(no subject)
For bsg_ficathon
Request: Open to suggestion -- just something plausible.
Character or Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Three things wanted: Well-written, not-too-sappy, in-character.
Three things not wanted: Weddings, children, character death
Rating: G for very tentative flirting.
Spoilers: Set between Final Cut and Flight of the Phoenix
Beta: Patrick, who stepped in at the last minute to save my deadline-meeting bacon.
Summary: Laura Roslin handles a minor crisis, with a little help.
Stolen Moments
By Snowballjane
Laura Roslin stared at the figures printed on the papers that were lying on top of the pile littering her desk. Fifteen boxes of shiny new parts had been dispatched from the factory ship; fourteen had been delivered to the Colonial ships in need of maintenance.
The commander of the Delphi Sunrise had been almost hysterical when he called her, an hour or so earlier, demanding to know where his new LXR coils were -- understandable, given that he wouldn’t be able to FTL jump safely without replacing the worn-out ones.
Since then, investigations aboard Colonial One had progressed slowly. The manager who shipped out the parts had given poor Billy an earful at the suggestion that a box had been left behind and the civilian delivery pilots had been all wounded innocence when questioned about the whereabouts of the coils. But the fact remained that the Delphi Sunrise didn’t have her vital components and someone else, somewhere in the fleet, did. Being President was one thing, trying to turn police detective was quite another.
Laura took off her glasses, letting the troublesome octagonal delivery sheets become a grey blur. She reached to make another call, then hesitated, tapping her fingernails along the handset as she considered whether her instinct to involve the Galactica in the matter was wisdom or cop-out.
It was hardly a military issue, after all. Some lost supplies that would soon be replaced with a fresh batch, now that they had enough raw materials from the Tyllium refinery to operate a small scale manufacturing plant aboard one of the ships that had been a service and repair vessel before the end of the worlds.
The last thing the fleet needed was heavy-handed military investigators arresting civilians, just when they’d achieved such a PR breakthrough with D’Anna Biers’s broadcast.
But what if it wasn’t the minor act of dishonesty it appeared to be? What if it was the first clue to some new Cylon plot and she failed to share what she knew?
Anyway, she needed Bill Adama’s help for her plan.
She took a deep breath and picked up the handset.
***
His voice shouldn’t offer instant reassurance. Mere weeks had passed since he had had her thrown into a bare grey cell, since she had thought they could never trust each other again. But as soon as Petty Officer Dualla had connected her call, his brusque greeting of “What is it?” served only to quiet her more paranoid fears.
She detailed the situation in brief terms. “I know it’s probably just petty theft, someone not reporting that their delivery was a few items too many,” she finished, “but...”
“But once it starts, you’ve got a black economy running in the Fleet with every quartermaster looking to make a quick profit and delivery pilots taking back handers, rather than everyone pulling together,” he finished for her, putting half of her concerns in a nutshell.
“That, plus if we have to jump at the moment, the Delphi Sunrise would be left behind to be picked off.”
“You suspect Cylon involvement?”
“Maybe.”
“My people are at your disposal, of course,” he said, though the offer was made very tentatively. “But I wouldn’t recommend sending military search teams at this point. It would be a terrible waste of our hard won popularity.”
He was trying so hard not to undermine her authority since they had returned that it was almost funny and actually sort of, well, endearing. The easy intimacy that had so surprised and pleased her on Kobol seemed much more fragile once they were back with the Fleet and had to perform their roles of Commander and President, but it was gradually becoming clear to her that Bill Adama had made a decision about where his loyalties lay.
They would -- it was a certainty -- argue in the future, but she had begun to suspect that he would move the stars themselves if he thought it would make her job any easier.
“I appreciate that Commander, and I’m glad we agree about not searching civilian vessels if we can avoid it.” She paused for a moment, before committing herself to gambling on the humanity of the fleet. “I need you to announce an FTL jump, with a fairly long, but unmovable deadline. About two hours, I’d suggest.”
