The Quick and the Dead (The People Got a Lotta Nerve Remix), Part II
Story information and part I here
~*~*~
Before they knew it, they fell into a routine for the otherwise unstructured couple hours of downtime before lights out and lockdown. The work was really wearing on Skulls, since he wasn’t anywhere close to healed yet, so he napped out of the way on the top bunk. Seelix liked to create the illusion of privacy. She nicely kicked Narcho out of the cell, closed the door, then did whatever she wanted, even though everyone could see and hear her through the chain links: pray, sing, shadowbox, write. Everyone else had the decency to pretend the cell walls were thick and opaque.
Narcho needed somewhere to go, so he and Racetrack struck up a game of cards, using the lower bunk in her cell as a table. They cycled through every game two people could play with a Triad deck, then invented a few of their own. If they’d been playing something that required more concentration than Hobble that night, Racetrack probably wouldn’t have been almost unconsciously eavesdropping on the conversation in the cell across from hers.
“That’s not news. Galactica was a piece of shit before the attacks. Been falling apart since before day one.”
“If the Adamas had more than half a brain between them, they would’ve used the Pegasus for the New Caprica rescue and rammed Galactica into the frakking baseships.”
“Amen to that.” Racetrack heard mugs clink. Harlan and Jeffrey, both civilians, lived in that cell, but they had a lot of company that night. She knew at least some of the other voices but couldn’t place them.
Narcho was talking to her, she realized a little too late. “I wouldn’t be so bold as to say we’re as close as you and Skulls are. There’s definitely a brotherhood among Viper pilots, but even we are willing to admit that Raptor pilot-ECO is different. You’re siblings in the literal, spending hours together in small spaces without killing each other sense. But still, I was kind of her mentor, especially after Starbuck bit it.”
“Seelix?” Racetrack asked, finally partially catching up.
Narcho looked at her oddly. “No, the Delphic Oracle. Yeah, Seelix. All I’m saying is, if she won’t tell me about whatever happened on New Caprica, it must’ve been pretty bad.”
More clinking mugs behind her. “We would’ve been frakking heroes if Admiral Cain was still alive.” She knew she’d heard that voice before…
“Thank you kindly for completely missing that green prince I discarded last turn,” Narcho said, grinning as he set another card down on the discard pile. “What’d I do that’s made you so grateful you’re letting me win tonight?”
Racetrack scowled at him. “Shut up and play, Noel.”
“It’s your turn, Margaret.”
She drew a card and discarded another but lost her train of thought to the voices behind her again.
“Never would’ve gotten to this point if Admiral Cain was still alive. Frak, can you imagine what she’d think of a frakking alliance with the Cylons?”
“She knew that the only good Cylon was a dead Cylon.”
A laugh. Racetrack knew what was coming. Her stomach twisted. “Well, not quite the only good way to deal with a Cylon.”
More laughter. “Yeah. A few more hours, and that Cylon bitch and her toasterfrakker hubby would’ve learned all about that. Gods, remember when the one on Pegasus-“
Vireem never got to finish his story. Racetrack had been up and crossing toward the other cell at “good way to deal with a Cylon.” She caught Vireem unawares from behind, threw him to the ground, dug one knee into his abdomen, and landed punch after punch to his face. She vaguely registered raised voices behind her-one of them was Narcho-but all she could really focus on was the satisfying slap of skin against blood and more skin, punctuated with the crunch of bone every now and then.
She didn’t even stop swinging when arms gripped around her middle and lifted her off Vireem. “Hey, hey, stop! Cool it, it’s me!” Skulls said in her ear as he hauled her out of the cell and back to theirs. “Quit thrashing, or you’re going to pull out my stitches.”
Racetrack went stiff in his arms. Skulls dropped her on the cot. She watched Seelix and Remy drag Narcho out of the other cell, too; luckily, nobody at the party across the way followed them. Blood ran out Narcho’s nose, but it looked like he’d still gotten the upper hand on whoever he’d gone after.
“I got Gage for you,” Narcho said, still gasping as he caught his breath. “I figured whatever it was Vireem did, Gage was in on it.” He shrugged and grinned. “If not, Gage probably deserved it for something anyway.”
Racetrack rolled her eyes. “You didn’t give a frak what it was about. You just wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of somebody.”
“What the frak is going on?” Seelix asked.
“No, Gage deserved what Narcho gave him,” Skulls said quietly. “I heard them talking, too. They were talking shit about Helo and Athena. Wanting to do a repeat of what happened with the Cylon on the Pegasus.”
That stopped Narcho dead in his tracks. What was even odder was Remy’s reaction. Racetrack had never thought about whether word about the Pegasus Cylon had ever got out into the Fleet, but from the look on Remy’s face, it was clear it had.
“But I thought you guys all hated the Cylons. That’s why you mutinied,” Remy said, inflecting the statement like a question.
“Well, yeah,” Skulls answered, “but Helo’s not a Cylon at all, and Athena’s different.”
Seelix huffed and rolled her eyes. “And Sam seemed like a really nice guy, up until the part where we found out he’s a homicidal robot somehow connected with a nuked-out Thirteenth Colony. It doesn’t matter whether they seem different now. They were all the same when they annihilated our homes.”
Racetrack saw the muscles in Skulls’ neck tense. Skulls rarely got truly angry, but when he did, it wasn’t pretty. “You flew with them, Hardball.”
“I flew with all sorts of Cylons at the Hub. That doesn’t mean shit, Skulls.” Seelix shook her head and looked like she was going to be sick. “I don’t want to deal with this. I’m going for a run.”
“A run where?” Skulls said, but she was already out the door and jogging down the path between the cellblocks.
Remy was still staring at them, expecting an answer.
Narcho said, “Yes, we hate the Cylons. But this is about us. No matter how bad they are, there are certain lines that we don’t cross. Because I’m not going to let the Cylons take away who we are.”
That wasn’t quite what Racetrack would say, but she couldn’t arrange her thoughts into something she could communicate, not with the adrenalin and anger still coursing through her. Remy seemed satisfied with Narcho’s answer, anyway, so they let it drop.
Late that night, hours after lights-out, Racetrack stared at the ceiling she knew was above her but couldn’t actually see. “Narcho?”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t surprised he was awake, for some reason.
“Did you…when you were on Pegasus, did you-”
“No.” It took him a long time to continue. “No. I went down there to see, but I didn’t do anything.” He added with a half-hearted laugh, “I know I have a reputation for frakking anything that moves, but I draw the line at different species and inanimate objects.”
She could tell just from his voice that something in there was a lie. She thought it might be the last part, thinking of Athena and the Pegasus Six as different species or inanimate objects. But if it wasn’t, at least he had the decency to be ashamed enough to lie.
“What you said today, about not letting the Cylons change who we are. It made a lot of sense,” she said.
“Good,” Narcho replied. She could hear him shift on his cot, rolling over to sleep.
“But that’s not why I joined up with Gaeta,” she said.
The movement stopped. “What?”
