Pit Stop
Still a bit upset at the ambush she'd received on Derrick's show, Dani left Shangri-La's communications offices with two hours to kill before the next scheduled transport back to Avalon.
The long walk earlier from the hanger deck of the massive ship to the communications office had taken more out of her than she wanted to admit, so the last thing the young woman wanted to do was walk around and sightsee on the luxury liner. Even if she'd had the energy and inclination, she'd just be gawked at by strangers surprised to see someone in her condition wearing the uniform of a Colonial Fleet officer.
With those thoughts in mind it was an easy call to wind up at one of the many bars on the ship, one with a view of the central environmental dome and the gardens it contained. It would help pass the time and let her rest until she had to make the trip back to the hanger deck. She might even get something to eat while she was there.
Bethany patted the young girl on the shoulder and held her hand as the medic checked the dressing. "No, you won't finish your shift, you will go on back to your quarters and rest up, sweetie, we can get by tonight." She finally convinced the young girl she wouldn't be losing her job over it and the young attentive medic quickly agreed to escorting her back to her room at Bethany's suggestion.
By this time the broken glass had been cleaned up and things were back to normal, diners back to eating and chatting and staff already taking on the other tables. It wasn't a busy night but Bethany decided she would stay and help out if it did pick up. The staff were a little jumpy, broken glass now meaning that was one less they had to use. It was things like that that had become harder to source and she was already hunting around for someone who had the know-how to blow glass and find out what it would take in the way of raw materials to get it done.
When she came back out to the dining room she cast an eye across the floor and saw a very pregnant woman sitting at one of the tables. Her eyes lit up and she made her way across there. "Dani, it's good to see you! It's been too long!" she told her, leaning down to press a kiss of greeting to both cheeks as was her custom.
Dani's mind had been a million miles away and was visibly startled to hear her name called out. She looked up and over in the direction of the voice and her own face broke out in a smile. "Ani!"
She hadn't seen the other woman since the last time she'd been on Shangri-La, though she'd seen Anika a few weeks earlier when Bethany's twin had been on a supply run to Avalon and popped up to visit her. The young woman reached up and hugged her friend. "It has been far too long, but I don't get around much anymore. This," she gestured at her stomach, "is getting a little large for me to be a fleet traveler. If we hadn't needed to put the word out about vacancies I probably wouldn't have come over at all." It was likely her last trip to Shangri-La before the twins were born.
Dani gestured for the other woman to sit down on the other side of the table. "How have you been? I hear about you from Niki but it's not the same thing."
With a quick supervisory glance across the room Bethany sat down at the table, turning her attention on her friend. "I'm fine. And yes, I'm not surprised! Niki's been keeping me up to date on what's going on with you," she told her, "and I heard you on the broadcast. He really didn't give you much of a chance to speak though did he? Had his own agenda from the sounds of it."
"No," Dan said sourly, "he didn't give me much time. I was supposed to have the entire segment to talk up service and instead we spend most of the time talking about how people can't bring their families to live on the battlestars or how we women need to be protected so we can be breeding stock and stay barefoot and pregnant." To be fair that wasn't exactly what Derrick had said, but Dani wasn't feeling particularly charitable at the moment toward the politician. It still irritated her, and she was expecting Major Simmons to read her the riot act for letting him deviate from the script, like she had a choice.
Even if he had agreed to do the follow up interview on the ship itself and try to get the Fleet Gazette to do an article on life in the Colonial Fleet three years on.
"I'd hoped to get a little something to eat, Ani." She told her friend, changing the subject. "The raptor from Avalon won't be back for a while yet, they had some other stops to make. Think you can help me out? I don't have room for a big meal anymore, but a high protein snack would be wonderful." She had a menu on the table but the server hadn't come by yet and Dani trusted Bethany to know what would be good.
"Of course darling, I'll get Jean Claude to fix you something immediately," she told her friend reassuringly, signaling to one of the waiters. He nodded and disappeared toward the kitchen with Bethany's instructions. "There, food organized and something to quench the thirst too!" She looked across at Dani and studied her openly. "So tell me how things are going over on Avalon? You're looking a little tired to me, you're not trying to keep doing what you've always been able to do now are you?" she asked, concerned for her friend. "And tell me how Rhys is going?"
"I haven't been able to do what I've always been able to since I got pregnant," Dani said a bit glumly. She loved to fly, and not being able to join her squadmates the past few months had been more than difficult. "I haven't been inside a Viper in over three months." Dani glanced down at her stomach, "not that I'd be able to fit inside one now." The mental image of her trying to squeeze herself inside the cockpit and then reach around her belly to try to grab hold of the control stick made her snort in amusement.
