Starbuck, Apollo, Barolay, Seelix, Hotdog, Cally, Tyrol-almost everyone in the bar by the time they were done, including Louis and Felix. She remembered Louis wrapping his arm around Felix’s shoulders and Felix looking both happy and scared, like he didn’t quite know what to do with the sheer adoration radiating from Louis whenever he looked at him.
“Yeah, but it was never about the money. You guys were so obviously interested in each other.”
“What did Felix say?” Louis pressed.
Racetrack would’ve rather talked about old times. The wounds from the mutiny were still too fresh. She wouldn’t presume to tell anybody how to heal, though. “He said something like, ‘Louis convinced Adama and Tigh to let him take a Raptor into the black to find me, with absolutely no clue where I was. Does that sound to you like someone who’s given up hope?’”
She could tell that hit Louis like a physical blow. She quickly shifted the subject. “That was the first time I actually asked myself, ‘Is that why you agreed to this?’ Then I realized Felix was right. I’d really given up.”
She took a long drag from her cigarette. It still burned her lungs, but the burn felt good now. “You know, I’m kind of glad they put me in prison.”
“Really?” Louis asked, startled.
“Yeah,” Racetrack said, realizing what she felt as she spoke. “I can’t imagine going back and having to look at the people I knew on the other side. A lot of people died.”
She dropped the cigarette butt to the floor and let it smolder on the cold metal. “I’m not a mind reader, Louis, but I think maybe Felix knew that he’d be executed if the mutiny failed, but that they’d let you live. You saved his life. Do you really think Felix wanted you to have to live out the rest of your days in a place like this?”
She hadn’t intended to lecture him, but Louis looked chastened and still as utterly lost as when he’d walked in. She hooked her fingers in the chain links separating them, even though the manacles awkwardly forced her other hand to follow it part-way. It was the most comforting gesture she could think of. “Take care, Louis.”
Much to her surprise, Louis reached out and fitted his fingers over hers. “You too, Meg.”
She nodded resolutely so she didn’t have to risk using her voice, stood up, and walked toward the door. She heard Louis get up from the chair behind her.
“Meg, what happened to your shoes?” Louis asked.
She turned, surprised. “They took away my flight suit. The shoes and the wings were kind of a package deal, I guess.”
Louis could only nod. She knocked on the door to call the guard before he could say anything else.
Two days later, Racetrack returned to her cell after supper in the mess to find a pair of boots on her bunk, shined up so bright she literally could see her face reflected in the toes. There was no note. There didn’t need to be.
part two
Summary: Just living is not enough. Racetrack’s life on the Astral Queen after the mutiny.
Characters: Racetrack, Narcho, Skulls, Seelix, and Hoshi
Pairings: Gen
Beta Thanks: Thanks to lorrainemarker for beta’ing!
Warnings: Violence, death, and non-explicit talk of past rape.
Original Story: Aftermath, by millari
Notes: Title taken from the Book of Common Prayer and from a Neko Case song. Thank you, millari, for writing such a wonderful story to work with. My biggest problem remixing was that every time I went back to your original fic to check something, I’d not only have to read all of it again, but it made me cry all over again as well!
The Quick and the Dead (The People Got a Lotta Nerve Remix)
Racetrack shivered uncontrollably. It wasn’t from fear-she was one of the most seasoned combat veterans left alive, for frak’s sake, and anyone who hadn’t killed those raw nerve endings by now was long dead. The shower had been frakking freezing, and droplets still fell from her hair down her chest and back, slid down her nose, caught on her eyelashes.
It was silly, but Racetrack was disappointed when, instead of an orange jumpsuit, the guard handed her back the pants and underwear she’d been wearing when they shipped her over to the Astral Queen. It made sense, but it felt like she deserved new clothes in recompense for the shivering humiliation of being “processed.”
The guards told her to keep the line moving, so all she could do was clutch the clothing to her chest and stumble along still naked into another room. This one looked like a locker room, only without lockers. The only things in the room were a few rows of benches and some hooks on the wall, just as spartan as the showers had been. It wasn’t exactly polite to stare at people when they were naked-even on Galactica, there was an unspoken rule that you didn’t give people once-overs in the head unless you were planning on doing something about it-but the need for something familiar overwhelmed Racetrack’s general willingness to follow the rules.
