Duet of Silence - Chapter 23
Title: Duet of Silence
Chapter 23
Word Count: 1,880
Rating: T - M (for violence, but not much more than on TV)
Pairing: Adama/Roslin ... plus all the other dysfunctional relationships on the good ship Galactica.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness and a couple of original characters.
Spoilers: To "Eye of Jupiter" ... everything from there is definitely AU.
Author's Note: Being rather a little nuts lately; you'll notice some poetry in Chapters 12 & 13 that will seem familiar to the astute reader. Most of it is by the incomparable Emily Dickinson, while the rest are my poor efforts. I hope as you read it, I've made it clear which parts are my scraelings. Enjoy.
Duet of Silence - Chapter 23
Laura sat at the back of Solange's bridge next to Jessica; it was bathed in cool blue light. Tony sat directly in front of her, immersed in the virtual world displayed in the large holographic sphere in front of him as the ship prepared for transition. To his right, the ship's executive officer, Emmanuela Rodrigues sat engrossed in her bridge master control board.
The front wall was curved, transparent and looked down into a mist filled chamber, in which Alexandra and Elisabeth floated on inclined pallets facing each other. Each had two control boards--one at the level of each hand. According to Jessica, they were submerged in Solange’s Core and each board was a Node, which gathered all necessary data from hyperspace; somewhere in there, little Hera also floated in her stasis chamber.
It was a fairly short hop to the fleet, so Alexandra would be the fully submerged pilot for this transition, while Elisabeth was kept just beneath the surface, ready to be submerged and take over if anything went wrong. At other times, both girls would submerge together, while another pilot acted as back-up.
The Nodes were the data gathering and information processing stations during their sojourn in hyperspace, but the processors were not the mechanical components of the Nodes--they were the minds of the pilots. Laura had asked if they did it with the help of cybernetic technology like the Cylons, but Solange's officers' obvious repugnance made it clear that they didn't. She wondered why they didn’t go mad like the hybrids at the centre of Cylon ships, and reckoned that had to do with the fact that Solange was a living entity.
The pilots are trained to do it, Jessica told her, but would not explain how. The Node control boards, unlike most things Laura had come into contact with, were completely incomprehensible. Since the Angels used the same alphabet system that the Colonies did, all written information was clearly readable--if not always comprehensible. But the symbols used by the Nodes were like no other writing she’d ever seen.
“A private language made up by the Twins,” Jessica had explained, but did not elaborate why this should be necessary and Laura couldn’t push.
The ship was now under silent running conditions; no unnecessary comm traffic or power emissions allowed. Everyone not at their duty stations was told to go to their preferred destinations and stay there for the duration. Besides the medbay, the children's nursery and the gardens, only two recreation rooms had limited power. The rest of the habitats and dormitories in the living ship were locked down tight and all power cut to them.
The sombre atmosphere on the ship as they prepared for transition was a sharp contrast to the night before. The party had started in the late afternoon in the large communal habitat area next to the dedicated gardens; it reminded Laura of the park deck on Cloud One, the luxury liner that had been destroyed to signal the Cylons as to New Caprica’s position.
As Laura had watched Solange's crew, there had been an atmosphere of desperate abandon in their revelry at the beginning. The children were allowed to stay up as long as they liked and were denied nothing, but cosseted and indulged in the sweets and treats of every kind that had been laid out.
She had heard Jessica tell a couple of the young people not to spare the rations, that they would have to go on trust that they would be re-supplied soon.
Watching Jessica's people as the tensions slowly bled out of them, and she could tell almost to the moment when each had stopped pushing so hard to relax. She could tell when their too bright smiles and too animated talk had shifted and they became a group of people at a party enjoying themselves. Laura and Boomer had been supplied with new clothing; and if Laura had been pleasantly surprised at the light, lovely fabrics and styles that would have been rather sophisticated back in the Colonies, the clothing the youths favoured for the most part was a real eye-opener.