“I don’t think it matters at all what you or I or anybody thinks about the Cylons. That’s not what it was about.” She had to close her eyes before she could go on. “It’s about what we’ve become. The Old Man let us down.”
Visions of the lost Raptor flashed across the backs of Racetrack’s eyelids: Shark’s eyes, wide open and scared and empty; Easy’s dog tags and wings caked with blood; Louis cradling Felix in his arms, kissing his forehead and whispering over and over again, It’s okay, baby. We’ve got you. It’s gonna be okay now.
“The Old Man let us down,” Racetrack repeated. “Gaeta was right. He’s not the same man I started out serving under. And maybe that man wouldn’t have gotten us this far. Maybe it would’ve been worse and we all would be dead by now, I don’t know. But he wouldn’t have done this.”
“What, piss all over the Quorum’s vote and, by extension, democracy?” Narcho said. “From what I’m told, he did that a few times even before Pegasus found you guys.” Racetrack made a disapproving noise, but Narcho didn’t press her for more. “I don’t know. I guess I never had as much faith in Adama as a lot of you did. Whether he’s the man who commanded you on day one or somebody else, he’s still just a man.”
Just a man, Racetrack mouthed silently into the darkness when she heard Narcho’s breath even out into sleep. Narcho was right. Adama was just a man. So was Tigh, at least in the ways that mattered for her way of thinking. So was Felix. Shark. Helo. Sam. Louis. Vireem. Skulls. All just men. It didn’t seem like that could be an explanation for everything, but in a way, it was. She knew, at least, that it was the closest thing to an explanation she’d ever get.
~*~*~
In the hour between lock-down and lights-out, Remy beckoned Racetrack over to the other side of the cell. “Got something for you.”
Racetrack approached him warily, eyeing the paper cylinder in his hand. “Doesn’t look like chocolate, and I didn’t put out an order for anything else.”
“I think you’ll appreciate it, all the same.”
“What do you want for it?” To an outsider, it might have seemed like she had her questions backwards, but she’d learned from experience that that was a better lead-off question than “What is it?”
“No charge on this one. Just…don’t keep it to yourself.” He threaded the tube through a chain link and into her hand.
Racetrack unfurled it. “Oh Gods.”
“What is it?” Skulls asked from where he was lying on his bunk. Racetrack handed him the paper. “Frak,” he said softly after reading for a minute. He handed it back. “People are going to want to know this.”
“We could pass it around,” she said, not liking the idea that it might get lost somewhere along the way. “Or someone could read it out loud. Someone in charge.”
Skulls smiled sadly. “Nobody’s in charge anymore.”
“Right.”
Almost without thinking, Racetrack straightened her back and walked to the cell door. She cleared her throat and yelled, “I’ve got something you’ll all want to hear.” The normal loud hum of conversation didn’t die down. Apparently, her pay attention, nuggets! voice was rusty. She said more sharply, “Hey! Listen up!”
The noise didn’t die away completely, but she turned enough heads she felt like she could continue. She read from the sheet in a clear voice, “Fatalities, Galactica. Albers, Joshua, Private First Class. Arnold, Stephanos, Civilian. Breedwell, Kayla, Ensign…” As she read down the list, Racetrack couldn’t help but think back to the day Starbuck lost the Top Gun mug to Kat and toasted all the lost pilots. It wasn’t the same-the thing that had hit everyone so hard about it had been Starbuck reciting from memory, how she and they had known and felt every single loss. Even so, there was enough of a connection to make Racetrack have to take a deep, steadying breath when she thought about having to live up to that memory.
“…Zarek, Thomas, Civilian, and Zelsburg, Octavian, Crewman.” Racetrack finally looked up. The whole cell block was silent. “Thank you. That’s all.”
She tucked the paper under her mattress before climbing into bed. She stared at the ceiling for a long time before Skulls asked, “They didn’t divide up the list of the dead by mutineers and loyalists?”
“No.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
The lights-out warning buzzed once, twice, three times, and then plunged the room into darkness.
~*~*~
It was funny how, even though the mutiny was what got them respect among the other prisoners, the other prisoners rarely ever talked about it.
“You ever wonder how we eat so good here?” Remy asked Racetrack in the chow line one night.
“This is good eating?” Racetrack curled her lip and wrinkled her nose, pointing at her bowl. Truth be told, the algae mash wasn’t all that different from what they’d gotten on Galactica.
“I’m talking portion size,” Remy clarified. He sat down at a table in the corner and tipped his head toward a spot on the bench across from him. Seelix and Narcho were sitting on the other side of the room, and Narcho waved her over. But Racetrack was curious, so she pretended she didn’t see them and slid onto the bench.
Remy smiled when she sat down. He lowered his voice, though there were no guards anywhere near them. “Manifests say we started out with 1,473 prisoners on board this ship, and that we’ve got 1,284 now, plus some guards. That first number was right.” Remy fairly giggled. “That second one, though…it’s off by about 200.”
Remy looked a little disappointed when Racetrack didn’t immediately get the joke. “What the frak?”
“We…accidentally forget to report a death here and there, and they keep sending us rations like there’s more of us here. We divide most of those extras up so everybody gets a little more, and sell a little on the black market to get other things. Well, not so much the last part anymore,” he glared darkly at a guard pacing on the other side of the mess. “Even as it is, we know they make our rations smaller, because of what we are. If we didn’t do it, we’d probably all’ve frakking starved by now.”
Racetrack wasn’t too sure that the rations actually were smaller than what the civvies got, though it was definitely less than what she was used to as a pilot. She didn’t want to think about that too hard. “How the frak did you manage to underreport by that many? Did you just not mention guys who died on New Caprica or something?”
“Nah, been a lot longer ago than that. After the guards left, we…cleaned house a little. Hey, don’t look at me like that!” Racetrack was surprised that she’d offended Remy. She hadn’t really thought that was possible. “We had to do something to keep this ship from falling into chaos. Zarek was good at convincing lots of people who wouldn’t stick their neck out for nobody to step up and act right, but there were some people here that not even he could handle.”
Racetrack stared down at her food, such as it was. She thought she’d gotten over the sight and the smell a long time ago, but it was turning her stomach now. She forced herself to take another bite anyway.
“Besides, there’s something satisfying about knowing little old us frakked up Her Highness’s precious head count.” Racetrack looked up and found Remy staring off into space. She realized she’d never heard bitterness in his voice until that moment, and how strange that was. “They say Roslin even keeps a tally on a board in her office.”
“She does. I’ve seen it.” She’d noticed the dry-erase board the day she and Skulls had gone to Colonial One and gotten their Presidential Commendation after finding New Caprica. She’d seen its twin in the courtroom at the Baltar trial, the numbers burned into her brain. She wasn’t egotistical enough to blame herself, but she still couldn’t help but think, None of this could have happened without me.
“It’s a godsdamn lie,” Racetrack heard Remy mutter. She wasn’t sure what he was talking about anymore.
She could have let the conversation drop there, pretended to be too tired to talk. Racetrack didn’t really like Remy at all, but he’d treated her well, and it was best not to get on his bad side. Plus, that day had been one of those few days when the monotony almost physically hurt rather. She felt like a little distraction.
