New Post: Edge 3/?
Author: Lurker2209
Spoilers: Through S3 and some oblique references to Razor
Rating: PG-13, for now.
Characters/pairings: Lots of OC’s, L/K (be patient, very patient!)
Timeline: About 13 years after the Second Exodus; this goes AU somewhere after Rapture, although the rest of S3 did or will happen, just differently.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Ron who generously lets us play in his universe.
Summary: For years the fleet has wandered in the wilderness and one girl has wandered from placement to placement.
A/N: Thanks to all three of my wonderful Beta's.
Chapter 1: Orphans
Part A
Part B
Part C
The pitch of the alarms increased, sounding a higher tone for just a few seconds warning. Then, we jumped.
Around me people relaxed. For now, imminent death was averted, yet again. After a few minutes the kitchen started serving food. People slowly gathered themselves and filed into the lines. They forgot the crowds and the terror. It was the only way to live.
My stomach growled as I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at school on the Chiron. The lunch where I’d mouthed off and started a fight, which led to detention, which led to-to pissing off Evelyn, which brought me here. Was it all really just yesterday? I focused on the hunger and filed into line.
The smoke of ice weed drifted into the air and mingled with the scent of algae soup. For some, drugs were better than simple routine at erasing fear and panic. A FleetSec officer wandered past one group rolling joints, but said nothing. The Quorum made some noise every few years about regulating the stuff, but it was too popular. Most folks said it was the only good thing that came out of New Caprica. I’d tried a joint a time or two, but didn’t like it. It took the edge off all right, and a whole lot more.
Finally I came to the front of the line.
“Casserole or soup?” the tired woman dishing out the food asked. I took the casserole, since everything pretty much tasted the same and soup was more likely to spill. A man handed us each a can of vitamin-spiked water. They called it juice, since supposedly it was flavored to resemble fruit. I doubted that, but the only fruit I’d tasted was the banana every schoolchild had gotten after a successful raid on cylon supply lines a few years back.
I ate quickly, not speaking to the people seated around me. One man had a wireless set and was flipping through the bands.
“…estimated 15 casualties. In related news, Secretary of Civil Security Lee Adama released a statement this afternoon assuring civilians that despite recent military deployments FleetSec still maintains the manpower and resources necessary to respond crises within the fleet. The Tauron delegation responded calling for increased recruitment to curb crime in times of Cylon attacks…”
“Just what we need, more cops,” the man grumbled, changing the station to music.
I finished my meal, and found there wasn’t much to do after returning the plate, fork, and can. FleetSec hadn’t released us to leave, and I didn’t want to risk trying to sneak past them. So I found a bare patch of wall and sat to wait.
I looked over to Simon’s bag, just sitting there, as if it were challenging me, to what I didn’t know. What kind of crazy would I have to be to run around this ship looking for him? And there was trouble after him. I’d probably only get him killed.
Of course, there were things in my bag I’d die to hang on to: the small wood box with my mother's photos for one. And her idols wrapped carefully in her tattered sweatshirt. It didn't really smell like her, not after six years, but somehow when I held it to my face, I could remember that scent: exhaust fumes and engine grease and sweat, mixed with a trace of acrid ozone. I had my sketch pads too, with my pencils and some handmade bamboo charcoal.
I stared at Simon’s bag.
It sat there.
I couldn’t win a staring contest with a bag, of all things. So I opened it. On top was a notebook, like one of the ones issued by the schools. I flipped it open, expecting history notes, or maybe biology given his odd medical knowledge. Instead there were pages of pen and ink drawings: ancient characters, odd shapes, gang insignia, religious symbols, flowers, and birds. They were tattoo designs, like the ones that traced his arms. I paused on an image of a coiled snake, head poised to strike. They were good.
I kept flipping pages as designs gave way to doodles and then a series of rough comic panels. It was hard to determine the storyline at first, since the speech balloons were empty. The figures were good, especially for the faces, although the scenery was rough. The main character was a boy, it seemed, at some sort of party. I turned the page to see a woman with an owl on her shoulder-the goddess Athena. Of course! It was a modern retelling of Pythia’s Of the Gods and Men on Earth, every kid’s favorite book of the Sacred Scrolls. The boy was Telemachus and Athena was sending him out to search for news of his father, Odysseus. Simon hadn’t gotten very far into the story when the rough panels gave way to blank sheets.
