FIC: The Stars in Their Courses - Chapter Ten
Summary: Elizabeth’s new haven presents its own dangers; Laura must find her leadership skills.
Rating: T
Genre: A/U, Adventure, Drama, Romance, Angst
Word Count: 2,300
A/N: I’ve seen The Plan, and had the unpleasant discovery that my plans (*Cavil voice* I have a plllaaaannn!) for the Cylons in this story mirrored the show's writers. As for spoilers, I won’t be using specific plot points from that film, but I do share the general story arc. Be forewarned if you haven’t seen it.
~*~
Laura stared at the number on her white board. It was now under fifty thousand; an unacceptable threshold passed after less than a week in space.
Many things were unacceptable. Her desk was untidy, overflowing with files. It had never looked like that at the Ministry of Education. Her mind was cluttered too, with unhelpful thoughts about Bill and Elizabeth and loss.
Billy was speaking again, saying something about someone wanting to meet with her.
Doctor Baltar popped up from the lounge chair where he’d been writhing fitfully. “What was that?” he asked. “So sorry to be interrupting you while you were speaking--you were just saying?”
Billy lost his train of thought and then found it. “Uh...I...uh, I was just saying a Doctor Amarak had requested to speak with the President.”
Baltar said, “Doctor Amarak. I see.” The jittery man gave a ghost smile to Laura and Billy.
“You know him?” asked Laura.
“Yes, yes,” Baltar said, his eyes darting around the room. “I used to work with him at the Ministry of Defense.”
Laura smiled at him as one does with the strange men who accost you on the sidewalk and ask for change.
“It says here that he’s uncovered important information regarding how the Cylons were able to defeat Colonial defenses,” said Billy.
“Were you going to speak to him?” Baltar said with odd inflections, jerking his head between Billy and Laura. “Perhaps I could speak to him if you’re busy,” he suggested.
Laura put a hand up to stop his babbling.
Billy quickly interjected, “Actually, I think he wanted to speak directly with the President.”
Baltar leaned closer, eyes intent, cocking his head like a sheep dog.
“It sounded urgent,” Billy said, giving Laura his own significant look.
Laura thought about it. “There’s not enough time before we jump,” she said, “I want him on board first thing during the next cycle.”
Responding to Baltar’s wide eyes of concern, she said, “Thank you, Doctor.”
He nodded in an odd manner, as though he had a chicken bone stuck in his throat and croaked, “Anything I can do to help.”
Laura watched Baltar scurry from the compartment and turned her attention back to Billy. “He’s a strange one, isn’t he?” The young man only half-shrugged, already onto the next item on his list.
~*~
Shelly Godfrey returned to the ward alone.
“Where’s the Doctor?” Elizabeth asked.
“He’s taken a turn for the worse and we’ve put him in his cabin,” said Shelly. “But he wants me to deliver the information to Colonial One and the President.”
Shelly held up a storage disk. “Do you still want to go?”
“Gods, yes,” Elizabeth said, leaping from the bed.
The woman’s strong grip closed around Elizabeth’s arm. “Hush then. We must hurry; there’s not much time left.”
Elizabeth glanced at the clock. Barely fifteen minutes until the next jump. “Will we make it?”
“Come,” said Shelly, tugging her through the door.
The guard was gone, but Elizabeth didn’t have time to ask where he’d gone before Shelly broke into a run, pulling her to the hatchway that led to the hangar deck.
Lieutenant Simon stood beside a grimy little shuttle. “Hurry,” he urged them.
As the two women rushed up the ramp into the shuttle, he called after them, “Go with God,” and Shelly smiled gratefully at him.
“See you later,” she replied and he smiled in return.
The ramp slammed shut and the shuttle immediately lifted off, wavering before righting itself. The flight doors were just opening as they shot forward.
Elizabeth barked at the pilot, “Be careful; what the frak are you doing?”
“Shut up and sit down,” yelled back their pilot. She was a tough-looking small woman, her curly hair tightly pulled back from her stern face.
