Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 14
Title: Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 14
Word Count: 2,315
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
Laura listened in dismay as three marines greeted her saviours in a language she had no idea how to start deciphering.
As Ingram and Garibaldi lifted Laura’s litter between them, she looked up into Ingram’s dark twinkling eyes and heard her say, “Hey, you’re in the presence of a lady here--would you jarheads please switch to a civilised language she’d understand! Marines are so rude,” she stage-whispered conspiratorially.
There was a roar of laughter from the marines and intellectually Laura knew that the shrewd young woman was doing her best to keep her engaged and awake … and keep her from thinking about what had happened to her. Well she could do that; she'd been doing it all her life.
“Sorry Ma’am,” a deep, masculine voice said. “Captain Benton Fairfax here--I was just telling your crazy-assed friends that only lunatic pilots would even think of crash-landing on an enemy ship!”
“I don’t suppose that would seem like a very prudent survival move, when you think about it,” Laura said, grateful for the distraction of their banter.
“Prudent isn’t a word I’d use to describe fighter pilots, Ma’am,” Fairfax laughed. “Come to think of it, the word “think” doesn’t seem to crop up much in their vocabulary either.”
“Hey!” Diana countered in mock outrage as Laura found herself being lifted above the pilot’s head into a dark, enclosed space. It felt as if the walls were closing in on her and she was on the verge of panic when she heard the other woman’s soothing voice.
“We’re lifting you into the breaching pod now,” she said. “Tony and I are right behind you. We’re just waiting for the airlock to cycle and then we’ll enter the pod proper and cast off in a minute--ah, here we go,” she said as they entered a brightly lit room.
Laura’s life-support unit was quickly carried over to a low pallet and strapped down securely. Diana Ingram sat down in the chair closest to Laura’s bed and strapped herself in as the marines quickly did the same.
“Now comes the fun part,” Benton Fairfax quipped; she couldn’t see him, but his voice was comforting. “Breakaway!” Laura felt the vibrations through her bones and had to force herself not to cry out. Then as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped.
“Our pilot says that it’ll be seven minutes to rendezvous with Sirius, Ms Roslin,” Diana said, “and we should be on board within ten.”
Laura licked her dry lips and gathered her courage. “Sirius, is that the name of your ship?” she asked, just to keep the conversation going.
Diana chuckled. “Not exactly,” she replied. “Sirius is what’s known in our Fleet as a parasite battleship. She’s slightly smaller than your Battlestars, but she only has sublight drives. So if you want to use her for interstellar travel, good luck. I hope you have a lot of vacation days coming to you.”
Laura laughed softly at this. “As a matter of fact, I probably do,” she said. Seeing the sudden shock on Diana Ingram’s beautiful light-brown face, she continued, “It’s all right Major Ingram, I’m old enough to know that I’ll probably be out of commission dealing with all this for a good, long time.”
The young woman’s eyes were compassionate. “And I hope you’ll take all the time you need,” she said softly, instinctively knowing that to say anything else would threaten Laura’s fragile control. “Anyway,” Diana said briskly again. “Sirius and other parasites like her are carried by capital ships like Emperor Herdan. After she picks us up, she’ll scoot over to Herdan, land and off-load us and all the other pods she’s carrying.”
Laura looked at her in astonishment. “Herdan must be one large ship to be able to land something almost as big as Galactica,” she said and Diana laughed. Laura could hear the marines chuckling in the background.
“You could say that,” Diana quipped. There was a definite spark of mischief in her eyes. She said something to Fairfax in their language. A small, black object sailed over Laura’s unit and Diana caught it easily.
“This is a personal data device,” she explained as she opened it up. Amazingly, from such a tiny package, it opened to create a large screen. Diana filled it--from what Laura could see from her angle--with incomprehensible writing and symbols. After a few minutes work, she turned the blank screen to face Laura. A picture of Galactica popped up and was joined by a sleek, rounded ship against a rather bronzy background. Laura could see that both ships were almost the same size.
“Now watch,” Diana said impishly. Both ships on the screen shrank to about the size of Laura’s thumbnail and a great bronze sphere appeared behind them, casting them into silhouette. The Imperial pilot tapped the sphere that filled the screen. “This is Herdan,” she said with a wide grin.
Laura’s mind boggled at the image. If the scale was correct, then that ship would be nearly the size of a planet! “By the Lords of Kobol,” she whispered in awe as she stared at the screen. She barely registered the shaking when Sirius tractored the pod into her docking bay.
#
Dr. Petris Cottle peered through the billowing smoke and fog that enveloped the town as he stepped hesitantly from his makeshift clinic. It had been at least ten minutes since he’d heard the last gun fire.