He got it immediately. “Should be just enough time for anyone with a spare coil lying around to freely offer it to the Delphi Sunrise.”
“Exactly.”
A laugh spluttered from the earpiece. “You do realise that this is treating the whole fleet like a kindergarten class Laura?”
***
The long-countdown jump was announced, sparking consternation as everyone immediately assumed Galactica had intelligence of an upcoming attack. The urgent plea for anyone with spare LXR coils to assist the Delphi Sunrise had been made. The fleet-wide inventory suggested no one did have any lying about in stores, so the only spares were the missing batch.
There was nothing left to do but wait.
Piling all the delivery records neatly to one side, Laura picked up the next file. It turned out to be a proposal for an archiving project to collect and copy all the musical recordings held anywhere within the fleet, to preserve Colonial culture for the future. It was hardly a priority but she found the idea heartening.
Music was one of those things, like reading anything other than administrative reports, that she barely had time to think of now, but she missed it all the same. It seemed churlish to regret the loss of a favourite tune, when so very much else was gone, but for the first time she really wondered whether beloved songs existed now, anywhere other than in her memory.
Twistle, Galia, Kistler; all favourite composers whose works had lived and moved their listeners for hundreds of years. Even if some of the refugees had their entire personal music collections with them, most of humanity’s musical work would be lost, just as art and literature would be.
Humming the opening bars of Kistler’s Oh Hear Me Lords, she moved on to petitions about the quality of schooling.
***
“Madam President?”
Billy’s head appeared around her door, for once wearing a broad smile rather than his accustomed frown.
“Coils turned up then?” she asked, feigning nonchalance for a moment despite the immense relief and satisfaction she felt.
“Captain Edson of the Lightning says that in an amazing piece of luck they just found a set of LXR coils wrapped in the packaging of their new filtration unit,” reported her intern-come-chief-of-staff. “He’s sending it over to the Delphi Sunrise now. Should be there in plenty of in time for the jump.”
“Well, that is an amazing piece of luck. Thank you Billy. Could you get me Galactica on the line?”
As the young man went to make the call she allowed herself a brief moment to revel in the success. Crisis averted. And almost no one knew there had ever even been a crisis. Now that was politics.
Billy indicated that the Commander was on the line and she lifted her own handset to her ear.
“I see the Lightning is making a rather urgent delivery,” said Bill Adama. “Gold star for the President.”
“Will you call off the jump?” she asked, grinning from ear to ear.
“If everyone’s ready to jump anyway, the change in position would be very helpful to the Astral plotting team trying to identify our constellations.”
It was unusual to be talking to the Commander in such laid-back circumstances. Everything was in its rightful place in the Fleet and they were actually making a jump at their own convenience, for once, and one that would help plot the location of Earth. The Gods were smiling on her today. She decided to push her luck with them.
“There is another civilian matter you could help with Bill,” she said, in her most wheedling tone.
“Go on...” He sounded wary, as though she might be about to ask him to serve on the dullest committee imaginable.
“Do you, by any chance, have any recordings of Kistler’s choral works?”
He coughed - a little bark of surprise at the question. “I have a complete set of the recent Caprica City Festival performances,” he said, making her heart leap. “I picked them up on my last shore leave, which was about a week after the Festival, worse luck.”
Laura smiled. “I was there, but spent my entire time dealing with lobbyists for more music in schools. I only got to two concerts and at one of those the woman behind me had the hiccups.”
“Oh dear,” said Bill, although Laura got the distinct impression that he was sniggering at her misfortune. “I haven’t played them in a while,” he added. “If you’d care to join me for lunch after tomorrow’s meeting, we could listen to them.”
“Provided there isn’t another crisis before then,” she teased, relaxing into the first genuinely sociable conversation she had had in days.
“And that neither of us gets the hiccups.” They both laughed.
“I’d be delighted,” she said, reaching across her desk as she spoke, to sign the letter promising her complete personal support for the archive project. There were some perks to being President.
The End
ETA: The Ficathon masterlist is here.
