03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (2 page)

“Are you decent?”

Now she actually laughed. “No, I’m stark naked and have three lovers in here.
Come on in and join the party.”

There was a slightly audible gulp. “You know, out here is actually perfectly
all right if—”

“Billy, I’m alone, I’m decent, come in and put your mind at ease.”

The door opened and a very tentative Keikeya poked his head in, squinting and
trying to make out shapes in the darkness. “Ah. All right. So… no security
breach here, then…”

“None whatsoever.” She paused and tilted her head in a slightly quizzical
fashion. “How did you hear me?”

“Pardon?”

“I said,” she repeated patiently, “how did you hear me?”

“Well… you screamed, and it was fairly loud, so…”

“Yes, I understand that part,” she said. “But it’s not as if your quarters
are right next door. And the walls are fairly soundproof.” Her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have a listening device in here or something, do you…?”

“No, ma’am, of course not.” Billy was fully dressed, save that he wasn’t
wearing a necktie. His hand automatically smoothed down the nonexistent tie. “I
just don’t require all that much sleep. Three, four hours and I’m good as new.”

“That’s impressive,” said Laura. “But it doesn’t really answer my question.
What, are you lurking outside my door all night?”

“Not… lurking exactly.”

“Then what exactly? Billy…?”

He rolled his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “It’s just… you’ve
been through a lot, Madame President. Being thrust into the presidency, being
arrested, fighting cancer, winning… I mean, gods, that was like a miracle
being handed to you.”

“A miracle that could benefit a lot more people than me, Billy,” she reminded
him. “The blood resulting from Shar… from the lieutena…”
She paused and then said, “…from the Cylon’s pregnancy has astounding healing properties.”

She felt a bit guilty, tripping over her referring to Sharon Valerii, the
Viper pilot nicknamed “Boomer.” A woman who had, several times, served as a
source of salvation for
Galactica
and the struggling remnants of humanity… but whose home consisted of a prison cell because she could never, ever be
trusted. Because she was the enemy. Because she was a Cylon. But fetal blood
culled from the… the whatever-it-was that was gestating in her stomach…had sent Laura’s cancer into complete remission. To say nothing of the fact that
Sharon’s cooperation with
Galactica
command had staved off the Cylons on
at least one occasion. Laura felt as if she should be thankful. She felt as if
they should be rewarding Sharon Valerii somehow. Give her a medal of honor, a
congratulatory basket of something, anything.

Instead she sat in her cell and her baby—which Laura Roslin had been ready to
order aborted—continued to grow in her belly, and Laura still struggled with the
idea of thinking of Sharon as anything other than a thing. A thing to which the
last survivors of the human race in general, and Laura Roslin in particular,
owed their lives. Hardly the gratitude one would expect for someone who had done
so much.

Well… she’d been allowed to keep her child, at least for the time being.
Considering a creature who had looked like Sharon—who had
been
her—had
gunned down Commander William Adama at point-blank range, perhaps that was as
much generosity as one could possibly anticipate.

Her mind was drifting. It annoyed her. She preferred to stay on track in all
her dealings. “So anyway… what’s your point, Billy?”

“The point is, I just feel as if anything could go wrong at any time. And if
that happens, someone should be on top of it.”

“So you… what? Wander the halls and check on me? Listen for any signs of
distress? Drop by every hour?”

“No, ma’am.”

“No?”

He winced as if caught out in some dirty little secret. “More like every half
hour.”

She stared at him in the dimness of her quarters, her eyes round in surprise.
Then she waggled her finger, indicating that he should come near. He did so, his
face a question, and she pulled his head forward and kissed him gently on the
top of it. “You,” she said, “are a very sweet man. If Dualla lets you slip
through her fingers, she would be a foolish young woman, mark my words.”

“Ma’am…”

“Listen to me, Billy,” and she rested her hands on his shoulders. “You’ll do
me no good if you worry yourself into exhaustion. At least now I understand why
it looks like you’re fighting to stay awake during press conferences. You need
more than three hours’ sleep, and not getting it because you’re literally
wandering the halls watching out for me is unacceptable.”

“But—”

“Un… acceptable,” she repeated firmly. “Besides, I have security personnel
who are on duty.”

