Adia Costas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chiron_survivor) wrote2017-10-17 05:10 pm
chiron_survivor) wrote2017-10-17 05:10 pm
Entry tags:
Finale.
Galactica jumps to the enemy Cylon base, and is immediately besieged by Vipers.
The old battleship releases its raptors to draw away enemy fire, then uses itself as a battering ram, slamming into the base and breaching its segmented hull. Galactica sustains some damage, but it’s all part of the plan: gain access to the base so that a team of solders can get inside and find Hera.
Unfortunately, the Cylons have a similar idea.
~*~
Adia is not privy to the plan. The only warning she gets is an announcement to brace for impact, quickly followed by a powerful tremor that jostles her around. She tries not to worry about what that means for Galactica or its crew, concentrating instead on getting the medical bay back in order.
For a long time, it is quiet, and she dares to hope that the mission is a success.
Then the injured start trickling in. Gunshot wounds, mostly. Some burns and shrapnel damage from explosives. Entire platoons of Centurions have boarded Galactica, taking advantage of the hull breach, and are descending upon Central Command.
The injured keep coming. Adia works as efficiently as she can. Some injuries she can treat, others only Laura has the skill and experience to handle. Whenever her resolve flags, she thinks of her friends and their messages of confidence. They believe in her. She can do this.
She thinks of the PINpoint in her pocket and keeps going.
~*~
She’s helping Laura with a bullet extraction when gunfire erupts just outside the medical bay doors.
A Centurion staggers in and Adia stops breathing, paralyzed with fear, until she notices the red handprint on its shiny metal chest, identifying it as one of the rebels.
“Go see what it wants,” Laura says, not bothering to look up from her steady forceps work.
Adia pulls off her bloody gloves and tosses them into the hazmat bin before approaching the Cylon. It’s leaning heavily against the doorframe, scorch marks on half of its body, its left arm hanging limply against its side. She stares up at its “eye”, a small red light that travels ceaselessly from one end of its visor to the other.
She’s never spoken to a Centurion before. Will it even understand her? “C-can I help you?” she asks nervously, gaze dropping to the guns built into ports above its wrists.
The Centurion looms over her, drawing itself up to its full, seven foot height. It points to the corridor with its good arm.
Hazarding a peek outside, she quickly understands the trouble. There is another Centurion on the ground, dead from the looks of it. There is no handprint on its chest. Nearby is a human soldier, bloodied and unconscious. Quickly, she rushes to him, assesses that he’s safe to move, and then drags him into the medical bay. By the time she’s done treating him, she has another bloody pair of gloves to throw away, but she’s confident that he’ll survive.
The Centurion is still there. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it seems almost pensive as it looks from the injured soldier to her and back again.
“He’ll be all right,” she says. She manages a smile, despite her unease. “Superficial head wounds always look worse than they actually are.”
The Centurion nods and relaxes its shoulders. Then it points to the corridor again.
“There are more injured?”
The Centurion nods and gestures to its bad arm. It couldn’t carry anybody else.
She sneaks a look at Laura, who is busy trying to keep her patient from bleeding out. She doesn’t hear any gunfire coming from further down the corridor. In fact, for the first time since they arrived, she doesn’t hear anything.
“Go ahead,” Laura shouts. “But be quick about it!”
She grabs a first aid kit and gives the Centurion a determined nod. “Take me to them.”
~*~
The Centurion doesn’t take her far, just to the end of the corridor and around the corner where another soldier is lying in a pool of his own blood. He is conscious, but in a lot of pain, and it takes as much work to calm him as it does to treat the worst of his injuries.
“I’m not going to be able to carry him back,” she tells the Centurion, who is standing guard over them both. “Can you stay here while I go get a stretcher?”
The Centurion bobs its head. She leaves it with the first aid kit and hustles back to the medical bay.
She’s almost to its doors when the ground lurches suddenly, throwing her off her feet.
The entire ship is shaking. She feels the vibration in her chest, in her teeth. She feels it in her hands as she uses the wall to steady herself and get back on her feet. She looks out the nearest porthole, desperate to learn what’s causing a ship this massive to shudder and bob as if it were a tiny shuttlecraft caught in a solar wind.
Lucky her, she gets a perfect view to the carnage. One of the Raptors had launched a nuclear missile into the side of the Cylon base, sending it careening towards the black hole it had been hovering over as a strategic defense.
And it was taking Galactica with it.
Hands shaking nearly as badly as the ship, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her PINpoint. She needs to get back to the Fleet. Galactica is a lost cause, but she can still tell whomever was left in charge about the Nexus. She can still protect the civilians. At the very least, she can find Seth and Maggie and baby Jason and get them to safety.
