| Gone and There Again |
| Summary: | Evandreus and Tisiphone wait for information on the away team and are interrupted by Pallas. |
| Date: | 2041.04.10 |
| Related Logs: | The Ostent Evanescent, Busted, & It Changes Nothing (Other Than Everything). |
| Players: |
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| Hangar Deck — Port — Midship — Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post Holocaust Day: #43 |
| The single largest rooms on the Cerberus are the hangar decks. Each flight pod consists of two stacked landing bays with adjoined decks and hangars, which along with computer-assisted landings results in a faster Viper recovery rate. Mirror images of each other, these two huge areas are located on the flight pods. The inboard sides of the deck, closest to the ship's main hull, are lined with parking and maintenance bays for Vipers and Raptors based aboard the battlestar. The outboard side of the deck contains the launch tubes used by the Vipers for standard deployment. Huge blast doors seal the deck into four sections, each one containing an elevator that leads up to the flight deck directly overhead. The fore-most section contains an elevator system that leads towards Aerospace Fabrication. |
| Condition Level: 2 — Danger Close |
Evandreus, flightsuited, by now, at least looks to belong on deck. He's lurking, however, over in the little off-duty area for the deckies, having come to request an official count of the destroyed Raptor's full number; pilot, ECO, passengers. As much as he might have waited for the official report to come out announcing X and Y and Z KIA, as soon as he'd changed into the appropriate gear he'd headed up here, and now paces anxiously, hands folded at the small of his back.
Tisiphone belongs on deck during Condition Two only under the most generous of terms, having received clearance from Chief Atreus and the CAG a week ago to pitch in with gophering and other menial duties to help stave off boredom. Sweeping is something that's Not Done when the whole hangar may suddenly need to launch, and so she's been put to work on the first thing that came to mind to an otherwise-distracted deckie — go tidy the tow lines. Utterly pointless, at a time like this, but the Ensign heads that way nonetheless. It's either recoiling chains, or going off-duty — and she won't be nearby when the headcount arrives, if she chooses the latter. As she crosses around the controlled chaos, Evan is spotted. She quickly detours toward him, her protective earmuffs hanging around her neck, eyewear snapped up onto her forehead. "Hey," is all she says, stopping nearby, pale eyes turned up to his face.
Evandreus is doing his best to keep an outward appearance of calm, though, with his mind whirring as it is, the outward effect is closer to a dumbstruck, idiotic look, eyes barely focused on anything, mouth hanging open a little ways as if he may begin to drool on himself at any moment, lips dry and pale. The greeting brings him back to the here and now long enough for his eyes to find Tisiphone's, halting in his pacing a moment before he eases into it again, keeping moving, if slowly. "I think Tempe and Flasher were on ready this shift," is his greeting back to her.
No relaxed slouch for Tisiphone, either — a combination of the situation and the creeping paranoia that someone will eventually have the wherewithal to look over and say, 'You. Condition Two. No Light Duty,' or something else that gets her caged back in the information-bereft berthings. She's shooting a quick glance around at the comings and going when Evan's 'greeting' hits her ears — it brings her head back around with an all-but-audible snap. "No…" she breathes. It's not so much that her eyes widen as the realization weighs the bottom lids down. Like the words can be taken back and remade into a more pleasing form. "You're sure? Heard the deckies say there was- Damon, a Marine, a girl from Engineering, and someone from Medical."
Tisiphone adds, tight-voiced, "No names, other than Damon's. Guess it's fair," she tries to reason with herself. "He's one of theirs."
Evandreus gives a feeble nod— of course, 'on ready' is a fairly loose concept, prone for any given mission to changes and revisions depending on the needs of the mission in question. So. Evan really has no clue who was -actually- aboard. Just who was supposed to be. And then Tisiphone returns information for information, and his eyes close a moment, like a blink that's too heavy to end for several moments after it should have been finished in the entirety of its execution. "Damon," he repeats the name. He knew the guy. If only in passing. "Gods, we didn't need this. Not now. What happened out there," he wonders, though it's not really a question so much as a weakly-voiced lamentation.