There were a lot of people she didn’t recognize. She’d had no idea Felix had risked recruiting so many civilians. She saw a few Marines, though they were hard to recognize as such until they got dressed in their black pants and t-shirts again. Even then it wasn’t easy; their faces looked so different without the helmets shading their brows anymore. She saw Redwing on the far side of the room, too far away to go over to him just for comfort. Everyone was silent. Guards were still watching.
She laid her clothes on the bench and dressed. Once she had her underwear on and was trying to find a way to cinch her pants so they would fit (they’d taken away her belt), she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, fist cocked, until she saw it was Narcho.
“Shh,” he said quietly, even though she hadn’t said anything. Her heart was still beating too fast. Narcho sat down on the bench beside her as he slowly put on his socks. “You okay?” he whispered.
“Fine,” she whispered back.
“What about Skulls?”
Racetrack shivered. The empty hangar deck was cold, she was stripped down to her bra, and she hadn’t thought to pull her flight suit sleeves back on when she pulled off her tanks. It was too late now, because she’d have to stop applying pressure to the bullet wound high on Skulls’ chest to do it.
She wasn’t afraid. But the old mantra of assume you’re already dead; just make sure Hell isn’t gonna be lonely rang hollow as her friend’s-frak it, her brother’s-life bubbled up between her fingers.
“Frak,” Skulls coughed more than said. “Always knew a Cylon would get me in the end, but never thought it’d be on our home turf.”
“Shut the frak up. That’s not true.”
“Funny time to be arguing about whether or not Starbuck is a toaster, don’t you think?”
Normally, Racetrack would have smacked him for telling such an awful joke. “I mean you’re not dying, you frakwad. I outrank you, and as your CAG, I’m ordering you not to die.”
Skulls smiled with gritted teeth. “Gaeta’s promoting you, huh? ‘Bout time somebody did.”
Racetrack shifted her fingers a little, trying to fold another edge of her tanks over the wound, where the blood had soaked through. Skulls groaned sharply at the movement. She stopped.
“If you’re going to force me to live, then I wish the man Connor said he’d send for me would get his ass down here already,” Skulls said. “Could use a nice shot of morpha.”
Racetrack swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Last I saw him, two of Connor’s men had found a clear route to the infirmary and were taking him there.” She stared at what was left of her pile of clothing. “They didn’t give me a shirt.”
“What?” Narcho asked.
Frak, she was not going to cry over a frakking shirt. “I took off my tanks to stop the bleeding. After they got Skulls, I just zipped my flight suit back up over my bra.” She felt her voice shaking. Gods, her wings. Even a month after she passed basic flight, she’d said she felt naked whenever she didn’t have them. “They took away my flight suit. I don’t have a shirt. Or shoes.”
“They took mine, too,” Narcho said. Even though he was still only whispering, Racetrack could feel he meant more than he was saying, too. “They gave me different shoes, though.” He looked at her for a moment, thinking. “Hold up a sec. It won’t fix everything, but…it’s something.” He pulled off his dark top tank and handed it to her, keeping his light under tank for himself.
She accepted it silently but gratefully. The arm openings were so big that her bra stuck out underneath, and it pulled too tightly across her breasts, but it would work.
She didn’t have much time to think about it, anyway, because a guard announced over the speakers that it was time to move out. They didn’t form up into a line this time; they were a jumbled mass of bodies shuffling toward a narrow door at the other end of the room. Narcho hooked his finger through a belt loop on the back of Racetrack’s pants so they wouldn’t get separated.
Racetrack felt bile rising in her throat when she stepped through the doorway. The summer between high school and academy, she had worked at a slaughterhouse. The rows upon rows of cells made out of chain-link fence-cages-housing the residents of the Astral Queen looked far too much like the cattle holding pens. She’d figured there would be several floors inside, but it looked like at least most of the cells were all on one level. Catwalks skirted around and crisscrossed over the cellblocks several meters above. Guards with Marine-like protective gear but mismatched uniforms ambled down the raised walkways, rifles in hand.
The worst of it was, it was so quiet. The inmates were all staring at them through the chain links, barely murmuring amongst themselves.
“Racetrack!” Skulls called out far too loudly. He towered above most of the crowd, but it took him a long time to push his way through to get to her. “I was hoping they hadn’t got you, but…Gods, it’s good to see you.”
She couldn’t help it; she pulled Skulls into a hug. She stopped when he drew in his breath sharply.
Skulls gingerly touched his chest and said in explanation, “The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked, but it’s still pretty raw.” Narcho learned from Racetrack’s mistake and just patted Skulls on his good shoulder.
