Fic - The Next Recruit in Lord Iblis's Secret Service part five
And the final part... of this section. batsojopo and I do have a few more tales in this verse. In case yer new, this story is tagged sgfic and is a BSG/Stargate SG1 crossover that began with In Lord Iblis's Secret Service so you might want to start there.
It was a set up, she realized. Helo and Sharon had too quickly acquiesced to watching all the children and the food, and in mere minutes she was sitting in a four wheeled truck as Janet drove on a dirt road to the cabin.
It was beautiful. She tried not to react but it was hard. The snow and the small building looked liked a perfect little haven. She was determined to not cave immediately. “If I understand the weather here, the snow and the road might be a problem.”
“Before my father took ill, we considered that,” Janet said. “There’s a snowmobile for emergencies. You’d be fine, but I’m not comfortable with my 70 year old father riding a snowmobile. On the other hand your SUV seems like it would handle the road fine. There’s not a lot of furniture here…” Janet led her to the front door. “It’s really meant for one person with occasional guests. We’re building the new house a bit bigger for resale value and because Dad is going to need someone to help him now.” There was a note of sadness to Janet’s voice. She must have a good relationship with her father, Kara reasoned.
Janet led her into the house. The problem, Kara realized on stepping into the bright airy place, was that it was beautiful and Felix Gaeta and his wife knew exactly how much she could afford. The kitchen and living room was empty but lovely and there was a glassed off area with lots of natural light coming in from both windows and large skylights. It was perfect for a possible studio. From the outside one would never realize just how bright and airy the log cabin was.
“Do you want to see what the rest of the cabin looks like?” Janet asked from just behind her.
Kara cringed slightly, berating herself for getting completely wrapped up in just the studio area. “Yeah,” she answered while turning her attention back from the studio to the rest of the cabin. The skylights gave the whole house a deceptively bright and airy feel to it. One would never know the walls were at least a foot thick from the logs.
“Don’t be deceived by the windows,” Janet said as she looked out one and into the edge of the forest. “They’re double pane and made to handle some of the worst that storms can throw at them. The double pane also makes it difficult for both cold and heat to seep through.” In other words, the cabin was well insulated, Kara finished in her mind.
Both bedrooms were a nice size, where one could fit decent sized furniture inside them and have room to spare, and the bathroom had areas of nice storage. That was the one thing she didn’t like about the apartment she was in. There was never enough storage space.
What surprised her was the subbasement area. In the area below the house the heater was located. “The pipes here?” Janet was pointing to large PCB pipes coming from the wall and into the house area, “Are from the well. You have well water here, nice and fresh. And the sub pump will make sure that nothing floods during the spring.
“What’s that door for?” Kara pointed to what looked like a very solid door.
“Fallout shelter.” With a heave she pulled the door open. The room hidden behind the door was about half the size of the basement, but large enough to support a decent size family. Shelves lined the walls, shelves that could easily carry lots of canned goods. “This is water from the well,” Janet explained as she turned on the spigot over the sink. “And we do have fresh air,” she showed the boxes on the walls. Boxes that looked eerily similar to the scrubbers that would clean the air on the Galactica.
“Looks like you’ve got everything planned,” Kara commented as she followed Janet out and back up to the ground floor.
A tense smile crossed the smaller woman’s face before she said anything, “Felix still has issues he’s dealing with. He’s always over-prepared for the worst case scenario.” Janet’s expression grew pensive. “He covers it well, but he has security issues.”
“The fallout shelter,” Kara nodded in understanding. She had to admit, the idea of having an emergency shelter did please her. Probably for the same reasons Gaeta had built it. “Is it unusual to have something like this?”
“Most people here don’t really do that anymore. About 40 years ago people were panicking over the fact that a nuclear war could break out at any moment. As long as it doesn’t get too out of hand, I let him do it.” Janet indicated the basement door again, “The shelter can also be used as a tornado shelter.”
Kara furrowed her brows in confusion, she still wasn’t quite sure what a tornado was, but the way people have talked about it, she didn’t want to have to go through one.
“-what do you think?”
“Huh?” Kara realized she hadn’t paid any attention to Janet once they had moved back through the cabin to the studio area. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“That’s okay,” Janet gave her a forgiving smile. “We wanted you to see it before we put an advertisement in the paper stating that the place was for rent.”
“You don’t have to tell me that to get me to make my decision,” Kara said as she turned around in the studio. “I think I made it when I stepped into this room.”