Like their hairstyles, it ran riot, from tight, barely-there little outfits to elaborate, almost costume-like garb. Jessica and Emmanuela had laughingly explained that as long as it didn’t interfere with their duties, with so much of their lives irretrievably lost, it was extremely important to allow them the freedom of personal expression and style.
Laura chuckled; Boomer had just become their latest mannequin.
And what colourful peacocks they certainly were, she thought in amusement as the young Cylon walked past with two pilots, Helene "The Face" Lucas and Robert "Blade" Adoulu, who seemed to have taken her under their wing. Both girls were simply gorgeous. Boomer’s long brown hair had been lopped off, somehow coloured snow-white and styled into a mass of unruly spikes. She wore a light, white slip of a dress with spaghetti straps, dotted with small, pale blue and yellow flowers.
Helene--whose face certainly would still launch a thousand ships in this day and age--on the other hand, sported a more severe look. Her champagne-blonde locks dyed space black and cut in a sharp, chic bob that emphasised her lovely cheekbone structure. She wore a long, fitted, black jacket over a diaphanous black skirt, which swirled about her ankles. However, the severity of her style was softened with the numerous silver bracelets and the crystal pendant she wore.
She had watched Jessica interact with them, taking their outrageousness in stride as the pounding music started and the young people started dancing, their gyrations so frankly sexual that they left her feeling almost prudish. A purple-haired boy with light brown skin caught the bald-headed girl he was dancing with about the waist, spun her around and drew her hips flush with his so that her bottom was firmly against his groin. Laura’s eyes widened as the girl leaned back into him, resting her head on his shoulder as their hips swivelled sensuously in time with the music while the moved across the dance floor.
Vertical intercourse indeed, she thought, smiling at Tony’s apt description of the young people’s preferred style of dancing. Laura sat back to observe the dynamics of the relationships between the crew.
Elisabeth and Tony arrived with a toddler about three years old, who was obviously their son. The little boy immediately climbed off his mother’s lap, abandoning her for a gaggle of his playmates. As Solange’s captain and pilot joined Laura, Jessica and Liam, she could sense their easy companionship and love. However, she had also felt barely controlled sense of apprehension, anticipation and a barrage of other emotions from the two of them that had left her baffled.
As the music changed and more people began to dance, Tony helped Elisabeth move from her chair to the couch beside him. Laura felt a sudden calm as they focused on each other. Still making small talk, Tony simply sat with Elisabeth--her small body turned half into his and circled by his arm. Laura watched his small intimate touches draw the fear and tension out of Elisabeth and felt the undeniable circuit of their love, as each drank thirstily from the pool of emotions. Suddenly, there was a moment when she felt almost like she had intruded on a moment of lovemaking, as she became caught-up in a powerful flood of emotional release and Elisabeth angled her head up to kiss him.
Laura looked away, suddenly feeling the need to give them some privacy. Yet no matter where she looked, with few exceptions, the interaction between Solange’s crew was far more intimate and public than anything she’d experienced among Galactica’s crew, even among the highly-sexed Viper pilots. Then she realised that what she was seeing wasn’t so much about sex as it was about the long-term relationships and commitments among this small crew of a hundred-odd souls. Two beautiful boys danced past, caught up in heady, carnal kisses, even as their feet carried them in time with the music into the melee of bodies on the dance floor.
Definitely different, Laura thought now as the black-haired boy came onto the bridge and moved down to consult with Emmanuela at the master control board. If she remembered correctly, he had been introduced as Timothy "Mouse" Suzuki, though he reminded Laura more of a sleek, powerful black panther than a mouse. His green-haired partner from the night before had been one of her "nurses" in medbay, Michael "The Maestro" Bellini, brother to Solange's captain, Tony Bellini. It seemed that call-signs here were not reserved strictly for pilots.
Laura smiled now as Tony looked up from the hologram and turned to her. "We'll be transiting in a minute," he said in a low voice as the entire window into Solange's core, where Alexandra and Elisabeth floated, became a window into the vast unknowable domain of hyperspace. "Watch the viewer." He smiled at them and turned back to his console. "Bridge to all personnel--we're transiting now; love and comfort, everyone."