“What’re you frakkers in here for?” someone in the cells called out. “You throw coffee at some of Adama’s Marines?”
The cellblock echoed with laughter. Skulls stiffened beside Racetrack. He hadn’t been in on the Gideon Massacre, but he and Tomcat had shuttled over the Marine unit sent to “clean up” afterwards. She’d heard Skulls tell her the story enough times to know it was no joke to him.
Without tearing his eyes off the cells, Skulls muttered, “I got your back.”
Racetrack snorted. It was…sweet, she guessed, but the sister-brother dynamic between them had always been firmly older-sister, younger-brother. “Well, that’s nice, but considering a well-positioned snuggle can bring you to your knees right now, what with that bullet wound-”
Skulls turned and looked her in the eye. “I got your back,” he repeated slowly. It was weird, seeing Skulls this serious. It made the unreality of the whole situation hit home. “Remember, when Cally….” He didn’t need to finish the sentence, even though it had happened years ago. “I’ve got your back.”
“Likewise,” Racetrack answered, serious now.
Racetrack was just about to turn around to get Narcho’s attention when one of the guards yelled down, “Quit standing around like frakking sheep and find a frakking empty bunk!”
All hell broke loose in the cells as the crowd wended its way through. On an intellectual level, Racetrack knew it was mostly a combination of boredom and posturing, but the fact that the people making obscene gestures and hollering things that she couldn’t tell if they were jokes or threats…these were the people she was going to be living with for most likely the rest of her life. ‘The rest of her life’ had always seemed so short when she was flying. Not anymore.
Narcho tried to break ranks when one of the prisoners propositioned him in a much nastier way than the other dozen or so inmates who’d done so. Racetrack caught his arm and pulled him back.
“Let me go!” Narcho spat, fists still clenched as he twisted in her grip. “If we don’t show we can’t be frakked around with right now, it’ll only get worse.”
Skulls said, “If we don’t find empty bunks right now before they’re all taken, you’re going to end up being roomies with that frak, or worse.” Then something caught Skulls’ eye, and he craned his neck over the crowd. “Is that Seelix?”
Racetrack let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Seelix was standing outside one of two empty cells that were side-by-side, and she was shouting down any civvie who even looked like they were considering taking one of the bunks. The three made their way over to her.
“Seelix! Glad you’re-” Skulls started to say, but Narcho enveloped her in a tight embrace before Skulls could finish. Skulls gave Racetrack a look of, “Are they together? How’d the rumor mill miss this?” Racetrack shook her head. She was pretty sure Narcho had been with some guy from the engine room lately.
Seelix looked almost as happy to see Narcho as he was to see her. “When I heard they had you down in the airlock, I was sure-”
“It was where they caught me, not where they took me,” Narcho said. “I don’t think they wanted to waste the bullets on a frak like me.”
“But you were Gaeta’s XO,” Seelix pressed.
Racetrack noticed the crowd was starting to thin out as people found empty bunks. “Saving this for anybody in particular?” she interrupted, pointing at one of the cells Seelix had been guarding.
“Figured I’d save it for the first people I saw that I half-way trusted. It’s all yours,” Seelix said.
They didn’t need to discuss it; Skulls and Racetrack took one cell, and Seelix and Narcho took the other. Racetrack staked her claim on the top bunk, and Skulls crawled gingerly into the lower one. There wasn’t much else in the cell to claim: just a sink, a toilet, and a shelf, all open to the view of the Gods and everyone through the chain-link fencing that comprised the cell walls. At least that meant they could see Seelix and Narcho in their cell.
Seelix and Narcho were both sitting on the lower bunk in their cell, which was pushed up against the other side of the “wall” that Skulls and Racetrack’s bunks were against as well. They hooked their fingers through the links and rested their forearms and foreheads against the fence. Racetrack climbed down and sat beside Skulls to join the conversation.
“You see anybody else?” Seelix asked them quietly.
“Redwing,” Racetrack said. “I think he’s in another cellblock.”
“Two-Bit and Ape Man were in the infirmary when they took me away,” Skulls said. “If they make it, I assume they’ll end up here eventually.”
“Anybody see Connor? Gunny Hanson? Yeti?” Seelix’s questions were all met with head-shakes and shrugs. “Maybe they’re not dead. Maybe the brass doesn’t even know some of them were mutineers.”
