Fic - " The President's Man"
Here a little something to get Team Airlock moving. rated PG although some hints are dropped to let people do what they will. :D
“ We’re only doing this once, “ Cottle said quietly as he pulled Roslin out of the tented waiting room. “ This is not going to be a meeting place or a drop site.” More under his breath he added, “ And if you insist on this it may affect the medicine delivery.
Roslin nodded. It wasn’t as much of risk to her as Cottle thought, but there were others to consider, presumably. He was a doctor and he believed in hope, and she simply didn’t see any reason to have any when it came to her cancer. It was the drug supply that told her that Jack Cottle had a source inside. Officially, her cancer was considered “untreatable” per the new Cylon triage rules and she was only allowed palliative care. For mercy, the Cylon that called himself Simon had said. Simon, or some version of Simon, occasionally assisted in the makeshift hospital, and he had said, feigning sadness she was certain, that there was simply nothing that could be done. Jack hadn’t agreed, but she had only allowed him to give her treatments after he assured her that he wasn’t stealing medicine from other patients who needed it as much, and who had a much better chance of survival. I have a source, he had told her, on the inside, who volunteered.
It had to be someone in the government. Only government workers had access to the fresh supplies that the Cylons distributed. Someone who was willing to steal and the real shocker was that they weren’t doing it for a price. That was becoming more and more common and ugly as well. Stop it, she told herself as Cottle led her through the hospital’s flapping canvas hallway, stop letting your anger get the best of you. She found it disgusting that anyone had continued working for the government once the Cylons had taken over, just like she found it disgusting that anyone was volunteering for the New Caprican Police. But being disgusted was not the way to act with an informant. Jack had been getting more than medicine from the contact, there had been some warnings as well. Warnings that had preserved the groups meager weapons cache and prevented it from being discovered. It’s help, she told herself, and it’s better than nothing , and if you want it to turn into more, then be nice.
Still, thinking about it later, she was certain that Felix Gaeta had known exactly how she felt about him the moment she spotted him sitting on the exam table.
“ Dammit, I thought this room was clear,” Cottle said gruffly and loudly. “ Ms. Roslin, please give me a moment to find another room.” Under his breath he added, “ Don’t take all day.”
Gaeta looked at her coolly. “ This is a surprise.”
“ I can easily say the same,” she said. Damn Jack for being so secretive, she thought. A warning would have been nice. And if she had even suspected the source was so highly placed, she would have already been using him. Still…. “ How are you enjoying Dr. Baltar’s presidency? Is it everything you hoped?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “ Is that why we’re both risking our lives? So you can score points?”
“ You are working for them,” she hissed. “ So I suggest you watch your tone.”
He crossed his arms. “ I suggest that you watch your tone, Madame President.” His eyes narrowed. “ Let me explain something to you, so you can at least attempt to understand where I am coming from.” Gaeta’s voice was barely above a whisper, and she stepped closer, catching the unstated need to be quiet. “ You’re so worried about the people, you don’t even see what’s going on. I should have quit my job, right? Walked out the day the Cylons came. I should have been a man about it, and not some coward. Not like your pals Colonel Tigh, or Kara Thrace. But you don’t have any godsdamned clue.”
“ Why don’t you explain it to me, Lt. Gaeta,” Roslin said. It wasn’t going the way she expected.
“ It’s very easy to look down on others, who make choices that you haven’t been asked to make.” She wasn’t sure if it was arrogance or anger that darkened his face. “ I should have quit, right? Showed the people how we weren’t going to support the Cylons, right?” She held her tongue. He smiled thinly and seemed to consider his next words. “ I should have died, in other words, other than submit. Done the honorable thing and quit in protest and damn the consequences. Because living under Cylon rule… we’d all be better off dead and I should be ashamed for not wanting to die. Right?”
“Something along those lines,” she said warily. Gaeta was no Gauis Baltar, but she had the sense that he was gearing up to say something ugly. “ Some people did resign.”