Shelly pulled the girl back to her seat. “Sit down,” she ordered Elizabeth. “Let the woman fly the shuttle.”
They darted away from the Olympic Carrier and Elizabeth couldn’t help but lean forward again when she spotted the Colonial One in the distance. In a few minutes, she would be in her mother’s arms--
The shuttle banked and the Colonial One went out of view.
“What the frak are we going?” wailed Elizabeth, struggling against Shelly’s grasp.
“We don’t have enough time to get to Colonial One,” explained Shelly. “We’re going to a freighter first. We’ll get to your mother after the next jump.”
The pilot glanced back at them, her face confused. She opened her mouth, then shrugged and turned back to her controls.
Shelly directed at the pilot, “Only three minutes left until they all jump.”
“I’ll make it,” the young woman said confidently, easing the control stick up and the battered shuttle’s engines groaned, then responded, accelerating.
“Why did we leave at all?” asked Elizabeth, her tears close as she saw the bay door of the hulking freighter open for them.
“It’s safer,” said Shelly coolly.
After they landed, Shelly paid the pilot, quietly murmuring something in her ear. The young woman looked at Elizabeth speculatively, shrugged and sauntered out of the shuttle to begin her post-flight checks.
Shelly turned back to Elizabeth. The girl was slouched in her seat, arms crossed, kicking the shuttle deck with her heel.
“Come along, child,” she said, echoing Doctor Amarak and Elizabeth suddenly wondered what had really happened to him.
“I’ll just wait here until the next jump,” said Elizabeth, not looking up. “I want to get to my mother, like, now.”
Shelly’s grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet. She looked into the girl’s frightened eyes. Very carefully, she explained, “I’ve brought you here to meet someone, Elizabeth. Do me the courtesy of coming out.”
“Who?” Elizabeth whispered.
“He can help you,” said Shelly, not answering the question. She tugged the girl to the hatchway and shoved Elizabeth down the ramp before her.
A small man with dark, dead eyes and a mean hare’s pointed mouth, stood waiting, hands clasped at his waist.
Shelly remained behind Elizabeth with her long fingers wrapped around the girl’s shoulders. She said, “I think that you need some spiritual guidance at this time. This is Brother Cavil.”
The priest nodded, smiling without showing his teeth or the smile reaching his blank eyes.
“Uh, that’s okay,” muttered Elizabeth. “That’s not really my thing, more my Mom’s--I really need to talk to my mother.”
Shelly sighed dramatically, and her grip tightened, bruising the girl’s shoulders. “You see what I mean, Brother?”
“We should go to my temple,” he chuckled, “which I fear is nothing more than a shipping container, and consult the oracles for guidance.”
“I just need to--“ Elizabeth’s voice caught and wavered. “I need to call my Mom. If I could just talk to her--“
“But your mother is dead, Elizabeth,” Cavil murmured, suddenly very close to her. “All our mothers are dead. You need to accept that reality, and stop with this fantasy that our new President--“ He paused and exchanged smiles with Shelly; her grip tightened even more-- “is your mother.”
He gently tugged her away from Shelly. “We can help you.”
As Cavil led her off the bay and into a dim corridor, Elizabeth remembered when Laura had finally agreed to allow her to drop her ballet lessons for martial arts lessons. “But only if you take a self-defense course too. Learn to do some street fighting along with that fancy wrestling.”
Her instructor, Maximus, with arms as big around as Elizabeth’s thighs, had loomed over the class and had said, “Never leave the first scene of the crime. They ain’t gonna do somethin’ nice to you once they get your somewheres private.”
Cavil laced his arm through Elizabeth’s tight bicep, and absentmindedly patted her hand. “We’ll have to pray extra hard for your poor soul.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said carefully, lengthening her stride, trying to move them farther ahead of Shelly. But the tall woman’s long legs kept her right behind them.
The crowd was thickening in the corridor, but no face among the bedraggled refugees looked friendly or helpful. Cavil pressed against Elizabeth, signaling that they were turning. This was her only chance.