“Oh, frak. Gunny Maddox,” Skulls said out of nowhere.
“He wasn’t in on it, was he?” Narcho asked.
Racetrack followed Skulls’ gaze. “Looks like he was.”
On the other side of the aisle, about five cells down, a tall kid in Marine garb with stunning brown eyes was curled up on a bunk, bawling his heart out.
“Frak,” Narcho said. “Who the hell pulled him in on this?”
Skulls shook his head. “I can’t believe Gaeta would keep Hoshi out of it but rope in Maddox. At least Hoshi’s decision would’ve probably been half-rational and only half-lovesick.”
Seelix’s brow furrowed. “What the frak are you talking about?”
“You remember the Frak Pool, betting on who’d hook up, right?” Racetrack explained. Seelix nodded. “Well, that sobbing mess right there is the reason why I made so many cubits off Gaeta getting together with Hoshi.”
“You have to admit, Hoshi looked like quite the dark horse up against a twenty-something Marine with pretty eyes and perfect abs who worshiped the ground Gaeta walked on,” Narcho said.
Racetrack smirked. She was going to cling to the odd normalcy of gossiping as long as she could. “This might come as a surprise to you, Narcho, but there are guys who don’t think exclusively with their dicks.”
Narcho rolled his eyes at her. “No, I just didn’t realize that Gaeta had a thing for older men when I placed my bet.”
Skulls got up from the bunk and walked over to the far corner of the cell. “Hey, Ryan!” he called out. “You okay? If you’re hurt, I think they’ve got a medic on staff here.”
Maddox sat up, raised his tear-streaked face to Skulls, and shook his head.
“Who’s your roomie, Ryan?” Skulls asked.
“Don’t have one.”
“Okay, then. Talk to me.”
“He’s dead,” Maddox choked.
“I know,” Skulls said, voice soothing. Of course, they didn’t know for sure, but barring a miracle, there was really no other way this story could end for Felix.
“No, I saw him,” Maddox pressed. That made Racetrack and the others sit up and take notice. “After they caught me, they came down the line and said they had a job. That if we took it, we’d be forgiven. We could go back to the way things were.” Racetrack’s stomach churned. “I raised my hand. They took me down to the airlock, gave me back my gun. Then I saw the two chairs, and…” Maddox started to sob again. “I couldn’t do it. They took me out of the firing line and put me outside, and I saw Felix and Zarek walk in, heard…. Then they sent me in to get the chairs. They didn’t want to space the frakking chairs….” Maddox completely lost it after that. Skulls sat back down, knowing there was nothing more he could do.
“Adama’s either a vindictive bastard or a frakking blind moron,” Narcho muttered. “I don’t know which is worse.”
“The Old Man I knew never would’ve done something like that to Maddox,” Racetrack said.
Seelix said, “Yes he would have. He did. He threatened Tyrol with putting Cally and half the deck crew up against the bulkhead and blowing our brains out. Or didn’t the pilots ever hear about that one?”
All four of them jumped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. “How does he know Zarek’s really dead?” the occupant of the cell on the other side of Skulls and Racetrack’s cell asked.
Racetrack was grateful when Narcho shortened the story. “He was there. We were all there.”
The prisoner looked interested. “You were on Zarek’s side?”
“You’re looking at a good chunk of ex-Commander Gaeta’s senior staff,” Narcho said with a rueful snort.
The inmate stood up, shaking his head and smiling. “I’d shake your hands, but it’s about five minutes ‘til lock-down, and I don’t want to get stuck in somebody else’s cell for the night. Wait, here-” He fumbled in his pocket, then pulled out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He squashed the pack a little to get it through the chain link and into Skulls and Racetrack’s cell. “Housewarming present.”
Racetrack and Skulls looked at one another, then back at Seelix and Narcho, trying to figure out if this was some sort of trap. Finally, Racetrack shrugged, picked up the pack, and pulled out cigarettes for each of them. The inmate had a light and was awkwardly poking it through a chain link before Racetrack could even ask.
“So all you new arrivals were with Zarek, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll get the word out, and everybody’ll straighten their act up with you,” he said.
“Thanks,” Skulls said, completely befuddled.
Racetrack passed a lit cigarette back to Seelix, then took the next for herself. The smoke burned her throat when she inhaled. She hated the feeling, but she didn’t cough. She told herself she was only doing it to be polite, but it did cross her mind that shortening her life a little didn’t sound like such a bad deal anymore.
