New Life, New Caprica (ch 8)
New Life New Caprica, chapter 8
Chapter 8: An Enemy's Fear
Laura woke to the sound of a woman humming, the familiar tone of her voice initially soothing until she recognized it from her flight to Galactica after the attacks. Her eyes flew open and she groaned. The light in the concrete room she found herself was over bright and painful.
“shh...keep your eyes closed. They need time to adjust. And you've got a cut over your eye.” Boomer gently touched a cold cloth to Laura's left eyes, then dabbed something gooey over where she'd cleaned. Laura, confused by the kindness, let her place a bandage over the cut, which was beginning to throb before slowly opening her eyes again.
Boomer, dressed in a short green jacket, black top, and blue jeans, was crouched in front of her. For a moment, a hint of concern looked back at her from the Cylon's dark eyes before it became flat and soulless.
“Why did you do it, Mrs. Adama?” She asked.
“I didn't.”
“But you knew. You knew and you helped plan.”
“No.”
“Yes. That plan was too sophisticated for the felons we caught near the site.” Boomer returned.
Laura swallowed deeply. She had helped a man from the Astral Queen, telling him what she knew from having seen a few people taken to this very place so he could find a way in. She hadn't told Bill, nor had she truly planned the bombing attempt, but the Cylons had gone for her anyway. There was little secret in her mind as to why she was targeted.
She was an Adama, of course. She was wife to Admiral Adama. She was stepmother to Commander Adama. She was the true President of the Twelve Colonies. She was dangerous.
“You're afraid of me.” She whispered softly, “You have no proof, really. You just fear me. How long have you all waited for a reason to take me, my good behavior be damned?”
“I don't think a terrorist has the right to question me.”
Laura scowled at her, “I don't think the woman who shot the man she claimed to love like a father has the right to call me a terrorist.” She spat, reveling for a moment in the pain she saw in the thing's eyes.
“So even you feel.” She murmmured drowsily, the throbbing in her skull beginning to overwhelm her.
“No.” Boomer said, standing, “I'm a machine. I don't feel, I do.”
She spared one last look at Laura when she'd walked to the door, then turned and shut it behind her.
“We'll let you sit there for a few hours,” Boomer's voice said, “and you'll wish you'd just admitted it outright to me. Cavil isn't as kind.”
Then the lights went out.
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Bill awoke slowly, the haze of what experience told him was either a really bad concussion or a really good hangover preventing immediate consciousness.
Slowly, the image of his wife's terrified and pained expression, her body kept rooted by Boomer's unnaturally strong arms, revealed itself in the mist and he shot upright. He was in a different tent than his own under a deep blue coverlet. He looked around, recognizing Kara's long mirror, two Viper jock smocks hanging from pegs on the wall, and a barrel of Tyrol's moonshine from his and Laura's wedding celebration.
“Anders?” He rasped. His throat was drier than a Caprican politician's jokes.
“Not here. He's at the Detention Center, waiting.” Came a woman's voice.
“Mn..Ellen?” He asked, looking to his right. Ellen nodded and handed him a cup of water. He took the time as she refiled the pitcher on the beside table to notice the unruly tangles in her once shining hair and the solemn way she carried herself. Even Ellen Tigh, the unsinkable woman that she was, had taken a battering of sorrow in the week since he'd last had direct contact with the outside world.
“Yes. Just lay there a moment, Bill. You got about half a ton of Cylon that came down on your head. Thick as it is, you've taken quite a hit.”
“Laura!” He said. Bill threw off the coverlet and attempted to stand. The things he'd seen in the war, the things his imagination provided, were assailing him, replacing unnamed victims with the face of his wife. He remembered the butchered woman's arm from the first time he met a Cylon creation, the wails of the mother and child locked in that back room, but Laura's body, her cries instead.
“No!” Ellen scolded, leaning forward to shove him back down on the bed, “You're over sixty and you got a big scar from a major surgery down your chest, you'll kill yourself getting up now, and then where will she be?”
He froze, realizing the truth in her words even as a part of him howled for the synthetic blood of their captors. If he died....if he died and she somehow survived....the pain it would cause her was unthinkable.
“I..you're right.” He said, lowering himself down to the bed.
“ Of course I am. Cottle says you need to stay her for at least ten hours,” Ellen said, distractedly rearranging the coverlet, “ you scared a lot of people, Bill. Your crew wanted to kill the Cylons as it was.”
He smiled a moment, proud of his crew despite the tingling worry for Laura. That they would do something that potentially stupid in his wife's defense was heartening.
Ellen stopped fidgeting with the coverlet and sat back in her chair, pale and unnaturally quiet. Bill was unnerved, and the tingling feeling of uselessness was feeding off the strange behavior, enhancing it.
He reached out to grasp Ellen's hand. She looked up at him with a trembling gaze and squeezed back.
“Saul will come back, Ellen. And Laura won't give up.” He said.
She attempted a weak smile. Bill would have smiled back, if not for the way the words sounded hollow even to his ears.