She pushed her hip into his, shifting the balance of their weight, and swung him away from her with all her strength. His little eyes popped open in surprise, but it was too late for him to react. She slammed him into the wall, hard, and he released his grip on her hand.
She fled, sensing the blonde woman’s long fingers grasping for her. But no matter what force drove that woman, pure terror made Elizabeth faster. She ran as though the flames of Hades were reaching for her, darting and weaving through the crowd.
~*~
Forty-five minutes and no sign of the Cylons.
Dropping his gaze from the DRADIS, Bill held himself upright only by sheer force of will. He told Dee, “Get me the President.”
He lifted the handset; it felt heavy as a stone. “Madam President, there’s still no sign of the Cylons,” he said.
“Why this time?” she asked, her voice as weak as he felt. “Is it something that you did?”
“We had a new plan, but we didn’t have time to implement it yet,” he said.
She asked him, “We lost a ship during the last cycle, the Olympic Carrier, do you think that had something to do with it?”
“Possibly,” he admitted. He visualized her--drooping in her big chair, haggard, worried--and he wanted to have answers for her; he had none.
Whisper-light, she asked, “Are you there?” and he realized he’d just been listening to her breathing.
He made his own voice strong and definite to tell her, “Yeah, I’m here.”
“What do we do now? Commander, I’ve got people on the verge over here.” He knew that she was including herself, daring to show him that vulnerability that she swore that she wouldn’t.
“We’re gonna go to Condition Two; take advantage of this time and get some rest,” he said.
She gave one of her hums. “And how long do we, um, stay on Condition Two?”
“’til I’m satisfied they’re not gonna return,” he said, and felt he had to point out, “It’s a military decision.”
But it gave him no sense of victory to hear her say, “It is. I know that, you’re right, and I defer to your decision.”
She rallied to say, “And Commander, let your men and women know how grateful I am, for the job that they are doing. Thank them for me.”
He replied in kind. “Thank you, Madam President. Thank you.”
~*~
Elizabeth watched the passing crowd from her hiding place between two packing crates. She’d been hiding for at least an hour. On this vessel, there were no announcements about the jumping or their Cylon pursuers, but she didn’t think that they’d jumped again at thirty-three minutes. There also was no sign of Shelly Godfrey.
But Elizabeth couldn’t hide forever. With her bright hair and gaudy tracksuit, she would be easily spotted. She had to get to a comm, and quickly.
She made her way to what seemed to be an informal market. “Where’s there a wireless station?” she asked the first vendor, a gap-toothed old man selling dirty boots. “I need to get a message out.” Something told her not to mention her mother anymore.
“You wanna make a call?” he asked, squinting at her, looking over her new clothes.
“Yes, please,” she said, gritting her teeth.
He just laughed, a rude, harsh sound. He said, “There’s no wireless station, as you call it. Who we gonna call?”
“So I need to contact the crew about making a call?” she asked.
“You could,” he said, running his tongue into the gap between his teeth--an obscene gesture. “But it would cost you.”
“How much?”
The trader exchanged knowing looks with the other merchants who’d been listening in. “At least a thousand cubits.”
When she gasped in shock, he said, “Or you could take it out in trade.” His leering glance ran up and down her body.
It suddenly hit Elizabeth that she was in a great deal of danger, and not just from Shelly Godfrey. She stood out and not in a good way. There may be a way off this bucket, but she didn’t want to take it.
“Five cubits for these boots,” she told him, slapping the coin down and stalking away before he could argue with her. Three stalls down, she paid another cubit for a torn and stained jumpsuit.
She found a dark alcove and quickly changed. Ripping her sweatpants apart, she made a snug cuff for her chest to compress her small breasts. There was a foul-smelling leak running down the wall. Wrinkling her nose, she wiped some off and applied it to her curly hair, slicking it back and darkening it to brown. She smeared more on her hands and down under her nails, and a few flicks across her cheeks. She was now a teen boy, a suitable knuckledragger.
Elizabeth decided to return to the last place she thought Shelly would look for her; the shuttle bay area. From there, surely she could get a deckhand job, and wait for the chance to jump a shuttle. She’d done it once; she could do it again.
