Calliope

by Rheanna
Rating: U
Spoilers: Through "33"
Disclaimer: The Megara family are mine; everything else belongs to USA Cable Entertainment (I think). No money changing hands here.
Author Notes: I couldn't resist (even though I'm supposed to be writing the Damn Epic). This is a small story, about the smallest ship.

Their ship is called the Calliope. Privately, Max has always thought calling a haulage ship after the Muse of Epic Poetry isn't the best idea Helen's ever had, but she was pregnant with Cressi at the time and gods knew it wasn't the craziest thing her hormones had made her do during those nine months. In the end, he'd decided just to go with it for the sake of a quiet life, and in the fifteen years since, he's gotten so used to saying it that it falls off his tongue now without a thought. The Calliope. Their ship.

It's not an impressive ship, by any means. The Calliope is at the very bottom end of the scale of deep-space, faster-than-light vessels, little more than a massive storage hold attached to a jump engine and a habitation pod. But it meets their needs -- more than meets them, since the habitation pod is equipped for a crew of ten people and has only ever had to berth three and, since Toby's unexpected arrival eight years ago, four. Helen sometimes jokes that she feels like she should have another six children just to prod the atmosphere recyclers into working more efficiently.

They had one actual employee for a brief period a couple of years ago -- a pleasant girl called Karyn who'd been taking a year out from an engineering degree to work her way round the Twelve Colonies. They both liked her enough to have talked about offering her a permanent position when she qualified, but in the end that year had been a difficult one, and they hadn't had the spare cash. The big haulage companies -- ColEx and the like -- had started expanding into the outer routes, depressing already tight margins. It's not like it was in Max's father's days, and there's little room left in the market for small independent operators like Megara Freight.

But there are still some routes which aren't profitable even for behemoths like ColEx, and there's a living to be made on them. It's not an easy life, but it has its compensations. Max has his ship and his family, and after twenty years he's found there's really nothing else he needs. The only time the family's ever been apart was for a couple of months when Cressi turned eleven, and they enrolled her in a boarding school on Virgon. She'd been miserable, and had written them heartrending letters in a childish scrawl describing how she cried every day. Helen had cried every day, too, and after eight awful weeks Max had simply turned the Calliope around and gone and brought his little girl home. Helen had signed up for a long-distance home-schooling program, and when Toby came along, the question hadn't even come up.

Max knows his ship and he knows his job. His life has a quiet equilibrium that satisfies him, and the most common prayer he offers at the small shrine Helen maintains to Hermes and Athena is for protection on the journey.

It's a better prayer than he knows.

***

"Wake up. Max, wake up."

Max rolls over in the bed and blinks sleepily. He knows at once something is wrong -- Helen wouldn't have woken him if it weren't -- but he can't immediately figure out what it is. The Calliope has been his home for long enough that he can tell when she isn't running smoothly, and there's nothing about her hums and vibrations which feels off to him.

"What's up?"

"Something's happened," Helen says. "There's been -- there's been an attack on the Colonies. It's the Cylons."

For a second, Max simply stares at her. The Cylons are a threat from his father's lifetime, not his. Max was born three months after the Treaty was signed, and although the Cylons have been a presence throughout his entire life, it has only ever been at one remove, as words in a history book at school, the enemy in a thousand war movies, subjects of endless documentaries on the public broadcasting channels.

"What --" He stops. "Which Colony have they attacked?"

Helen is pale. More than pale, she's white. "All of them."

"Where are Cressi and Toby?"

"They're asleep. I checked on them already."

Of course the kids are safe -- they're all safe, for the moment, out here in deep space, away from the major shipping lanes. But Max has to ask it, needs to hear it confirmed.

He throws on his robe and goes with Helen to the Calliope's cockpit. The commlink is still jabbering; she must have left it switched on. Max flips through the channels, trying to make sense of the garbled transmissions.

"-- reports of nuclear blasts on Caprica, Virgon, Tauron --"

"-- thirty Battlestars gone in the first wave --"

"-- krypter, krypter, krypter, please, for the love of the gods, if you can hear this, help us, we're --"

"-- not millions of casualties, billions. Gods help us all --"

Helen's hand is over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock and wet with tears.

Max looks out of the cockpit window. The stars shine as brightly and as certainly as they did when he went to bed. It's hard to believe there's anything wrong at all.