Request: Open to suggestion -- just something plausible.
Character or Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Three things wanted: Well-written, not-too-sappy, in-character.
Three things not wanted: Weddings, children, character death
Rating: G for very tentative flirting.
Spoilers: Set between Final Cut and Flight of the Phoenix
Beta: Patrick, who stepped in at the last minute to save my deadline-meeting bacon.
Summary: Laura Roslin handles a minor crisis, with a little help.
Stolen Moments
By Snowballjane
Laura Roslin stared at the figures printed on the papers that were lying on top of the pile littering her desk. Fifteen boxes of shiny new parts had been dispatched from the factory ship; fourteen had been delivered to the Colonial ships in need of maintenance.
The commander of the Delphi Sunrise had been almost hysterical when he called her, an hour or so earlier, demanding to know where his new LXR coils were -- understandable, given that he wouldn’t be able to FTL jump safely without replacing the worn-out ones.
Since then, investigations aboard Colonial One had progressed slowly. The manager who shipped out the parts had given poor Billy an earful at the suggestion that a box had been left behind and the civilian delivery pilots had been all wounded innocence when questioned about the whereabouts of the coils. But the fact remained that the Delphi Sunrise didn’t have her vital components and someone else, somewhere in the fleet, did. Being President was one thing, trying to turn police detective was quite another.
Laura took off her glasses, letting the troublesome octagonal delivery sheets become a grey blur. She reached to make another call, then hesitated, tapping her fingernails along the handset as she considered whether her instinct to involve the Galactica in the matter was wisdom or cop-out.
It was hardly a military issue, after all. Some lost supplies that would soon be replaced with a fresh batch, now that they had enough raw materials from the Tyllium refinery to operate a small scale manufacturing plant aboard one of the ships that had been a service and repair vessel before the end of the worlds.
The last thing the fleet needed was heavy-handed military investigators arresting civilians, just when they’d achieved such a PR breakthrough with D’Anna Biers’s broadcast.
But what if it wasn’t the minor act of dishonesty it appeared to be? What if it was the first clue to some new Cylon plot and she failed to share what she knew?
Anyway, she needed Bill Adama’s help for her plan.
She took a deep breath and picked up the handset.
***
His voice shouldn’t offer instant reassurance. Mere weeks had passed since he had had her thrown into a bare grey cell, since she had thought they could never trust each other again. But as soon as Petty Officer Dualla had connected her call, his brusque greeting of “What is it?” served only to quiet her more paranoid fears.
She detailed the situation in brief terms. “I know it’s probably just petty theft, someone not reporting that their delivery was a few items too many,” she finished, “but...”
“But once it starts, you’ve got a black economy running in the Fleet with every quartermaster looking to make a quick profit and delivery pilots taking back handers, rather than everyone pulling together,” he finished for her, putting half of her concerns in a nutshell.
“That, plus if we have to jump at the moment, the Delphi Sunrise would be left behind to be picked off.”
“You suspect Cylon involvement?”
“Maybe.”
“My people are at your disposal, of course,” he said, though the offer was made very tentatively. “But I wouldn’t recommend sending military search teams at this point. It would be a terrible waste of our hard won popularity.”
He was trying so hard not to undermine her authority since they had returned that it was almost funny and actually sort of, well, endearing. The easy intimacy that had so surprised and pleased her on Kobol seemed much more fragile once they were back with the Fleet and had to perform their roles of Commander and President, but it was gradually becoming clear to her that Bill Adama had made a decision about where his loyalties lay.
They would -- it was a certainty -- argue in the future, but she had begun to suspect that he would move the stars themselves if he thought it would make her job any easier.
“I appreciate that Commander, and I’m glad we agree about not searching civilian vessels if we can avoid it.” She paused for a moment, before committing herself to gambling on the humanity of the fleet. “I need you to announce an FTL jump, with a fairly long, but unmovable deadline. About two hours, I’d suggest.”