Rather than try to answer the rhetorical lamentation, Tisiphone tries to find something practical. "If the Raptor blew as the ship jumped out, they were- trying to get away." That's how she reasons out what the Admiral's announcement was saying between the lines, at least. Another bleak look up at Evan. Like dying while trying to escape is better, somehow. "There's gotta be /someone/ who-" she starts to say, attention slicing restlessly around the room again.
It's then that Tisiphone spots the deckie heading for Chief Atreus's office, with a paper in his hands. A second later she's suddenly in motion, straight for the young man. "Hey. HEY," she calls to him, voice crackling a little through her attempt to sound Officer-ly, if not Official. "Crew manifest for the clusterfrak?" The deckie starts to answer in the affirmative, and she cuts him off, holding out her hand. "I'll take it in to the Chief." Maybe there's something in the look she gives him; maybe he knows she's on decently-friendly terms with the Chief; maybe he just doesn't really want to be the bearer of bad news. Whatever the true reason is, the paper is handed over, and he makes his hasty retreat. For Tisiphone's part, all she does is stand there, reading down the list.
Pallas arrives from Midship.
Pallas has arrived.
Yeah, that makes it all the better, doesn't it. "It doesn't make any sense. Why try flying out when the ship's jumping? Why not… let the ship jump, then leave and jump back? It's not like they didn't know where we were going to be." Evan gesticulates with his hands, agitated almost to the point of anger, which is… probably the angriest Tisiphone's ever seen him. He doesn't do the anger thing very well, or very often. Then, the list's here, and he bites at the inside of his cheek, looking away, waiting a beat or two while she reads, and then, only then, barely daring to look back to her face.
Neither Tisiphone nor Evandreus are very good judges of time, right about now. Whether it really takes a small eternity for her to read, then re-read, the crew manifest would require someone else to judge. She looks back up from the list, at long last, meeting Evan's eyes for only a moment. It's all it takes for that look — the Here Be Terrible Things look — to pass. Rather than answer aloud, she passes the list over for him to read, himself.
It's been so long since Pallas has been out on the hangar bay floor. For real, anyway. And here he comes in full glory, wearing his flightsuit, no sling, and just as a bonus, no drunken stagger either. He has a cigarette in his hand, at least. Walking with purpose, he heads toward the Chief's Office when he catches sight of Tisiphone standing there. "So it's true what I heard," he says. "You've been taking your 'money shots' from the knuckledraggers lately instead of the Air Wing."
Evandreus reaches out a set of numb fingers to fumble the paper away from Tisiphone, slowly, carefully, turning it around before his eyes move from hers to the paper, eyes focusing on this letter and that, as if it were some foreign alphabet, so many senseless squiggles on the page he can't quite make head or tail out of, from the look on his face, the sort of stricken and baffled eyes, brows slanted at a tragically confused angle, dried mouth open and silent. Pallas' comments, thankfully, blend right into the rest of the clamor on deck, a grey, homogenous noise falling on deaf ears.
"I gotta take it to the Chief." Tisiphone to Evandreus, words falling out in a flat line. She, too, looks stricken and baffled, the blood drained out of her already-pale features, leaving them ashen and wan. "Bunny. I have to-" She's reaching for the crew manifest when Pallas's words finally sink in. Leaving Evan to try and make sense of the words on the paper, she looks over toward the other pilot and says, only, "No smoking on the Deck, Sir. You know the rules."
"That I do," Pallas replies easily. Like a petulant child, he takes one last long puff of the cancer stick before putting it out on the sole of his boot. He looks back and forth between Tisiphone and Evandreus, obviously thrown off by the complete lack of reaction to his entrance. "What's this now?" he asks with mock-curiosity, reaching over to take the page from Bunny, if the man will let him. "Don't tell me your to-frak page is only one page long. Though I suppose there ain't many more people left on this ship you haven't."