Nothing happens when she presses the emergency button. The screen is dead. Her PINpoint is dead.
She looks up and watches in horror as the base breaks apart. Pieces fall into the event horizon, crushed by the inexorable pull of gravity. The last Cylon colony, gone.
No more Caspar.
They say that there are no atheists in foxholes. The same could be said for black holes, too, because for the first time in a long while, Adia bows her head and begins to pray.
She prays to Zeus, Persephone, and all the others. She even prays to the Cylons’ god. She doesn’t bother with the prayers of the Sacred Scrolls. She keeps it short and simple.
“Please,” she whispers, eyes squeezed shut. “Please, please, please.”
Galactica stops shaking.
She cracks open one eye, then the other, and hazards a peek out the porthole. The black hole is gone, replaced with a small cratered moon.
Her PINpoint’s screen lights up. New location detected. Reset coordinates y/n?
Galactica must have jumped at the last moment. They’re orbiting a moon… but what’s the moon orbiting?
In the round frame of the porthole, a planet comes into view. It is blue and green — more blue than green — and white with ice at the poles. She traces the edge of the continents with her gaze and wonders why it looks so familiar.
The answer comes to her suddenly, like a vision. She’s seen this planet before. On her friend Josh’s phone. On the Nexus terminal. In the Nexus library.
It’s Earth.
Her Nexus friends’ Earth.
~*~
She gets the stretcher. In her absence, the Centurion attempted to put more gauze on the soldier’s wounds, which caused the soldier to panic all over again. “You tried,” she reassures the robot, who seems downtrodden about it. Together, they get the unhappy soldier on the stretcher and to the medical bay.
“There you are.” Laura takes over the stretcher. “Captain Agathon’s asking for you.”
She spots the Captain on one of the exam tables, his leg in a splint. “I got shot,” he explains, when she rushes over. “Laura already took a look at me. I’ll be okay.”
“And Hera?”
The broad smile on his face is all the reassurance she needs. “We got her. She’s fine.” He tries to sit up but grimaces at the strain. “We found a habitable planet, too. It looks promising.”
She bites the inside of her lip to keep from blurting out anything ridiculous. “Do you know how we found it?” she asks instead. “How did Command come up with the coordinates?”
Giving up on sitting, he leans back again and sighs. “It’s a long, strange story. I’m not sure if you’d believe me.”
She bursts into giddy laughter. She can’t help it. “You know what, Karl? Right now, I think I’d believe just about anything.”
The old battleship releases its raptors to draw away enemy fire, then uses itself as a battering ram, slamming into the base and breaching its segmented hull. Galactica sustains some damage, but it’s all part of the plan: gain access to the base so that a team of solders can get inside and find Hera.
Unfortunately, the Cylons have a similar idea.
~*~
Adia is not privy to the plan. The only warning she gets is an announcement to brace for impact, quickly followed by a powerful tremor that jostles her around. She tries not to worry about what that means for Galactica or its crew, concentrating instead on getting the medical bay back in order.
For a long time, it is quiet, and she dares to hope that the mission is a success.
Then the injured start trickling in. Gunshot wounds, mostly. Some burns and shrapnel damage from explosives. Entire platoons of Centurions have boarded Galactica, taking advantage of the hull breach, and are descending upon Central Command.
The injured keep coming. Adia works as efficiently as she can. Some injuries she can treat, others only Laura has the skill and experience to handle. Whenever her resolve flags, she thinks of her friends and their messages of confidence. They believe in her. She can do this.
She thinks of the PINpoint in her pocket and keeps going.
~*~
She’s helping Laura with a bullet extraction when gunfire erupts just outside the medical bay doors.
A Centurion staggers in and Adia stops breathing, paralyzed with fear, until she notices the red handprint on its shiny metal chest, identifying it as one of the rebels.
“Go see what it wants,” Laura says, not bothering to look up from her steady forceps work.
Adia pulls off her bloody gloves and tosses them into the hazmat bin before approaching the Cylon. It’s leaning heavily against the doorframe, scorch marks on half of its body, its left arm hanging limply against its side. She stares up at its “eye”, a small red light that travels ceaselessly from one end of its visor to the other.
She’s never spoken to a Centurion before. Will it even understand her? “C-can I help you?” she asks nervously, gaze dropping to the guns built into ports above its wrists.
The Centurion looms over her, drawing itself up to its full, seven foot height. It points to the corridor with its good arm.
Hazarding a peek outside, she quickly understands the trouble. There is another Centurion on the ground, dead from the looks of it. There is no handprint on its chest. Nearby is a human soldier, bloodied and unconscious. Quickly, she rushes to him, assesses that he’s safe to move, and then drags him into the medical bay. By the time she’s done treating him, she has another bloody pair of gloves to throw away, but she’s confident that he’ll survive.
