Jilleen Adel Simmons (absolutelysheba) wrote in kobols_legacies, @ 2008-01-07 23:29:00 |
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Current location: | Avalon |
Entry tags: | (c) jake mackenzie, (c) jilleen simmons, (l) avalon |
Rest Stop
It had been nearly 48 hours since the last engagement with the Cylons, and the crew aboard the Avalon had been very busy in its wake. Jilleen had been busy seeing that the Destroyer Brownlee got what it needed to bring it back to combat readiness, and had spent some time there. It had been a mess aboard that ship, it had suffered some significant damage, but nothing that was not fixable. It was the lives lost that were not replaceable.
After checking with her department and seeing that everything was in order, especially that the sign out logs for classified documents was maintained by the new acting Provost Marshal, Jilleen decided to pay her friend a visit. She had first dropped by her own quarters to relieve herself of her side arm and to take one of her green pills.
Outside of Jake's quarters at the mechanical hatch, Jilleen knocked on the metal frame of the door.
Jake was at his desk catching up on paperwork that had gone by the wayside during the past two days. The Colonel was feeling rather frazzled, having managed to get only about six hours sleep total since the knife fight with the Cylons as he dealt with the needs of the strike group and the civilian fleet as well. As the Admiral's Chief of Staff he was always in demand from a politician or ship captain trying to get face time with her, and the ones that had a legitimate reason often got to talk to him instead, while the ones who didn't were simply referred a lower level officer or refused outright.
The knock on the hatch startled him and he realized he'd been staring at the same page for the last ten minutes. Time to stop and take a break.
He buttoned up his tunic and got up from his chair to open the hatch, see who it was and what they wanted.
The thin metal hatched opened. "Hey, Jake," greeted Jilleen with a smile. "I thought I'd drop by and waste some of your precious time."
Jake snorted and moved to one side for her to enter the stateroom. "Come on in, I needed a break anyway." The hatch closed after her and he leaned against the bulkhead, watching her.
"So for what do I owe the honor of your presence for today?" He asked, smirking. It wasn't everyday that Jilleen knocked on his hatch.
Jilleen walked to his bunk and turned round to face him. "I had to get away, before I lost my mind completely and forget that I'm human." She sat down on his made bunk with no agenda in mind. "I'm tired of being called sir or major, I would like someone to say my name." She pouted.
"I think I changed my legal name to 'Colonel' about a year ago," Jake said with a chuckle as he collapsed in a seemingly boneless heap onto his couch. "It's the nature of the beast Jill, Jilleen, Jilly bean." He waved a hand lazily in apology at the last nickname, one he knew she hated. "Sorry."
Instead of being crossed for the last comment, she laughed it off. "I had not heard someone call me that in...its actually been years." Her brother used to call her by that name when he was teasing. "Wished Robby had not taught you that." She sighed, as she really wished that her brother Robert was still alive.
"Don't you keep any of the mechanic's brew in here somewhere?" It was not officially sanctioned by the those in command, but it was not entirely discouraged as long as it did not make people blind. "Or anything better perhaps?"
"I might have a bottle of ambrosia in here somewhere," Jake muttered, dragging himself off the couch and shuffling over to his filing cabinet. Normally he drank over at Josiah's or over at Shangri-La on those (rare) occasions he was able to take some time off.
He ruffled through the cabinet and removed a half empty bottle of ambrosia along with a pair of glasses. "You'll have to take it neat."
"I'm a big girl," she said looking up at Jake.
"That's for sure," Jake muttered under his breath and filled the two glasses, handing one to Jilleen and keeping the other for himself. He moved back to the couch and placed the bottle on the floor nearby.
"So how bad was Brownlee? I read the damage reports but its not the same thing as seeing it with your own eyes." He took a sip and waited for her response.
Jilleen had already taken sip from her glass before Jake had returned to his couch. With the short glass in her hand, "The crew is taking it well as can be expected, but I afraid its going to be a long time before they are back to one hundred percent. They really need to be docked to do a proper job," she lifted on leg up onto the bunk with her boot hanging over the side and shifted to lean against the head rest. "I got engineering to look at some kind of temporary docking with a battlestar to do the work."
"If we're going to do that we might as well have them dock with one of the larger industrial ships, most of the materials are going to be manufactured there anyway." Jake pointed out, "I'll raise the issue with the Admiral and see if we can't look into that. I'm sure some of the civilians would be happy to work on the repairs, if the price is right."