Gaeta nodded. “ And they’re all dead now. Remember Playa Palacious? You haven’t seen her since the invasion. She was next to me in the line. They made us all line up, and she said she wouldn’t work for Cylons and she was executed. I had to have Dr. Cottle pick her bone fragments out of my skin. For weeks, because it was so close, and bone doesn’t pick up on x-ray.” He sighed. “ My job is not to die stupidly.”
“ And what is your job, Lt. Gaeta?”
“ I am an officer of the Colonial Fleet. I vowed to uphold the Articles of Colonial Confederation. All of the articles, not just the ones I like. I didn’t resign my commission to be a presidential aide for Dr. Baltar, I became a reservist, and I will follow the orders I received from Admiral Adama before the fleet jumped away. I will do everything in my power to keep as many of the civilian population alive as I can. I will do everything I can to keep you, the real president as far as he’s concerned, alive until he returns. That’s why I am risking my life right now talking to you, and that’s why I am at your command and not the command of Col. Tigh and Helena Cain.” He stopped.
“But?” Roslin let herself smile.
“I’m not going to be treated like a piece of garbage by someone who judges me for not doing something that she’s not willing to do herself.” He pushed off the exam table and got in her face. “ I don’t see you, or anyone else in the resistance groups willing to walk up to a Cylon and ask to be executed. I will most likely die helping you and I’ve made peace with that. That’s dying with honor. You haven’t walked up to the Colonial One and declared you won’t live under Cylon rule. If you did, you would be shot, and that would be dying stupidly. You’re right not to do that. You’re not right to judge anyone else who makes that same choice.” He looked down, and she realized suddenly that despite the anger and emotion on his face, she was looking at a man that wasn’t much older than Billy. A man wracked with guilt, and doubt, and fear, a man trying desperately to make desperate, impossible choices and still look at himself in the mirror.
And suddenly she wasn’t as afraid. This was humanity looking at her, with all of it’s flaws and triumphs written on Felix Gaeta’s tired face. It was human to make mistakes, and the gods knew she thought Gaeta had made some, but it was also human to try and make it right, no matter what the cost.
She wondered idly if Bill had really given him orders. It sounded like Bill, it felt like Bill, but she suspected she would never really know. “ All right,” she said quietly, “ I accept your condition. Now what can you do for me?”
“ We need a better routine.” Gaeta gestured around the room. “ I see Cottle at least once a week for one thing or another, but it isn’t safe to meet here. It puts him at risk. As for what I can do… that depends on what you want. I don’t make decisions, I want you to understand that. I sit in on most of the Cylon meetings, and they’re starting to trust me. I’m not an aide in the sense that Billy was your aide. I attend the meetings so Dr. Baltar has something to refer to. He misses a lot, and he’s drinking and using a lot of drugs.”
“ Is he still sleeping with the Cylon whore?” Roslin could feel her anger rising.
“ Yes. All the time.” Gaeta looked at her. “ What do you need? I can tell you, you are watched. Not as closely as Tigh but you need to be careful.”
“ I want anything that can help us contact the Admiral, and get the people off this rock,” she said. “ I want you to do anything necessary to gain the Cylons trust.” Because it occurred to her who the Cylons would turn to if Baltar managed to incapacitate himself. This isn’t wrong, she told herself, it’s not wrong, and he volunteered. “ I don’t care what it takes, Lt. Gaeta, but I want the Cylons to consider you trustworthy. Do whatever it takes to ingratiate yourself and get access. We need to know where the Admiral is and we need to be able to get in contact. I don’t care if you have to rape and kill human children to make them trust you, if you have to perform sex acts on them for their amusement, you will do whatever it takes, is that understood?”
Gaeta straightened, his face pale and sweaty. “ Yes sir. But it may take all of that. If either of us survive this… I don’t want to be executed.”
“ If we both survive this, Lt. Gaeta, I will personally pin any medal you want to your chest.” She wondered if that even meant anything to him.
He shrugged. “ If we both survive… I’ll vote for you in the next election.” Gaeta stepped over to the tent flap. “ I’ll figure out a contact procedure and I’ll contact you. Watch yourself. They talk about you.”
Roslin nodded and in seconds he was gone, as if he had never been there at all. Oh Bill, she sadly, I wish despite everything that’s happening, that I had you here. She was surrounded by people, but she was always alone.
yay! tis a part!