Laura found herself tuning out the incomprehensible conversation around her carried out in low voices around her. She marvelled as a gaping tear in the roiling thermonuclear fires of the sun appeared to fill the Core and they moved inexorably deeper into it. Suddenly she felt something slam against her chest and knew she was dying.
Her mind exploded outwards, flying apart as the universe blossomed.
She was the origin of everything and nothing; she was thought giving birth to matter and energy and the Gods.
She heard the songs of all the galaxies as they flowed inexorably through her; lived infinite lives in the space of a thought.
She felt voluptuous, pregnant with all the souls of all life and in that moment, she was Solange, ancient mother of stars and galaxies and universes ... for that moment, she was a mother again, holding one precious little soul in her arms ...
And then she inhaled.
As the bridge snapped back into focus, she heard Emmanuela's voice saying calmly, "Inertial compensators online," as her hands flew across her boards, monitoring everything constantly, and keeping up a soft running dialogue with the navigation and engineering master controllers, as well as with Liam in medbay, who monitored the condition of the pilots.
Through the window of the viewer, the Twins seemed to float in the roiling energies of hyperspace. Only Alexandra's hands moving across her boards gave any indication that she was still alive, while Elisabeth was deathly still like some bizarre mannequin, fingers hovering rigidly above her boards, while her unconscious mind followed the data streaming through the Node and how Alexandra dealt with it.
Laura turned her attention to hyperspace itself, as rendered by the viewer; to the violent swirling energies flowing past the Twins as they pushed through the currents of this interface between "normal space and God and poetry"--whatever that meant to them.
Suddenly there were two large vortices of bearing down on them, deadly cyclones of energy and otherworldly plasma that could turn a ship into a mass of debris. They deftly swung out of the way at right angles to the vortices, hurtling towards the vast reaches of eternity.
#
Chapter 24
Chapter 23
Word Count: 1,880
Rating: T - M (for violence, but not much more than on TV)
Pairing: Adama/Roslin ... plus all the other dysfunctional relationships on the good ship Galactica.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness and a couple of original characters.
Spoilers: To "Eye of Jupiter" ... everything from there is definitely AU.
Author's Note: Being rather a little nuts lately; you'll notice some poetry in Chapters 12 & 13 that will seem familiar to the astute reader. Most of it is by the incomparable Emily Dickinson, while the rest are my poor efforts. I hope as you read it, I've made it clear which parts are my scraelings. Enjoy.
Duet of Silence - Chapter 23
Laura sat at the back of Solange's bridge next to Jessica; it was bathed in cool blue light. Tony sat directly in front of her, immersed in the virtual world displayed in the large holographic sphere in front of him as the ship prepared for transition. To his right, the ship's executive officer, Emmanuela Rodrigues sat engrossed in her bridge master control board.
The front wall was curved, transparent and looked down into a mist filled chamber, in which Alexandra and Elisabeth floated on inclined pallets facing each other. Each had two control boards--one at the level of each hand. According to Jessica, they were submerged in Solange’s Core and each board was a Node, which gathered all necessary data from hyperspace; somewhere in there, little Hera also floated in her stasis chamber.
It was a fairly short hop to the fleet, so Alexandra would be the fully submerged pilot for this transition, while Elisabeth was kept just beneath the surface, ready to be submerged and take over if anything went wrong. At other times, both girls would submerge together, while another pilot acted as back-up.
The Nodes were the data gathering and information processing stations during their sojourn in hyperspace, but the processors were not the mechanical components of the Nodes--they were the minds of the pilots. Laura had asked if they did it with the help of cybernetic technology like the Cylons, but Solange's officers' obvious repugnance made it clear that they didn't. She wondered why they didn’t go mad like the hybrids at the centre of Cylon ships, and reckoned that had to do with the fact that Solange was a living entity.