~~~~~~~
He tasted the sauce. Delphi noodles, made traditionally, was a two day affair and his mother’s recipe extended it to three. The sauce was good, he thought. Not right, but there were certain limitations with Earth produce. The portebello mushrooms were close to taragaza mushrooms but they gave the sauce a bite that his mother’s sauce never had.
Judging by the shouts, there was soon to be a commercial break and the crowd would run in for snacks. The noodles were more of a half time dish, at least on Earth, and he wasn’t fool enough to serve it with the traditional chopsticks. At least not to the Earth born guests. Janet could manage and Daniel usually made a good effort, but there were plenty of forks.
It was fun. He liked cooking and making treats for his friends. The football game itself was a bit of a bore for him, but he had picked a team and popped in every few minutes with fresh snacks and people wandered in and out from the media room for more drinks and snacks. As military people, the people in Stargate Command tended to watch their diets, but he had learned that Thanksgiving, which had a much more stringent menu, and Superbowl Sunday, were occasions where everyone was encouraged to wallow in food. Thanksgiving was also an extravaganza in the Gaeta home, with guests all over, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for experimenting. Americans, he had learned, wanted turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and some sort of hearty green vegetable, preferably done up in a sauce. There were variations but there wasn’t much room to experiment. Superbowl Sunday in contrast was less of a traditional meal situation and more of a daylong feast. People liked certain traditional foods like hamburgers and hotdogs, and he had those ready although Jack or Karl or George Hammond would do the actual grilling. He had managed to substitute some handmade sausages and even had some salmon and swordfish for the more health conscious. After the initial thrill had worn off, Felix discovered that he’d lost his taste for meals that were heavily based on beef or pork.
The fun thing about the Superbowl party was that he could try new things. The wasabi chicken wings were clearly a hit and so were the loaded nachos. This year he had made his own salsa and kettle potato chips. The chili was a variation of last year’s, and the bacon wrapped scallops had been a hit since the first year he had served them. So were the Delphi noodles, which he had also made for the first Superbowl party he had hosted. The nice thing was that with the noodles deep fried, it was just a matter of ladling the sauce and meat over the noodles in the bowls he’d already prepared. With everything bubbling and all the dips fresh and waiting, he walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. Beer was another thing he had experimented with, and the ale he had bottled up for the party seemed to be going over well.
He heard the front door open and close and could tell from the pleasant chatter that Janet had worked her magic on Kara. They didn’t *need* someone to rent the cabin but he preferred to have someone in the place. And Kara needed a place, and while she wasn’t exactly a close friend, she was from the colonies and they shared a unique background. He had needed companionship after his time with the Goa’uld, but he suspected that Kara needed the exact opposite. A home that was hers, with a door that locked, with no neighbors nearby to complain or bother with, that was what Kara needed. And Janet was the one to convince her. He knew a lot of Kara’s problem was an unwillingness to back down from her previous anger with him. But he was certain Kara had been convinced. The next step was to convince her to go a bit further and he was pretty certain he could convince her.
“I need to check on the kids,” Janet said, giving him a knowing look. “Why don’t you two get this hashed out before the game starts?” And in seconds he was alone with Kara in his kitchen.
She took a seat at the large island. “I’m not dumb enough to think this wasn’t prearranged, Gaeta.” She eyed him for a moment. “So is there any ambrosia?”
“As a matter of fact…” He moved to the liquor cabinet and in seconds had two glasses of scotch poured. “They call it scotch whiskey here but they make it the same way.” Janet didn’t care for it, and he had come to understand that the way people drank in the colonies was considered excessive by Earth standards. On the other hand, he’d been drinking ambrosia since he was fifteen, and the Tau’ri knew how to make a smooth drink. He set the generous drink in front of Kara, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. “The Tau’ri like ice in it. They call it ’on the rocks’.”
She took the glass and sipped it. A surprise, she had always been a gulper when it came to ambrosia but then he had gotten into the habit of downing the rotgut of the fleet as fast as possible himself. Kara nodded after a moment. “I’m not complaining. This is smooth… good stuff.” She hesitated for just a moment. “Your rental property is good. I’d like to rent it but I doubt I can afford it with what I make as an Air Force captain.”
