| War Footage |
| Summary: | Pallas examines footage of Cylon ship combat from the First War and runs into Cidra. |
| Date: | 28 Mar 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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| Ships Library - Deck 9 - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post Holocaust Day: #30 |
| Racks of books extend deep into this room, nearly darkening the overhead lights towards the back. The shelves are neatly labeled to each category with nearly everything represented here. Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance, and everything down to comic books has been loaded up onto the shelves. A smaller research area at the back has a large table for maps to be opened-up. Nearer the door is a small library of movies that covers some of the most recent blockbusters and flows through some of the more campy movies from about two decades before. Next to the door, a Petty Officer can usually be found at a desk to help someone checkout their selections. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
Pallas is in the recesses of the library, sitting in front of a small screen with a headset on. Head leaned on his right hand, his posture as lazy as it can possibly be as he stares blankly at the screen, he appears to be starting to nod off from the way that he starts to drift and catches himself with a start. On his left - next to his arm which is back in a sling - is a stack of videos. It's all the footage that exists of Cylon air maneuvering in the library, back from the War.
Cidra ventures into library. Her hair's damp, as if she's recently showered, and she's in her off-duties. Copious cult tattoos on display. She likely recently came off duty, in some capacity. She heads not to any official part of the library, but to the small section devoted to poetry. Pallas is not immediately noticed, but the place isn't huge, so she'll probably stumble upon him sooner or later.
Driiiiiiift… jerk awake. Driiiiift… crash. Pallas sends the stack of videos falling over onto the floor, which jolts him awake - reacting without thinking, he tries to catch them. Bad idea, since the sudden movement on his left arm causes him to groan. He half-stumbles out of his seat and starts piling up the cases again. As he reaches for the last one, the headphone cord pulls a little bit too far. There's a moment of tension, and then, snap. The cord tears right. "Frakkin' two-bit piece of shit," he growls, ripping the thing off his head and tossing it away. He's starting to get more than a few looks.
The crashing is notable. That must be said. Cidra's head turns and, taking a book of poetry she's plucked off the shelf with her, she sets a course back to Pallas' video area. Curious. Over at him she peaks, one of those looks he's attracted. "Good eve, Ellinon," she says simply, tone just a hint dry.
"Oh, good, you're here to watch me make an ass of myself again," Pallas says, glancing up to Cidra. He struggles a bit to pick up the pile of videos with one hand and place it back on the counter, but he gets it done. "Poetry, is it then, Toast?" he asks. Turning to face the CAG again, he nods to the book she holds. He might be getting older, but his eyes are still sharp.
Cidra's lips curve into the barest hint of a smile and she seats herself at one of the video terminals next to him. The book is set down on it. 'A Poet's Dream' by Kataris. A nod to Pallas. "I do not usually care for the Caprican stuff in general, but his work has always called to me. I find that poetry helps me to clear my head. The best of it makes little literal sense, yet holds deep meaning, so it becomes an exercise in focus and introspection." She flicks a look over at the screen he had on before. "Anything good?"
"Poetry is like prophecy," Pallas grumbles. "Fifty different people read it and have fifty different interpretations. I'd be surprised if the poet even knew what they were writing about." He sits back down and examines the frayed end of the audio cable, little wires sticking out of it from where they were ripped from the headset. Old war footage still flickers on the screen, almost all of it recovered footage from various crafts. So it's very jarring and hard to follow. "Enthralling," he says sarcastically. "Thrilled me right to sleep."
"Perhaps that is why I enjoy it," Cidra says, when the compares poetry to prophecy. The frayed cable is noted. Small wrinkle of her nose. Well, that's why the ship has repair crews. To fix what the pilots break, large and small. Her head tilts to watch the footage, blue eyes flitting over various parts of it, narrowing again. "The Cylon War…I was born not two years after it, but even then it seemed like another age. My parents rarely spoke of it, and I did not ask much about it until I entered the service. Even then, it was all history."
"I wasn't old enough to understand much of anything," Pallas answers with a shrug, yanking the plug out of the monitor to wrap around the broken headphones. He presses a button to kill the sound so others don't complain. "But aside from footage from the past few skirmishes, I don't know where else I'd get any data on enemy movement and tactics." He casts a sidelong glance to Cidra, putting his boots up on the table. "So, I am older than the CAG. I always wondered."
"A very little," Cidra answers Pallas, eyeing him mildly. "Did you think I was older than you, Spiral?" The question is half a joke. Probably. Not answering that may be the wisest course of action. "I have been doing much the same. Going over the old recordings. The old exercises in the simulators. We've gathered a fair amount of gun camera footage from our recent encounters with the Cylons, which is open to your review as well. I still feel as if we are playing catch-up, however. Gods only know how long the Cylons have been planning the destruction of the colonies."