“Were you a political prisoner, like Zarek?” Seelix asked. Racetrack silently conceded that that was a good guess for why this guy was so weirdly friendly. He looked about the same age as Zarek, skinny but with wiry muscles, a tattoo peeking out from under one sleeve of his jumpsuit, and scraggly brown hair combed back from his forehead.
The man laughed. “No. Drug dealer and addict. The worlds ending was the best thing that ever happened to me. Cut off my supply.” He winked at Racetrack. “Tough to stay addicted to something that doesn’t exist anymore. Plus, Zarek taught me a thing or two about addictions. They cost you a lot, especially in here. Me personally, not so much maybe, since I’m one of the go-to guys if you want to get something from the outside-for a price. But he taught me how dangerous it was to need things, because it makes it so easy for others to hold power over you.” That did sound a lot like Zarek. The man continued, “Anyway, we all had a lot of respect for Zarek. He’s the one who got rid of the guards and forced Adama to let us govern ourselves. Well, at least for a while.” The man glared up at the catwalk.
“When did the guards come back?” Racetrack asked, already pretty sure of the answer.
The man snorted a laugh. “Before Zarek’s body was even cold, by the sounds of it. I’m sure the official line is they need to control you new arrivals, but that’s bullshit. Adama and Roslin sent scumbag crime bosses over here when we didn’t have official guards, but now they think we can’t handle flyboys and knuckledraggers practically programmed to follow orders? No offense. Anyway, nobody blames you for that. Everybody knows it’s all because the minute the guy holding their asses to the fire to keep that promise was gone…” He snapped his fingers.
Racetrack wasn’t sure that was all true-if the people he’d sent here were dangerous enough as a group to almost take over Galactica, she imagined Adama had plenty to fear from leaving them to their own devices on the Astral Queen-but she could definitely see how it could easily look that way to the inmates.
“Sorry, I got so carried away I forgot to introduce myself. Remy. Like I said, I’d shake, but I’m pretty sure our doors are locked by now.”
She hesitated before she spoke. “I’m Racetrack,” she said. There was something more comfortable about giving out a callsign rather than a name, like she was holding a part of herself apart and safe from the weird world she’d just entered.
“Skulls,” Skulls said, following her lead.
“Awful funny names,” Remy said.
“They’re callsigns,” Narcho added. “Trust me, if you knew Skulls’ real name, you’d understand why he preferred his callsign. I’m Narcho, and this is Hardball.”
“No, it’s not. This is Diana Seelix,” Seelix said. Racetrack had always struggled at referring to Seelix by her callsign after so many years of knowing her as a knuckledragger, but she doubted this choice was for her convenience. “We’re not pilots anymore, Noel. We’re nothing.”
Narcho laid a hand on her shoulder, but Seelix flinched away angrily and crossed over to the other side of the cell, busying herself at the sink. The remaining three stood looking at Remy awkwardly, not sure what to do now.
Remy just shrugged and settled onto his bunk, staring more at the cigarette smoke curling up toward the ceiling than at them. “Welcome to the Astral Queen.”
~*~*~
Racetrack startled awake, reaching automatically for a sidearm that wasn’t there.
“Frak! Somebody help!” a voice far down the row of cells yelled. It was pitch dark, except for the dull red glow of the few emergency lights that dotted the hull high above the cells, up on the guards’ catwalks.
“What is it?” another voice hollered. Racetrack could hear Skulls shifting on the bunk below her.
“I think there’s something wrong with the guy in the next cell,” the first voice said. “You know that weird, loud noise? It came from his cell. And there’s something…it’s too dark to see what, but there’s something not right about it.”
“Whose cell is it?” Racetrack heard Narcho call out. She swung her legs over the bunk, ready to help. Skulls caught her ankle and gave it a friendly squeeze, a signal of both “I’m here” and “we should stay out of this.” Racetrack stilled.
“Don’t know. A Marine, I think,” the voice said.
Racetrack’s eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that she at least thought she saw Narcho stand in the cell beside hers. “Hey! Warden!” he yelled up at the catwalk. “We got a situation down here!”
She heard a snort from the cell on the other side of hers. “Don’t waste your voice. The guards didn’t give a shit about us back when they were getting paid. They sure as hell aren’t gonna start now,” Remy said.