"What are we going to do, Max?" Helen asks. "What are we going to do?"

"Listen," Max says. One voice, a woman's, cuts through the panic on the comm channels. There's fear in it, but no terror.

" -- the Colonies are now occupied by Cylon forces. We cannot remain here. We are assembling a fleet. If you can, you must get to the co-ordinates which I will read out at the end of this message. The government still exists. The military has not been destroyed. Everything is not lost. This message will repeat. The co-ordinates are --"

Max takes hold of Helen's hand and squeezes it tightly. "Go and wake up the kids," he says. "I want them to see the Colonies one last time."

***

In the six days following the Cylon attacks, the Fleet makes two hundred and seventy six faster-than-light jumps at thirty-three minute intervals.

By the fourth day, Max's hands are shaking so much he can barely hit the right keys to program the jump drive. He has to get Helen to read the co-ordinates back to him, in case he inputs them wrongly and jumps them into deep space. He starts to wish a variety of violent deaths on whoever that woman is on the Galactica with the Sagittarian accent whose voice issues the jump order every half hour. It's not her doing, of course -- it's the Cylons' -- but extreme exhaustion is making him irrational and he's too tired to fight it.

On the two hundred and thirtieth jump, the Calliope's faster-than-light drive fails.

It takes a second for it to sink in. He tries to initiate the jump sequence again, and gets the same error message.

Drive initiation sequence failure. Please correct sequence and retry.

It's the right sequence. He knows it's the right frakking sequence.

"What's wrong?" Helen asks. There's an edge of panic in her voice.

"It won't accept the sequence," he says. "It won't take the sequence --"

He glances at the DRADIS, and sees wave after wave of the Fleet's other civilian ships pop out of existence as they execute the jump successfully. Very quickly, there are only two dots left -- the huge mass of the Galactica and the tiny Calliope.

They're going to be left behind.

"Oh, gods," Helen whispers. "Oh, gods, Max --"

He looks up, and sees what she just has -- a stream of Cylon Raiders clearly visible through the cockpit window, swooping toward the Calliope out of the darkness.

"Calliope, this is Galactica." It's the Sagittarian-accented woman again, except now Max feels only immense relief to hear her voice. "Report your status. Why haven't you jumped?"

"Sequence failure," Max says. "I'm trying to correct it. I just need time --"

And then, impossibly, the lead Raider blows up. So does the one behind it, just as a Viper swoops into view. In the distance, Max can see the Battlestar's massive bulk, and the flashes of her guns firing. And it hits him -- they're not going to be left behind. Their four lives are precious, irreplaceable. Worth fighting for.

He takes a breath to clear his head, and resubmits the initiation sequence.

This time, it works.

"Galactica," Max shouts into the commlink, "Jump sequence is initiated. Jumping in five, four, three, two, one --"

The universe outside flashes bright white, and when it reverts to normal, the sky is empty of both Raiders and Vipers. When Max looks out of the cockpit window, he sees only the welcome sight of the Fleet's forty-seven other civilian ships.

Behind him, Helen whispers, "Hermes and Athena, thank you, thank you --"

There are two hundred and seventy six jumps in all, but that's the only one Max ever remembers.

***

Two weeks later, they get a visit from the Commander of the Fleet's Air Group.

The family is still at breakfast when the Raptor arrives, a little ahead of the schedule sent by the Galactica. Max leaves Helen and the kids in the galley and goes down to take care of the docking himself.

When the airlock slides open, the young man standing on the other side salutes. "Permission to come aboard."

"Granted," Max says. He holds out his hand. "Max Megara. Welcome to the Calliope."

They shake hands. "Captain Lee Adama." Adama's not that common a name, and Max figures it's unlikely to be just a coincidence that the Captain shares it with the Galactica's commander. Adama clearly knows it too, because he says, "He's my father, if you're wondering."

Max nods. "Must be good to have family around in all of this."

"It's..." The Captain stops, then nods in a way that makes Max think there's a story there. "Yes, it is."

Max takes Captain Adama up to the galley, giving him the guided tour on the way. It doesn't take very long. "Guess there aren't many ships smaller than the Calliope," he says as they finish.

"This is the smallest," the Captain confirms. "By quite a margin."