Felix almost sighed and stopped himself. If she did the math, and he was certain she hadn’t, market value rent was just within her means. At the same time, he had to respect where she was coming from. He had chafed at the idea of accepting help from others and he could understand what she was thinking. “Well,” he said carefully as he sipped his own drink, “I wanted to talk to you about that as well. Have you wondered why Janet and I have such a… huge place? I mean, I’m just a major in the Air Force and Janet is a colonel. The military isn’t a place to get rich.” Something that was true in the Twelve Colonies and Earth both.
She swirled her drink and then took another sip. “Janet is a doctor, and a colonel, and I assumed that you married well.” After a moment she laughed. “Frak, Gaeta, I’m still internalizing the idea that you’re married. To a woman. I just assumed she was wealthy.”
Felix smiled. “That’s fair, I have to admit, but it’s not true. Janet’s family is not without means but she isn’t independently wealthy.” He gestured expansively. “The truth is that I have a very good memory and the Earth people desperately need our technology and knowledge. Have you been given a college degree with your cover identity?” He knew she had, but he wasn’t sure what she’d been given.
Kara sniffed. “I have something called a bachelor’s degree of science in aerospace engineering from Emory Riddle University.”
A good choice considering they couldn’t pass her off as an Air Force Academy grad. “I have a bachelor’s of science in physics and a doctorate in computer science from MIT. I also have a doctorate in classical history from Oxford.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So it’s Dr. Gaeta now?” After a moment she smirked. “That’d piss off Baltar.”
He smiled, because it would indeed piss off one Dr. Gaius Baltar, especially since the degrees were acquired by the U.S. Air Force as part of his cover. “It would, yes. But I was given doctoral degrees because I can explain how our technology works and I remember enough of even the obscure things to help jumpstart Earth’s technology. In the short term, that means I got a lot of lucrative patents for things I remember but didn’t actually create. So when the money started rolling in, I decided to create a corporation and if anyone from the colonies was found… they would get a partnership and a share of the profits. There are other people who are partners,” namely the people who had rescued him, “and since you’re from the colonies, you’re eligible to be a partner.” He held up his hand as soon as she opened her mouth. “Don’t say it’s charity, it isn’t. I didn’t create the things I have patents on, so I don’t deserve all the money. If you accept the partnership at Thirteen Colonies Institute, one of your responsibilities would be to assist in research and development. So it would be more work, a lot more since you always had more direct access to weapons and flight technology. On the other hand, you’ll certainly be able to afford the rent on the cabin.”
She took another drink, a deeper drink. “Thirteen Colonies Institute? Not Twelve Colonies?”
“There are thirteen,” or were, but he didn’t go there, “and ironically the United States began with thirteen colonies so the name makes people think that we’re patriotic. It helps that I have the bulk of the profits that we’re not reinvesting are going to charity. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a share of that. You could even establish your own charity if you wanted to. I did.”
Kara snapped her fingers and smiled. “TCI…. That’s why it’s familiar.” She swirled her drink. “At the hospital, the crazy wing was right next to the physical rehab unit and they had some sort of huge grant from TCI to work with military veterans that were amputees. And little kids.”
“Victims of war,” Felix said after a moment. He began to stir the sauce, not wanting to betray his own emotions but even after so much time it was still hard. “The health care system here in the States isn’t bad, but soldiers aren’t always given what they deserve. I like to think that if there had been decent medical facilities, that I would have gotten better than a poorly fitted cup and steel pipe for a prosthetic leg. There’s no excuse for a soldier in service here to not receive the best available. And the children… they’re mostly kids from places where losing a limb means you’re spending your life as a beggar.” He still had nightmares about the amputation and about what his life would have been like in the fleet if he hadn’t been captured by the Goa’uld. “It’s hard enough as an adult…. Earth isn’t Caprica, even though the part we’re in seems like Caprica sometimes. They call the United States, and Canada, and Europe, the First World and most of those kids are from the Third World. That’s like being from Sagiterra.”
After a moment she nodded. He was surprised but then she had come a long ways from when she had been rescued. “I get it. If I accept this… do I get some input in where the charity money goes? I have some ideas.”
“Of course. All the partners have their own areas of emphasis. Helo and Sharon have partnerships” He waited a moment. “I don’t want to pressure you. You can take as long as you like to think about it.”
After a moment she tossed back the remains of her drink and smiled. “Well, I suppose I should have a lawyer or something look at the paperwork before I sign it… but if the Delphi noodles are as good as they smell, I might be convinced.” She paused. “But if you hand me a damn fork, I swear, Gaeta, I will stomp you.”