Narcho ignored him and kept yelling for help for another fifteen minutes. Finally the long-time inmates, annoyed, yelled at Narcho enough to shut him up. Racetrack listened to him and Seelix talk quietly about what might be up and which cell he might be talking about, but Racetrack didn’t join in. She had counted down the cell block in her mind as soon as the yelling had started, and she had a pretty good idea what had happened.
That still didn’t prepare her for what she saw when the lights blinked on early in the morning.
“Oh, frak,” Skulls muttered. “Poor kid.”
It was an odd thing to say, but Racetrack was glad Skulls had said it so she didn’t have to.
Ryan Maddox’s boots drifted back and forth about six inches from the floor, like his body was blowing in some gentle breeze that nobody else could feel. He’d made the noose out of his bed sheet.
The guy from the night before in the cell next to Maddox’s started freaking out. “Frak! Frak! That’s, just-come on, guys, get him down!” he yelled vaguely upward.
Narcho looked up with more focus and caught the eye of a guard on the catwalk above them, who was leaning against the rail. “Hey! A little help down here?” The guard stared back impassively. “Oh, come on! Treat the kid with a little human decency.”
The guard smirked, flicked a cigarette butt down into Narcho’s cell, and walked away.
“Welcome to the Astral Queen and its famous hospitality,” Remy said, turning over on his cot, away from the sight of Maddox’s body.
Two hours. The guards let Maddox hang there for two hours before they finally opened all the cell doors, so someone could get in and lay his body at rest. The guards took the body away while the rest of the cell block was in the mess for lunch. Remy told them the guards would’ve flushed it out an airlock, no funeral, no ceremonies.
Racetrack felt stupid for not having realized it earlier. Adama may not have lined them up for the firing squad, but none of their fates were going to be any different from Felix’s. There was just going to be more shit in between before each of them finally got to that same ending.
~*~*~
Racetrack’s second full day aboard the Astral Queen was uneventful. A guard shoved algae bars through the chain links in the cell, and that was breakfast. Some time later (she missed her watch more than anything, except maybe her shoes-someone else had gotten to Ryan Maddox’s boots first), the locks buzzed and the doors of all the cells on the block swung open.
The guards told everyone to line up, so they did. They were assigned “chores”: Skulls still couldn’t lift because of the bullet wound, so he got shower-cleaning duty; Narcho was being an insolent ass to everyone, guards and prisoners alike, so he got stuck with the sanitation crew; and Seelix and Racetrack were sent down to fix rickety pipes right outside the engine room, even though Racetrack still didn’t have any shoes. The work was hard, and loosening rusted bolts made her muscles ache.
They got a quick break for lunch before being sent back to work for six or so more hours, then a longer break for dinner in the mess. Then they were herded back into the cellblocks, though the cell doors were kept open for a while. Remy gave Narcho a deck of cards as another “housewarming gift,” so the four of them played for a while until Skulls begged off to go to sleep early. The three of them kept playing until another inmate told them it was almost time for lock-down. They went back to their cells, washed up, talked a little while longer, and then went to bed at lights-out.
As she stared up at the ceiling she couldn’t actually see because it was so pitch-black, Racetrack thought about how she should be angrier and antsier about all this than she was. The day had been long and hard and, what should have been worst of all, downright boring. When she’d been flying, boredom had been the thing she hated most, even more than the Cylons some days. She hated waiting in the ready room, pacing back and forth until the call came down from CIC to actually let them do something. By all rights, this day should’ve felt as frustrating and nerve-wracking as eighteen hours waiting for the call to action stations.
That’s when it hit her: the difference was, she wasn’t waiting for anything anymore. There was something relieving about that, she felt.
But in her dreams that night, she was flying.
~*~*~
The guards never talked to them unless it was absolutely necessary. That was why everyone jumped when one called down from the catwalk, “Which one of you is Meg Edmondson?”
Narcho laid his cards down and locked eyes with her across the bunk they were using as a table. She could tell the same questions and worries were racing through his head, though he looked more scared about them than she did.
Racetrack leaned back and called up calmly, with that little bit of insubordinate venom she’d learned from Felix, “Why the frak do you care?”
“You got a visitor,” the guard said.
She saw the mirror of her own doubt and confusion on Narcho’s face. She flicked her gaze at the rest of the hall and noticed lots of prisoners were staring at her and the guard. It appeared this sort of thing didn’t happen very much.
“The kind I got a choice of whether or not I want to see them?” Racetrack yelled back.