“So I hear that right before Adama retook the ship, Gaeta sent out jump coordinates. Was willing to split the Fleet,” Racetrack said.
Remy barely reacted, just nodding. “He did. We were going with him and Zarek. Wasn’t even a question,” he added without her asking.
“I didn’t exactly figure you guys had real moral problems with mutinies,” she said, more just to show she was listening than to actually say anything important. Then she looked around the mess at the dozens of inmates sitting at tables and the two guards at the door. Something occurred to her that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of earlier. She leaned in and said in a low voice, “Why haven’t I ever heard anybody talk about a mutiny here? I mean, yeah, of course the guards are armed, but you guys outnumber them by so much.”
Remy cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the guard on the other side of the room, but she was too far away to hear. Remy shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Besides the damn schedule, you know they don’t interfere too much. Plus, it’s not like getting rid of these guys would get us out from under Adama’s thumb.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
Remy looked at Racetrack, dumbstruck. “Galactica has an ace-in-the-hole over every frakking civilian ship. If we piss them off too much, they just won’t give us the jump coordinates the next time the Fleet moves. No one ship can survive alone any longer than their food or water or fuel holds out. Getting left behind is as game over as the Cylons or Adama nuking us would be.”
Racetrack’s jaw dropped. “Have they ever actually threatened not to…?”
Remy gave her an incredulous smile. “Naivety doesn’t suit you, honey.”
“Gods.” Racetrack sat back and ran her hand through her hair. “How did you not go crazy, not being able to fight back at all, against anybody?”
Remy shrugged. “Being stuck here is harder on you Galactica guys than it is for a lot of us, ‘cause we never got the chance to shoot the Cylon bastards down ourselves, you know?” Racetrack furrowed her brow and shook her head. “I mean, Zarek would make speeches about how we the people had some sort of…whatever, but look how that turned out. I suppose it comes down to…guess you can’t miss where you’ve never been.”
She’d never actually felt pity for Remy until that moment.
~*~*~
Narcho wasn’t there to play cards that night-he’d pulled extra shower-cleaning duty for trying to goad one of the guards into a fight-so Racetrack was trying out Skulls’ evening activity of lying around doing nothing. Something about it just being the two of them, together in close quarters with nothing to do but shoot the shit, reminded her of all the hours they’d spent sitting in a Raptor in the soup above New Caprica during the Occupation, waiting for a signal from the ground.
“Gods, you remember that time when those Raiders jumped in while the Cybele was in the middle of refueling?” Skulls said below her from his bunk.
Of course Racetrack remembered, but that wasn’t really what Skulls was asking. “I don’t care what Redwing says. That Raider had him dead to rights. If it wasn’t for us being such good shots, he would’ve been toast.”
“Not every day the ‘school bus drivers’ get to save a Viper jock’s ass.” She could hear the grin in Skulls’ voice.
“You ever miss it?”
“What, endless shuttle runs and drills and sit-and-wait recon missions broken up every now and then by opportunities to get killed?” Skulls paused, and his voice had lost the mocking edge when he started again. “Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
~*~*~
The guards had changed the layout of the visitation room a little since the last time Racetrack had been there, or maybe she was in a different room altogether. There was no way of telling. The chain-link fence only ran from the ceiling to about waist-high; there was some kind of paneling separating the room from there down to the floor. There was a table situated half in the prisoner side, half in the visitor side, and a slot for passing small objects through. One chair sat on each side, just like last time, and like last time, the opposite chair was occupied by Louis Hoshi.
“How are you doing, Meg?” Louis greeted. An aura of sadness still surrounded him, but he didn’t look nearly as old and haggard as the last time she’d seen him.
“Getting by,” Racetrack said, slipping into the chair much more easily since the guards hadn’t manacled her this time. Louis smiled at her awkwardly and didn’t speak. “So, should I be calling you Admiral Hoshi?” she teased.
He seemed more embarrassed than pleased at the title. “Nothing official yet. I doubt they’ll even change my rank, really. The Admiral and Colonel have much bigger things to worry about than promotions.” Louis took a deep breath. “But speaking of-”
Racetrack cut him off. “Look, Louis, I like you, and I honestly do respect what you’re doing, so I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But if you’ve come over here to convince me to join Adama’s death wish mission, you might as well save your breath.”
Louis only deflated a little. “So the guards did announce the Presidential pardon deal?” Racetrack nodded, and Louis sighed and shook his head. “I was half-way hoping the reason no one here has taken it was because they’d forgotten to tell you about it.”
“I told you, life isn’t different enough out there versus in here. Frak, this pardon carrot isn’t even worth giving up your pride for, let alone going on a suicide mission for it.”
She was surprised at Louis’s answer. “Oh, I know that. I just…the creature comforts were never what serving was about, even after the Attacks, you know?”
She knew, but she didn’t want to admit it. “What was it for, then? Honor? Being a part of something good and noble and bigger than yourself that made a real difference?” she said sarcastically.
“That’s what Felix would have said.” She was shocked that his wistful smile didn’t even falter.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what he would’ve said,” Racetrack said softly. She sat back and put her hands behind her head. “In fact, I think he did once give half a dozen nuggets a lecture on that subject after they dyed the bridge bunnies’ bed sheets pink. Gods, that was way back in our first year stationed on the Galactica.”
Louis grinned. “I can almost hear it.” His voice softened. “I have a picture of him from around that time. I just packed it in my last bag to send over to the baseship. It’s a little strange, that the only picture I have of him is from before we met. I’m glad I have it, though. I like remembering him that way.”
She didn’t want to say that Louis had transformed since the last time she’d seen him. He was the same person he’d always been: genuine, kind, maybe felt things a little too hard, but pulled together. There was a strength in him now that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen in him before, though.
“So if honor and do-gooding is what Felix would’ve said,” Racetrack ventured, “what do you say this is all about?”
He set his hands palm-up on the table. It was an odd gesture, but somehow Racetrack understood it. “Guess I have a thing for lost causes.” He and Racetrack both chuckled. “Seriously.” Louis leaned in and lowered his voice, eyes locked on Racetrack’s. “I won’t pretend to understand why you or Felix or anybody did what you did. But I do know you didn’t do it because of Hera Agathon.”
Racetrack looked away first, blinking rapidly. “Frak, so when the carrot doesn’t work, you lay on the guilt, huh?” she tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out right.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “Your choice makes sense-I see that, I do. And like I’m one to talk about sacrifice, what with Adama leaving me on the baseship with the Fleet even though I volunteered to go. But they don’t have enough volunteers right now to even have a shot at succeeding, Meg. I didn’t come over here just to ask you to join up. I was going to ask you to convince the others here of how much we need them.”
“Adama’s big plan hinges on me?” Racetrack said. “The frakked-up mutineer whose only major accomplishments were discovering shit by accident? Yeah, those guys don’t have a prayer.”
“Meg, don’t pull that crap with me,” Louis said calmly. “You know I found out Felix was going to make you CAG? I think he made a good choice.”
