The entire Blue Squadron was gathered together for a meeting
in the fore mess. It was the first time in five years. Obviously, the new Cylon
menace was even worse than the one they had fought back when they were active.
Now they were active again. ColIntel was reactivating the squadron, to use the
Celestra against the cylons.
After finally having caught up on his sleep, after trying to
feel anything but numbness and a vague nihilistic anger during the morning
ritual, Laszlo was expecting to have to fly some missions. He spent his day in
readiness, but no flight missions were handed out. The cockroaches on the
Celestra were all but gone - the refugees were eating all the food, there were
no more scraps for the bugs to feed on. Noticing the impending food shortage
Laszlo had captured some of the roaches, fried them and rolled them in scraps
of cheap chocolate he had been assigned for his flying missions. The
choco-roaches proved to be a popular snack among pilots and hang-arounds.
For the Blue Squadron activity, he tried to keep an eye on
the Ha'la'tha. This was rather difficult, because the Gaspar, the new Próta Kéfali, had apparently vanished after
openly declaring herself to be Ha'la'tha in the mourning ritual. Nobody seemed
to be able to find her. Captain Polos appeared to be missing as well, and even
though Laszlo had no problems following major Darlington - JAVELIN - he
realized that many Taurons felt the Caprican major had committed a coup. Down
among the refugees, politics was happening, and Laszlo couldn't have cared
less. Civilians playing democracy while the world is ending - he scoffed at one
of his fellow pilots, Spinner, actually standing for election.
Then, someone in
charge decided to do something about the Vergis corporation, and suddenly there
was a standoff at the stairway leading to the Vergis tower. Laszlo managed to
bribe the Caprican pilot Book (with some sedatives) to give him her sidearm,
and joined the siege. He didn't know about the order, but he saw his fellow
Blues, Cassidy and Wesley (callsign SWEETHEART) being threatened, and went to
their aid. Then he realized that a Blue in deep-cover as a Vergis guard, Janda
(callsign SHINY) seemed to be on the other side. There was no way the Blues
would actually fire on one of their own.
However, pretty
much as expected, Kirk Emmerson of the Galactica turned up and offered to
negotiate a diplomatic solution. Laszlo had to smile at this: Emmerson was also
a Blue, callsign ATLAS, and his speciality was getting people to agree to
whatever he wanted. Suddenly the entire siege felt like a tactical
masterstroke, a way for Emmerson to get his foot in the door at Vergis. It
probably wasn't planned as one, but the Squadron was always very good at
improvisation.
The standoff over,
Laszlo heard about a missing FTL key and went to investigate. Previously he had
paid little attention to the charismatic sublight engineer Elias Puskas, and
was going to lightly threaten the man in order to increase pressure on him to
return the key. However, it turned out that Puskas was not easily intimidated. The
engineer wanted the captain re-instated, and had the talent of a populist
demagogue to get others to agree with him. Laszlo realized that this was a
dangerous and a powerful man.
He shared his
suspicions with Kobor. Trying to catch some news in the pilot bay, he noticed
Bey Simon there as well. Then Darlington came in, and tossed a black bag at
Simon. Inside was a pilot suit. Simon was also a Blue, callsign TAXI, and he'd
been a Viper pilot in a previous life. He had quit after an attack of
conscience, but Darlington wanted him back. Simon blew up at him, as might have
been expected. Finally he accepted the job. Now there were eight pilots in
total, even though Book was grounded for a while due to abusing sedatives.
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