“ We’re only doing this once, “ Cottle said quietly as he pulled Roslin out of the tented waiting room. “ This is not going to be a meeting place or a drop site.” More under his breath he added, “ And if you insist on this it may affect the medicine delivery.
Roslin nodded. It wasn’t as much of risk to her as Cottle thought, but there were others to consider, presumably. He was a doctor and he believed in hope, and she simply didn’t see any reason to have any when it came to her cancer. It was the drug supply that told her that Jack Cottle had a source inside. Officially, her cancer was considered “untreatable” per the new Cylon triage rules and she was only allowed palliative care. For mercy, the Cylon that called himself Simon had said. Simon, or some version of Simon, occasionally assisted in the makeshift hospital, and he had said, feigning sadness she was certain, that there was simply nothing that could be done. Jack hadn’t agreed, but she had only allowed him to give her treatments after he assured her that he wasn’t stealing medicine from other patients who needed it as much, and who had a much better chance of survival. I have a source, he had told her, on the inside, who volunteered.
It had to be someone in the government. Only government workers had access to the fresh supplies that the Cylons distributed. Someone who was willing to steal and the real shocker was that they weren’t doing it for a price. That was becoming more and more common and ugly as well. Stop it, she told herself as Cottle led her through the hospital’s flapping canvas hallway, stop letting your anger get the best of you. She found it disgusting that anyone had continued working for the government once the Cylons had taken over, just like she found it disgusting that anyone was volunteering for the New Caprican Police. But being disgusted was not the way to act with an informant. Jack had been getting more than medicine from the contact, there had been some warnings as well. Warnings that had preserved the groups meager weapons cache and prevented it from being discovered. It’s help, she told herself, and it’s better than nothing , and if you want it to turn into more, then be nice.
Still, thinking about it later, she was certain that Felix Gaeta had known exactly how she felt about him the moment she spotted him sitting on the exam table.
“ Dammit, I thought this room was clear,” Cottle said gruffly and loudly. “ Ms. Roslin, please give me a moment to find another room.” Under his breath he added, “ Don’t take all day.”
Gaeta looked at her coolly. “ This is a surprise.”
“ I can easily say the same,” she said. Damn Jack for being so secretive, she thought. A warning would have been nice. And if she had even suspected the source was so highly placed, she would have already been using him. Still…. “ How are you enjoying Dr. Baltar’s presidency? Is it everything you hoped?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “ Is that why we’re both risking our lives? So you can score points?”
“ You are working for them,” she hissed. “ So I suggest you watch your tone.”
He crossed his arms. “ I suggest that you watch your tone, Madame President.” His eyes narrowed. “ Let me explain something to you, so you can at least attempt to understand where I am coming from.” Gaeta’s voice was barely above a whisper, and she stepped closer, catching the unstated need to be quiet. “ You’re so worried about the people, you don’t even see what’s going on. I should have quit my job, right? Walked out the day the Cylons came. I should have been a man about it, and not some coward. Not like your pals Colonel Tigh, or Kara Thrace. But you don’t have any godsdamned clue.”
“ Why don’t you explain it to me, Lt. Gaeta,” Roslin said. It wasn’t going the way she expected.
“ It’s very easy to look down on others, who make choices that you haven’t been asked to make.” She wasn’t sure if it was arrogance or anger that darkened his face. “ I should have quit, right? Showed the people how we weren’t going to support the Cylons, right?” She held her tongue. He smiled thinly and seemed to consider his next words. “ I should have died, in other words, other than submit. Done the honorable thing and quit in protest and damn the consequences. Because living under Cylon rule… we’d all be better off dead and I should be ashamed for not wanting to die. Right?”
“Something along those lines,” she said warily. Gaeta was no Gauis Baltar, but she had the sense that he was gearing up to say something ugly. “ Some people did resign.”
Gaeta nodded. “ And they’re all dead now. Remember Playa Palacious? You haven’t seen her since the invasion. She was next to me in the line. They made us all line up, and she said she wouldn’t work for Cylons and she was executed. I had to have Dr. Cottle pick her bone fragments out of my skin. For weeks, because it was so close, and bone doesn’t pick up on x-ray.” He sighed. “ My job is not to die stupidly.”