“Just get your ass over to the aft stairwell,” the guard said. When Narcho rose along with Racetrack and was about to follow her out of the cell, the guard snapped, “You sure as hell don’t look like a ‘Meg Edmondson’ to me, so sit the frak back down.”
Narcho gave Racetrack an apologetic little nod, then raised his hands in something between surrender and a shrug and went back into Racetrack and Skulls’ cell.
Racetrack held her head high and maintained her pilot swagger as she walked down the cellblock to the stairs. Two guards met her at its base, one with a rifle trained on her, one with manacles. Her escort walked her a little too quickly up the stairs, making her stumble when she tried to extend her stride past the limits of the chains. The pattern of the grating hurt the soles of her feet. They led her out of the cellblock area down a small, closed-off hall. She didn’t have the energy to be scared of who or what might be behind the hatch the guards opened for her, then closed behind her.
The room was dingy and tiny, made even smaller by the floor-to-ceiling chain-link fencing that divided it in half. Two plastic chairs, one on each side, faced each other through the fence. The chair on the opposite side was occupied.
Louis Hoshi stood when she walked in. That stupid little gesture of respect damn near made her cry. She smiled hard instead.
“How are they treating you, Meg?”
“Louis! What the frak are you doing here?”
He smiled back at her. Racetrack really was happy to see Louis. He wasn’t Dee, but she’d always liked his mixing competence with a sense of humor when he was on comm., and he had a calm and gentleness that you just didn’t see much in the military outside of infirmary crew, let alone in Pegasus guys. For some reason, he’d automatically taken to calling her ‘Meg,’ and unlike with pretty much everyone but her mom, Racetrack had let him.
She felt really bad about all the times she’d good-naturedly joked with Louis about him being a cradle robber, though, because he looked like he’d aged five years since she’d taken him out on the SAR mission for Felix just a few short weeks ago. Then again, Felix had looked a decade older than he really was the last time she’d seen him in CIC, struggling with his cane at the command table.
“Are they treating you okay?” Louis asked.
He looked so uncomfortable. There was no reason to let him worry about her, especially since there was nothing he could do about any of it anyway. She flopped into the chair as casually as the manacles would allow. “Oh, you know. Lots of exhausting work, shitty food, the occasional card game. Not all that different from Galactica, really.”
Somehow, what she said had the opposite effect on Louis that she’d been going for, making his jaw hang open a little and his brows knit together in concern.
“No, seriously. I’m okay, all things considered,” she reassured him. “This ship was Zarek’s little kingdom for a long time. His name still means a lot here, so they treat us mutineers…kind of like heroes.” That was maybe overselling it a bit. “It’s worth a few extra smokes and a few places forward in the lunch line now and then, anyway.”
“Aren’t you even just the least bit angry?” he asked.
It was a good question. A lot of people still were. Narcho, definitely. Seelix. As for herself, there was still a churning, bitter something that was always there, but it had been there so long that she didn’t actively think about feeling it anymore, like the feel of wearing clothes.
“Sure, I’m angry,” she finally said. “But I was angry before, too-about the Cylons, about losing my family, my home. Where’s that gotten me?” She threw up her hand carelessly, indicating the room. “At least now I don’t have to pretend to have hope when I don’t, just to keep everyone else’s morale up.”
Louis looked stricken. Only then did she realize how that must have sounded to him, the guy who she’d taken on what from any rational point of view was a wild goose chase to look for his missing lover. “At least now I don’t have to act like I think we’re ever going to find a place to be,” she added quickly. “A lot of the people who were locked up in here before the Attacks never expected to see sunlight again, so they never had any hope to begin with. Turns out, that’s kind of liberating.”
Louis sat silent, staring at her with such a lost, defeated expression. Not hopeless, though. No, it was clear as day that Louis Hoshi was a man still imprisoned in the chains of hope.
Holding Louis’s gaze was too much for her, so she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette to give herself a break. Even though she only had three left, she offered Louis one, because he looked like he really needed it. He declined. “I hear they executed Felix,” she said, flicking her eyes up to gauge if that was why Louis was here. It sure looked like it was. “It must be hitting you pretty hard.”
Racetrack saw him blink rapidly and his mouth move without any sound coming out, searching for words. He finally closed his eyes and said, “Nobody talks to me anymore.”
Of all the things she’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them. “On Galactica? Seriously? But you didn’t even know about the mutiny! How can they hold it against you?”