The end... Chapter Eleven >>>
Rating: T
Genre: A/U, Adventure, Drama, Romance, Angst
Word Count: 2,300
A/N: I’ve seen The Plan, and had the unpleasant discovery that my plans (*Cavil voice* I have a plllaaaannn!) for the Cylons in this story mirrored the show's writers. As for spoilers, I won’t be using specific plot points from that film, but I do share the general story arc. Be forewarned if you haven’t seen it.
~*~
Laura stared at the number on her white board. It was now under fifty thousand; an unacceptable threshold passed after less than a week in space.
Many things were unacceptable. Her desk was untidy, overflowing with files. It had never looked like that at the Ministry of Education. Her mind was cluttered too, with unhelpful thoughts about Bill and Elizabeth and loss.
Billy was speaking again, saying something about someone wanting to meet with her.
Doctor Baltar popped up from the lounge chair where he’d been writhing fitfully. “What was that?” he asked. “So sorry to be interrupting you while you were speaking--you were just saying?”
Billy lost his train of thought and then found it. “Uh...I...uh, I was just saying a Doctor Amarak had requested to speak with the President.”
Baltar said, “Doctor Amarak. I see.” The jittery man gave a ghost smile to Laura and Billy.
“You know him?” asked Laura.
“Yes, yes,” Baltar said, his eyes darting around the room. “I used to work with him at the Ministry of Defense.”
Laura smiled at him as one does with the strange men who accost you on the sidewalk and ask for change.
“It says here that he’s uncovered important information regarding how the Cylons were able to defeat Colonial defenses,” said Billy.
“Were you going to speak to him?” Baltar said with odd inflections, jerking his head between Billy and Laura. “Perhaps I could speak to him if you’re busy,” he suggested.
Laura put a hand up to stop his babbling.
Billy quickly interjected, “Actually, I think he wanted to speak directly with the President.”
Baltar leaned closer, eyes intent, cocking his head like a sheep dog.
“It sounded urgent,” Billy said, giving Laura his own significant look.
Laura thought about it. “There’s not enough time before we jump,” she said, “I want him on board first thing during the next cycle.”
Responding to Baltar’s wide eyes of concern, she said, “Thank you, Doctor.”
He nodded in an odd manner, as though he had a chicken bone stuck in his throat and croaked, “Anything I can do to help.”
Laura watched Baltar scurry from the compartment and turned her attention back to Billy. “He’s a strange one, isn’t he?” The young man only half-shrugged, already onto the next item on his list.
~*~
Shelly Godfrey returned to the ward alone.
“Where’s the Doctor?” Elizabeth asked.
“He’s taken a turn for the worse and we’ve put him in his cabin,” said Shelly. “But he wants me to deliver the information to Colonial One and the President.”
Shelly held up a storage disk. “Do you still want to go?”
“Gods, yes,” Elizabeth said, leaping from the bed.
The woman’s strong grip closed around Elizabeth’s arm. “Hush then. We must hurry; there’s not much time left.”
Elizabeth glanced at the clock. Barely fifteen minutes until the next jump. “Will we make it?”
“Come,” said Shelly, tugging her through the door.
The guard was gone, but Elizabeth didn’t have time to ask where he’d gone before Shelly broke into a run, pulling her to the hatchway that led to the hangar deck.
Lieutenant Simon stood beside a grimy little shuttle. “Hurry,” he urged them.
As the two women rushed up the ramp into the shuttle, he called after them, “Go with God,” and Shelly smiled gratefully at him.
“See you later,” she replied and he smiled in return.
The ramp slammed shut and the shuttle immediately lifted off, wavering before righting itself. The flight doors were just opening as they shot forward.
Elizabeth barked at the pilot, “Be careful; what the frak are you doing?”
“Shut up and sit down,” yelled back their pilot. She was a tough-looking small woman, her curly hair tightly pulled back from her stern face.
Shelly pulled the girl back to her seat. “Sit down,” she ordered Elizabeth. “Let the woman fly the shuttle.”
