Who: Lieutenant William Adama
Where: Battlestar Acropolis
When: Fifth Year of the Great War



He picked up “Murder on Picon” on the tail end of a forty-eight hour furlough on Scorpia. The woman with the used books spread out on the embroidered cloth wanted three cubits for it, he paid ten as the transport wouldn’t wait for her to produce the change.

Now it lay, face down, on the deck of the bunkroom. A month later and he still hadn’t made it out of chapter one. Most probably because whenever he got the chance to read it he was so tired that by the time he realised he was re-reading the same four pages for the fifth or sixth time fatigue usually had hold of him and he surrendered to the arms of Lethe-rich sleep.

Forty-eight hours. After pushing back the cylon incursion into the Cosmara Major sector the Old Man was forced to put back to Scorpia Fleetyards for a re-fit as soon as the relief force arrived. After six months in the thick everyone was looking forward to a well earned shore leave and a chance to see families and get reacquainted with lovers, or to take the chance of getting acquainted with someone that would lend some comfort to the long lonely nights ahead when they were separated again. But it would only take the ground crew and knuckle draggers forty-eight hours to transfer the serviceable vipers of blue squadron from the Galactica to Acropolis and that’s how long he got before reporting for a TDY; while most of the rest of the crew were stood down for three weeks or more. That’s what you get for flying with a squadron that came home largely intact.

Largely.

His close-cropped hair prickled against the palm of his hand as he lay on his rack wanting to sleep but unwilling to yield these scarce moments of relative quiet, unwilling to accept that his existence would be defined by and endless cycle of fighting, surviving and sleeping. Peace on a Battlestar in a forward area came dripping slow. Each time his chest rose the claustrophobic pungency of exertion assailed his nostrils. The silted, re-circulated air carried every one of the throaty gargles from where Badger lay across the bunkroom. The snoring had long since become little more than a minor annoyance, much like the other pilot’s inclination to miss the showers whenever they returned from a patrol. Bill shifted his weight from one hip to another. It seemed that he no sooner got comfortable on this well worn mattress before a dull niggling annoyance made him stir again. He missed his equally spartan rack on the Galactica but he longed more for the time when, like Badger, he would truly believe that one rack was as good as another.

The combination of rhythmic, ever-present vibrations through the panelling of the bulkhead and the close, stale heart of the bunk room wore away his resolve to stay awake. ‘Eat and sleep whenever you can.’ The advice of the old hands came back to mollify him as he tugged at the black-out curtain and dragged it across the aperture of the bunk frame as his eyelids became as heavy as the air in the cabin. Lying on his side Bill took note of the sound of his own breathing and the regular throb of his pulse.

Without the piercing artic blue eyes, his face was a cold mask. The unrelenting insistent klaxon jarred him back to life with a start, as he blinked the few seconds sleep away Colonel Macrae’s voice interspersed the next klaxon blare.

”Attention. Combat Jump Prep is underway. Pilots man your planes. Set condition one throughout the ship, this is no drill. Set condition one throughout the ship.”

As Bill swung his legs out of the bunk and into a waiting flightsuit Badger pulled his previously discarded undershirt over his thick black hair, as soon as the trademark tuft of white pushed through the neckline, he spoke in his heavy Virgoan accent. “C’mon lad. Time enough for sleeping when the battle’s won or lost.” As Bill followed him through the hatch, pulling the sleeves of the heavy suit to his shoulder he could already feel the adrenalin begin to counter his weariness. He wouldn’t let it trouble him anymore than the dull ache from his right knee.

Peace on a Battlestar came dripping slow but disappeared in a flood.