“Shut up,” she said, but there was more distress than anger in it. “You know that if I’d be flying under your command, I’d do it in a heartbeat, right? And not at all because one’s more dangerous than the other.”
“Thank you. That means a lot, actually.” Louis paused for a long time. “I don’t know what to tell you about how to deal with Admiral Adama. If you don’t think I wasn’t mad after what he-after what happened to Felix… But I know that you Galacticans saw yourselves as a big family, and that it’s different when family lets you down the way he did. When you come right down to it, a person doesn’t have to do this for Adama, though. Some people, loyalty to him is their reason, and that’s fine. It’s certainly not for me. It wouldn’t have to be for you.”
“And what is your reason?” Racetrack asked.
“Because someone was willing to do it for me,” Louis said simply, looking her square in the eye. “Because when I was in the mess trying not to cry over my algae mash and said I wasn’t sure whether to start organizing a search and rescue mission or a funeral, somebody slapped me on the back and swore she’d have a Raptor ready to go by the time I got the launch cleared. And because somebody else growled permission for me to go on a crazy, hopeless hunt when all I could do was babble some ridiculous crap about divine providence being all I needed to locate Felix. Meg.” For once, Racetrack was glad of the partition, because she sensed Louis wanted to reach out and take her hand. She was afraid that might have been all she needed to cave. “You and the Colonel walked across that line for me, helped me when I was asking the impossible.”
“You seriously think Tigh would let you do it over again now, with the way things turned out?”
Racetrack hadn’t really been aiming below the belt so much as just scrambling for some way to sidetrack him, but she could see how hard that hit Louis. “I don’t know.” There was a long pause. “But it’s not about how things turned out, not really. I’d be doing the same thing even if we’d found the Raptor too late. It’s about what people are willing to do for each other, even when rationality says they shouldn’t waste their time. Coming from a bridge bunny who loves logic, it hurts to say it, but I think that’s one of the best things left about the human race. So I guess the real question is not why I’m doing this, but why did you do what you did?”
They sat in silence for what felt like a very long time. Just when Racetrack was about to give in and say something, anything, Louis spoke up. “Yes, that’s what I came here to say.” He was half-way speaking to himself. “Sorry it took so much meandering for me to get there. I’m not a great orator like Adama at all.”
“No, you’re not,” Racetrack said, smiling. It was a good thing, too. A grand speech never would’ve worked on her.
~*~*~
“Why’d we save them for last?” Skulls asked as he walked with Racetrack.
Racetrack sighed. “Because this is probably good-bye, too.”
Skulls and Racetrack walked into their own cell, but they turned towards the neighboring cell. Narcho was already standing and staring back at them, arms folded across his chest. Seelix sat on the lower bunk, her eyes on them as well.
Racetrack had gotten quite used to breaking standoffs like this over the course of that day, but this one was the hardest. Another reason why she’d saved it for last. “It’s not too late, you know. They’ll take anybody, even if you didn’t sign up for a seat on one of the Raptors going to Galactica.”
“What, do they give you some kind of bonus for every idiot you recruit?” Narcho spat. “What is it, drink chits at Joe’s? Sounds like you’ve convinced enough people to go on this crazy-ass mission to buy the whole bar a round.” Narcho gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I really thought you had some backbone, for a Raptor wrangler. But the instant they dangle an opportunity for you to get out of here and back into your precious Old Man’s good graces-”
“That’s not what this is about,” Racetrack said, only allowing her voice to sharpen a little with anger.
“Don’t you remember how many people died for what we’re standing for? Ape Man, and Shiner, and Ryan Maddox, and Felix Gaeta?”
“And they died doing something!” she yelled. “I don’t give a flying frak what the Old Man thinks about it, or what Gaeta would think about it, or even you. I’m sick and tired of losing, and waiting, and then losing some more. I’m doing this because it’s a chance to maybe save somebody for once, and whether we succeed in the mission or not, I’m sure I’ll get to fill up Hell with a few more toasters.”
Going from cell to cell drumming up volunteers for the mission had taught Racetrack to tailor her pitch to the individual, because that was the only way she had any hope of it working. She could tell she’d opened a chink in Narcho’s armor. “We’re not so different, Noel. You mouth off and pick fights because you’re angry and can’t do anything about it.”
Everyone jumped when Seelix spoke up. “I can’t fly with Twos,” she said, voice and eyes hollow. “At the Hub, we flew with a squadron of Sixes and a squadron of Eights, and that was bad enough, but I did it. But Twos…I can’t…I don’t give a frak if Starbuck can forgive and forget that frakking monster, I-”
Seelix couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to, either. Racetrack could tell from Narcho’s expression that this was new to him, too. She also knew there was no way he was going to leave Seelix here on her own, and nothing Racetrack could say in the few minutes they had left could change Seelix’s mind.
“We gotta go, if we’re going to catch our ride,” Skulls said softly.
“It won’t leave without us. We’re driving,” Racetrack muttered back, stepping up to the fencing. She said to Narcho and Seelix, “You guys take care of yourselves, okay?”
She wasn’t sure whether Narcho truly wasn’t angry at her anymore or if Seelix’s revelation had just sapped all the fight out of him. It looked like there was respect in his eyes, though, when he nodded and said, “Good hunting.”
As Racetrack and Skulls turned to leave, they heard a voice they hadn’t been expecting. “Hey,” Remy said. “That offer good for non-mutineers, too?”
She stopped. “Yeah.”
“S’pose they’d take an old fart like me?” he asked. He was trying to act like he was joking, but Racetrack could sense nervousness under the façade.
“Do you know how to fire a gun?”
Remy genuinely grinned. “Darlin’, I told you naivety doesn’t suit you.”
Remy easily fell into step behind her and Skulls as they walked through the cell block toward the stairwell that led up to the guards’ quarters and on to the hangar deck. They drew a wide variety of different kinds of stares from the inmates, but Racetrack held her head high.
“You know,” Skulls said quietly, “Hoshi’s never going to believe how many people you convinced to join the mission.”
“Frankly, I don’t believe it myself,” Racetrack said.
“I believe it,” Skulls said. “Besides losing, the only thing I really regret about the mutiny is that our side didn’t at least hang on long enough for you to get to be CAG.”
Racetrack did not, as a rule, blush, but if she’d been the sort of person who did, her cheeks would have been red. “That job’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyway. Besides, the important thing is that no matter how far down the ranks they bust my ass, I know I’ll still be able to order you around.”
Skulls laughed in a way that made it feel just like old times.
~*~*~
Racetrack acted cool, but flying hadn’t come with such a visceral thrill as it did sailing into battle against the Colony since her academy days. Maybe that was ultimately what got them killed: she’d killed off the nerve endings for fear, but not for joy. She thought about this in the instant between getting hit and her life flickering out, an instant that stretched on much longer for her than it did by any objective measure of time. She had a few regrets, but none of them stung too badly. For once, she’d flown without feeling her mantra of assume you’re already dead. There was no need for an assumption. She had been dead, and buried, and left to rot, her tomb made out of chain-link fence. This time, she had flown knowing she’d been resurrected.