"If the price is right? We should charge them for the protection we provide. Gods know we paid that in blood," said Jillleen. She had been on Brownlee to conduct a personal inspection to see the damage for herself and if the destroyer could be combat effective once again. Numbers and names on a piece of paper was not enough to make a judgement, she had to see the crew and gage the resolve they had to get back on their feet again after the near tragedy to their ship and crew. She had seen the body bags lined up inside the destroyer's hanger bay. The dead had a duty, they did not ask for payment. It was almost insulting that they would have to name the right price for the civvies to do the work.
"We do charge them, technically," Jake corrected her. "We have a budget and we draw pay, as insane as that sounds. What we do is our duty, our sworn oath." He didn't want to sound preachy or overbearing, Jilleen had a right to be upset, but the point still needed to be made. "If you want them to fall down and kiss our feet for serving then you're in it for the wrong reasons."
She took a slow sip from her glass as she looked at Jake, who had lived his entire life in the military. She shifted again on his bunk and sat again at the edge of it. "You know me, Jake. I joined because I thought the uniform was cool," she smirked. "You amaze me, you know that. I don't know how you can see it. Is everything to you always black and white?"
"Not everything," Jake allowed. "You've got to understand Jill, I have the military in my blood. My ancestors have been in the Naval Service in one form or another for centuries, and I'm third generation Colonial Fleet. The concepts of Duty, Honor, and Service were passed to me practically with mother's milk. The Mackenzies have seen it all when it comes to Military-Civilian relations, I like to think of myself as a pragmatist in that area."
He took a sip of his drink and leaned forward, warming to the topic. "Most civilians, even now, just don't really think about it. We've always been here and we always will be, just like gravity on a planet. Some of them do care and make a point of letting us know, others think we're the devil who brought the Cylons down on them by our 'aggressiveness', but the bulk of them just don't think about it."
"If it takes a little extra play money to get some roughnecks to help us get the repairs done faster then I say make it happen. It won't hurt anything and everybody gets what they want."
"Its still stupid I think," she moved her hand to sweep back loose strain of hair from her face. "Oh well, it really doesn't matter, everyone can go on pretending or else we will all go mad thinking about it." She moved to lay back in the bunk with her head on the pillow but with her glass in hand resting on her chest. "I get tired of it to tell you the truth." Her eyes stared up to the ceiling. "I simply don't want to care anymore." The fatigue of systems on the ships was one thing, but fatigue as a result of the constant strain of the war had been creeping in on many of those inside the ships.
"Don't you ever want to not care, Jake?" she asked with her eyes back on him.
"Yes," he said simply, closing his eyes and leaning back on the couch until his head rested on the bulkhead behind it. "I don't want to care about the Civilians, I don't want to care about the Strike Group or what others think of me as an officer. But I do. And as long as I do, I'll continue to do my duty as I understand it." Aside from the friendships he'd developed on this ship all he really had was duty.
"Ah the burden of a conscious," she snickered. She had to laugh because she had been struggling with her own conscious for years now since leaving the Colonies. Too many difficult and moral decisions about those they had to leave behind. "You only can suppress it for so long till it bites you on the butt, when you least expect it." She placed the glass to her lips and took more than sip to finish what remained.
Jake shrugged. "It's just the exhaustion talking here, I think the longest stretch of sleep I've had since the last attack is two hours at a time. Catch me after a full night and I'll probably be so optimistic its sickening." The Colonel shifted so that he was lying down on the couch and opened his eyes to look at Jilleen. "You had a harder time of it than most of us, those first few months. I don't think I could have done what you did." He knew he wouldn't have. Instead the first time they landed on the Colonies he'd take whatever marines volunteered and fought a guerrilla campaign until he either died of radiation poisoning or the Cylons killed him. "How you're still functional I'll never know, sterner stuff than me I guess."
Her had already been closed when he finished. "I miss her..."she mumbled. Her empty glass fell away from her chest onto the bunk as the exhaustion of the past two days overwhelmed her. Jilleen felt safe to fall asleep there in Jake's cabin. Her own cabin that she shared with two others would be empty as her room mates were on duty. At least here she would not be alone, though it had not been her intention to sleep. Jake was the husband of her closest friend, who she missed dearly. Bridget had been her support when she was down, and understood her like no other. Besides Jake being her friend, Bridget had been like her sister, and that made Jake family.
Jake's own eyes had slid shut again, he'd been halfway asleep at his desk when Jill showed up at his hatch and it was getting harder to stay awake. One eyelid opened partway to see his oldest surviving friend sound asleep in his bunk and he snorted. "I ought to make you get up," he told her sleeping form, but he knew she'd been having a hard time lately. It wouldn't do any harm to let her get an hour or two's nap in.
The idea sounded pretty good, actually, and Jake rolled over so that he was facing the back of the couch before closing his eyes and letting sleep claim him.