The Centurion is still there. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it seems almost pensive as it looks from the injured soldier to her and back again.
“He’ll be all right,” she says. She manages a smile, despite her unease. “Superficial head wounds always look worse than they actually are.”
The Centurion nods and relaxes its shoulders. Then it points to the corridor again.
“There are more injured?”
The Centurion nods and gestures to its bad arm. It couldn’t carry anybody else.
She sneaks a look at Laura, who is busy trying to keep her patient from bleeding out. She doesn’t hear any gunfire coming from further down the corridor. In fact, for the first time since they arrived, she doesn’t hear anything.
“Go ahead,” Laura shouts. “But be quick about it!”
She grabs a first aid kit and gives the Centurion a determined nod. “Take me to them.”
~*~
The Centurion doesn’t take her far, just to the end of the corridor and around the corner where another soldier is lying in a pool of his own blood. He is conscious, but in a lot of pain, and it takes as much work to calm him as it does to treat the worst of his injuries.
“I’m not going to be able to carry him back,” she tells the Centurion, who is standing guard over them both. “Can you stay here while I go get a stretcher?”
The Centurion bobs its head. She leaves it with the first aid kit and hustles back to the medical bay.
She’s almost to its doors when the ground lurches suddenly, throwing her off her feet.
The entire ship is shaking. She feels the vibration in her chest, in her teeth. She feels it in her hands as she uses the wall to steady herself and get back on her feet. She looks out the nearest porthole, desperate to learn what’s causing a ship this massive to shudder and bob as if it were a tiny shuttlecraft caught in a solar wind.
Lucky her, she gets a perfect view to the carnage. One of the Raptors had launched a nuclear missile into the side of the Cylon base, sending it careening towards the black hole it had been hovering over as a strategic defense.
And it was taking Galactica with it.
Hands shaking nearly as badly as the ship, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her PINpoint. She needs to get back to the Fleet. Galactica is a lost cause, but she can still tell whomever was left in charge about the Nexus. She can still protect the civilians. At the very least, she can find Seth and Maggie and baby Jason and get them to safety.
Nothing happens when she presses the emergency button. The screen is dead. Her PINpoint is dead.
She looks up and watches in horror as the base breaks apart. Pieces fall into the event horizon, crushed by the inexorable pull of gravity. The last Cylon colony, gone.
No more Caspar.
They say that there are no atheists in foxholes. The same could be said for black holes, too, because for the first time in a long while, Adia bows her head and begins to pray.
She prays to Zeus, Persephone, and all the others. She even prays to the Cylons’ god. She doesn’t bother with the prayers of the Sacred Scrolls. She keeps it short and simple.
“Please,” she whispers, eyes squeezed shut. “Please, please, please.”
Galactica stops shaking.
She cracks open one eye, then the other, and hazards a peek out the porthole. The black hole is gone, replaced with a small cratered moon.
Her PINpoint’s screen lights up. New location detected. Reset coordinates y/n?
Galactica must have jumped at the last moment. They’re orbiting a moon… but what’s the moon orbiting?
In the round frame of the porthole, a planet comes into view. It is blue and green — more blue than green — and white with ice at the poles. She traces the edge of the continents with her gaze and wonders why it looks so familiar.
The answer comes to her suddenly, like a vision. She’s seen this planet before. On her friend Josh’s phone. On the Nexus terminal. In the Nexus library.
It’s Earth.
Her Nexus friends’ Earth.
~*~
She gets the stretcher. In her absence, the Centurion attempted to put more gauze on the soldier’s wounds, which caused the soldier to panic all over again. “You tried,” she reassures the robot, who seems downtrodden about it. Together, they get the unhappy soldier on the stretcher and to the medical bay.
“There you are.” Laura takes over the stretcher. “Captain Agathon’s asking for you.”
She spots the Captain on one of the exam tables, his leg in a splint. “I got shot,” he explains, when she rushes over. “Laura already took a look at me. I’ll be okay.”
“And Hera?”
The broad smile on his face is all the reassurance she needs. “We got her. She’s fine.” He tries to sit up but grimaces at the strain. “We found a habitable planet, too. It looks promising.”
She bites the inside of her lip to keep from blurting out anything ridiculous. “Do you know how we found it?” she asks instead. “How did Command come up with the coordinates?”
Giving up on sitting, he leans back again and sighs. “It’s a long, strange story. I’m not sure if you’d believe me.”
She bursts into giddy laughter. She can’t help it. “You know what, Karl? Right now, I think I’d believe just about anything.”