~*~*~
Before they knew it, they fell into a routine for the otherwise unstructured couple hours of downtime before lights out and lockdown. The work was really wearing on Skulls, since he wasn’t anywhere close to healed yet, so he napped out of the way on the top bunk. Seelix liked to create the illusion of privacy. She nicely kicked Narcho out of the cell, closed the door, then did whatever she wanted, even though everyone could see and hear her through the chain links: pray, sing, shadowbox, write. Everyone else had the decency to pretend the cell walls were thick and opaque.
Narcho needed somewhere to go, so he and Racetrack struck up a game of cards, using the lower bunk in her cell as a table. They cycled through every game two people could play with a Triad deck, then invented a few of their own. If they’d been playing something that required more concentration than Hobble that night, Racetrack probably wouldn’t have been almost unconsciously eavesdropping on the conversation in the cell across from hers.
“That’s not news. Galactica was a piece of shit before the attacks. Been falling apart since before day one.”
“If the Adamas had more than half a brain between them, they would’ve used the Pegasus for the New Caprica rescue and rammed Galactica into the frakking baseships.”
“Amen to that.” Racetrack heard mugs clink. Harlan and Jeffrey, both civilians, lived in that cell, but they had a lot of company that night. She knew at least some of the other voices but couldn’t place them.
Narcho was talking to her, she realized a little too late. “I wouldn’t be so bold as to say we’re as close as you and Skulls are. There’s definitely a brotherhood among Viper pilots, but even we are willing to admit that Raptor pilot-ECO is different. You’re siblings in the literal, spending hours together in small spaces without killing each other sense. But still, I was kind of her mentor, especially after Starbuck bit it.”
“Seelix?” Racetrack asked, finally partially catching up.
Narcho looked at her oddly. “No, the Delphic Oracle. Yeah, Seelix. All I’m saying is, if she won’t tell me about whatever happened on New Caprica, it must’ve been pretty bad.”
More clinking mugs behind her. “We would’ve been frakking heroes if Admiral Cain was still alive.” She knew she’d heard that voice before…
“Thank you kindly for completely missing that green prince I discarded last turn,” Narcho said, grinning as he set another card down on the discard pile. “What’d I do that’s made you so grateful you’re letting me win tonight?”
Racetrack scowled at him. “Shut up and play, Noel.”
“It’s your turn, Margaret.”
She drew a card and discarded another but lost her train of thought to the voices behind her again.
“Never would’ve gotten to this point if Admiral Cain was still alive. Frak, can you imagine what she’d think of a frakking alliance with the Cylons?”
“She knew that the only good Cylon was a dead Cylon.”
A laugh. Racetrack knew what was coming. Her stomach twisted. “Well, not quite the only good way to deal with a Cylon.”
More laughter. “Yeah. A few more hours, and that Cylon bitch and her toasterfrakker hubby would’ve learned all about that. Gods, remember when the one on Pegasus-“
Vireem never got to finish his story. Racetrack had been up and crossing toward the other cell at “good way to deal with a Cylon.” She caught Vireem unawares from behind, threw him to the ground, dug one knee into his abdomen, and landed punch after punch to his face. She vaguely registered raised voices behind her-one of them was Narcho-but all she could really focus on was the satisfying slap of skin against blood and more skin, punctuated with the crunch of bone every now and then.
She didn’t even stop swinging when arms gripped around her middle and lifted her off Vireem. “Hey, hey, stop! Cool it, it’s me!” Skulls said in her ear as he hauled her out of the cell and back to theirs. “Quit thrashing, or you’re going to pull out my stitches.”
Racetrack went stiff in his arms. Skulls dropped her on the cot. She watched Seelix and Remy drag Narcho out of the other cell, too; luckily, nobody at the party across the way followed them. Blood ran out Narcho’s nose, but it looked like he’d still gotten the upper hand on whoever he’d gone after.
“I got Gage for you,” Narcho said, still gasping as he caught his breath. “I figured whatever it was Vireem did, Gage was in on it.” He shrugged and grinned. “If not, Gage probably deserved it for something anyway.”
Racetrack rolled her eyes. “You didn’t give a frak what it was about. You just wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of somebody.”
“What the frak is going on?” Seelix asked.
“No, Gage deserved what Narcho gave him,” Skulls said quietly. “I heard them talking, too. They were talking shit about Helo and Athena. Wanting to do a repeat of what happened with the Cylon on the Pegasus.”
That stopped Narcho dead in his tracks. What was even odder was Remy’s reaction. Racetrack had never thought about whether word about the Pegasus Cylon had ever got out into the Fleet, but from the look on Remy’s face, it was clear it had.
“But I thought you guys all hated the Cylons. That’s why you mutinied,” Remy said, inflecting the statement like a question.
“Well, yeah,” Skulls answered, “but Helo’s not a Cylon at all, and Athena’s different.”
Seelix huffed and rolled her eyes. “And Sam seemed like a really nice guy, up until the part where we found out he’s a homicidal robot somehow connected with a nuked-out Thirteenth Colony. It doesn’t matter whether they seem different now. They were all the same when they annihilated our homes.”
Racetrack saw the muscles in Skulls’ neck tense. Skulls rarely got truly angry, but when he did, it wasn’t pretty. “You flew with them, Hardball.”
“I flew with all sorts of Cylons at the Hub. That doesn’t mean shit, Skulls.” Seelix shook her head and looked like she was going to be sick. “I don’t want to deal with this. I’m going for a run.”
“A run where?” Skulls said, but she was already out the door and jogging down the path between the cellblocks.
Remy was still staring at them, expecting an answer.
Narcho said, “Yes, we hate the Cylons. But this is about us. No matter how bad they are, there are certain lines that we don’t cross. Because I’m not going to let the Cylons take away who we are.”
That wasn’t quite what Racetrack would say, but she couldn’t arrange her thoughts into something she could communicate, not with the adrenalin and anger still coursing through her. Remy seemed satisfied with Narcho’s answer, anyway, so they let it drop.
Late that night, hours after lights-out, Racetrack stared at the ceiling she knew was above her but couldn’t actually see. “Narcho?”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t surprised he was awake, for some reason.
“Did you…when you were on Pegasus, did you-”
“No.” It took him a long time to continue. “No. I went down there to see, but I didn’t do anything.” He added with a half-hearted laugh, “I know I have a reputation for frakking anything that moves, but I draw the line at different species and inanimate objects.”
She could tell just from his voice that something in there was a lie. She thought it might be the last part, thinking of Athena and the Pegasus Six as different species or inanimate objects. But if it wasn’t, at least he had the decency to be ashamed enough to lie.
“What you said today, about not letting the Cylons change who we are. It made a lot of sense,” she said.
“Good,” Narcho replied. She could hear him shift on his cot, rolling over to sleep.
“But that’s not why I joined up with Gaeta,” she said.
The movement stopped. “What?”
“I don’t think it matters at all what you or I or anybody thinks about the Cylons. That’s not what it was about.” She had to close her eyes before she could go on. “It’s about what we’ve become. The Old Man let us down.”