“Meg,” he said quietly, “I was hoping you could tell me why Felix never gave me a chance to join him.”
The image of Ryan Maddox’s boots drifting six inches off the ground burst unbidden into her mind. She didn’t think that was why Felix had kept Louis out, but the thought still wouldn’t go away.
“Would you have?” she asked instead.
He looked away, shoulders folding in on himself. “I don’t know anymore.”
If Louis could hang on to some kind of hope even now, after everything… But now she knew for certain why Louis was there, at least. “Yeah, I don’t think Felix knew, either. I remember being surprised at first that you weren’t in on the plan. I asked him about it once.”
Louis’s head shot up. “What did he say?” The desperation in his voice set her back in her chair.
“McLeay has comms training,” Felix answered. “Given the timing, it’ll take her a while to get to CIC. In the meantime, Gage can handle it well enough.”
“One, Louis is better at comms than both of them, and you know that better than anyone. Though, frankly, a trained monkey would probably be better at comms than Gage,” Racetrack said, leaning in over the table and lowering her voice even more when Hotdog and Top Hat walked behind her. “And two, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Felix sighed and put his hand to his forehead, carefully holding out the cigarette between his fingers so it wouldn’t singe his hair.
“He avoided the question,” Racetrack said.
Louis’s eyes fell with disappointment. If not knowing hurt him that much, well, so much for trying to save him a little pain. “I bugged him about it, though. I told him he should include you, that you guys were a team. You knew I always rooted for you guys to get together, right?”
That actually got a half-smile out of him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “You were making book on us.”
For the first time since she’d been brought to the Astral Queen, Racetrack allowed herself to remember Joe’s. She replayed the memory of a night sometime before the Baltar trial-nothing special about that night in particular, just one she and Skulls had spent kicking Narcho and Anders’s asses at the Pyramid Toss game. Beating Mr. Caprica Buccaneer at anything involving a pyramid ball was bound to draw an audience: Starbuck, Apollo, Barolay, Seelix, Hotdog, Cally, Tyrol-almost everyone in the bar by the time they were done, including Louis and Felix. She remembered Louis wrapping his arm around Felix’s shoulders and Felix looking both happy and scared, like he didn’t quite know what to do with the sheer adoration radiating from Louis whenever he looked at him.
“Yeah, but it was never about the money. You guys were so obviously interested in each other.”
“What did Felix say?” Louis pressed.
Racetrack would’ve rather talked about old times. The wounds from the mutiny were still too fresh. She wouldn’t presume to tell anybody how to heal, though. “He said something like, ‘Louis convinced Adama and Tigh to let him take a Raptor into the black to find me, with absolutely no clue where I was. Does that sound to you like someone who’s given up hope?’”
She could tell that hit Louis like a physical blow. She quickly shifted the subject. “That was the first time I actually asked myself, ‘Is that why you agreed to this?’ Then I realized Felix was right. I’d really given up.”
She took a long drag from her cigarette. It still burned her lungs, but the burn felt good now. “You know, I’m kind of glad they put me in prison.”
“Really?” Louis asked, startled.
“Yeah,” Racetrack said, realizing what she felt as she spoke. “I can’t imagine going back and having to look at the people I knew on the other side. A lot of people died.”
She dropped the cigarette butt to the floor and let it smolder on the cold metal. “I’m not a mind reader, Louis, but I think maybe Felix knew that he’d be executed if the mutiny failed, but that they’d let you live. You saved his life. Do you really think Felix wanted you to have to live out the rest of your days in a place like this?”
She hadn’t intended to lecture him, but Louis looked chastened and still as utterly lost as when he’d walked in. She hooked her fingers in the chain links separating them, even though the manacles awkwardly forced her other hand to follow it part-way. It was the most comforting gesture she could think of. “Take care, Louis.”
Much to her surprise, Louis reached out and fitted his fingers over hers. “You too, Meg.”
She nodded resolutely so she didn’t have to risk using her voice, stood up, and walked toward the door. She heard Louis get up from the chair behind her.
“Meg, what happened to your shoes?” Louis asked.
She turned, surprised. “They took away my flight suit. The shoes and the wings were kind of a package deal, I guess.”
Louis could only nod. She knocked on the door to call the guard before he could say anything else.
Two days later, Racetrack returned to her cell after supper in the mess to find a pair of boots on her bunk, shined up so bright she literally could see her face reflected in the toes. There was no note. There didn’t need to be.
part two