Fic: The Black Ships, Part XVIII
Previous Part: Part XVII
“Admiral Adama has left for Andrews again, with Mr. Zarek,” CJ announced putting the phone back in the cradle as President Bartlet sat down. She suspected that the Admiral was blaming Zarek for the games with flyovers, or that it was a diplomatic way to let Roslin retreat. Either way CJ was fairly certain that the Colonial President’s military had called their President’s bluff.
“Who decided to turn this into a shooting war?” Bartlet demanded and inwardly CJ winced at his tone.
“A Patriot Missile Battery from the Washington State National Guard out of Fort Lewis,” explained General Nicolas Alexander, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Put young inexperienced crews in a stressful situation and it's bound to happen.”
“Someone get the Governor of Washington on the phone and let her know that if we’re going to start the first interplanetary war that I’d rather have someone else make that decision.” There was a nod down the table.
General Alexander spoke again, “Sir, the Patriot crew might have been a blessing in disguise. We have been downloading the telemetry data from the missile and are attempting to analyze it to get better firing solutions on the Colonial craft. We also have begun flying Combat Air Patrols over the major cities… and are digging out test bed ASAT weapons systems. Unfortunately, they are more geared to combat Earth launched satellites in orbit, and not maneuverable craft.”
CJ searched her memory for all the acronyms that she had learned in government service, recalling that he was talking about Anti-Satellite weapons.
“So if the Colonials are nice enough to fly in a straight line we’re all good?” The President’s temper was in full force.
“Essentially, sir,” CJ confirmed.
Bartlet turned to CJ. “Is that woman still here?”
“President Roslin?”
“No, the Queen of Sheba.” CJ noted the President’s sass, as Mrs. Landingham had called it, was in full force as well.
The sarcasm was a bad sign. The day was full of bad signs, truthfully. If they lost control of the situation they would never get it back. “She’s waiting for you, sir; she asked to talk to you alone.”
**~**~**
Laura Roslin was alone in the Oval Office. Laura Roslin was alone everywhere, it seemed, but at this moment she felt it with a particular certainty. She had wanted to cry after Bill left. She had wanted to cry when Bill was there, if for no other reason than to prove to him and to herself that she was capable of that display of human emotion. But the tears did not come, nor did the words, and as always the Admiral walked away to leave the President to her thoughts.
They were here. They had made it. Why did Bill Adama have to be so frustratingly right? How had she had turned herself into this person? How a progressive education reformer had become this hard soul? How she had forgotten how to cry? Why she was always alone, even in a crowd? Today was not the time for her to ponder these awful questions of her own salvation.
Laura ran her hands along the top of one of the sofas and walked towards the President’s desk, a heavy ornately carved piece of furniture that conveyed both permanence and authority. When she placed her hand along the top of the desk she could imagine the hard decisions made there, the years that desk sucked from the person who sat behind it. Just as she had been able to watch how a similar desk had taken from Richard Adar as much as it had given him.
Laura Roslin knew one thing for certain the moment she took the oath of office: power didn’t corrupt, power stole. It stole life, it stole love, and it stole humanity like an assassin in the night. And she also knew today that she had freely given her soul to the office. The difference between what she saw in that her gift, and what Bill Adama saw in it, was that she wasn’t sure she regretted it.
She picked up a picture frame off President Bartlet’s desk in an effort to dismiss the dismal thoughts from her mind. Little children playing in the snow. Grandchildren perhaps? For someone who had spent so much of her life with children, there was a sad irony that she had never made time to have any herself. She had always thought she had time. They all had thought they had more time than they did. It was one of humanity's flaws.
Roslin put the picture down when she heard a door open behind her and she could feel a flush of color enter her face as Jed Bartlet watched her from across the room.
“You have lovely grandchildren.”
“I hope to have lovely grandchildren tomorrow too, Madam President.” His answer was cold, and she could tell by the tension in his body that he would rather be anywhere else than in a room with her. He thought she was a mad woman, and she had let him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the part of Laura that was still an idealistic schoolteacher asked if it was illusion or truth. “My military advisers inform me that the missile shot at one of your fighter was fired by a Washington State National Guard crew. It’s never a good sign when reservists are put under this kind of pressure, but you have my sincere apology and my hopes that the pilot made it back to his ship safely.”