“Which, under ordinary circumstances, would be perfectly fine,” said Billy.
“But these are dangerous times, Madame President, and besides, we never know who
might be a Cylon and who might not be. So I figure that the more eyes watching
out for things, the better.”

“Mm-hmm. And what if you’re a Cylon, Billy?” He started to laugh, but she
continued, “After all, supposedly Valerii didn’t know of her own nature for the
longest time. How do you know you aren’t actually patrolling the halls, waiting
for the perfect time to do mischief?”

He stared at her, no longer laughing. “You want me to get more sleep and then
you tell me something guaranteed to keep me awake all night? Besides, Doctor
Baltar’s Cylon detection test confirmed I was human. Unless,” he suddenly said,
“Doctor Bal-tar is also a Cylon, or under Cylon influence, in which case—”

Laura sighed. “Good night, Billy. Get more sleep and stop worrying about me.
That’s a presidential directive.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Madame President.” He bowed ever so slightly, which
naturally wasn’t remotely necessary but he likely couldn’t help it, and started
to exit her chambers. Then he paused, turned and asked, “By the way… why
did
you scream, Madame President?”

“Nothing. It was nothing. I had a bad dream.”

“About what?”

“About this conversation and its refusal to end. Good night, William,” she
said with a touch of pointed formality.

Taking the hint, Billy said, “Good night, ma’am,” and exited, closing the
door behind himself.

Shaking her head, Laura sent the lights back from dim to darkness, removed
her robe, and climbed back into bed.

And there she lay, for hour after hour, her mind suddenly alive with
concerns. Concerns over the dream, concerns over everyone and his brother being
a Cylon. She remembered a conversation she’d once had with Adama in which she’d
said, “If you’re a Cylon, I’d like to know.” To which Adama had quite accurately
replied, “If I’m a Cylon, you’re really screwed.”

She was convinced by now that Adama was not a Cylon.

But as she recalled the bleeding archer, the precursor of their own colony of
Sagittaron—and the subsequent collapsing of all the obelisks, which had a
symbolism that even a blind man could have seen—she wasn’t entirely convinced
that they weren’t still really screwed.

In the Viper pilots’ lounge, Kara Thrace threw down her cards as her lips
twisted in disgust. She fixed her opponent with a fearsome stare and said far
more loudly than was necessary, to everyone who was seated at the table, “Who
told this bum he could sit in? Huh?”

“You did,” Gaius Baltar reminded her coolly.

Kara glanced around the table and saw an array of heads bobbing in agreement.
“And you people
let
me? Knowing what you know about me? Knowing what an
idiot I am, you were that dumb as to listen to me? Okay, fine.” She tilted back
in her chair and took a deep swallow of her drink, which sent a pleasant burning
sensation down her throat. “In that case, I wash my hands of you. You brought it
on yourselves.”

Deckhand Callista Henderson, nicknamed Cally, cast a weary yow-talk-to-her
glance at Viper Pilot Lee Adama. Lee, however, refused to rise to it, and
instead simply shook his head in resignation.

Meanwhile the target of Kara’s ire was leaning forward and raking in his chips. “It’s no big deal, Kara. It was just luck,” said Boxey,
who had to stand on his toes to reach the pot.

“Kara. He’s calling me Kara, like we’re… like we’re friends or
something,” Kara said in mock indignation. “Punk kid! Remember who the grown-ups
are around here.”

“Admittedly, it’s not always easy to tell,” Baltar said pointedly.

“A little respect, is all I’m asking.”

Lee Adama leaned forward and told the boy, “Personally, I’d give her as
little as possible.” Kara reached over and thumped Lee in the upper arm, which
garnered a laugh followed by a loud “Ow!” as the pain caught up with him.

“How about Starbuck. Should I just call you Starbuck?” asked Boxey.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Kara, who was accustomed to responding to the name
that was her call handle. Sometimes she even wondered whether Starbuck was her
real name, and Kara Thrace was simply this nice, good-girl name that she put on
to hide her true persona.

“Are you really upset with me?” The thirteen-year-old boy looked genuinely
concerned. “For winning so much money, I mean.”

