| We, are, Family |
| Summary: | The Black Knights have a meeting, current events are discussed, different opinions all around. One big happy family. |
| Date: | 12 Feb 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | All Swarm attack logs. |
| Players: |
     |
| Ready Room |
|---|
| With the hatches at the rear of the room, the walkways on both sides slope down towards the dais at the front of the room. The stadium seating forms a partial semi-circle around the speaking podium and provides enough seats for all three hundred members of the Air Wing. The walls are adorned with the patches of each squadron aboard and their mottos stenciled in white lettering above each one. Behind the podium is a set of large LCD screens that can display any matter of material from reconnaissance to maps to gun camera footage. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #351 |
After having that small conversation with Poppy, Wade decided to call the Knights that are aboard Cerberus at that specific moment in time. Some of them might be on alert, some of them might be on something else, but, there are a few matters to discuss and opinions to exchange. So, the man is now wearing his pilot suit and is standing close to the pod, playing with the control remote to get different gun camera recordings on each screen.
Devlin enters promptly after receiving word, out of his flightsuit, but with a gymbag slung over one shoulder. He nods to Wade as he heads in, greeting him, "Drips. Any new word on Hosedown?" He moves toward a seat while still keeping an eye on the LT, backing away so he doesn't turn his back on the response to his question. He sits, dropping his bag at his feet and shoving it under the chair a little and then waiting quietly.
Roland pauses, at the hatch, and glances around the ready room for a moment. He steps inside, and moves up front to find a seat near the pod. He nods over to Wade, "Drips." before he settles back in his seat.
Wade looks at the two incoming pilots and nods to them "Decoy, Blue" At he question about Hosedown, he takes a deep breath and offers "She's stable, but she's in a coma and the Doctors don't know when or if she'll be out." He clears his throat at this a and then takes a deep breath "They say that, it's good for her if people sits next to her and…just talk, positive" There is a very faint smile but it fades right away "How's Bubbles?" asks Wade now to Decoy and then looking at Blue "Any word on Spiral's hand?" Now, he nods again. Wade basically called the Knights that are on the ship right now, to discuss what's going on.
Enter Psyche, drawn and pale, sans makeup, her new 'haircut' — if the haphazard application of scissors in sickbay can be called that — sticking up in all directions. Truly, this is not her best look. But she's on her feet and sans pain killers, if the tightness around her eyes and the grim set of her mouth are any indicators. She's suited up for flight, though she walks with a slight limp, clearly favoring her left side, and her left arm is cradled against her middle. "I'm mobile," she calls from the door, in answer to Wade's query. She limps in, chin set. "The sims'll tell for sure if I'm flight-ready. But I'm going to be flight ready." There'll be no sitting out the next call for this little blonde duck.
Enter Pallas. He's been pulled off the regular rotation for the time being due to injury. From the way his hand is splinted and wrapped, it looks like only the thumb and index finger on his left hand are currently functional. "Spiral's hand is fine," he says dryly to Wade, taking a seat. "I could still fly circles with my good hand if those lazy-ass incompetent knuckledraggers could actually maintain a Viper so it doesn't fall apart after taking one glancing shot."
Roland blinks a little in surprise, and stands up hearing the two pilots. He smiles slightly, and nods over to Psyche, "Bubbles.." He nods to Pallas as well, before sinking back down into his seat.
Devlin nods to Wade, "So just the same, then. Well, stable's good? I tried to look in earlier but the doctors were checking things, or… something," he shakes his head, "You know. I didn't want to get in the way. Anyway. Hey, Blue." At the question about Bubbles, he nods, "She's good, doing a lot better. They let her off morpha last night, we'll see how it goes, I think she's hoping—" He double-takes, clearly surprised to see his wife walk through the door, staring for a second before shrugging and gesturing, saying to Wade, "Well, I guess she convinced them. There's your answer." He chuckles a little at Spiral's entrance afterwards and then leans towards Psyche, patting the seat next to him before rising, speaking quietly into her ear for a second.
Psyche flashes Spiral a warm, if somewhat strained and weary, smile. "Hey, Bunky." Once a bunky, always a bunky, apparently. She lifts a hand in greeting to Roland and Wade, then hobbles over to join Devlin, lowering herself gingerly into the seat and tilting her head to catch his words.