“She did. Kat is a good pilot.” Laura smiled and inhaled. “I think I am probably the one that owes you an apology though, and I hope that the missile crew is not disciplined too harshly. I was playing a high stakes game without thinking enough about the long-term consequences and repercussions.”
“I’m not big on playing games with people’s lives, President Roslin.” Bartlet watched her as he walked farther into the room and sat down in chair.
“Believe it or not, neither am I. I wonder sometimes if the gods will forgive me for the lives on my hands.”
He watched her for a bit but doubled back on the conversation. “You know your pilots by name?”
“Probably not good for my long term sanity but yes. I know their names. Sometimes I think when I’m looking out the windows of Colonial One that I can tell who they are just by the way they flight their ships. Which ones are cautious and which ones are cocky… and which ones belong to the numbers that slowly tick off the population total.”
He was still mad, livid, she guessed, and in this moment, Bartlet reminded her of Bill Adama. Righteous indignation personified. She wished she had that kind of fury to spare. These days when she was mad, it was a slow burning fire that seemed so much harder to control. Behind the anger in Jed Bartlet’s eyes, she could see the dawn of a little understanding. “I’m not sure if I could ever order young men into combat if I knew their names before hand.”
“I don’t think I could have either…before I had to. There is so much I think we tell ourselves we would never do until you have no choice in the matter.”
“You always have a choice.”
Laura smiled again, this time more in sympathy. “I have learned, Mr. President, that righteousness is a luxury that you can not afford at the end of the world. I sincerely hope and pray that you never have to learn that lesson.”
“Do you pray… to these gods of yours?”
“Am I religious?”
“Strange question to be asking, I suppose, but it seems to me that we have been talking about the complexities and ignoring the simplicities. The two of us at least.”
“I’ve always had faith, but I don’t think I would call myself religious most of my life.” The President raised an eyebrow and she continued. “I think it was… two weeks after the attacks. Just long enough for us all to sleep and for the horror to sink in. We were all operating on so much adrenaline and lack of sleep that I don’t think any of us really thought it was real until about then. Billy… my aide brought me this gift from the makeshift class of children that had been set up on one of the bigger ships. The teacher had asked the children to draw home...” Laura could here her own voice cracking. “She had asked them to draw their families and their homes and almost all the drawings had mushroom clouds. All I could think of is how I wanted to comfort these children. And how I couldn’t. So many people walked away from faith… they blamed the gods for what had happened and all I could think of is that it was the sins of man, not the gods, we were atoning for. I didn’t want to become a religious fanatic anymore than I wanted to be President, but the fates seem to have other plans for us all.”
Jed didn’t say anything as she spoke, but instead stood and walked towards her and placed a hand on her shoulder. When they walked into the room they were adversaries, yet when she looked up at him as her own tears began to flow she could see them forming at the corners of his eyes as well. Bartlet at first didn’t seem to know what to say, and finally he just smiled and shook his head, “This is the time of year for confession and rebirth, Madam President. And forgiveness.”
The first steps on the road back to humanity for Laura Roslin were tears. Tears shared with Josiah Bartlet.
**~**~**
Two Months Later
CJ Cregg had said recently that she had seen enough spacecraft in the last few weeks that she didn’t think she could be awed by them anymore. Ellie Bartlet had just quietly laughed and told her not to think too soon. The roar of the mighty engines of Colonial One as it approached for landing had to be the loudest sound she had heard in her life. She knew intellectually there were ships in orbit much bigger than this one, but the weight of it and the heft of the ship as it shook the ground on landing made CJ regret the earlier statement.
She looked across to Jed Bartlet, and not for the first time in recent days couldn’t read what he was thinking behind his thoughtful eyes.
“We were lucky that the crisis was settled…”
The President smiled at her as the shadow of the space ship settled across his face. “What makes you think it was settled, CJ? It has just gotten much more complicated. The world has too. Beautifully, wonderfully, terribly complicated.”
The End.
Author's Notes: I would like to thank all of those who have left such wonderful and motivating feedback, I promise that there will be continuations of this universe, however the next fic on my plate is a non-crossover BSG fic set during the Cylon Occupation of New Caprica that would center around Roslin, Caprica Six, and D'Anna. For those of you who have taken issue with the political or military choices I have made, I simply encourage you to express those creative energies in your own visions of Colonial/Earth contact. Again, thank you.