Felix laughed. “I swear, Kara, I will never offer you Delphi noodles with a fork.”
It was a set up, she realized. Helo and Sharon had too quickly acquiesced to watching all the children and the food, and in mere minutes she was sitting in a four wheeled truck as Janet drove on a dirt road to the cabin.
It was beautiful. She tried not to react but it was hard. The snow and the small building looked liked a perfect little haven. She was determined to not cave immediately. “If I understand the weather here, the snow and the road might be a problem.”
“Before my father took ill, we considered that,” Janet said. “There’s a snowmobile for emergencies. You’d be fine, but I’m not comfortable with my 70 year old father riding a snowmobile. On the other hand your SUV seems like it would handle the road fine. There’s not a lot of furniture here…” Janet led her to the front door. “It’s really meant for one person with occasional guests. We’re building the new house a bit bigger for resale value and because Dad is going to need someone to help him now.” There was a note of sadness to Janet’s voice. She must have a good relationship with her father, Kara reasoned.
Janet led her into the house. The problem, Kara realized on stepping into the bright airy place, was that it was beautiful and Felix Gaeta and his wife knew exactly how much she could afford. The kitchen and living room was empty but lovely and there was a glassed off area with lots of natural light coming in from both windows and large skylights. It was perfect for a possible studio. From the outside one would never realize just how bright and airy the log cabin was.
“Do you want to see what the rest of the cabin looks like?” Janet asked from just behind her.
Kara cringed slightly, berating herself for getting completely wrapped up in just the studio area. “Yeah,” she answered while turning her attention back from the studio to the rest of the cabin. The skylights gave the whole house a deceptively bright and airy feel to it. One would never know the walls were at least a foot thick from the logs.
“Don’t be deceived by the windows,” Janet said as she looked out one and into the edge of the forest. “They’re double pane and made to handle some of the worst that storms can throw at them. The double pane also makes it difficult for both cold and heat to seep through.” In other words, the cabin was well insulated, Kara finished in her mind.
Both bedrooms were a nice size, where one could fit decent sized furniture inside them and have room to spare, and the bathroom had areas of nice storage. That was the one thing she didn’t like about the apartment she was in. There was never enough storage space.
What surprised her was the subbasement area. In the area below the house the heater was located. “The pipes here?” Janet was pointing to large PCB pipes coming from the wall and into the house area, “Are from the well. You have well water here, nice and fresh. And the sub pump will make sure that nothing floods during the spring.
“What’s that door for?” Kara pointed to what looked like a very solid door.
“Fallout shelter.” With a heave she pulled the door open. The room hidden behind the door was about half the size of the basement, but large enough to support a decent size family. Shelves lined the walls, shelves that could easily carry lots of canned goods. “This is water from the well,” Janet explained as she turned on the spigot over the sink. “And we do have fresh air,” she showed the boxes on the walls. Boxes that looked eerily similar to the scrubbers that would clean the air on the Galactica.
“Looks like you’ve got everything planned,” Kara commented as she followed Janet out and back up to the ground floor.
A tense smile crossed the smaller woman’s face before she said anything, “Felix still has issues he’s dealing with. He’s always over-prepared for the worst case scenario.” Janet’s expression grew pensive. “He covers it well, but he has security issues.”
“The fallout shelter,” Kara nodded in understanding. She had to admit, the idea of having an emergency shelter did please her. Probably for the same reasons Gaeta had built it. “Is it unusual to have something like this?”
“Most people here don’t really do that anymore. About 40 years ago people were panicking over the fact that a nuclear war could break out at any moment. As long as it doesn’t get too out of hand, I let him do it.” Janet indicated the basement door again, “The shelter can also be used as a tornado shelter.”
Kara furrowed her brows in confusion, she still wasn’t quite sure what a tornado was, but the way people have talked about it, she didn’t want to have to go through one.
“-what do you think?”
“Huh?” Kara realized she hadn’t paid any attention to Janet once they had moved back through the cabin to the studio area. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“That’s okay,” Janet gave her a forgiving smile. “We wanted you to see it before we put an advertisement in the paper stating that the place was for rent.”
“You don’t have to tell me that to get me to make my decision,” Kara said as she turned around in the studio. “I think I made it when I stepped into this room.”
