Laszlo Katona: Episode 3

Captain Polos was missing, and wild rumors said she had been jailed by the Capricans. Elias Puskas was having none of this, and had started an actual mutiny. Engineering was now a hostile area to everyone not in Puskas' team, and he threatened to blow it up unless captain Polos was reinstated. He had also taken the presidential secretary Hallywell as hostage, which to Laszlo mattered not at all.

A team of pilots was being sent to a planet called Aegis-9, where Blue Squadron had had its last disastrous mission, one that had ended in a bloodbath and nuclear bombardment. Laszlo was not going to join the pilots on their run - the Blue presence on it was to be Simon. Instead, Laszlo went undercover to infiltrate the rebels at Engineering, drawing on his Ha'la'tha identity. His gamble paid off: the Ha'la'tha were a part of Puskas' mutiny, and he got accepted into the mutineers.

Laszlo had originally intended to take Puskas out, but that would have been suicide. Instead, Puskas got what he wanted - captain Polos got her post back - and so Laszlo got to play an undercover agent for a while. He did his best to sabotage the mutineers from within, to destroy their morale and undermine Puskas' authority, but he didn't quite dare to do it openly. It was easy enough to just let Capricans slip through when he was watching the choke point at the corridor, and whenever he was sent to run to get something approved by the captain, he'd just claim that the captain had approved whatever he wished to happen.

This was a dangerous game, and one that could not be played for long. Sooner or later someone would notice his deception, although the confusion was working in Laszlo's favor. Still, he realized that this was not his strong suit. His normal approach would have left the mutineers dead; this was not an option right now. If the Galactica crew decided to break out of the aft part of the ship, the corridor would become a deathtrap. Laszlo tried to use the news anchor Hadarhi to send Darlington a message - "tell the major I hope he gets a cancer of the ass" - an old Blue Squadron in-joke, hoping that the major would realize that Blues are working to bring down the rebellion. He realized the message would probably never reach Darlington. The journalist was way too polite to pass on what he perceived to be an insult.

Eventually the situation de-escalated, the Galacticans were allowed back into the fold and in an inspired moment of diplomacy, captain Polos and major Darlington actually managed to settle their differences and share command for the time being. For the first time ever, Laszlo actually realized why exactly Darlington had earned his stripes, and admitted a grudging admiration at the major.

Then the pilots came back, and they had prisoners with them. One was obviously a cylon, and the other looked exactly like someone Laszlo remembered shooting dead five years ago on Aegis-9. Somehow he found himself in the fore mess, where the prisoners were being interrogated. Disturbingly, Puskas was also present, still armed with a shotgun.

Someone asked Laszlo to interrogate the bearded man called Daniel. Interrogation was not one of his strengths. Normally people he questioned tended to end up dead in messy ways. Daniel obviously recognized both Laszlo and Darlington, and dropped hints about the massacre on Aegis-9. Puskas, of course, latched on to those, probably because they looked like a way to undermine the major's credibility.

So Laszlo did the only thing he thought might help, and for a chance, it was not "shoot everybody in the room and burn the place down to destroy the evidence". He told Puskas and all the other present about Aegis-9. There was an intelligence mission, a settlement on a distant world, there were 300 people, and he plus some others he was not going to name had slaughtered the lot of them. Maybe they were civilians, to many Blues they'd been a moral problem, but to Laszlo they had been just enemies, merely targets. He hadn't seen a problem in killing them back then, and he didn't give a frak about killing them now.

Puskas was disturbed at the story. Laszlo didn't care. Someone demanded to know if Darlington had been involved, who else had been involved, had the killed been Taurons, all kinds of pointless details. Puskas blew away the other prisoner with his shotgun, splattering blood all over everyone. Daniel started to weep. Laszlo wished someone else would take over this interrogation business, since it was rapidly going downhill. He wanted to get back to his own speciality.

Someone needed to do something about Puskas. Laszlo couldn't figure out what this could be. He wanted to have a private discussion with the man. Most likely it would end with one of them gravely wounded. Laszlo figured that it was more likely to be him than the engineer, but that was all right as well: with his lightly armored flight suit he'd probably survive the blast, and if Puskas shot him, he'd be in trouble with the Ha'la'tha. Right?

It was not turning out to be Laszlo's day, since next he found himself in a ceremony initiating Puskas to the Ha'la'tha. Apparently Gaspar was really impressed with the way the man was handling himself. Laszlo had to admit that Gaspar was right, in a short-sighted kind of way. Puskas seemed to be a fanatic, and fanatics were what the organization had always wanted. Fanatic was what Laszlo himself might have been, if he didn't have such a strong survival instinct.

He expressed doubts to Gaspar about Puskas' suitability, but Gaspar had made up his mind. So Laszlo joined the ceremony, along with the medic Balog, the temple guard Midoru and even the deepcover Ha'la'tha, the boatswain Bartos. Puskas was sworn in, and Laszlo felt completely outmaneuvered.

Then, just after the ceremony had ended, Bartos had left and the others had stayed to discuss strategy, the first mate Kobor turned up with two Galactica marines. Puskas was arrested. Maybe this would turn out okay after all. The man had to be tried for mutiny, but it would be the Tauron captain Polos, and the Ha'la'tha paid at least lip service to obeying the captain. Laszlo was almost able to talk Gaspar out of taking rash action - until it turned out that instead of a tribunal, Puskas was being taken to Vergis tower, to be plugged into the makeshift cylon detector being built out of the Holoband. This machine was reported to be making people insane.

There was no way the Ha'la'tha were going to let this stand.

Strings were pulled, and Puskas was retrieved from the tower. Instead he was taken to the fore mess to be disciplined by the first mate. Laszlo saw the people going into the mess. Kobor was Blue. Everybody else present, including the boatswain, was Ha'la'tha. Everybody except Kobor was armed. This would turn real shitty real quick.

Laszlo wrote a note saying "Bartos is Ha'la'tha", and gave it to Mariska Bako, to take to Kobor. If he'd taken it himself, Bartos would surely have suspected something. Right now he could only hope that the first mate would be able to resolve the situation without the Ha'la'tha deciding that he'd have to be shot or taken hostage.

Somehow Kobor managed to defuse the situation. However, it was now obvious that the balance of power on the boat was completely skewed, and the Ha'la'tha seemed to be coming out on top. Even worse for Laszlo personally was that he'd been feeding them disinformation and doing his best to make them ineffective. It would be a matter of hours before they noticed. When that happened, they'd kill him.