“Stay inside,” he ordered the orphans gruffly. The oldest girl nodded, brown eyes wide with fear and tears as she gathered the youngest children around her. Not the way he would have chosen to spend the battle, but they each had a part to play.
As he stumbled through the fog, he came face to face with a Sharon Valerii Cylon model. Stepping back involuntarily, his heart raced until he noticed the strange, fixed look on her face, and the horror in her eyes.
She’s as still as a statue, he realised and finally remembered to breathe.
Even now, over a year later, he still woke up on too many nights, fighting the iron grip of Sharon Valerii’s hands about his throat as she blamed him for the death of her daughter. And even with the evidence before him, it was difficult to accept that the Imperials' Cylon suppressor devices had rendered this creature of his most squalid nightmares, completely inert.
“Gods! I wish I had a cigarette,” he muttered.
“Would a cigar do?” a familiar--and very amused--voice said. Starbuck materialised out of the fog, dressed in strange fatigues, her helmet undone and rakishly askew. She carried a very big gun in one hand and was puffing on two fat cigars at once. Pulling one from her mouth, she held it out to him.
Cottle laughed and accepted it. He didn’t usually like cigars, but his first pull tasted like heaven and he realised it was because the smoke lacked the harsh, acrid after-bite he was so used to.
Starbuck laughed. “It’s an Earth cigar,” she explained impishly, “made in some place called Havana. Have you seen Sam?” she asked abruptly, humour giving way to concern. “He wasn’t in our tent.”
“Damn,” Cottle replied worried now. “Saw him there about an hour before the attack--his pneumonia was better; he was responding to the antibiotics the Imperials smuggled in. I gave him something for the fever, but he wouldn’t come to the clinic. I’ve got over thirty patients in there with the same condition--plus all those orphans. Check the school," he said with sudden inspiration. "Maya and some of the kids never made it to the clinic."
Kara nodded, but Cottle could see that her eyes were anxious with fear. Four Imperial marines appeared as the fog began to dissipate. One stopped and snapped something around the Cylon’s throat.
“Captain Thrace, sir,” the older woman with the greying black hair said as she approached. She stopped and saluted smartly; the form was a bit different, but Cottle recognised a salute when he saw one. “Ma’am, we’re securing the surviving humanoid Cylons. Major Tsien reports that the bulk of the fight in space is over. The Basestars have been neutralized; all that’s left is the mop-up. Both Colonial Battlestars are in good shape. Fleet Captain MacIntyre has requested that we begin organising the civilian population as quickly as possible, starting with those who are most in need of medical assistance. Transports will be landing in a few minutes.”
Cottle’s jaw dropped and he had to scramble to save his precious cigar. “It’s over?” he said hoarsely
“Yes sir,” the Imperial said with a grin.
Starbuck laughed. “You’ve come to right place, Sergeant Major Duncan,” she said. “This is Dr. Cottle and he’s got a clinic full of pneumonia patients and orphans. They're your priority--go with him and get everyone organised. Sergeant Grey Feather, you and Corporal Lombardo will come with me to the school."
#
"Oh Gods!"
Tyrol's involuntary gasp tore from his throat and he raced to the site of the decimated school tent. Collette Tsien’s heart caught as she hurried after him and the wails of the children penetrated her consciousness. She sent out the call to her medics as Tyrol handed her the first little body … a boy … only five or six years old … breathing shallow. She proceeded to scan his body for damage and air passages for any obstructions. Nothing obvious showed on her sensors but signs of a mild concussion.
A young middle-eastern looking woman appeared with another child--this time a little girl about eight … her copper hair matted with blood … her right arm torn off. Each breath she took made a wet, sucking sound.
Collette abandoned the boy and pulled a body bag from her kit. Quickly, she unfolded it. “Put her in here,” she ordered the young woman, who laid her precious burden into the life-support unit. Collette quickly sprayed the stump of the child’s arm with a battle-dress tourniquet and placed a quick-heal patch over the chest wound--it would penetrate and hold the lung for a while. As she reached into her kit for a blood pouch, she spared a thought for her first patient and tossed a rebreather to the woman.
More medics were arriving now and quickly setting up their field kits as people ran bodies from the decimated tents.
“Fit the mask over the boy’s nose and mouth,” she ordered as she fitted the pouch of artificial blood into the blood pump.
“It’s too big,” the woman began plaintively.
“It’s a rebreather,” Collette replied hastily as she fitted an identical mask over the girl’s face. “It’ll shrink to fit within moments and help him breathe--it’ll adjust to suit his needs. Now come and help me hook this child up to the blood pump.”