She sighed and looked back up at the other woman, a little teary eyed. "I am tired. Things have been so crazy lately even before the Cylons attacked the other day. I thought the doc was nuts when she told me I could go on leave as early as twenty weeks, I didn't think it would be so difficult. Now at twenty two weeks I can't imagine trying to work much longer, its just too hard." The doctor hadn't been exaggerating, Dani knew that now. If anything the woman had underestimated the strain.
"Then I had to just sit there, all alone, when the Cylons attacked." She did sniffle that time, it had been a terrifying experience just sitting there in quarters listening to the sounds of the point defense guns blazing away and then the explosions as missiles slipped through to impact on the hull. "Everyone left to get to their stations and I'd have just been in the way and..." She shrugged, unable to continue, choking up.
"Hey there, come on," Bethany said supportively, flicking a serviette open and handing it over to Dani. She moved seats to shield Dani from any prying eyes in the restaurant. "Looks to me like you'll be going on leave none too soon!" she continued. "Honey, you're pregnant, and you need to let some others take care of that there battleship while you take care of the 'mothership'!" she said, half joking, half with a hint of admonishment. "Now I know you'd rather be flying, just like Niki, and it must be hard to not do what you're used to doing, but hey, you've got other things to be thinking about now. And they're pretty damned important too! Have you had a baby shower yet? And you've got make the most of getting plenty of rest too, because believe me, once your bundles of joy arrive? That'll be it for you and rest, according to my parents!" She offered a few examples of what she could remember her mother saying to her and Anika, feeling a small twinge of loss ta the memory and the fact she knew she would never see her mother again.
"I think I just made my decision today about going on leave," Dani sniffled, wiping her eyes with the serviette and trying to stop the waterworks. She was glad it happened here in a way, she didn't want to get Rhys upset or burst into tears in front of Captain Tarix. "I'd wanted to keep working as long as possible because I didn't know what I'd do with myself, but the past few days have just been so hard." It had been getting steadily more difficult, but it had been the fiasco with the classified document and then the Cylon attack that had kicked everything up a level and made working completely untenable.
"We haven't had a shower yet, Rhys and I just moved into family quarters a few days ago. I talked with the supply officer today about trying to find things for the quarters to soften them up and to get items we need for the babies." Truth be told Dani hadn't thought about a baby shower. Who would have anything to give these days?
"I don't know what I'm doing, or how to be a mom." She put her chin in her hands and looked over at Bethany. "I was raised in the temple, what do I know about being a mother?"
"And that's another reason to have a 'shower'!" Bethany replied as she patted Dani's hand. "I'll organize it, you'll get to meet some new friends, women who have been, or are mothers, and you leave it to me to sort out what you need for your quarters. I can't imagine too many battlestars carry supplies that'll be much use at all for bringing a baby into any world let alone this one!" she declared, only too well aware of the attitudes of the supplies masters of the various military craft. Funnily enough most of them had changed their attitudes over the past three years when it became obvious that there was more to life than fatigues, khaki and survival rations.
"So, you need to give me a list of the names of people you would like to have at the shower, and where they are and I'll take care of the rest! Oh, and a date," she said, keeping Dani's attention focused on this to help her gather herself. "And if you want I could organize for Rhys to have a 'Dad's Day' introduction!" she added with a grin and wink. "Let him hear from a few old hands what being a father is all about!"
"I'd like the women from my squadron to be on the list, along with Major Simmons and Captain Wade. Annika of course.." Dani reeled off the names. She wasn't sure if Captain Tarix would attend, but she wanted Dagger to know she was welcome as Dani considered her to be a friend. It was great of Bethany to volunteer for organizing the shower, Dani didn't have the first clue about how to put one of those on and it would be weird if she were doing it herself anyway. The other woman was the same age as herself, but seemed so much wiser about people.
"I'll have to check Rhys's schedule and talk it over with him, but a 'dad's day' sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for everything..." She almost cried again, only this time for very different reasons.
Bethany gave the woman's hand an encouraging squeeze, unable to lean over and give her a hug. She caught the movement from the corner of her eye and leaned back enough that the young barman was able to put the drinks on the table. "Now, drink this, it's got lots of iron in it and no alcohol, despite tasting like it has," she told her, lifting her own glass. "To new life!" she toasted, smiling widely, "and not too many sleepless nights!"