~~~~~~~
He tasted the sauce. Delphi noodles, made traditionally, was a two day affair and his mother’s recipe extended it to three. The sauce was good, he thought. Not right, but there were certain limitations with Earth produce. The portebello mushrooms were close to taragaza mushrooms but they gave the sauce a bite that his mother’s sauce never had.
Judging by the shouts, there was soon to be a commercial break and the crowd would run in for snacks. The noodles were more of a half time dish, at least on Earth, and he wasn’t fool enough to serve it with the traditional chopsticks. At least not to the Earth born guests. Janet could manage and Daniel usually made a good effort, but there were plenty of forks.
It was fun. He liked cooking and making treats for his friends. The football game itself was a bit of a bore for him, but he had picked a team and popped in every few minutes with fresh snacks and people wandered in and out from the media room for more drinks and snacks. As military people, the people in Stargate Command tended to watch their diets, but he had learned that Thanksgiving, which had a much more stringent menu, and Superbowl Sunday, were occasions where everyone was encouraged to wallow in food. Thanksgiving was also an extravaganza in the Gaeta home, with guests all over, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for experimenting. Americans, he had learned, wanted turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and some sort of hearty green vegetable, preferably done up in a sauce. There were variations but there wasn’t much room to experiment. Superbowl Sunday in contrast was less of a traditional meal situation and more of a daylong feast. People liked certain traditional foods like hamburgers and hotdogs, and he had those ready although Jack or Karl or George Hammond would do the actual grilling. He had managed to substitute some handmade sausages and even had some salmon and swordfish for the more health conscious. After the initial thrill had worn off, Felix discovered that he’d lost his taste for meals that were heavily based on beef or pork.
The fun thing about the Superbowl party was that he could try new things. The wasabi chicken wings were clearly a hit and so were the loaded nachos. This year he had made his own salsa and kettle potato chips. The chili was a variation of last year’s, and the bacon wrapped scallops had been a hit since the first year he had served them. So were the Delphi noodles, which he had also made for the first Superbowl party he had hosted. The nice thing was that with the noodles deep fried, it was just a matter of ladling the sauce and meat over the noodles in the bowls he’d already prepared. With everything bubbling and all the dips fresh and waiting, he walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. Beer was another thing he had experimented with, and the ale he had bottled up for the party seemed to be going over well.
He heard the front door open and close and could tell from the pleasant chatter that Janet had worked her magic on Kara. They didn’t *need* someone to rent the cabin but he preferred to have someone in the place. And Kara needed a place, and while she wasn’t exactly a close friend, she was from the colonies and they shared a unique background. He had needed companionship after his time with the Goa’uld, but he suspected that Kara needed the exact opposite. A home that was hers, with a door that locked, with no neighbors nearby to complain or bother with, that was what Kara needed. And Janet was the one to convince her. He knew a lot of Kara’s problem was an unwillingness to back down from her previous anger with him. But he was certain Kara had been convinced. The next step was to convince her to go a bit further and he was pretty certain he could convince her.
“I need to check on the kids,” Janet said, giving him a knowing look. “Why don’t you two get this hashed out before the game starts?” And in seconds he was alone with Kara in his kitchen.
She took a seat at the large island. “I’m not dumb enough to think this wasn’t prearranged, Gaeta.” She eyed him for a moment. “So is there any ambrosia?”
“As a matter of fact…” He moved to the liquor cabinet and in seconds had two glasses of scotch poured. “They call it scotch whiskey here but they make it the same way.” Janet didn’t care for it, and he had come to understand that the way people drank in the colonies was considered excessive by Earth standards. On the other hand, he’d been drinking ambrosia since he was fifteen, and the Tau’ri knew how to make a smooth drink. He set the generous drink in front of Kara, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. “The Tau’ri like ice in it. They call it ’on the rocks’.”
She took the glass and sipped it. A surprise, she had always been a gulper when it came to ambrosia but then he had gotten into the habit of downing the rotgut of the fleet as fast as possible himself. Kara nodded after a moment. “I’m not complaining. This is smooth… good stuff.” She hesitated for just a moment. “Your rental property is good. I’d like to rent it but I doubt I can afford it with what I make as an Air Force captain.”
Felix almost sighed and stopped himself. If she did the math, and he was certain she hadn’t, market value rent was just within her means. At the same time, he had to respect where she was coming from. He had chafed at the idea of accepting help from others and he could understand what she was thinking. “Well,” he said carefully as he sipped his own drink, “I wanted to talk to you about that as well. Have you wondered why Janet and I have such a… huge place? I mean, I’m just a major in the Air Force and Janet is a colonel. The military isn’t a place to get rich.” Something that was true in the Twelve Colonies and Earth both.