“I don’t know how--I don’t have any training,” the woman said hoarsely. “There’s so much blood … the children weren’t supposed to be there …” Collette evaluated her beautiful tear-stained face in a single glance as the woman stared with horrified fascination at her blood-stained hands; civilian … shocky--definitely shocky. “What’s your name?”
The woman seemed stunned at this simple question. “My name?” After a moment, she seemed to get a hold of herself, wiping her hands on her pants. “Tori--my name is Tori Foster,” she said.
“All right, Tori,” Collette replied as she placed the small machine into the woman’s nut-brown hands. “I’m Collette Tsien. This little girl has lost a lot of blood and we need to replace it quickly. I need you to watch the display on the blood pump and let me know if it goes up to the red line or down to the blue line. Ideally, it should remain somewhere in the middle. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Tori said hoarsely.
Collette found a vein in the girl’s left arm and inserted the cannula with an ease that spoke of nearly twenty years experience in battlefield triage. Through her scanner, she watched the tracer in the artificial blood as it began spreading through the child’s system.
“It’s dropped a little towards the blue line, but it’s still closer to the centre,” Tori reported anxiously.
“That’s to be expected,” Collette replied as she set the controls on the body bag and hooked up the air supply. “Let me know if it dips or jumps precipitously.” She then turned her attention to encasing the stump of the child’s arm in a regen sleeve and sealed it. The nutrients would pass through the membrane of the tourniquet and should keep the cells at the tip of the stump alive until the little girl could undergo regeneration to regrow the arm.
She turned back to the woman staring intently at the blood pump’s tiny screen and gently pried the machine out of her hands. “It’s ok now,” she said as she placed it inside the bag. “I have to seal her into the unit now. We’ve done as much as we can. She should survive.”
Collette deftly sealed the bag and pressed the corners together to start the chemical reaction to stiffen the walls of the life-support unit. She beckoned to a pair of privates who'd been setting up body-bags assembly-line style. They immediately picked up the child's support unit and double-timed it over to a waiting transport.
Finally able to look up and assess the area, Collette was not shocked by what she found. No tent in a one hundred metre radius was standing. From the explosion pattern, it had been Cylon shelling, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
Suddenly, as Tyrol brought another wounded child to her, a soul-shattering cry caught her attention and she watched as Kara Thrace pulled her husband’s mangled body from the ruins of the school tent.
Part 15
Word Count: 2,315
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
Laura listened in dismay as three marines greeted her saviours in a language she had no idea how to start deciphering.
As Ingram and Garibaldi lifted Laura’s litter between them, she looked up into Ingram’s dark twinkling eyes and heard her say, “Hey, you’re in the presence of a lady here--would you jarheads please switch to a civilised language she’d understand! Marines are so rude,” she stage-whispered conspiratorially.
There was a roar of laughter from the marines and intellectually Laura knew that the shrewd young woman was doing her best to keep her engaged and awake … and keep her from thinking about what had happened to her. Well she could do that; she'd been doing it all her life.
“Sorry Ma’am,” a deep, masculine voice said. “Captain Benton Fairfax here--I was just telling your crazy-assed friends that only lunatic pilots would even think of crash-landing on an enemy ship!”
“I don’t suppose that would seem like a very prudent survival move, when you think about it,” Laura said, grateful for the distraction of their banter.
“Prudent isn’t a word I’d use to describe fighter pilots, Ma’am,” Fairfax laughed. “Come to think of it, the word “think” doesn’t seem to crop up much in their vocabulary either.”
“Hey!” Diana countered in mock outrage as Laura found herself being lifted above the pilot’s head into a dark, enclosed space. It felt as if the walls were closing in on her and she was on the verge of panic when she heard the other woman’s soothing voice.
“We’re lifting you into the breaching pod now,” she said. “Tony and I are right behind you. We’re just waiting for the airlock to cycle and then we’ll enter the pod proper and cast off in a minute--ah, here we go,” she said as they entered a brightly lit room.
Laura’s life-support unit was quickly carried over to a low pallet and strapped down securely. Diana Ingram sat down in the chair closest to Laura’s bed and strapped herself in as the marines quickly did the same.
“Now comes the fun part,” Benton Fairfax quipped; she couldn’t see him, but his voice was comforting. “Breakaway!” Laura felt the vibrations through her bones and had to force herself not to cry out. Then as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped.
“Our pilot says that it’ll be seven minutes to rendezvous with Sirius, Ms Roslin,” Diana said, “and we should be on board within ten.”
Laura licked her dry lips and gathered her courage. “Sirius, is that the name of your ship?” she asked, just to keep the conversation going.