"So say we all!" Dani agreed wryly after thanking the barman who brought the drink out. She lifted her glass in unison with Bethany's and brought it to her lips to take a sip. It tasted wonderful and the young woman ended up draining half the glass before setting it down again. "Ummm...this is great!" She licked her lips and brought the glass up again to drain the rest without really thinking about it.
She turned her attention back to Bethany. "Here I've been crying all over you instead of asking what's going on with you here. Shangri-La looks the same as ever, how do you do it Ani? Every time I come to one of the bars or restuarants it looks like it just opened."
"Good staff and a little bit of nous," Bethany told her, tapping the side of her nose lightly, pleased to see Dani feeling a little better. She glanced around the restaurant they were in and nodded. "Not sure how much longer we can keep up the appearances," she admitted quietly for a moment before sparking up again. "Still, another venture being investigated as we speak and hopefully we'll have a way of keeping our glasses stock replenished!" she told her, holding up the glass in her hand as an example.
Dani laughed, amused at the mention of yet another business venture by Bethany. "You're getting quite the little business empire going, Ani. Another few years and you'll be one of the richest souls in the fleet." It seemed Bethany was always getting her hands into one enterprise or another.
She grinned at her friend. "I might come and ask you for a job sometime, if I ever have to stop flying for good."
"And I'd find you one you'd love quick smart!" Ani assured her with a smile and wink. "Still, all our ventures are purely survival items, in one way or another, just they probably aren't viewed as such by the 'powers that be' over on Avalon." She shrugged lightly. "And I don't think they'd be much use for fighting off the Cylon attacks. The way I look at it is if I can help keep the people who do all the fighting feeling good, and happy and human, then that's my contribution."
"And one just as important in its own way," Dani declared with a knowing grin. The women of the fleet were all well aware of some of the items the Jereldsen twins trafficked in. She'd used some of them herself when she'd started dating Rhys and had been quite pleased with the results. As a Virgonese she had always found some of the more restrictive regulations of military life silly and mystifying, but that was probably why so few of her tribe joined the military in the first place. "I think the powers that be are having to adjust to reality, but sometimes they get stubborn."
Bethany sighed a deep, knowing sigh. "Oh aren't they just?" she agreed a little whimsically. "Though some have been known to ... be a lot more flexible in private!" she added with a wink and grin. "Just need to figure out the right buttons to push!"
A knowing laugh was Dani's response, and she was going to share a bit of scuttlebutt about the buttons of a particular officer in Pacifica's Airgroup when she spotted an anxious looking deck hand poke his head in the bar, an anxious look that turned into one of relief when he spotted her.
"Lieutenant, there you are!" The young man made a bee line for her table. "We got a call from Avalon, your ride's schedule was moved up and they'll be on the deck in twenty minutes."
Dani nodded, "Thank you for telling me, I'll be there directly." She turned back to Bethany, "I guess that's my cue to leave, it'll take me at least half that to waddle my way down to the hanger deck."
Bethany stood up and saw the waiter bringing Dani's food. She offered her friend a hand. "Let me have them put your meal in a warmer for you and you can have it either on the flight back or while you're waiting," she told her friend.
"Omph," Dani accepted the hand up and hauled herself to her feet. "Thanks, I'd appreciate that." The drink had been wonderful, and she was sure the meal would taste just as good.
It wasn't long before the meal was packaged up and Dani put it on the table while she hugged Bethany. "Thanks again for all your help, Ani. It helped having someone to talk to who isn't military."
"Well, don't be such a stranger!" Bethany laughed, returning the hug. "When you go on leave you come and stay a while, get some pampering and 'you' time before you don't have any time!" She looped her arm through Dani's as they walked toward the restaurant's entrance. "Let me know when you think we can have the baby shower and when they're going to let you go on leave and we'll sort everything out, OK?"
"I will," Dani promised. "I've still got to submit the request. My doctor has signed off for anytime after twenty weeks but I don't know how receptive the higher ups will be to me going on leave so early." She paused just outside the entrance and hugged her friend again. "Tell Niki hi for me when you see her and take care of yourself. I'll see you soon, I hope."
She pulled back and started off toward the hanger in the slow waddling gait that had become normal for her in the past several weeks.
The food smelled divine, it wouldn't last past the hanger.
Watching her pregnant friend starting on her way down to the lifts down to the hangar deck Bethany felt a small pang of jealousy but pushed it away. She quickly started thinking about what would need to be organized to get Dani set up for the new arrivals and who she could call on who might have some of the necessaries. No ship was set up with it, but she knew a few of the freighters had cargo that hadn't been shunted off and could be useful. She headed back into the restaurant to continue work while her mind started to make lists and plans.