The galley is snug, and smells of toast and cooking bacon. Max invites Captain Adama to sit at the table, then introduces his family. "This is my wife, Helen, and my kids -- Cressida and Toby."

"Hi," Toby says brightly. Cressi almost smiles, then blushes crimson. Just shy, Max figures.

"Pleased to meet you," the Captain says. He's smiling, and it seems genuine to Max.

"Are you in charge of the Fleet?" Toby asks, with an eight-year-old's directness.

"No, I'm just in charge of the Vipers that protect the Fleet," Captain Adama replies.

Toby doesn't look any less impressed. "Wow. There must be thousands of them."

"Not thousands. Not as many as we'd like, but we're working on that." The Captain looks back at Max. "I'm making a tour of all the ships, meeting the skippers and crews in person. We're going to be asking a lot from people, and I need to make sure everyone understands what the situation is. Could I meet your crew, Captain?"

Max waves a hand to indicate his family. "This is my crew."

"There are only four of you?"

"We had an engineering assistant for a while, but we had a tough year and we had to let her go," Helen says.

"I see," Captain Adama says slowly. "Okay. I need to confirm some details about your ship's condition and your supply status."

"Ask away." Max pours himself a coffee and leans against the galley wall. The truth is, this is a redundant exercise -- they've already given all this information, and more, over the commlink, and he's sure the Fleet's CAG has more pressing tasks than ticking boxes on a form. But that's not the point of the visit, Max knows. There are forty-eight ships in the Fleet, not counting the Galactica. That's forty-eight skippers, forty-eight men and women on whose abilities every other life depends. If Max were the one in charge of the Fleet's safety, he'd want to meet them all in person, too.

The Captain produces a checklist and starts to work his way through it. "Any damage or outstanding repairs?"

"Jump drive's been acting up a bit. Otherwise we're green. The Calliope's only fifteen years old -- same age as Cressi here, and you know what teenagers are like. A little bit temperamental."

"Dad," Cressi says, looking mortified.

The Captain smiles at her. "My father embarrasses me sometimes, too." He makes a note on the list and says to Max, "Jump drives are a priority; I'll send someone over to look at yours." On the small hob, the bacon crackles, and the aroma fills the small galley. "How are you for, uh, for food?"

"We've got enough for a couple of months," Helen says. The Captain's pencil hovers above the page, but he doesn't write anything. The bacon appears to be distracting him.

"Have you had breakfast?" Max asks.

Captain Adama looks embarrassed for a second before admitting, "I didn't have time this morning."

"Well, now, that's not right," Helen says sternly. A minute later, she's setting a plate in front of the Captain, loaded with toast and bacon and eggs. He makes polite noises of resistance for maybe all of thirty seconds, then caves in and eats.

He wolfs down the contents of the plate in five minutes, and allows himself to be persuaded by Helen to have a second helping. Watching him eat, it strikes Max suddenly how young he is -- hardly thirty, if that. The protection of the whole Fleet seems like a heavy burden to heap on such young shoulders.

"Now, you make sure you eat properly, you hear me?" Helen berates him as she lifts the cleared plate away. "If you're going to be responsible for our safety, I want to know you're well nourished."

"Yes, ma'am," Captain Adama says. He wipes his hands on a napkin -- Max can tell Helen, a stickler for good table manners, approves -- and picks up the checklist again. "Do you have any spare berths?"

"The Calliope was built for a crew of ten, so we could take another six," Max says. He thinks he knows where this is heading.

"We might have to ask you to do that," the Captain says. "A couple of the other ships sustained damage in the attacks. We need to put the people who were on them somewhere until they can be repaired."

"Oh," Helen says uncertainly, "I don't know if we can --"

"That'll be fine," Max interrupts.

On the way back down to the airlock, the Captain says, "There's something else I have to ask you. I didn't want to say it in front of your family."

"Go on."

"Can your wife pilot the ship?"

"She's qualified for sub-light," Max says, "but I handle the jumps."

"You have to have a backup," Captain Adama says. "There are no spare jump pilots anywhere in the Fleet. If anything happened to you, we'd have to take your family off the Calliope and leave the ship behind."

"I understand," Max says. They stop outside the airlock, and Max punches in the code to open it. "I had something I wanted to ask you in private, too, Captain. How many of us are there left?"

Captain Adama hesitates. "Just under fifty thousand."