The pilots are trained to do it, Jessica told her, but would not explain how. The Node control boards, unlike most things Laura had come into contact with, were completely incomprehensible. Since the Angels used the same alphabet system that the Colonies did, all written information was clearly readable--if not always comprehensible. But the symbols used by the Nodes were like no other writing she’d ever seen.
“A private language made up by the Twins,” Jessica had explained, but did not elaborate why this should be necessary and Laura couldn’t push.
The ship was now under silent running conditions; no unnecessary comm traffic or power emissions allowed. Everyone not at their duty stations was told to go to their preferred destinations and stay there for the duration. Besides the medbay, the children's nursery and the gardens, only two recreation rooms had limited power. The rest of the habitats and dormitories in the living ship were locked down tight and all power cut to them.
The sombre atmosphere on the ship as they prepared for transition was a sharp contrast to the night before. The party had started in the late afternoon in the large communal habitat area next to the dedicated gardens; it reminded Laura of the park deck on Cloud One, the luxury liner that had been destroyed to signal the Cylons as to New Caprica’s position.
As Laura had watched Solange's crew, there had been an atmosphere of desperate abandon in their revelry at the beginning. The children were allowed to stay up as long as they liked and were denied nothing, but cosseted and indulged in the sweets and treats of every kind that had been laid out.
She had heard Jessica tell a couple of the young people not to spare the rations, that they would have to go on trust that they would be re-supplied soon.
Watching Jessica's people as the tensions slowly bled out of them, and she could tell almost to the moment when each had stopped pushing so hard to relax. She could tell when their too bright smiles and too animated talk had shifted and they became a group of people at a party enjoying themselves. Laura and Boomer had been supplied with new clothing; and if Laura had been pleasantly surprised at the light, lovely fabrics and styles that would have been rather sophisticated back in the Colonies, the clothing the youths favoured for the most part was a real eye-opener.
Like their hairstyles, it ran riot, from tight, barely-there little outfits to elaborate, almost costume-like garb. Jessica and Emmanuela had laughingly explained that as long as it didn’t interfere with their duties, with so much of their lives irretrievably lost, it was extremely important to allow them the freedom of personal expression and style.
Laura chuckled; Boomer had just become their latest mannequin.
And what colourful peacocks they certainly were, she thought in amusement as the young Cylon walked past with two pilots, Helene "The Face" Lucas and Robert "Blade" Adoulu, who seemed to have taken her under their wing. Both girls were simply gorgeous. Boomer’s long brown hair had been lopped off, somehow coloured snow-white and styled into a mass of unruly spikes. She wore a light, white slip of a dress with spaghetti straps, dotted with small, pale blue and yellow flowers.
Helene--whose face certainly would still launch a thousand ships in this day and age--on the other hand, sported a more severe look. Her champagne-blonde locks dyed space black and cut in a sharp, chic bob that emphasised her lovely cheekbone structure. She wore a long, fitted, black jacket over a diaphanous black skirt, which swirled about her ankles. However, the severity of her style was softened with the numerous silver bracelets and the crystal pendant she wore.
She had watched Jessica interact with them, taking their outrageousness in stride as the pounding music started and the young people started dancing, their gyrations so frankly sexual that they left her feeling almost prudish. A purple-haired boy with light brown skin caught the bald-headed girl he was dancing with about the waist, spun her around and drew her hips flush with his so that her bottom was firmly against his groin. Laura’s eyes widened as the girl leaned back into him, resting her head on his shoulder as their hips swivelled sensuously in time with the music while the moved across the dance floor.
Vertical intercourse indeed, she thought, smiling at Tony’s apt description of the young people’s preferred style of dancing. Laura sat back to observe the dynamics of the relationships between the crew.
Elisabeth and Tony arrived with a toddler about three years old, who was obviously their son. The little boy immediately climbed off his mother’s lap, abandoning her for a gaggle of his playmates. As Solange’s captain and pilot joined Laura, Jessica and Liam, she could sense their easy companionship and love. However, she had also felt barely controlled sense of apprehension, anticipation and a barrage of other emotions from the two of them that had left her baffled.