She swirled her drink and then took another sip. “Janet is a doctor, and a colonel, and I assumed that you married well.” After a moment she laughed. “Frak, Gaeta, I’m still internalizing the idea that you’re married. To a woman. I just assumed she was wealthy.”
Felix smiled. “That’s fair, I have to admit, but it’s not true. Janet’s family is not without means but she isn’t independently wealthy.” He gestured expansively. “The truth is that I have a very good memory and the Earth people desperately need our technology and knowledge. Have you been given a college degree with your cover identity?” He knew she had, but he wasn’t sure what she’d been given.
Kara sniffed. “I have something called a bachelor’s degree of science in aerospace engineering from Emory Riddle University.”
A good choice considering they couldn’t pass her off as an Air Force Academy grad. “I have a bachelor’s of science in physics and a doctorate in computer science from MIT. I also have a doctorate in classical history from Oxford.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So it’s Dr. Gaeta now?” After a moment she smirked. “That’d piss off Baltar.”
He smiled, because it would indeed piss off one Dr. Gaius Baltar, especially since the degrees were acquired by the U.S. Air Force as part of his cover. “It would, yes. But I was given doctoral degrees because I can explain how our technology works and I remember enough of even the obscure things to help jumpstart Earth’s technology. In the short term, that means I got a lot of lucrative patents for things I remember but didn’t actually create. So when the money started rolling in, I decided to create a corporation and if anyone from the colonies was found… they would get a partnership and a share of the profits. There are other people who are partners,” namely the people who had rescued him, “and since you’re from the colonies, you’re eligible to be a partner.” He held up his hand as soon as she opened her mouth. “Don’t say it’s charity, it isn’t. I didn’t create the things I have patents on, so I don’t deserve all the money. If you accept the partnership at Thirteen Colonies Institute, one of your responsibilities would be to assist in research and development. So it would be more work, a lot more since you always had more direct access to weapons and flight technology. On the other hand, you’ll certainly be able to afford the rent on the cabin.”
She took another drink, a deeper drink. “Thirteen Colonies Institute? Not Twelve Colonies?”
“There are thirteen,” or were, but he didn’t go there, “and ironically the United States began with thirteen colonies so the name makes people think that we’re patriotic. It helps that I have the bulk of the profits that we’re not reinvesting are going to charity. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a share of that. You could even establish your own charity if you wanted to. I did.”
Kara snapped her fingers and smiled. “TCI…. That’s why it’s familiar.” She swirled her drink. “At the hospital, the crazy wing was right next to the physical rehab unit and they had some sort of huge grant from TCI to work with military veterans that were amputees. And little kids.”
“Victims of war,” Felix said after a moment. He began to stir the sauce, not wanting to betray his own emotions but even after so much time it was still hard. “The health care system here in the States isn’t bad, but soldiers aren’t always given what they deserve. I like to think that if there had been decent medical facilities, that I would have gotten better than a poorly fitted cup and steel pipe for a prosthetic leg. There’s no excuse for a soldier in service here to not receive the best available. And the children… they’re mostly kids from places where losing a limb means you’re spending your life as a beggar.” He still had nightmares about the amputation and about what his life would have been like in the fleet if he hadn’t been captured by the Goa’uld. “It’s hard enough as an adult…. Earth isn’t Caprica, even though the part we’re in seems like Caprica sometimes. They call the United States, and Canada, and Europe, the First World and most of those kids are from the Third World. That’s like being from Sagiterra.”
After a moment she nodded. He was surprised but then she had come a long ways from when she had been rescued. “I get it. If I accept this… do I get some input in where the charity money goes? I have some ideas.”
“Of course. All the partners have their own areas of emphasis. Helo and Sharon have partnerships” He waited a moment. “I don’t want to pressure you. You can take as long as you like to think about it.”
After a moment she tossed back the remains of her drink and smiled. “Well, I suppose I should have a lawyer or something look at the paperwork before I sign it… but if the Delphi noodles are as good as they smell, I might be convinced.” She paused. “But if you hand me a damn fork, I swear, Gaeta, I will stomp you.”
Felix laughed. “I swear, Kara, I will never offer you Delphi noodles with a fork.”