| Signals Parsed |
| Summary: | Captain Gabrieli analyzes the readings picked up from Leonis, but questions still remain. Cidra queries him about that, and some other items. |
| Date: | 29 Apr 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | From the Den |
| Players: |
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| Engineering - Deck 11 - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #62 |
The ChEng's office is not snazzy. Who could possibly expect it to be, considering what work goes on in the bowels of the ship. Gabrieli doesn't normally live in here unless there's something that requires concentration, or isn't the business of his general minionship. Like right now, settled at the tiny desk among his sea of paperwork and a broken piece of metal that for some reason is hanging out on the tabletop. Working on a cigarette and poring over the information sent by the wing.
Into the bowels comes Cidra. In officer blues rather than work greens, which sets her apart by itself from the others down here. A light knock at Gabrieli's door. She sent word that she'd be coming to see him, but barge in she does not. Her polite manners are ingrained deeper than anything OCS could ever manage.
Gabrieli exhales a dragon's breath of smoke through his nostrils, gray-green eyes lifting from papers to the door. "Yeah." One assumes this punched word means 'come in'. The ChEng's sense of manners are, as usual, somewhat lacking.
Cidra comes in when bidden. "Captain. They have you back full speed now?" Though all of professionalism, the opening question is touched with concern. Though the second gets to the point directly. "Have you been able to make anything of the ECM readings we got off Leonis?"
Gabrieli still wears a hat most of the time, the brim stuck out over his eyes. Whether it's vanity or protecting the knotting scars on the top of his head, he may never tell. "Full-speed. Didn't even have to dismantle my heart monitor." He puts the cigarette down in the ashtray, folding his green fatigue-covered arms on the desk top. "I think I've got something, yeah. You can even come see it if I don't have to call you sir."
Cidra plucks a pack of cigarettes and lighter out of her pocket. Taking Gabrieli's smoking as open invitation to fire up in here. Blue eyes regard him for a moment. "That is to the good," she says simply, as to him being back in full working form. She moves to his desk to get a gander at whatever he's got. Barest hint of a smirk at that last. "I spend my days now surrounded by fair few people who do not call me 'sir.' It gets exhausting. I would be most grateful for the avoidance."
"You can come down here and feel like a member of the working class anytime you want to, pretty lady," Gabrieli's scar-crooked mouth pulls up at the right side, grinning at her. The brief joking over, any more personal talk's pushed back behind the more pressing issue, however. He is an excellent prioritizer when it comes to work needs be done, as the divorced so often are. "Your venture here." His finger taps a couple of the infrared readouts. "Interesting heat signatures you got here."
Cidra smiles that bare hint of a smile. "Perhaps I shall take you up on that." Though, likewise, she dovetails into all business without missing a beat. "Captain Quinn and her ECO picked them up during the fly-over of the city of Kythera. They were most…intriguing. It was my hope that they might be survivors but…" A shrug. Such things are more hope and prayer nowadays. "…the location, it also did strike me as most odd. Had you ever heard tell of this Molgen company?"
"Well, hang on a second." Gabrieli holds up his index finger as she starts to dismiss talk of survivors. Stop, rewind. "Yeah, I've heard of Molgen. Subsidiary of one of the companies in a list we got off the Parnassis computers, funny enough. Civilian company, did some contracting here and there, /but/…" He taps the pages again, circling around the fuzzy indicators of heat. "I crunched the numbers on this. This shielding this is coming through is military grade. And I do mean heavy shit."
"Funny," Cidra deadpans when Parnassus pops up in this conversation. "There was nothing about Parnassus that was not most queer." A frown as he mentioned military grade shielding. And a nod. "That fits. Admittedly, just more strange to add to it. That signal we picked up was a Fleet distress signal. It should not have been coming from a civilian company."
