Laszlo Katona: Episode 4

While the command sent a shuttle to meet the representatives of a Tauron splinter fleet, Laszlo raced to Vergis Tower. He needed backup fast. The heaviest armed Blues, Janda, Cassidy and Wesley, would be the best option.

In Vergis the situation seemed to be going to hell. Laszlo had no capacity to process this, and anyway other Blues seemed to be on the case. Wesley looked just about ready to collapse, but Laszlo asked for her help anyway. He explained his situation with the Ha'la'tha, and asked his friends to watch his back.

The steward Cinege, also a Blue (callsign BASE), had been up to the tower for some memory scrubbing. He'd been able to identify a couple of Cylon infiltrators on the Celestra, and somehow he'd also turned up co-ordinates to a nearby system with an inhabitable planet and presumably no Cylon presence.

With the shuttle returned, it turned out that the Tauron fleet was just basically a pirate operation that would probably welcome some of the Celestrans - but would most likely toss any Capricans or insufficiently fanatical Tauron supremacists out of the airlock. This was not a reasonable option. Kobor came up with another way. He wanted to find some kind of hope that would prevent the ship from tearing itself apart, and he had an idea as to how.

Blue Squadron was reassembled in its entriety for a mission. The 12 ColIntel operatives boarded the Raptor and took off for Elysium Omega. Simon navigated the debris field surrounding the Celestra. The mission specs were put together on the run, and the Raptor jumped away.

Laszlo didn't mind getting out of the Celestra for a chance. Maybe his proximity to the Ha'la'tha skewed his opinions, but for the last 24 hours he'd been feeling that the factions on the ship were getting more and more entrenched, and that they'd end up fighting each other over control. Normally he'd have thought he'd be indifferent at this - let the people kill each other, he'd stay out of their way. Except that this was pretty much all that was left of humanity. When there are only 50000 people left alive, 150 is not an insignificant sum to lose.

Laszlo had never pondered questions of species extinction. To him a few hundred dead people were a statistic, a couple of dozen a decent body count for a mission, a single one a mere speed bump. He had no idea how many people he had killed for Ha'la'tha, in prison, for ColIntel. He didn't really care, there were plenty more where they came from. But he didn't really want to be the last man left alive in the universe either.

He realized he wanted the Celestrans to survive. More than that, he wanted humanity to survive.

Elysium Omega was inhabitable, but the cylon base orbiting Elysium Omega was in the way of any plan involving the system. A quick wireless contact revealed that the people on the station weren't the friendly sort. The squadron jumped away, to the rendezvous coordinates agreed beforehand.

Celestra wasn't there. After the FTL had recharged, the Raptor jumped back to the Free Tauron fleet, the co-ordinates Celestra had last been seen. She wasn't there either.

Plans from B to F were floated around, but most of them are moot without the Celestra. If the ship is nowhere to be found, all the remaining choices were desperate. Still, Laszlo felt proud of his friends. Even in this crisis they were a professional unit, weighing the situation dispassionately, not arguing, not blaming each other, not jockeying for position. Ideas were weighed on their own merit, built upon by others. It was like the best parts of Caprican and Tauron culture - all individuals, but all working selflessly for the good of the whole. He remembered why he had felt at home with these people, why he still loved them. He felt no need to say it.

A momentary silence fell. Somebody started to sing What A Wonderful World, like they had used to back in their missions. Others joined in.

Hours passed. Then Celestra appeared on the Dradis, and they hailed her on the wireless.

The welcome on the ship was tense, but not outright hostile. At least captain Polos wanted to hear what they had to say. She agreed with their assesment: on its own, Celestra wouldn't survive, joining the pirate fleet would be impossible after shots had been exchanged. The Cylons on Elysium Omega seemed to be isolated from the main forces. If they could be taken down, maybe they'd have a chance. And even if they couldn't, at least they'd go down fighting.

So the captain made one last announcement. The ship roared with approval. The decision might not have been unanimous, but at least it was not divided along the old lines of Tauron versus Caprican.

The Celestra jumped.

Laszlo never got to fly his shuttle into the final battle. He watched his fellow pilots Kiss and Lightbulb get into rad suits, escorted them to the secondary dock. He would have followed them out in the shuttle, but the shuttle wasn't there. So he stayed on the ship.

As the battle outside raged, Laszlo saw Bartos knife another Tauron in vengeance, saw the boatswain gunned down by security. Arin Lebara, another Ha'la'tha wanted to know who had done it. Laszlo told him that Bartos had gone down the way he chose to, gunned down by security. He didn't mention that the security guard was Galactican.

He got irradiated. He could hardly stand. Cassidy passed him some antirads.

He was nauseous and weak. He felt the ship shaking, heard a terrible noise that just wouldn't stop. He felt the wind as the air escaped through ruptured bulkheads.

Laszlo didn't know where his friends were. He wanted to go look for them, but didn't feel like standing up. Besides, he'd always known that he'd die alone, painfully and nastily. Now that death was certain, it felt wrong to try to interfere with the details. Maybe he was more Tauron than he'd expected after all.