Diana chuckled. “Not exactly,” she replied. “Sirius is what’s known in our Fleet as a parasite battleship. She’s slightly smaller than your Battlestars, but she only has sublight drives. So if you want to use her for interstellar travel, good luck. I hope you have a lot of vacation days coming to you.”
Laura laughed softly at this. “As a matter of fact, I probably do,” she said. Seeing the sudden shock on Diana Ingram’s beautiful light-brown face, she continued, “It’s all right Major Ingram, I’m old enough to know that I’ll probably be out of commission dealing with all this for a good, long time.”
The young woman’s eyes were compassionate. “And I hope you’ll take all the time you need,” she said softly, instinctively knowing that to say anything else would threaten Laura’s fragile control. “Anyway,” Diana said briskly again. “Sirius and other parasites like her are carried by capital ships like Emperor Herdan. After she picks us up, she’ll scoot over to Herdan, land and off-load us and all the other pods she’s carrying.”
Laura looked at her in astonishment. “Herdan must be one large ship to be able to land something almost as big as Galactica,” she said and Diana laughed. Laura could hear the marines chuckling in the background.
“You could say that,” Diana quipped. There was a definite spark of mischief in her eyes. She said something to Fairfax in their language. A small, black object sailed over Laura’s unit and Diana caught it easily.
“This is a personal data device,” she explained as she opened it up. Amazingly, from such a tiny package, it opened to create a large screen. Diana filled it--from what Laura could see from her angle--with incomprehensible writing and symbols. After a few minutes work, she turned the blank screen to face Laura. A picture of Galactica popped up and was joined by a sleek, rounded ship against a rather bronzy background. Laura could see that both ships were almost the same size.
“Now watch,” Diana said impishly. Both ships on the screen shrank to about the size of Laura’s thumbnail and a great bronze sphere appeared behind them, casting them into silhouette. The Imperial pilot tapped the sphere that filled the screen. “This is Herdan,” she said with a wide grin.
Laura’s mind boggled at the image. If the scale was correct, then that ship would be nearly the size of a planet! “By the Lords of Kobol,” she whispered in awe as she stared at the screen. She barely registered the shaking when Sirius tractored the pod into her docking bay.
#
Dr. Petris Cottle peered through the billowing smoke and fog that enveloped the town as he stepped hesitantly from his makeshift clinic. It had been at least ten minutes since he’d heard the last gun fire.
“Stay inside,” he ordered the orphans gruffly. The oldest girl nodded, brown eyes wide with fear and tears as she gathered the youngest children around her. Not the way he would have chosen to spend the battle, but they each had a part to play.
As he stumbled through the fog, he came face to face with a Sharon Valerii Cylon model. Stepping back involuntarily, his heart raced until he noticed the strange, fixed look on her face, and the horror in her eyes.
She’s as still as a statue, he realised and finally remembered to breathe.
Even now, over a year later, he still woke up on too many nights, fighting the iron grip of Sharon Valerii’s hands about his throat as she blamed him for the death of her daughter. And even with the evidence before him, it was difficult to accept that the Imperials' Cylon suppressor devices had rendered this creature of his most squalid nightmares, completely inert.
“Gods! I wish I had a cigarette,” he muttered.
“Would a cigar do?” a familiar--and very amused--voice said. Starbuck materialised out of the fog, dressed in strange fatigues, her helmet undone and rakishly askew. She carried a very big gun in one hand and was puffing on two fat cigars at once. Pulling one from her mouth, she held it out to him.
Cottle laughed and accepted it. He didn’t usually like cigars, but his first pull tasted like heaven and he realised it was because the smoke lacked the harsh, acrid after-bite he was so used to.
Starbuck laughed. “It’s an Earth cigar,” she explained impishly, “made in some place called Havana. Have you seen Sam?” she asked abruptly, humour giving way to concern. “He wasn’t in our tent.”
“Damn,” Cottle replied worried now. “Saw him there about an hour before the attack--his pneumonia was better; he was responding to the antibiotics the Imperials smuggled in. I gave him something for the fever, but he wouldn’t come to the clinic. I’ve got over thirty patients in there with the same condition--plus all those orphans. Check the school," he said with sudden inspiration. "Maya and some of the kids never made it to the clinic."
Kara nodded, but Cottle could see that her eyes were anxious with fear. Four Imperial marines appeared as the fog began to dissipate. One stopped and snapped something around the Cylon’s throat.