Kara, who was feeling a little bleary-minded with the combination of the
lateness of the hour and the alcohol she’d consumed, smiled wanly and chucked
Boxey under the chin. “Nah. Not really. You shouldn’t worry about my feelings.”

“I wasn’t,” Boxey replied. “I just wanted to figure out if you were gonna
jump me once the game was over and try to get the money back.”

This prompted guffaws from everyone else, and an archly fierce scowl from
Kara.

Lee leaned forward and said, “If you ask me…”

“Which nobody did,” Kara quickly told him.

“…you’ve gotten a lot better at your game, kid. You been taking lessons?
Hanging out with a bad crowd?”

“Worse than this one?” asked Baltar. “The mind positively boggles.”

“I’ve met some guys, yeah,” Boxey said guardedly.

He paused, and the adults looked at each other with knowing smiles. Cally
poked him in the ribs and said in a sing-song voice, “There’s a girrrrrrrrl…”

“Is not!”

“Is too.”

“Is not!”

“Is too.”

“I can feel my IQ spiraling into the abyss the longer this conversation
continues,” said Baltar. “Is anyone planning to deal a new hand so I can win
some money back from the human chip-vacuum over here?”

“Not happening anytime soon, Mr. Vice President,” Boxey assured him.

“Oh, great!
He
gets Mr. Vice President,
I
get Kara! Why is
that?”

“Just a thought,” suggested Baltar, “but could it possibly have anything to
do with the fact that your name is Kara and mine isn’t?”

“Frak you,” said Kara.

“Been there, done that,” Lee muttered a bit too loudly, which drew him a
lethal glance from Starbuck.

Boxey looked up in confusion. “What?”

“Nothing,” every adult at the table echoed.

With that bewildering consensus, another round of play passed, and once
again, Boxey won. By this point everyone was throwing down their cards in disgust. “I want to meet this girl,” Cally
said loudly as she watched the last of her chips get swept away into Boxey’s
pile. “Whoever she is. I want to see what she’s been teaching you.”

“Just how to be a better card player,” Boxey said defensively.

“No one’s this good a card player.”

“I am,” Baltar pointed out.

“Couldn’t tell it from what we’re seeing here.”

“Everyone has an off night.”

“Well,” Cally continued, “like I said, I want to meet her. You ask me, she’s
probably not even human if she taught you to play that well. Probably a Cylon.”

“That’s not funny!”

Boxey’s outburst was so unexpected that the adults were startled into
silence. Immediately chagrined at his reaction, Boxey looked down and said
sullenly, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.”

“No, I am,” said Cally, and she reached over and placed a hand atop his. “I
mean, you lost your whole family to the Cylon attack on Caprica. I should have…”

“It’s not that.”

Kara raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. “It’s not?”

“Well, it is a little,” Boxey corrected himself. “But I’m not the only one.
Millions and millions of people died, and the ones who didn’t, almost no whole
families made it. So I’ve got lots of, you know, company in trying to deal with
all that.”

“Then what…?” Kara was still confused, and then she saw Lee mouth a name
to her that she instantly recognized. “Oh.”

Baltar had also worked it out, but he was less subtle than Lee. “You’re
referring to Sharon Valerii,” he said.

Boxey nodded. “Do you ever get creeped out about it?” he asked Baltar.

“‘Creeped out’?”

“Well, she piloted the ship that brought the both of us off Caprica.”

“Ah, yes. You know… since then, there’s been so much going on, I haven’t
had the opportunity to give it much thought.”

“Wish I could say that,” said Boxey. He had completely forgotten about the
deck that was in front of him, even though it was his turn to shuffle.
“Sometimes I have dreams about her. I see her there, and she’s at the helm of
the ship, and suddenly she goes nuts like she did on Adama. Except in my dream,
she doesn’t shoot anyone. Instead she pilots the ship down, straight into the
planet. And we die. Or at least we’re going to die, except I wake up at the last
second.”

“Oh, thank the gods for that. Can we play cards?” Baltar said irritably.

Starbuck said, “Shut up, Gaius,” silencing the vice president. “Boxey, you’ve
got to remember something: The Sharon Valerii who flew that ship from Caprica
and saved you, the one who shot Adama… she’s gone.”

“I know. She was shot and killed. Except she’s in a cell, isn’t she?”