"Got a bird full o' civvies and we're comin' home. Raptor four requesting docking vectors."
There was a moment of wireless silence, and Rosie glanced over her shoulder at the ECO to the aft. "Careful, Zero, watch that yaw, we're gonna bang up the Admiral's pretty battlestar if you keep us on this course."
"Hey Cupcake, why don't you shut the frak up an' lemme fly?"
Lt. JC Rosie Shayl glanced back at Luke coolly. "Jus' be glad I'm lettin' you fly at all. MacKenzie'd drop dead an' I'd have four more years o' JC t'look forward to if anyone knew I was puttin' the lives of a bunch of civilians in th'hands of a gods-damned navigator."
One of said civilians gave Rosie a shocked look, which she returned with a sarcastic look of surprise of her own, and the wireless again crackled to life.
"Raptor four, maintain your present course and await instructions," said the voice on the other end, not immediately recognizable, but who knew who they were training for operations control these days.
"Copy that," she replied, and turned back to Zero. "Why don't they just clear us? Floating out here is making me nervous. I'm taking the controls back now."
The ECO actually pouted a little, but otherwise gave no sign of insubordination. Technically, he outranked Rosie, but on the Raptor the pilot's word was law.
Rosie took the yoke, but there was little need, they were vectoring toward the starboard side of the battlestar, and there was still plenty of space still to adjust course when it was needed. Time passed in silence, both actual and wireless, and the Raptor continued along. It took a few minutes for Rosie to realize they were too close to pull into the docking bay.
"What the frak?" she murmured, and pressed the transmit button. "Vulcan, this is Raptor four requesting docking vectors. Vulcan, do you read?" Nothing. "Vulcan?"
Rosie glanced back at Zero over her shoulder again. "Are they trying to make us ram the ship or something?!?" she asked incredulously, but the words had scarcely left her lips when the Raptor was jarred viciously to port. A sound like a wooden spoon being banged against an empty soup tureen echoed in her ears, and it took a half a second before her brain could link up efficiently enough to connect the dots. "Holy frak! We're hit!" Rosie cried, and immediately began flipping switches.
"Hey, what in Gods' names is going on?" yelled someone behind her, but she barely heard it.
"Zero! Run emergency checklist four-niner-alpha!" The yaw, ironically enough, was now completely out of control. Rosie pulled hard on the yoke, and prayed to each of the Lords of Kobol in turn that the Raptor didn't stall. Amazingly, it obeyed her and instead of entering a tailspin flipped nose over tail and completely inverted she started back toward Aerelon.
Around the blue and green planet, fierce-looking Cylon raiders swam into view. "Frak!" Cupcake muttered under her breath and pushed up the sliders, loosing more fuel into the Raptor's engines. "Zero, run emergency checklist four-niner-alpha! Zero!"
"Uh, sir, I don't think he's movin'," came a timid voice from behind her. She spun in her seat to see some ROTC brat unstrapping himself, presumably to check Luke's vitals.
"Sit the frak down, kid!" Cupcake shouted over her shoulder. A few long moments passed. No checklist, no ECO, nothing that made any sense was available to her. The pilot yanked the yoke and the Raptor went hard to port. She glanced back again, Luke's head was lolling uselessly and what looked to be quite a good deal of blood decorated the front of his coverall.
"Y'know, on second thought, kid, are you Raptor qualified?" Fat chance, he looked to be all of nineteen years old.
"No sir."
"Well, congratulations, you are now. Get that officer out of his seat and take the yoke. I've gotta plot this jump."
The mission on Aerelon hadn't been her first. She'd run several recon missions, and several evacuations. Not secretly, she'd been hoping for a promotion. She'd been hoping for recognition. She'd been hoping for her very own Viper, one stenciled with her callsign and prepared lovingly by Specialists for her runs against the Cylons. What she'd gotten was mission after mission with Zero, aptly dubbed as far as she'd been concerned, as the ECO couldn't seem to make much of anything, including himself. She wrenched her eyes away from his broken body and onto her monitor as the kid lifted Luke laboriously and strapped him into a jumpseat.
Rosie didn't stop to think about what was going on, she couldn't, she opened up her charts, placed coordinates carefully, didn't once let her brain drift to the bloody reality. She could hear crying somewhere behind her, she could hear an engine banging, she could hear the emptiness of space pressing down on her from every direction, and she was blindingly, stupefyingly afraid.
The kid was handling the Raptor surprisingly decently. Must play a lot of flight simulators, Rosie thought blandly as she set to work punching in the emergency jump coordinates. This had to qualify as an emergency. The Avalon would be waiting on the other side, and they'd come back with Vipers and nukes and blast the hell out of the Cylons and get everyone off the ship. They'd fix the Vulcan back up again. And Luke, poor Luke, he'd be just fine, and Rosie would let him fly the stupid Raptor as often as he wanted. It wasn't like she felt any kind of attachment to the thing, anyway. Right now, all she wanted was for this mission to be over.
"Alright everyone, prepare to jump! We're in countdown phase now." She glanced back at the child in Luke's seat. "You got a good handle on this? I only need you to hang on another couple seconds."