Visions of the lost Raptor flashed across the backs of Racetrack’s eyelids: Shark’s eyes, wide open and scared and empty; Easy’s dog tags and wings caked with blood; Louis cradling Felix in his arms, kissing his forehead and whispering over and over again, It’s okay, baby. We’ve got you. It’s gonna be okay now.
“The Old Man let us down,” Racetrack repeated. “Gaeta was right. He’s not the same man I started out serving under. And maybe that man wouldn’t have gotten us this far. Maybe it would’ve been worse and we all would be dead by now, I don’t know. But he wouldn’t have done this.”
“What, piss all over the Quorum’s vote and, by extension, democracy?” Narcho said. “From what I’m told, he did that a few times even before Pegasus found you guys.” Racetrack made a disapproving noise, but Narcho didn’t press her for more. “I don’t know. I guess I never had as much faith in Adama as a lot of you did. Whether he’s the man who commanded you on day one or somebody else, he’s still just a man.”
Just a man, Racetrack mouthed silently into the darkness when she heard Narcho’s breath even out into sleep. Narcho was right. Adama was just a man. So was Tigh, at least in the ways that mattered for her way of thinking. So was Felix. Shark. Helo. Sam. Louis. Vireem. Skulls. All just men. It didn’t seem like that could be an explanation for everything, but in a way, it was. She knew, at least, that it was the closest thing to an explanation she’d ever get.
~*~*~
In the hour between lock-down and lights-out, Remy beckoned Racetrack over to the other side of the cell. “Got something for you.”
Racetrack approached him warily, eyeing the paper cylinder in his hand. “Doesn’t look like chocolate, and I didn’t put out an order for anything else.”
“I think you’ll appreciate it, all the same.”
“What do you want for it?” To an outsider, it might have seemed like she had her questions backwards, but she’d learned from experience that that was a better lead-off question than “What is it?”
“No charge on this one. Just…don’t keep it to yourself.” He threaded the tube through a chain link and into her hand.
Racetrack unfurled it. “Oh Gods.”
“What is it?” Skulls asked from where he was lying on his bunk. Racetrack handed him the paper. “Frak,” he said softly after reading for a minute. He handed it back. “People are going to want to know this.”
“We could pass it around,” she said, not liking the idea that it might get lost somewhere along the way. “Or someone could read it out loud. Someone in charge.”
Skulls smiled sadly. “Nobody’s in charge anymore.”
“Right.”
Almost without thinking, Racetrack straightened her back and walked to the cell door. She cleared her throat and yelled, “I’ve got something you’ll all want to hear.” The normal loud hum of conversation didn’t die down. Apparently, her pay attention, nuggets! voice was rusty. She said more sharply, “Hey! Listen up!”
The noise didn’t die away completely, but she turned enough heads she felt like she could continue. She read from the sheet in a clear voice, “Fatalities, Galactica. Albers, Joshua, Private First Class. Arnold, Stephanos, Civilian. Breedwell, Kayla, Ensign…” As she read down the list, Racetrack couldn’t help but think back to the day Starbuck lost the Top Gun mug to Kat and toasted all the lost pilots. It wasn’t the same-the thing that had hit everyone so hard about it had been Starbuck reciting from memory, how she and they had known and felt every single loss. Even so, there was enough of a connection to make Racetrack have to take a deep, steadying breath when she thought about having to live up to that memory.
“…Zarek, Thomas, Civilian, and Zelsburg, Octavian, Crewman.” Racetrack finally looked up. The whole cell block was silent. “Thank you. That’s all.”
She tucked the paper under her mattress before climbing into bed. She stared at the ceiling for a long time before Skulls asked, “They didn’t divide up the list of the dead by mutineers and loyalists?”
“No.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
The lights-out warning buzzed once, twice, three times, and then plunged the room into darkness.
~*~*~
It was funny how, even though the mutiny was what got them respect among the other prisoners, the other prisoners rarely ever talked about it.
“You ever wonder how we eat so good here?” Remy asked Racetrack in the chow line one night.
“This is good eating?” Racetrack curled her lip and wrinkled her nose, pointing at her bowl. Truth be told, the algae mash wasn’t all that different from what they’d gotten on Galactica.
“I’m talking portion size,” Remy clarified. He sat down at a table in the corner and tipped his head toward a spot on the bench across from him. Seelix and Narcho were sitting on the other side of the room, and Narcho waved her over. But Racetrack was curious, so she pretended she didn’t see them and slid onto the bench.
Remy smiled when she sat down. He lowered his voice, though there were no guards anywhere near them. “Manifests say we started out with 1,473 prisoners on board this ship, and that we’ve got 1,284 now, plus some guards. That first number was right.” Remy fairly giggled. “That second one, though…it’s off by about 200.”
Remy looked a little disappointed when Racetrack didn’t immediately get the joke. “What the frak?”
“We…accidentally forget to report a death here and there, and they keep sending us rations like there’s more of us here. We divide most of those extras up so everybody gets a little more, and sell a little on the black market to get other things. Well, not so much the last part anymore,” he glared darkly at a guard pacing on the other side of the mess. “Even as it is, we know they make our rations smaller, because of what we are. If we didn’t do it, we’d probably all’ve frakking starved by now.”
Racetrack wasn’t too sure that the rations actually were smaller than what the civvies got, though it was definitely less than what she was used to as a pilot. She didn’t want to think about that too hard. “How the frak did you manage to underreport by that many? Did you just not mention guys who died on New Caprica or something?”
“Nah, been a lot longer ago than that. After the guards left, we…cleaned house a little. Hey, don’t look at me like that!” Racetrack was surprised that she’d offended Remy. She hadn’t really thought that was possible. “We had to do something to keep this ship from falling into chaos. Zarek was good at convincing lots of people who wouldn’t stick their neck out for nobody to step up and act right, but there were some people here that not even he could handle.”
Racetrack stared down at her food, such as it was. She thought she’d gotten over the sight and the smell a long time ago, but it was turning her stomach now. She forced herself to take another bite anyway.
“Besides, there’s something satisfying about knowing little old us frakked up Her Highness’s precious head count.” Racetrack looked up and found Remy staring off into space. She realized she’d never heard bitterness in his voice until that moment, and how strange that was. “They say Roslin even keeps a tally on a board in her office.”
“She does. I’ve seen it.” She’d noticed the dry-erase board the day she and Skulls had gone to Colonial One and gotten their Presidential Commendation after finding New Caprica. She’d seen its twin in the courtroom at the Baltar trial, the numbers burned into her brain. She wasn’t egotistical enough to blame herself, but she still couldn’t help but think, None of this could have happened without me.
“It’s a godsdamn lie,” Racetrack heard Remy mutter. She wasn’t sure what he was talking about anymore.
She could have let the conversation drop there, pretended to be too tired to talk. Racetrack didn’t really like Remy at all, but he’d treated her well, and it was best not to get on his bad side. Plus, that day had been one of those few days when the monotony almost physically hurt rather. She felt like a little distraction.