As the music changed and more people began to dance, Tony helped Elisabeth move from her chair to the couch beside him. Laura felt a sudden calm as they focused on each other. Still making small talk, Tony simply sat with Elisabeth--her small body turned half into his and circled by his arm. Laura watched his small intimate touches draw the fear and tension out of Elisabeth and felt the undeniable circuit of their love, as each drank thirstily from the pool of emotions. Suddenly, there was a moment when she felt almost like she had intruded on a moment of lovemaking, as she became caught-up in a powerful flood of emotional release and Elisabeth angled her head up to kiss him.
Laura looked away, suddenly feeling the need to give them some privacy. Yet no matter where she looked, with few exceptions, the interaction between Solange’s crew was far more intimate and public than anything she’d experienced among Galactica’s crew, even among the highly-sexed Viper pilots. Then she realised that what she was seeing wasn’t so much about sex as it was about the long-term relationships and commitments among this small crew of a hundred-odd souls. Two beautiful boys danced past, caught up in heady, carnal kisses, even as their feet carried them in time with the music into the melee of bodies on the dance floor.
Definitely different, Laura thought now as the black-haired boy came onto the bridge and moved down to consult with Emmanuela at the master control board. If she remembered correctly, he had been introduced as Timothy "Mouse" Suzuki, though he reminded Laura more of a sleek, powerful black panther than a mouse. His green-haired partner from the night before had been one of her "nurses" in medbay, Michael "The Maestro" Bellini, brother to Solange's captain, Tony Bellini. It seemed that call-signs here were not reserved strictly for pilots.
Laura smiled now as Tony looked up from the hologram and turned to her. "We'll be transiting in a minute," he said in a low voice as the entire window into Solange's core, where Alexandra and Elisabeth floated, became a window into the vast unknowable domain of hyperspace. "Watch the viewer." He smiled at them and turned back to his console. "Bridge to all personnel--we're transiting now; love and comfort, everyone."
Laura found herself tuning out the incomprehensible conversation around her carried out in low voices around her. She marvelled as a gaping tear in the roiling thermonuclear fires of the sun appeared to fill the Core and they moved inexorably deeper into it. Suddenly she felt something slam against her chest and knew she was dying.
Her mind exploded outwards, flying apart as the universe blossomed.
She was the origin of everything and nothing; she was thought giving birth to matter and energy and the Gods.
She heard the songs of all the galaxies as they flowed inexorably through her; lived infinite lives in the space of a thought.
She felt voluptuous, pregnant with all the souls of all life and in that moment, she was Solange, ancient mother of stars and galaxies and universes ... for that moment, she was a mother again, holding one precious little soul in her arms ...
And then she inhaled.
As the bridge snapped back into focus, she heard Emmanuela's voice saying calmly, "Inertial compensators online," as her hands flew across her boards, monitoring everything constantly, and keeping up a soft running dialogue with the navigation and engineering master controllers, as well as with Liam in medbay, who monitored the condition of the pilots.
Through the window of the viewer, the Twins seemed to float in the roiling energies of hyperspace. Only Alexandra's hands moving across her boards gave any indication that she was still alive, while Elisabeth was deathly still like some bizarre mannequin, fingers hovering rigidly above her boards, while her unconscious mind followed the data streaming through the Node and how Alexandra dealt with it.
Laura turned her attention to hyperspace itself, as rendered by the viewer; to the violent swirling energies flowing past the Twins as they pushed through the currents of this interface between "normal space and God and poetry"--whatever that meant to them.
Suddenly there were two large vortices of bearing down on them, deadly cyclones of energy and otherworldly plasma that could turn a ship into a mass of debris. They deftly swung out of the way at right angles to the vortices, hurtling towards the vast reaches of eternity.
#
Chapter 24