The boy nodded dumbly.
Rosie frowned, but softened slightly. "What's your name, kid?"
"Marius, sir."
"Well, Cadet Marius, welcome to the Coloniol Fleet." Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a light flashed on the monitor, indicating that the FTL drive was powered up and that they could make their jump. "Anyone who believes in the Gods, feel free to pray right now," Rosie declared as she engaged the FTL drive and the Raptor lurched sickeningly.
Something crashed behind her, and the aircraft started to spin. The good thing about a spin in space was that unlike atmosphere, there was no ground to hit. The bad thing was that it could keep going forever, and an eternity of five g's was one of the most unpleasant ways to spend the rest of her life that Rosie could possibly think of. She threw up all the flaps, about two of which obeyed her, and pulled both aelirons into raised position.
"S'cuse me, sir," shouted Marius, his eyes squinted to slits, quite obviously fighting back nausea. A couple of other passengers had already thrown up on the floor of the craft and one had lost consciousness. "I don't mean to presume, but if my knowledge of physics is correct, the best way out of this spin's if you roll starboard and then..." he paused, swallowed, "try an' restart the aft engine."
She wasn't going to bother asking the kid where he learned all of this crap, because right now it was more than what she had. She lowered the starboard aeliron and the Raptor pitched accordingly. It took about five barrel-rolls before the momentum caused the spin to stop, and Rosie flattened the Raptor, pitching forward and smashing her chin on the control panel in front her in the process.
Complete silence pressed in from all sides. Stunned, Cupcake finally looked around the cabin. Marius was wide-eyed, still gripping the yoke with white-knuckled tenacity. Vomit was splashed in wide puddles over the floor. A pair of civilians were slumped over each other, either unconscious or dead, another was just coming to. Absurdly, the first thought that crept into the pilot's head was that she was proud she hadn't thrown up all over herself. The second was not a thought, it was a pressing in her sinuses that signalled that she was about to cry. And cry she did, bent over her control panel, great wracking sobs that shook her entire body from the inside out. No one else spoke, and only a few sniffled. Perhaps they were simply so shocked to see an officer, even one as young and green as Rosie, so completely vulnerable in such a setting. It was inconsequential, though, because for a few long moments, Lt. JC Rosemarie Shayl was completely oblivious to the presence of anyone else.
After what seemed like an eternity, Rosie was interrupted by the wireless crackling to life. "Unidentified Raptor, provide authentication codes."
Shocked, Rosie looked up to see the Battlestar ahead of her, huge and beautiful in the blackness of space. She entered her authentication codes with a trembling hand, not replying on the wireless simply because she didn't trust her own voice.
A few long moments passed, before the same calming voice spoke to her again. "Cupcake, this is Battlestar Avalon. Do you think you can bring her in? We can send a team out to you if you need to dump."
She barely even heard herself, it was another voice, one far away and foreign. "I...I think so. Get me my vectors."
"You're going to have to bring her in manually, Cupcake. We've got visual on you now, and you're pretty well junked, there's no way your autopilot's functioning at all." A beat. "Honestly, we're pretty surprised you've even got wireless. We'll guide you in."
The next few moments were as a dream. The Raptor shook violently every time she juiced the engines past about 15%, so it was slow going. She came in hard, not surprisingly, and the hatch had to be pried open by deck specialists. Rosie herself went into autopilot, stumbled out of the Raptor with glassy eyes and shaky legs. She barely noticed when Marius stepped up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.
"Hey," said the kid, "You were fine. No one would have done anything differently, you know?"
Rosie looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a pathetic attempt at a smile. "If you hadn't been there, we'd still be spinning out there."
He shrugged. "Nah, you'd have figured it out. I'm pretty sure I read that trick on a Raptor Emergency Ops checklist."
Cupcake laughed mirthlessly and shook her head. She knew damn well that she wouldn't have run any checklists or suddenly remembered something she'd read a couple of years ago when she'd been essentially forced to learn Raptor. "Either way, there'd definitely have been a lot more vomit in that cabin." They headed for the aft bulkhead, just trying to get out of the way so that the critically injured could get the attention they needed. "You wanna be a pilot, kid? I'll nominate you for fast-track flight training if you want."
The relative calm was surreal. Sure, there were people running across the deck like it was the end of the world (no wait, too late for that, Cupcake thought grimly) but compared with the spinning and clattering Raptor it was positively tranquil.
"You know, no thanks," laughed Marius and slumped against the bulkhead. "I thought I wanted that...to be a pilot that is...but I think it's a bit more excitement than I like. If you don't mind, could you put in a good word with the deck chief though? I wouldn't mind working on your Raptor."
Rosie giggled a little, and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I doubt he'd listen to me," she replied, "but sure. I'll talk you up."
"Thanks, Cupcake," Marius replied. "Hey, I feel weird asking this after what we survived, but what's your name?"
"It's Rosie," she laughed. "Rosemarie, actually. Rosemarie Shayl."
"Alright. Well, thanks for getting me off that rock, Rosie Shayl."
She smiled. "Thanks for getting me out of that spin, Mr. Marius."
He laughed as he took a few reticent steps away. "It's Bobby."