You paged Pallas with 'The crew manifest reads: KIA: Air Wing: LTJG Kal Trask, ENS Temperance O'Sullivan. CMC: LTJG Raine Lunair. Deck: PO1 Andreas Damon. Engineering: LTJG Haeleah Parres. Medical: LTJG Jesse Stavrian.'
Evandreus doesn't hear the first request. Or the beginning of the second. So it's likely good that Tisiphone finds something else to attract her attention. Eventually his elbow begins to unbend, hand, cum paper, descending toward thigh in a slow arc, eyebeams rising in a mirror of that arc out toward the deck. Numb fingers are bereft of paper with ease, though they clutch more firmly at the empty air once the paper's taken from them, and his head moves to look down at his empty hand, then up at Pallas, to Tisiphone, and to the opening out into the double stairwell. Which is where, after a moment longer, his footsteps proceed to bear him.
Tisiphone can't just leave the crew manifest in Pallas's loving care. Who knows /where/ it would end up, but 'actually in Chief Atreus's office' is way too far down the list to hope for. "Bunny. Bunny, /wait/," she says, taking one urgent step past the Lieutenant, then unhappily reining herself in to a halt. "Wait up!" she calls, before looking back to Pallas. Hand out, expectant, still with that flat and ashen stare. "Chief Atreus needs that. Now."
Crew manifest, what? Pallas barely even glances at it, eyes passing over it in a second. Long enough to see a list of names he doesn't much care about; not long enough to zero in on those three letters, 'KIA'. "Of course," he says, handing it over to her with a shrug. He looks back over his shoulder at the departing Evandreus, curiosity piqued. "Guess he's devastated that he didn't make your list," he says.
Evandreus's booted toes catch on the lower lip of the hatchway out to the stairs, not once, but twice before the clay-heavy foot makes it over the low ridge and over to the other side. Out and through, and out of sight, he's down a flight and a half of stairs before he finds a quiet place to sit between decks two and three, there, on the landing.
Pallas glances back over his shoulder, missing the transformation that passes across Tisiphone's face. Instead, he may end up the recipient of a swift and hateful backhand, courtesy of the plastered gauze on Tisiphone's right hand. As soon as it's thrown, whether it actually lands or not, she's almost /howling/ at him, so utterly livid she is. The first few words are a gutteral tangle of Sagittaran, before it breaks back into Standard: "Could you not even SHOW a little RESPECT for the frakking DEAD, you motherless frakker!"
Well, it's not like Pallas is expecting to be hit. The backhand catches him nice and square across the jaw, sending him staggering back a step, and then two. His lip splits open, top and bottom, and blood drips down onto the deck floor. She's even managed to chip part of a tooth - at least, that's what it looks like from what he spits out along with the blood. But the surprise looks to be more from the fact that she actually hit him, not the shock of the pain. "Didn't think you'd stoop so far as to frak the dead," he spits, blood flowing from his mouth and dribbling down his chin. He really never stops, does he?
It's like some sort of Fisticuffs Tango — Tisiphone staggers forward a step, only to recoil immediately thereafter, adrenaline-glittery eyes tracking Pallas and the payoff of her backhand. There's a thick, wet sound as her mouth purses; a second later she spits a thick and right proper loogie at his feet. Someone taught her well, at some point. Her nuked-to-ash male siblings would be proud. Snatching up the crew manifest, she crosses to the Chief's Office, vanishing within for only a few seconds. The slap of the paper hitting the desk can be heard. Immediately thereafter, she's off for the door Evan left through, storming past Pallas like he's no longer on her DRADIS.
It takes two to tango, so they say. Pallas looks like he's about to return the favor as she passes him. He doesn't, even though anger smolders in his eyes. "You and you," he says, pointing to two knuckledraggers after Tisiphone passes by. "I want witness statements submitted from both of you by the end of today. Got it?" Spitting more blood, he wipes his mouth off with his sleeve and stalks off.