The rest of the bag held clothes, a homemade tattoo gun that would be worth quite a bit, and a strange mechanical contraption wrapped in a blanket. It also seemed homemade, but while many of the pieces were clearly recycled, a few others looked as if they were new, made specifically for the device. I couldn’t figure it out. It looked to be disassembled, but I couldn’t see how any of the three pieces fit together. One part, the largest, had a hand crank that seemed to cause another piece to spin. I gave up and rewrapped it in the blanket.
“We will be releasing you shortly.” One of the FleetSec officers shouted, as the crowd quieted some. “All unattended children should come forward to be reunited with their families. The following sections are closed…”
Frak! They’d wait for kids to come forward, and then they’d come checking through the crowd, just to make sure a pimp or a loanshark didn’t snatch a kid in the chaos. I was going to have to sneak past, somehow. Maybe there was an exit through the kitchen. I shoved Simon’s notebook into his bag and then noticed something slip out.
An ID card.
It wasn’t his; the grainy photo showed a dark-haired girl. I flipped open the back cover of the book to reveal a couple dozen cards. Was this Simon’s secret? A fake ID ring? At any rate, it was going to get me out of a jam. I sorted through the cards, looking only at birthdates and the descriptions. Halfway through, I hit the jackpot: blonde, blue eyes and sixteen. The height was a little off, but I was sitting.
I stuffed the rest of the cards back into the notebook, zipped it in the bag and tried to wait nonchalantly. Finally the officer came by.
“Your folks around kid?”
“Haven’t cared to know since I turned legal,” I handed him the card. He glanced at me, then at the picture and finally shrugged and handed it back.
“Have a nice day, Iphigenia Orthia.”
Thank the gods for crappy makeshift film. Now all I had to do was wait until they let us go. With this ID, I could go anywhere, get a job even. I looked at the cardstock that proclaimed the new me. Iphigenia-from the story in the Scrolls. She was sacrificed for the sake of her father’s war, but Artemis spirited her away to a temple. It had always scared me a little, to hear my mother describe Agamemnon dragging her to the Altar, even when I knew she’d be saved.
I pulled out my sketchbook and drew without really thinking. I always drew the same thing when I let my hand make the decisions. My mother’s face stared back at me, smirking the way she had when I’d gotten fingerpaint all over the XO’s dress greys. She’d scolded me harshly in front of Tigh, but back in our quarters she’d made more paint and bought a whole stack of paper.
Things had been good then, bright blues and reds. I made do these days with the grey and sepia of pencil and charcoal. Letting go, again, I flipped the sheet over and tried my hand at Simon’s face, roughing in his big nose and wide mouth.
The woman beside me called a medic over to listen to her daughter’s cough. The people around shifted back a bit. It might be pneumonia, after all, and there wasn’t anything to be done for that. I went back to my sketch, trying to get the eyes right. I hadn’t really been able to study them, so I wasn’t sure what exactly about the shape was off.
“You hurt, girl?” the medic had finished with the child-not pneumonia then-and had turned to me.
“No, I’m fine.” She looked skeptically at my sling. “I’ll be fine.” I insisted. She gave me a hard look and then bent to grab her bag. There were too many sick and injured peopled in the fleet who wanted help for them to worry much about those who didn’t.
“I saw that kid.” She was looking at my drawing. Frak. Frak! I was an idiot.
“He offered to help do bandages and splints if he could stay in the med section,” she continued. “Knew what he was doing too.” Ok, so maybe I wasn’t about to get Simon arrested. The medic’s badge indicated that her FleetSec Unit was from the Tora Bashiri; she might be clueless about wanted criminals here on the Gideon. And everything went chaotic in a Cylon attack anyways.
“Where’d you see him? He’s my boyfriend.” So much for staying out of whatever trouble he was in. I could have just pretended he was merely an interesting face I’d seen.
“In the port mess on this deck.” I got directions and was on my feet before my brain even caught up. What was I thinking, getting back into whatever trouble was chasing him? I had the ID, I had cash and, I could sell his junk for more of it. What did I gain by chasing after him?