“ And what is your job, Lt. Gaeta?”
“ I am an officer of the Colonial Fleet. I vowed to uphold the Articles of Colonial Confederation. All of the articles, not just the ones I like. I didn’t resign my commission to be a presidential aide for Dr. Baltar, I became a reservist, and I will follow the orders I received from Admiral Adama before the fleet jumped away. I will do everything in my power to keep as many of the civilian population alive as I can. I will do everything I can to keep you, the real president as far as he’s concerned, alive until he returns. That’s why I am risking my life right now talking to you, and that’s why I am at your command and not the command of Col. Tigh and Helena Cain.” He stopped.
“But?” Roslin let herself smile.
“I’m not going to be treated like a piece of garbage by someone who judges me for not doing something that she’s not willing to do herself.” He pushed off the exam table and got in her face. “ I don’t see you, or anyone else in the resistance groups willing to walk up to a Cylon and ask to be executed. I will most likely die helping you and I’ve made peace with that. That’s dying with honor. You haven’t walked up to the Colonial One and declared you won’t live under Cylon rule. If you did, you would be shot, and that would be dying stupidly. You’re right not to do that. You’re not right to judge anyone else who makes that same choice.” He looked down, and she realized suddenly that despite the anger and emotion on his face, she was looking at a man that wasn’t much older than Billy. A man wracked with guilt, and doubt, and fear, a man trying desperately to make desperate, impossible choices and still look at himself in the mirror.
And suddenly she wasn’t as afraid. This was humanity looking at her, with all of it’s flaws and triumphs written on Felix Gaeta’s tired face. It was human to make mistakes, and the gods knew she thought Gaeta had made some, but it was also human to try and make it right, no matter what the cost.
She wondered idly if Bill had really given him orders. It sounded like Bill, it felt like Bill, but she suspected she would never really know. “ All right,” she said quietly, “ I accept your condition. Now what can you do for me?”
“ We need a better routine.” Gaeta gestured around the room. “ I see Cottle at least once a week for one thing or another, but it isn’t safe to meet here. It puts him at risk. As for what I can do… that depends on what you want. I don’t make decisions, I want you to understand that. I sit in on most of the Cylon meetings, and they’re starting to trust me. I’m not an aide in the sense that Billy was your aide. I attend the meetings so Dr. Baltar has something to refer to. He misses a lot, and he’s drinking and using a lot of drugs.”
“ Is he still sleeping with the Cylon whore?” Roslin could feel her anger rising.
“ Yes. All the time.” Gaeta looked at her. “ What do you need? I can tell you, you are watched. Not as closely as Tigh but you need to be careful.”
“ I want anything that can help us contact the Admiral, and get the people off this rock,” she said. “ I want you to do anything necessary to gain the Cylons trust.” Because it occurred to her who the Cylons would turn to if Baltar managed to incapacitate himself. This isn’t wrong, she told herself, it’s not wrong, and he volunteered. “ I don’t care what it takes, Lt. Gaeta, but I want the Cylons to consider you trustworthy. Do whatever it takes to ingratiate yourself and get access. We need to know where the Admiral is and we need to be able to get in contact. I don’t care if you have to rape and kill human children to make them trust you, if you have to perform sex acts on them for their amusement, you will do whatever it takes, is that understood?”
Gaeta straightened, his face pale and sweaty. “ Yes sir. But it may take all of that. If either of us survive this… I don’t want to be executed.”
“ If we both survive this, Lt. Gaeta, I will personally pin any medal you want to your chest.” She wondered if that even meant anything to him.
He shrugged. “ If we both survive… I’ll vote for you in the next election.” Gaeta stepped over to the tent flap. “ I’ll figure out a contact procedure and I’ll contact you. Watch yourself. They talk about you.”
Roslin nodded and in seconds he was gone, as if he had never been there at all. Oh Bill, she sadly, I wish despite everything that’s happening, that I had you here. She was surrounded by people, but she was always alone.
yay! tis a part!