They darted away from the Olympic Carrier and Elizabeth couldn’t help but lean forward again when she spotted the Colonial One in the distance. In a few minutes, she would be in her mother’s arms--
The shuttle banked and the Colonial One went out of view.
“What the frak are we going?” wailed Elizabeth, struggling against Shelly’s grasp.
“We don’t have enough time to get to Colonial One,” explained Shelly. “We’re going to a freighter first. We’ll get to your mother after the next jump.”
The pilot glanced back at them, her face confused. She opened her mouth, then shrugged and turned back to her controls.
Shelly directed at the pilot, “Only three minutes left until they all jump.”
“I’ll make it,” the young woman said confidently, easing the control stick up and the battered shuttle’s engines groaned, then responded, accelerating.
“Why did we leave at all?” asked Elizabeth, her tears close as she saw the bay door of the hulking freighter open for them.
“It’s safer,” said Shelly coolly.
After they landed, Shelly paid the pilot, quietly murmuring something in her ear. The young woman looked at Elizabeth speculatively, shrugged and sauntered out of the shuttle to begin her post-flight checks.
Shelly turned back to Elizabeth. The girl was slouched in her seat, arms crossed, kicking the shuttle deck with her heel.
“Come along, child,” she said, echoing Doctor Amarak and Elizabeth suddenly wondered what had really happened to him.
“I’ll just wait here until the next jump,” said Elizabeth, not looking up. “I want to get to my mother, like, now.”
Shelly’s grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet. She looked into the girl’s frightened eyes. Very carefully, she explained, “I’ve brought you here to meet someone, Elizabeth. Do me the courtesy of coming out.”
“Who?” Elizabeth whispered.
“He can help you,” said Shelly, not answering the question. She tugged the girl to the hatchway and shoved Elizabeth down the ramp before her.
A small man with dark, dead eyes and a mean hare’s pointed mouth, stood waiting, hands clasped at his waist.
Shelly remained behind Elizabeth with her long fingers wrapped around the girl’s shoulders. She said, “I think that you need some spiritual guidance at this time. This is Brother Cavil.”
The priest nodded, smiling without showing his teeth or the smile reaching his blank eyes.
“Uh, that’s okay,” muttered Elizabeth. “That’s not really my thing, more my Mom’s--I really need to talk to my mother.”
Shelly sighed dramatically, and her grip tightened, bruising the girl’s shoulders. “You see what I mean, Brother?”
“We should go to my temple,” he chuckled, “which I fear is nothing more than a shipping container, and consult the oracles for guidance.”
“I just need to--“ Elizabeth’s voice caught and wavered. “I need to call my Mom. If I could just talk to her--“
“But your mother is dead, Elizabeth,” Cavil murmured, suddenly very close to her. “All our mothers are dead. You need to accept that reality, and stop with this fantasy that our new President--“ He paused and exchanged smiles with Shelly; her grip tightened even more-- “is your mother.”
He gently tugged her away from Shelly. “We can help you.”
As Cavil led her off the bay and into a dim corridor, Elizabeth remembered when Laura had finally agreed to allow her to drop her ballet lessons for martial arts lessons. “But only if you take a self-defense course too. Learn to do some street fighting along with that fancy wrestling.”
Her instructor, Maximus, with arms as big around as Elizabeth’s thighs, had loomed over the class and had said, “Never leave the first scene of the crime. They ain’t gonna do somethin’ nice to you once they get your somewheres private.”
Cavil laced his arm through Elizabeth’s tight bicep, and absentmindedly patted her hand. “We’ll have to pray extra hard for your poor soul.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said carefully, lengthening her stride, trying to move them farther ahead of Shelly. But the tall woman’s long legs kept her right behind them.
The crowd was thickening in the corridor, but no face among the bedraggled refugees looked friendly or helpful. Cavil pressed against Elizabeth, signaling that they were turning. This was her only chance.
She pushed her hip into his, shifting the balance of their weight, and swung him away from her with all her strength. His little eyes popped open in surprise, but it was too late for him to react. She slammed him into the wall, hard, and he released his grip on her hand.