Max breathes out. It's no worse than he thought, but it's not a lot better. "Guess we're all going to have to start looking out for each other."

"Yes, we are." Adama steps back through the open airlock and into the docked Raptor. "It was good to meet you, Captain. And your family."

"I know I've been lucky," Max says. "You must be meeting a lot of people who've lost their families."

"We're all family now," Captain Adama says. "Thank you for breakfast."

"Any time," Max says, and means it.

***

"Cressi made an offering to Aphrodite," Toby says at dinner the next night.

Cressi glares at him with the kind of deep-felt loathing which can exist only between siblings. "Did not!"

"Did too. You offered her your favorite sticker album. I saw." Toby grins maliciously, then sing-songs, "Cressi's got a crush, Cressi's got a crush. She wants to marry Captain Adama. She wants to have BABIES with him."

"I hate you," Cressi says. "I hate you so much."

"Knock it off, you two," Max says equably.

"He was a very charming young man."

"Helen, don't encourage them."

"Dad, can I be a Viper pilot when I grow up?" Toby asks.

Max freezes, his fork half-way between his plate and his mouth. Captain Adama is career military; he chose the life he leads. In the coming fight for survival, Toby's generation may not have the same choices open to them. It's all too easy to picture Toby in the future, wearing a Colonial uniform like Captain Adama and flying out to face the enemy, time and time again, until the day he doesn't come back. It's not the life Max wanted for him.

He meets Helen's eyes across the table, and knows she is thinking the same thing.

"Of course you can," Max says at last. "You can be anything you want to be. Eat your dinner."

***

He lies in bed next to Helen, listening to the soft hums and groans of the Calliope's automated systems.

"This time tomorrow, we'll have six strangers on board," she says.

"Well, they won't be strangers for long. Anyway, it won't be much different to how it was when we got married. You remember when we were on the Urania with your parents and Dina and Mike? And that ship only had half the living space the Calliope does."

"I suppose," she says. "I wonder if Dina and Mike..."

"We'd have heard from them by now," Max says gently.

"Yes. I guess."

He puts an arm around her. They've been married long enough that he can tell her moods by the tiniest signals, and the tension in her shoulders is a clear indicator of her anxiety.

"Hey," he says. "Hey, it could be a lot worse. We're all safe and we're together, and we've still got our home. That's more than most other people out there."

"I guess," she says again. She exhales slowly. "I had this idea that we'd save up enough to retire some day. Sell the ship and buy a little place planetside. On Tauron, maybe. I always liked the look of Tauron."

"C'mon." Gently, Max starts to knead the hard knots in his wife's shoulders between his fingers and thumbs. "You were raised in space. So was I. Did you ever really want to settle in one place for the rest of your life?"

"No," Helen replies slowly, "but I wanted to feel like I had the choice. The kids aren't going to get to go to college, you know."

"Helen, nobody's kids are going to get to go to college." He moves his hands down her back a little way. "Anyway, there's other stuff it's more important for them to know about. Tomorrow, I'm going to start teaching Cressi how to pilot the ship."

"She's only fifteen, Max."

"She's smart. And -- things are going to be different for her and Toby when they grow up."

"If they grow up," Helen says quietly.

"Ssshhh," he says, and they lie in silence for a while, while Max gently massages Helen's back.

"That feels nice," she says. "Keep doing that. We've been lucky, haven't we?"

Max thinks about their engineering assistant, Karyn, who's probably dead and who probably wouldn't be if they'd just been able to afford to offer her a permanent job the year she shipped out with them. He thinks that if Cressi had settled down in that school on Virgon, she would have been there when the attacks happened. And if she'd settled, they'd probably have sent Toby there, too. For a second, he comprehends the infinite number of individually insignificant choices and quirks of fate which had to combine to ensure the survival of his family, and this knowledge -- the fragility of their lives -- threatens to overwhelm him.

He tries to imagine what it would be like, facing this without Helen, without Cressi and Toby. He doesn't think he'd even have it in him to try. "Yes. We've been lucky."

Helen says, "You know, I think we should take a little time tomorrow night and make an offering to Hermes. Give thanks that we're still alive. That the family's still together."

"All fifty thousand of us," Max says softly.

"What?"

"Nothing," he says, and kisses her back, right between her shoulder blades.