“So I hear that right before Adama retook the ship, Gaeta sent out jump coordinates. Was willing to split the Fleet,” Racetrack said.
Remy barely reacted, just nodding. “He did. We were going with him and Zarek. Wasn’t even a question,” he added without her asking.
“I didn’t exactly figure you guys had real moral problems with mutinies,” she said, more just to show she was listening than to actually say anything important. Then she looked around the mess at the dozens of inmates sitting at tables and the two guards at the door. Something occurred to her that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of earlier. She leaned in and said in a low voice, “Why haven’t I ever heard anybody talk about a mutiny here? I mean, yeah, of course the guards are armed, but you guys outnumber them by so much.”
Remy cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the guard on the other side of the room, but she was too far away to hear. Remy shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Besides the damn schedule, you know they don’t interfere too much. Plus, it’s not like getting rid of these guys would get us out from under Adama’s thumb.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
Remy looked at Racetrack, dumbstruck. “Galactica has an ace-in-the-hole over every frakking civilian ship. If we piss them off too much, they just won’t give us the jump coordinates the next time the Fleet moves. No one ship can survive alone any longer than their food or water or fuel holds out. Getting left behind is as game over as the Cylons or Adama nuking us would be.”
Racetrack’s jaw dropped. “Have they ever actually threatened not to…?”
Remy gave her an incredulous smile. “Naivety doesn’t suit you, honey.”
“Gods.” Racetrack sat back and ran her hand through her hair. “How did you not go crazy, not being able to fight back at all, against anybody?”
Remy shrugged. “Being stuck here is harder on you Galactica guys than it is for a lot of us, ‘cause we never got the chance to shoot the Cylon bastards down ourselves, you know?” Racetrack furrowed her brow and shook her head. “I mean, Zarek would make speeches about how we the people had some sort of…whatever, but look how that turned out. I suppose it comes down to…guess you can’t miss where you’ve never been.”
She’d never actually felt pity for Remy until that moment.
~*~*~
Narcho wasn’t there to play cards that night-he’d pulled extra shower-cleaning duty for trying to goad one of the guards into a fight-so Racetrack was trying out Skulls’ evening activity of lying around doing nothing. Something about it just being the two of them, together in close quarters with nothing to do but shoot the shit, reminded her of all the hours they’d spent sitting in a Raptor in the soup above New Caprica during the Occupation, waiting for a signal from the ground.
“Gods, you remember that time when those Raiders jumped in while the Cybele was in the middle of refueling?” Skulls said below her from his bunk.
Of course Racetrack remembered, but that wasn’t really what Skulls was asking. “I don’t care what Redwing says. That Raider had him dead to rights. If it wasn’t for us being such good shots, he would’ve been toast.”
“Not every day the ‘school bus drivers’ get to save a Viper jock’s ass.” She could hear the grin in Skulls’ voice.
“You ever miss it?”
“What, endless shuttle runs and drills and sit-and-wait recon missions broken up every now and then by opportunities to get killed?” Skulls paused, and his voice had lost the mocking edge when he started again. “Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
~*~*~
The guards had changed the layout of the visitation room a little since the last time Racetrack had been there, or maybe she was in a different room altogether. There was no way of telling. The chain-link fence only ran from the ceiling to about waist-high; there was some kind of paneling separating the room from there down to the floor. There was a table situated half in the prisoner side, half in the visitor side, and a slot for passing small objects through. One chair sat on each side, just like last time, and like last time, the opposite chair was occupied by Louis Hoshi.
“How are you doing, Meg?” Louis greeted. An aura of sadness still surrounded him, but he didn’t look nearly as old and haggard as the last time she’d seen him.
“Getting by,” Racetrack said, slipping into the chair much more easily since the guards hadn’t manacled her this time. Louis smiled at her awkwardly and didn’t speak. “So, should I be calling you Admiral Hoshi?” she teased.
He seemed more embarrassed than pleased at the title. “Nothing official yet. I doubt they’ll even change my rank, really. The Admiral and Colonel have much bigger things to worry about than promotions.” Louis took a deep breath. “But speaking of-”
Racetrack cut him off. “Look, Louis, I like you, and I honestly do respect what you’re doing, so I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But if you’ve come over here to convince me to join Adama’s death wish mission, you might as well save your breath.”
Louis only deflated a little. “So the guards did announce the Presidential pardon deal?” Racetrack nodded, and Louis sighed and shook his head. “I was half-way hoping the reason no one here has taken it was because they’d forgotten to tell you about it.”
“I told you, life isn’t different enough out there versus in here. Frak, this pardon carrot isn’t even worth giving up your pride for, let alone going on a suicide mission for it.”
She was surprised at Louis’s answer. “Oh, I know that. I just…the creature comforts were never what serving was about, even after the Attacks, you know?”
She knew, but she didn’t want to admit it. “What was it for, then? Honor? Being a part of something good and noble and bigger than yourself that made a real difference?” she said sarcastically.
“That’s what Felix would have said.” She was shocked that his wistful smile didn’t even falter.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what he would’ve said,” Racetrack said softly. She sat back and put her hands behind her head. “In fact, I think he did once give half a dozen nuggets a lecture on that subject after they dyed the bridge bunnies’ bed sheets pink. Gods, that was way back in our first year stationed on the Galactica.”
Louis grinned. “I can almost hear it.” His voice softened. “I have a picture of him from around that time. I just packed it in my last bag to send over to the baseship. It’s a little strange, that the only picture I have of him is from before we met. I’m glad I have it, though. I like remembering him that way.”
She didn’t want to say that Louis had transformed since the last time she’d seen him. He was the same person he’d always been: genuine, kind, maybe felt things a little too hard, but pulled together. There was a strength in him now that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen in him before, though.
“So if honor and do-gooding is what Felix would’ve said,” Racetrack ventured, “what do you say this is all about?”
He set his hands palm-up on the table. It was an odd gesture, but somehow Racetrack understood it. “Guess I have a thing for lost causes.” He and Racetrack both chuckled. “Seriously.” Louis leaned in and lowered his voice, eyes locked on Racetrack’s. “I won’t pretend to understand why you or Felix or anybody did what you did. But I do know you didn’t do it because of Hera Agathon.”
Racetrack looked away first, blinking rapidly. “Frak, so when the carrot doesn’t work, you lay on the guilt, huh?” she tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out right.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “Your choice makes sense-I see that, I do. And like I’m one to talk about sacrifice, what with Adama leaving me on the baseship with the Fleet even though I volunteered to go. But they don’t have enough volunteers right now to even have a shot at succeeding, Meg. I didn’t come over here just to ask you to join up. I was going to ask you to convince the others here of how much we need them.”
“Adama’s big plan hinges on me?” Racetrack said. “The frakked-up mutineer whose only major accomplishments were discovering shit by accident? Yeah, those guys don’t have a prayer.”
“Meg, don’t pull that crap with me,” Louis said calmly. “You know I found out Felix was going to make you CAG? I think he made a good choice.”