She fled, sensing the blonde woman’s long fingers grasping for her. But no matter what force drove that woman, pure terror made Elizabeth faster. She ran as though the flames of Hades were reaching for her, darting and weaving through the crowd.
~*~
Forty-five minutes and no sign of the Cylons.
Dropping his gaze from the DRADIS, Bill held himself upright only by sheer force of will. He told Dee, “Get me the President.”
He lifted the handset; it felt heavy as a stone. “Madam President, there’s still no sign of the Cylons,” he said.
“Why this time?” she asked, her voice as weak as he felt. “Is it something that you did?”
“We had a new plan, but we didn’t have time to implement it yet,” he said.
She asked him, “We lost a ship during the last cycle, the Olympic Carrier, do you think that had something to do with it?”
“Possibly,” he admitted. He visualized her--drooping in her big chair, haggard, worried--and he wanted to have answers for her; he had none.
Whisper-light, she asked, “Are you there?” and he realized he’d just been listening to her breathing.
He made his own voice strong and definite to tell her, “Yeah, I’m here.”
“What do we do now? Commander, I’ve got people on the verge over here.” He knew that she was including herself, daring to show him that vulnerability that she swore that she wouldn’t.
“We’re gonna go to Condition Two; take advantage of this time and get some rest,” he said.
She gave one of her hums. “And how long do we, um, stay on Condition Two?”
“’til I’m satisfied they’re not gonna return,” he said, and felt he had to point out, “It’s a military decision.”
But it gave him no sense of victory to hear her say, “It is. I know that, you’re right, and I defer to your decision.”
She rallied to say, “And Commander, let your men and women know how grateful I am, for the job that they are doing. Thank them for me.”
He replied in kind. “Thank you, Madam President. Thank you.”
~*~
Elizabeth watched the passing crowd from her hiding place between two packing crates. She’d been hiding for at least an hour. On this vessel, there were no announcements about the jumping or their Cylon pursuers, but she didn’t think that they’d jumped again at thirty-three minutes. There also was no sign of Shelly Godfrey.
But Elizabeth couldn’t hide forever. With her bright hair and gaudy tracksuit, she would be easily spotted. She had to get to a comm, and quickly.
She made her way to what seemed to be an informal market. “Where’s there a wireless station?” she asked the first vendor, a gap-toothed old man selling dirty boots. “I need to get a message out.” Something told her not to mention her mother anymore.
“You wanna make a call?” he asked, squinting at her, looking over her new clothes.
“Yes, please,” she said, gritting her teeth.
He just laughed, a rude, harsh sound. He said, “There’s no wireless station, as you call it. Who we gonna call?”
“So I need to contact the crew about making a call?” she asked.
“You could,” he said, running his tongue into the gap between his teeth--an obscene gesture. “But it would cost you.”
“How much?”
The trader exchanged knowing looks with the other merchants who’d been listening in. “At least a thousand cubits.”
When she gasped in shock, he said, “Or you could take it out in trade.” His leering glance ran up and down her body.
It suddenly hit Elizabeth that she was in a great deal of danger, and not just from Shelly Godfrey. She stood out and not in a good way. There may be a way off this bucket, but she didn’t want to take it.
“Five cubits for these boots,” she told him, slapping the coin down and stalking away before he could argue with her. Three stalls down, she paid another cubit for a torn and stained jumpsuit.
She found a dark alcove and quickly changed. Ripping her sweatpants apart, she made a snug cuff for her chest to compress her small breasts. There was a foul-smelling leak running down the wall. Wrinkling her nose, she wiped some off and applied it to her curly hair, slicking it back and darkening it to brown. She smeared more on her hands and down under her nails, and a few flicks across her cheeks. She was now a teen boy, a suitable knuckledragger.
Elizabeth decided to return to the last place she thought Shelly would look for her; the shuttle bay area. From there, surely she could get a deckhand job, and wait for the chance to jump a shuttle. She’d done it once; she could do it again.
The end... Chapter Eleven >>>