Cidra gets a browraise from the old pilot. "No, I just wanted to be able to say, 'Respect your elders' to the CAG." Hell, that probably makes him the oldest member in the Air Wing. "Wonder how old the Admiral is…" he muses, barely suppressing a smirk. Reaching out, he pauses the playback. It's frozen on a frame of an old Viper chasing down a Cylon over a planet. Hard to tell with the blurring what planet it is, though. "The thing I've never understood is… they're machines," he says flatly. "They might be superior in reflexes, targeting, coordination, and all that technical shit because of that, but they can't exceed their programming. So if we can recover their programming from one of the scrapped toasters…"
"Older than me," Cidra says simply, as to the Admiral. "After that, I do not care overmuch." She leans forward a little as she watches the old recording, eyes narrowing. "You think we can perhaps anticipate the scope of their tactical abilities? I would hope that might be the case. Although in the new footage we have collected, we have noted their abilities seem to have…evolved. They are sharper. Quicker in their reactions. More…aggressive." A shake of her head. "They are machines and yet, they are sentient as well. It is most…unnerving. I curse the fools who created them all those decades ago."
"Sentient." Pallas' lip curls and he almost spits that word. "Even still…" He folds his arms - carefully, since one of 'em is in a sling and all - leans back in his chair, pushes off with his feet, and spins slowly. "Even still. Their range of capabilities are physically limited to what's available. They can't exceed the abilities of their ships. There has to be some blind spot, some advantage we can take. Otherwise we might as well give up." And as a pilot who's not top-of-the-class, Pallas is always looking for the exploits and advantages he can take.
"Ensign Tisiphone Apostolos has cataloged a good deal of the new footage we've gathered," Cidra says. "With the injuries at Virgon, she and Lieutenant Bell have a great deal of time on their hands." Her lips twist with some bitterness as she notes that, but at least they're being put to some use. "She and Bell may have noticed something. They've had more time with the tapes than the rest of us, as there's little else she can do. It is my hope we can find something. We need all the advantages against them we can muster."
"Hm." Eloquent as ever. Pallas continues spinning for a while, tapping his fingers against his arm. "Another two weeks, by the way, says the CMO." He rolls his eyes at that. But that little tidbit does betray the fact that he wasn't supposed to be in the simulators that day he was supposed to be releasing - he was still on light duties. "I call bullshit on that. My arm's almost back to normal already."
"I was informed of that, yes," Cidra says, her own tone rather flat. "Well. I have learned at my peril it is usually best to follow the doctors' orders. Or one shall pay more for it later. I do recall when I was a young lieutenant on the Columbia. Had a nasty ground landing in my Raptor during a transport run. Tore my shoulders up something quite awful. Pushing it too fast did little but land we an extra week on light duty. And the animosity of the medical officers on the ship." She smirks.
"Oh, don't give me that past experience, better-in-the-long-run crap," Pallas snorts, cutting his spinning short with an outheld foot that brakes against the table. "This isn't bullshit frak-around military playtime anymore. I'm sitting on my ass snapping at nurses and swearing at this Gods-be-damned sling while there are real frakkin' Cylons out there." He shakes his head and goes back to spinning his chair. "If I can't release, I might as well be allowed to do my frakking job."
Cidra eyes Pallas mildly throughout all that. "Are you quite finished?" She waits a beat, to see, though she continues on in any case. "You will be no good to anyone if you further aggravate your injury. But you are correct about one thing. Playtime is over." She releases a long breath. "You are, for better or worse, one of the most experienced pilots left on this ship. You are most needed, if you do not manage to cripple yourself."
Pallas snorts. "We all know if it's for better or worse," he says dryly. "No need to spare my sensitive feelings." Playtime is over, and so is spinnytime. The unlikely Viper pilot unfurls his arms and pops out the last vid he was watching to fidget with that instead. "I follow my orders. If the CMO says two weeks, fine, two weeks. But not even the Admiral can take away my inalienable right to bitch and whine about it every chance I get."
"I withhold the right to bitch from no man, Spiral," Cidra replies wryly. Half under her breath. "It is clearly an unstoppable force." She rises from her chair, plucking up her little tome of poetry. "But you seem to be trying to keep your mind engaged in useful endeavors. That is promising. I shall leave you to it."
"I've yet to meet an Immovable Object that can stand aginst my Unstoppable Force of non-stop complaining," Pallas says wryly. He puts the video that he's been toying with away and pops in the next one as Cidra gets up. If he's keeping any notes from what he's been watching, they must be all in his head, since he's got nothing else there. "If trying to stay alive to make myself a blight upon my peers is a useful endeavor, consider me not-yet-obsolete." As an afterthought, he adds, "Enjoy your poetry, Toast. Gods know the toasters can't appreciate such things." There's a slight emphasis on the 'toast' of toasters, especially evident following so close to her callsign.