"Civilian company shouldn't have this grade shielding either. Shit, some military research bases aren't this well-shielded." Gabrieli picks up his cigarette, pausing for a long drag off it. His eyes narrow as smoke drifts back into his face, brows drawn. "Does make it hard to tell exactly what's producing the heat. Could be machinery, could be people. I will say this — something that well built?" He looks up from the papers, now directly at the CAG. "That'd protect anyone in there from a nuke or ten."
"So there could be people left alive in there," Cidra says, meeting Dominic's with her cloudy blues. Smoking deep. "People who survived the blast. Or machines, and it could be a Cylon trap, yes?" She sighs heavy.
Gabrieli spreads his hands, a motion of 'can't help you there'. "I can cross reference what we know of the centurions' power output. See if I can get any kind of match that'd suggest it's infested with cylons that way, but…don't count on it."
"Do what you can," Cidra says simply. "Though it is suggestive of something else entirely, is it not…?" She trails off, thoughtful. She does more serious smoking during the pause. And admits, softly, to Gabrieli, "Would you think me traitorous if I said I was not unhappy the Cylons had destroyed Parnassus, Dominic? That place…it seemed filled with dark omens. It haunts my thoughts even now."
"If it was filled with anything dark, we put it there." Gabrieli says this at length, his breath disturbing the steady column of smoke drifting upwards. "Is it worse to not know what the cylons are up to, or…what /we/ were?" His fingers pinch the end of his nose and he takes another drag on the cigarette, frowning and looking back down at the papers.
"Those mines unnerved me as much as the sight of a Raider," Cidra admits. "Gods, Dominic. It made me wonder how much else was going on at Fleet Intelligence I did not know. Did not care to know." She smokes again, and sighs again. "It does not matter now, I suppose. So this Molgen is yet another connection to Parnassus. It does seem to be a step further on our path, for good or ill."
"Not sure it's so black and white anymore." Gabrieli admits in return. His cigarette's about done, and he mashes it out in the pile of ash and other butts hanging out in the tray. After a while he takes another breath. "Are you going back there?"
"I do not know," Cidra admits. "Command wanted reconnaissance on Leonis to decide how to proceed with the colony. And we found it covered with Cylons like flies upon carrion. And yet, perhaps those survivors. In that fearful strange bunker." She shakes her head. "I do not what the Admiral shall do. Or if mine or all of us shall be venturing there."
The answer that Gabrieli probably expected. She is the CAG, and everything. "If I told you to be careful out there," he starts, far too dead seriously, "Will you give me one of those dirty looks? That was always pretty hot."
Cidra's blue eyes shift to regard Gabrieli. In that steady way of hers. She holds it for a moment, before she starts chuckling. No immediate verbal response. She just laughs. Low, but with genuine amusement.
"Oh, come on. Old times' sake." Gabrieli can't be serious. Can he? No, wait, crack in the scarred facade — tiny grin. "Alright, alright, I understand. Drains your valuable CAG batteries, I can live with that."
"There are things I missed about you, Dominic," Cidra says with a last chuckle. She doesn't specify what things those might be. "I have been lonely since I came aboard. I shall admit it. Command isolates one. And I…I suppose I do not make it easy on people."
"You've never made it easy on people." The brim of the naval cap that Gabrieli wears makes his eyes a little harder to read, keeping a slight shadow on them. "But I'm a sucker for hard to get." He clears his throat, a slight tilt down of his head now completely obscuring his startling eyes. "I, um…wanted to come see you after I got back on my feet. I just." Pause, then, "I know I don't look like what you remember, anymore."
"It was never about looks, Dominic," Cidra says. Wasn't about anything particularly deep, either, for that matter. Not that she adds that part verbally. "I was very alone then. When you talked, you sounded like home. It was uncomplicated. And at times very…pleasant."
"There aren't many complicated things in life, Cidra," Gabrieli says, shadows lifting up to his cheekbones as his head moves again. "We just look at them that way. Call it self-defense. And I don't spend much time regretting things; wastes my time. I don't regret you. Usually after I've seen you again I just think of how you still walk the same way you did then. Most of the time I wonder if it feels the same way to kiss you."