“Shut up,” she said, but there was more distress than anger in it. “You know that if I’d be flying under your command, I’d do it in a heartbeat, right? And not at all because one’s more dangerous than the other.”
“Thank you. That means a lot, actually.” Louis paused for a long time. “I don’t know what to tell you about how to deal with Admiral Adama. If you don’t think I wasn’t mad after what he-after what happened to Felix… But I know that you Galacticans saw yourselves as a big family, and that it’s different when family lets you down the way he did. When you come right down to it, a person doesn’t have to do this for Adama, though. Some people, loyalty to him is their reason, and that’s fine. It’s certainly not for me. It wouldn’t have to be for you.”
“And what is your reason?” Racetrack asked.
“Because someone was willing to do it for me,” Louis said simply, looking her square in the eye. “Because when I was in the mess trying not to cry over my algae mash and said I wasn’t sure whether to start organizing a search and rescue mission or a funeral, somebody slapped me on the back and swore she’d have a Raptor ready to go by the time I got the launch cleared. And because somebody else growled permission for me to go on a crazy, hopeless hunt when all I could do was babble some ridiculous crap about divine providence being all I needed to locate Felix. Meg.” For once, Racetrack was glad of the partition, because she sensed Louis wanted to reach out and take her hand. She was afraid that might have been all she needed to cave. “You and the Colonel walked across that line for me, helped me when I was asking the impossible.”
“You seriously think Tigh would let you do it over again now, with the way things turned out?”
Racetrack hadn’t really been aiming below the belt so much as just scrambling for some way to sidetrack him, but she could see how hard that hit Louis. “I don’t know.” There was a long pause. “But it’s not about how things turned out, not really. I’d be doing the same thing even if we’d found the Raptor too late. It’s about what people are willing to do for each other, even when rationality says they shouldn’t waste their time. Coming from a bridge bunny who loves logic, it hurts to say it, but I think that’s one of the best things left about the human race. So I guess the real question is not why I’m doing this, but why did you do what you did?”
They sat in silence for what felt like a very long time. Just when Racetrack was about to give in and say something, anything, Louis spoke up. “Yes, that’s what I came here to say.” He was half-way speaking to himself. “Sorry it took so much meandering for me to get there. I’m not a great orator like Adama at all.”
“No, you’re not,” Racetrack said, smiling. It was a good thing, too. A grand speech never would’ve worked on her.
~*~*~
“Why’d we save them for last?” Skulls asked as he walked with Racetrack.
Racetrack sighed. “Because this is probably good-bye, too.”
Skulls and Racetrack walked into their own cell, but they turned towards the neighboring cell. Narcho was already standing and staring back at them, arms folded across his chest. Seelix sat on the lower bunk, her eyes on them as well.
Racetrack had gotten quite used to breaking standoffs like this over the course of that day, but this one was the hardest. Another reason why she’d saved it for last. “It’s not too late, you know. They’ll take anybody, even if you didn’t sign up for a seat on one of the Raptors going to Galactica.”
“What, do they give you some kind of bonus for every idiot you recruit?” Narcho spat. “What is it, drink chits at Joe’s? Sounds like you’ve convinced enough people to go on this crazy-ass mission to buy the whole bar a round.” Narcho gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I really thought you had some backbone, for a Raptor wrangler. But the instant they dangle an opportunity for you to get out of here and back into your precious Old Man’s good graces-”
“That’s not what this is about,” Racetrack said, only allowing her voice to sharpen a little with anger.
“Don’t you remember how many people died for what we’re standing for? Ape Man, and Shiner, and Ryan Maddox, and Felix Gaeta?”
“And they died doing something!” she yelled. “I don’t give a flying frak what the Old Man thinks about it, or what Gaeta would think about it, or even you. I’m sick and tired of losing, and waiting, and then losing some more. I’m doing this because it’s a chance to maybe save somebody for once, and whether we succeed in the mission or not, I’m sure I’ll get to fill up Hell with a few more toasters.”
Going from cell to cell drumming up volunteers for the mission had taught Racetrack to tailor her pitch to the individual, because that was the only way she had any hope of it working. She could tell she’d opened a chink in Narcho’s armor. “We’re not so different, Noel. You mouth off and pick fights because you’re angry and can’t do anything about it.”
Everyone jumped when Seelix spoke up. “I can’t fly with Twos,” she said, voice and eyes hollow. “At the Hub, we flew with a squadron of Sixes and a squadron of Eights, and that was bad enough, but I did it. But Twos…I can’t…I don’t give a frak if Starbuck can forgive and forget that frakking monster, I-”
Seelix couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to, either. Racetrack could tell from Narcho’s expression that this was new to him, too. She also knew there was no way he was going to leave Seelix here on her own, and nothing Racetrack could say in the few minutes they had left could change Seelix’s mind.
“We gotta go, if we’re going to catch our ride,” Skulls said softly.
“It won’t leave without us. We’re driving,” Racetrack muttered back, stepping up to the fencing. She said to Narcho and Seelix, “You guys take care of yourselves, okay?”
She wasn’t sure whether Narcho truly wasn’t angry at her anymore or if Seelix’s revelation had just sapped all the fight out of him. It looked like there was respect in his eyes, though, when he nodded and said, “Good hunting.”
As Racetrack and Skulls turned to leave, they heard a voice they hadn’t been expecting. “Hey,” Remy said. “That offer good for non-mutineers, too?”
She stopped. “Yeah.”
“S’pose they’d take an old fart like me?” he asked. He was trying to act like he was joking, but Racetrack could sense nervousness under the façade.
“Do you know how to fire a gun?”
Remy genuinely grinned. “Darlin’, I told you naivety doesn’t suit you.”
Remy easily fell into step behind her and Skulls as they walked through the cell block toward the stairwell that led up to the guards’ quarters and on to the hangar deck. They drew a wide variety of different kinds of stares from the inmates, but Racetrack held her head high.
“You know,” Skulls said quietly, “Hoshi’s never going to believe how many people you convinced to join the mission.”
“Frankly, I don’t believe it myself,” Racetrack said.
“I believe it,” Skulls said. “Besides losing, the only thing I really regret about the mutiny is that our side didn’t at least hang on long enough for you to get to be CAG.”
Racetrack did not, as a rule, blush, but if she’d been the sort of person who did, her cheeks would have been red. “That job’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyway. Besides, the important thing is that no matter how far down the ranks they bust my ass, I know I’ll still be able to order you around.”
Skulls laughed in a way that made it feel just like old times.
~*~*~
Racetrack acted cool, but flying hadn’t come with such a visceral thrill as it did sailing into battle against the Colony since her academy days. Maybe that was ultimately what got them killed: she’d killed off the nerve endings for fear, but not for joy. She thought about this in the instant between getting hit and her life flickering out, an instant that stretched on much longer for her than it did by any objective measure of time. She had a few regrets, but none of them stung too badly. For once, she’d flown without feeling her mantra of assume you’re already dead. There was no need for an assumption. She had been dead, and buried, and left to rot, her tomb made out of chain-link fence. This time, she had flown knowing she’d been resurrected.