“Captain Thrace, sir,” the older woman with the greying black hair said as she approached. She stopped and saluted smartly; the form was a bit different, but Cottle recognised a salute when he saw one. “Ma’am, we’re securing the surviving humanoid Cylons. Major Tsien reports that the bulk of the fight in space is over. The Basestars have been neutralized; all that’s left is the mop-up. Both Colonial Battlestars are in good shape. Fleet Captain MacIntyre has requested that we begin organising the civilian population as quickly as possible, starting with those who are most in need of medical assistance. Transports will be landing in a few minutes.”
Cottle’s jaw dropped and he had to scramble to save his precious cigar. “It’s over?” he said hoarsely
“Yes sir,” the Imperial said with a grin.
Starbuck laughed. “You’ve come to right place, Sergeant Major Duncan,” she said. “This is Dr. Cottle and he’s got a clinic full of pneumonia patients and orphans. They're your priority--go with him and get everyone organised. Sergeant Grey Feather, you and Corporal Lombardo will come with me to the school."
#
"Oh Gods!"
Tyrol's involuntary gasp tore from his throat and he raced to the site of the decimated school tent. Collette Tsien’s heart caught as she hurried after him and the wails of the children penetrated her consciousness. She sent out the call to her medics as Tyrol handed her the first little body … a boy … only five or six years old … breathing shallow. She proceeded to scan his body for damage and air passages for any obstructions. Nothing obvious showed on her sensors but signs of a mild concussion.
A young middle-eastern looking woman appeared with another child--this time a little girl about eight … her copper hair matted with blood … her right arm torn off. Each breath she took made a wet, sucking sound.
Collette abandoned the boy and pulled a body bag from her kit. Quickly, she unfolded it. “Put her in here,” she ordered the young woman, who laid her precious burden into the life-support unit. Collette quickly sprayed the stump of the child’s arm with a battle-dress tourniquet and placed a quick-heal patch over the chest wound--it would penetrate and hold the lung for a while. As she reached into her kit for a blood pouch, she spared a thought for her first patient and tossed a rebreather to the woman.
More medics were arriving now and quickly setting up their field kits as people ran bodies from the decimated tents.
“Fit the mask over the boy’s nose and mouth,” she ordered as she fitted the pouch of artificial blood into the blood pump.
“It’s too big,” the woman began plaintively.
“It’s a rebreather,” Collette replied hastily as she fitted an identical mask over the girl’s face. “It’ll shrink to fit within moments and help him breathe--it’ll adjust to suit his needs. Now come and help me hook this child up to the blood pump.”
“I don’t know how--I don’t have any training,” the woman said hoarsely. “There’s so much blood … the children weren’t supposed to be there …” Collette evaluated her beautiful tear-stained face in a single glance as the woman stared with horrified fascination at her blood-stained hands; civilian … shocky--definitely shocky. “What’s your name?”
The woman seemed stunned at this simple question. “My name?” After a moment, she seemed to get a hold of herself, wiping her hands on her pants. “Tori--my name is Tori Foster,” she said.
“All right, Tori,” Collette replied as she placed the small machine into the woman’s nut-brown hands. “I’m Collette Tsien. This little girl has lost a lot of blood and we need to replace it quickly. I need you to watch the display on the blood pump and let me know if it goes up to the red line or down to the blue line. Ideally, it should remain somewhere in the middle. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Tori said hoarsely.
Collette found a vein in the girl’s left arm and inserted the cannula with an ease that spoke of nearly twenty years experience in battlefield triage. Through her scanner, she watched the tracer in the artificial blood as it began spreading through the child’s system.
“It’s dropped a little towards the blue line, but it’s still closer to the centre,” Tori reported anxiously.
“That’s to be expected,” Collette replied as she set the controls on the body bag and hooked up the air supply. “Let me know if it dips or jumps precipitously.” She then turned her attention to encasing the stump of the child’s arm in a regen sleeve and sealed it. The nutrients would pass through the membrane of the tourniquet and should keep the cells at the tip of the stump alive until the little girl could undergo regeneration to regrow the arm.
She turned back to the woman staring intently at the blood pump’s tiny screen and gently pried the machine out of her hands. “It’s ok now,” she said as she placed it inside the bag. “I have to seal her into the unit now. We’ve done as much as we can. She should survive.”
Collette deftly sealed the bag and pressed the corners together to start the chemical reaction to stiffen the walls of the life-support unit. She beckoned to a pair of privates who'd been setting up body-bags assembly-line style. They immediately picked up the child's support unit and double-timed it over to a waiting transport.
Finally able to look up and assess the area, Collette was not shocked by what she found. No tent in a one hundred metre radius was standing. From the explosion pattern, it had been Cylon shelling, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
Suddenly, as Tyrol brought another wounded child to her, a soul-shattering cry caught her attention and she watched as Kara Thrace pulled her husband’s mangled body from the ruins of the school tent.
Part 15