"I feel older. But I felt old then, too. Perhaps you should find out sometime." Cidra tilts her head at an angle that almost encourages him to try. But then she seems to remember herself. Office. She clears her throat. "Sometime. You have work to do, I am sure. There is always duty."
She doesn't get a chance to get out the '-ty'. Gabrieli doesn't have to lean over his arms but an inch or so, satisfying his own curiosity right at the perfectly offered pout of the 'du'. He is, at least, nice enough to tilt his head so his cap brim doesn't bonk her in the forehead. Experience with these issues.
If Cidra's surprised, it only lasts a moment. The kiss is returned, mouth slightly open, head angling so she's in no danger of bumping his nose or knocking his cap askew. She's considerate like that. Instinctively her fingers start undoing the buttons on her duty jacket. Though she stops herself short again before she's shrugged it off. Office. Yeah. That.
Gabrieli's hand cups the side of her face, his thumb brushing over the lower half of the shell of her ear. The kiss does not, of course, go on forever but it feels close to that, phasing from impulsive testing to slightly more desirous and then pulling back. Just as it occurs to him that she didn't lock his door. His lips only draw back far enough that they barely miss brushing hers as he talks, stroking the side of his fingers against her chin. "I'd say that's a successful trial."
Cidra's fingers eventually drift from her uniform to Gabrieli. Palms open, resting against his uniformed chest. She's silent for a moment. Breathing deep, chin arching a little into his fingertips. "Trial? Ever the engineer, aren't you, Dominic?" Blue eyes flit from him, to his door, back to him. "You should perhaps lock your hatch," is her only suggestion.
"If that were engineering, it'd have had more statistics." Gabrieli lifts his chin enough that she can see his one-and-a-half brows quirk up and down. That right one's never quite managed to grow back. His eyes lower, making a show of tracing the line of her neck and where her blue collar meets up with it. And further, since she so kindly unbuttoned the front of it for him. "I should perhaps get back to work," he says, in a tone that's obviously revenge for her earlier attempt at stalling this moment. "But…we could continue this vital experiment in five and a half hours."
Cidra gives Gabrieli a level look. She's skilled at keeping too much expression out of her eyes, but her gaze is ever very steady. "I shall see you later, then. I could use that, I think." For a woman who can occasionally appear so prim, she's always lacked for sentimentality in these matters. She slides away from his desk, buttoning back up to her collar. A pause while she gets herself sorted, then she asks, "Do you think we should go back to Leonis? Or to any of the colonies?"
Gabrieli's hand flicks out as she sits up, giving the front of her unbuttoned uniform a purposeful tug before she can tend to it. His grip on the edge of the lapel, it slides all the way down until it meets other fabric, and what of her body the backs of his fingers can brush onto, before he lets go. "Depends if we give a shit what actually happened back there or if we give a shit about saying frak it all, we can live without knowing. Would I risk a couple thousand lives for the former at this stage?" He says it like the answer's obviously no, but then there's a pause. "Yeah. I think I would."
Cidra leans in toward Gabrieli as his fingers brush her skin. She smirks. Tease. "I want to know the truth of it all," she says softly. "I need to know. But I also must defend what little we have left. We have lost too much to throw what little we have away needlessly." She clears her throat. "We shall see where the currents take us, I do suppose. I shall see you later, Dominic." Palm comes to rest on his shoulder for a moment, then fingers softly drag down the length of his arm, until she finally has her hand to herself again.
Gabrieli's scarred hand turns up, closing around her fingers. They're let slip through; he doesn't hang onto her. "Currents are a bitch," he offers simply, letting a rich curl of their shared accent into the drawled vowels. "Five and a half hours, Cidra. Don't work too hard, you'll need your energy."
Cidra holds his gaze and says simply, "I shall see you then." With that, she looks away and leaves him to his work. Whatever various other trials he has to occupy himself.