Well, Kasey for one. Even if the odds were long on him actually finding her, it would be worth a shot. And Simon himself was…interesting. I remembered the arch of the hissing snake and the desperate look in Telemachus’s eyes.
I was one of the first to leave the mess hall. The officers at the door bought my ID just like the others and I followed the medic’s directions through the winding partitions that had long ago divided the Gideon’s cargo holds into living space.
People were already drifting into their places along the halls. One man was setting up things to sell. I caught a glimpse of a beefy man behind me in a cracked, ornate mirror. Funny, I thought I’d seen him follow me out of the mess. I didn’t break my step, but managed a furtive glance back a few turns later.
He was still there.
At the next turn I dodged right and then ducked behind another vendor’s stacked boxes. After a second the beefy guy passed by. Was he looking for me? I couldn’t tell. I waited a minute. He didn’t come back this way, so I retraced my steps, taking a left to follow the directions. I kept an eye out, but didn’t see anyone else tailing me.
The port mess was a big undivided space, much like the starboard. The med section was walled off with curtains on the left. I slipped inside. An orderly glanced at my arm and told me to sit until the doctor wasn’t busy. I obeyed, until he turned his back, and then slipped through another curtain to a room with a bunch of cots.
I couldn’t call Simon’s name. He might be using another one, or Simon might be an alias. So I wandered around, ducking out of sight when the medical staff passed, until I checked a curtained off corner that served as a supply closet. He was curled up behind a laundry bin, asleep. I slipped around the bin, tucked the bags out of sight and leaned against the wall to wait.
I wasn’t in a hurry, and when he finally came to, I almost wished he’d sleep longer.
“Hey.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Petra?” He blinked a few times, as if unsure if I was really there and then stared, glanced at his bag, and then back to me.
“You brought my stuff.”
“It was getting heavy. I only have the one good arm.”
He nodded, unwilling, I suppose, to question this good fortune.
“They’re letting people out of the mess?”
“For a few hours now.”
“How’d you convince them you were sixteen?”
“I used this.” I pulled the ID card from my pocket. I knew he could snatch it back, but I was here. It was too late to distrust him.
He glanced at the picture, “It’s a good match.”
“Is that why you were hiding? Cause you stole people’s ID?”
“No. I’m not running from FleetSec. Those people don’t need their ID cards anymore. They’re dead.”
I stared at him. I didn’t believe he could have killed all those people. I just didn’t.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in sick bays. I got those from a morgue.”
“So who are you running from?”
He didn’t answer, but looked as though he’d just thought of something and quickly pulled open his back. He grabbed the weird mechanical thing and seemed relieved to see it. I didn’t get it. Of all the things I’d steal, that’d be at the bottom of the list.
“You run into any trouble?”
I frowned. “Some big guy might have been tailing me. If he was, I lost him.”
“Shit. They’re already skulking around. Look, keep that card, take all these cigs,” he handed me a fistful, good as cash. “I gotta stow away on some transport, get off this ship before FleetSec clears out and they can come after me.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I wasn’t letting him go anywhere without telling me who might be out for my hide.
“The Arietids. They control the drugs on these levels.”
“And they’re after us why?”
“I swiped that centrifuge from their Ace lab in the keel.
“Why?” Simon was probably smart enough to run his own Ace lab, making the more addictive drug from morpha required some tricky chemistry and a knack for avoiding explosions. But it wasn’t something you set up without serious muscle, unless you had a death wish.
“I need it to help my brother, Linus. He’s sick, has this bleeding disease. I can make medicine with it, basically.”
“I guess we’d better get going then.” I picked up my bag and swung it over my shoulder. Simon’s hand on my arm stopped me; he looked at me for a second. He hadn’t asked me why I’d found him, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted him to. Not yet.
“You are going to help me find Kasey right?” I asked instead.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Ok. I’ve got some cash. Enough to get us somewhere the Arietids don’t operate.”
“Ok.” He said slowly, eyes still on mine as he took my hand and led me out of the mess.
End of chapter 1. Next week we start chapter two.
The description of the centrifuge is based on this 1896 patent, if anyone is curious!