He got it immediately. “Should be just enough time for anyone with a spare coil lying around to freely offer it to the Delphi Sunrise.”
“Exactly.”
A laugh spluttered from the earpiece. “You do realise that this is treating the whole fleet like a kindergarten class Laura?”
***
The long-countdown jump was announced, sparking consternation as everyone immediately assumed Galactica had intelligence of an upcoming attack. The urgent plea for anyone with spare LXR coils to assist the Delphi Sunrise had been made. The fleet-wide inventory suggested no one did have any lying about in stores, so the only spares were the missing batch.
There was nothing left to do but wait.
Piling all the delivery records neatly to one side, Laura picked up the next file. It turned out to be a proposal for an archiving project to collect and copy all the musical recordings held anywhere within the fleet, to preserve Colonial culture for the future. It was hardly a priority but she found the idea heartening.
Music was one of those things, like reading anything other than administrative reports, that she barely had time to think of now, but she missed it all the same. It seemed churlish to regret the loss of a favourite tune, when so very much else was gone, but for the first time she really wondered whether beloved songs existed now, anywhere other than in her memory.
Twistle, Galia, Kistler; all favourite composers whose works had lived and moved their listeners for hundreds of years. Even if some of the refugees had their entire personal music collections with them, most of humanity’s musical work would be lost, just as art and literature would be.
Humming the opening bars of Kistler’s Oh Hear Me Lords, she moved on to petitions about the quality of schooling.
***
“Madam President?”
Billy’s head appeared around her door, for once wearing a broad smile rather than his accustomed frown.
“Coils turned up then?” she asked, feigning nonchalance for a moment despite the immense relief and satisfaction she felt.
“Captain Edson of the Lightning says that in an amazing piece of luck they just found a set of LXR coils wrapped in the packaging of their new filtration unit,” reported her intern-come-chief-of-staff. “He’s sending it over to the Delphi Sunrise now. Should be there in plenty of in time for the jump.”
“Well, that is an amazing piece of luck. Thank you Billy. Could you get me Galactica on the line?”
As the young man went to make the call she allowed herself a brief moment to revel in the success. Crisis averted. And almost no one knew there had ever even been a crisis. Now that was politics.
Billy indicated that the Commander was on the line and she lifted her own handset to her ear.
“I see the Lightning is making a rather urgent delivery,” said Bill Adama. “Gold star for the President.”
“Will you call off the jump?” she asked, grinning from ear to ear.
“If everyone’s ready to jump anyway, the change in position would be very helpful to the Astral plotting team trying to identify our constellations.”
It was unusual to be talking to the Commander in such laid-back circumstances. Everything was in its rightful place in the Fleet and they were actually making a jump at their own convenience, for once, and one that would help plot the location of Earth. The Gods were smiling on her today. She decided to push her luck with them.
“There is another civilian matter you could help with Bill,” she said, in her most wheedling tone.
“Go on...” He sounded wary, as though she might be about to ask him to serve on the dullest committee imaginable.
“Do you, by any chance, have any recordings of Kistler’s choral works?”
He coughed - a little bark of surprise at the question. “I have a complete set of the recent Caprica City Festival performances,” he said, making her heart leap. “I picked them up on my last shore leave, which was about a week after the Festival, worse luck.”
Laura smiled. “I was there, but spent my entire time dealing with lobbyists for more music in schools. I only got to two concerts and at one of those the woman behind me had the hiccups.”
“Oh dear,” said Bill, although Laura got the distinct impression that he was sniggering at her misfortune. “I haven’t played them in a while,” he added. “If you’d care to join me for lunch after tomorrow’s meeting, we could listen to them.”
“Provided there isn’t another crisis before then,” she teased, relaxing into the first genuinely sociable conversation she had had in days.
“And that neither of us gets the hiccups.” They both laughed.
“I’d be delighted,” she said, reaching across her desk as she spoke, to sign the letter promising her complete personal support for the archive project. There were some perks to being President.
The End
ETA: The Ficathon masterlist is here.