Wade moves his gaze over Bubbles and a smile forms on his lips "Glad to have you back Bubbles, love the haircut by the way" He smiles a little more at this and then looks at Decoy "Yeah, stable is good…" He guesses at least, he's no doctor. Attention moving back to Bubbles, he adds "Well, I can't really say we don't need every pilot out there." He takes a deep breath and nods, looking at Pallas now "Spiral, glad to see that the humor levels are normal." he looks at the hand "Ok, so you are grounded then…" he nods to himself and makes a mark on a piece of paper he has in front of him "We are getting quite a beating and we haven't seen the last of them, whatever these Raiders are doing, they are doing it well. We can't replace Pilots as easily so we gotta survive, survive to fight another day" He looks at his sheet again and adds "In case of alert scramble, I'm going to be flying with Blue. Decoy I think you should go out with McQueen. Bubbles, if you really feel up for it, how about Grunt for you?" He rubs his fingers over his eyes and then looks at Pallas "Spiral, what do you think, this is pretty much a first time that we get hammered like this in a long time"
"You? Flight-ready?" Pallas says to Psyche with a disbelieving laugh in his voice. Hello to you too, Bunky. "What a bunch of frakking heroes we've got in this room. You're in no shape to go up four flights of stairs without taking a break, much less mount up for combat." Holding up his injured hand, he points to Wade. "Grounded, like frak. The next time a Gods-be-damned medical school drop-out in a military uniform tells me I can't fly with one hand injured, I'll kick her right in the clit with steel-toe boots until she signs the papers." Standing up again, he braces himself against the back of the chair in front of him. "I stand by what I said the other night. The Cylons don't want us all dead, or they'd've finished the job long ago. They're looking for answers, and for whatever reason, they need us alive for it. Either that, or we have something or someone they want. Either we're getting closer, or they're running out of time."
Devlin smiles at Wade's mention of Psyche's haircut and then looks back to Wade, nodding at the wing suggestions. "Sounds good to me," he nods, "I'll track Queenie down and let him know." He shuts up then as Pallas starts talking, looking between the older pilot and the others, back and forth. He seems a little uncomfortable, but can't quite cover a snort of laughter at the bit about kicking a doctor in the clit with steel-toed boots. He muffles it in a hand as best he can and turns away, shaking his head a little and saying nothing.
Psyche smirks faintly at Devlin's whisper and nods. "With misgivings and under protest, but they let me out," she replies, more audibly. She rolls her eyes faintly at Spiral. "As long as the pain doesn't detract from my performance, I can fly. The sims'll prove that. All I really need is four fingers and an opposable thumb, y'know? I'm right handed — armed, whatever. I have complete range of motion on that side. Frakking Poppy flew, and there's no way I'm sitting out another dance 'cause it'd be more comfortable to be cuddled up in bed with morpha." Well, that might be over-simplifying things JUST a bit. But. She turns her attention to Wade as he speaks, nodding. "Sure, I can fly with Wilkerson. Not a problem."
Roland coughs as Pallas speaks. He covers a grins, and listens as the others chime in. He looks back up front to Wade, and nods to the pilot, "Condition 2 .. Are we setting double CAP's"
"I'm not /grounding/ you, Spiral. Don't throw a fit." quickly returns Wade to the older Pilot, he shakes his head at this an says "I understood that you were grounded by Medical, my bad then" he nods to this and takes a deep breath "Like I said, we need every pilot we can get out there" As for the comment on what the Cylons are trying to do, he nods "I agree. I sure as hell don't know what the frak they are up to, but I do know that I don't want to give them the satisfaction to accomplish that goal. And in particular, I don't want to give them the satisfaction of blowing us up to pieces." He clears his throat now and rubs his eyes as he looks at the sheet in front of him "Well, better yet then. Let's do it this way. Spiral with Decoy, Bubbless with Queenie, Blue with me…" and he keeps adding other names there as well. Now, his attention moves to Roland and he shakes his head "Not yet Roland, those are being handled on a need to need basis I believe." Now, he looks at the group "We are all good pilots here, and you guys know it. So what we do, is work as a unit, as a group, and we don't let those frakking pieces of tin metal frak with us." Cylon bitches.
"The useful question to ask," Pallas continues, "is not why they're hammering us like this now, but how. And don't even think think about this Gods-be-damned 'curse' that the ignorant enlisted grunts cooked up. They're tracking us somehow, and if they show up again tonight, then we'll know they're doing it consistently. Which means it doesn't matter how many times we jump away, they'll just keep coming." That's apparently it for Spiral's Soapbox, since he pushes away from the seat he's leaning against and sits back down.
Devlin leans over and whispers in Psyche's ear once more and then straightens up, facing Wade at the front of the room again and nodding as assignments are re-jiggered again. "Okay," he nods his agreement easily before falling silent once more. Spiral's words get a grimmer nod and after a moment or two he asks, "So… what do we do?"
Roland crosses his arms across his chest, and listens quietly for a few moments. He glances back to Devlin as he speaks before looking back up front to Wade.
"What he said," Psyche agrees with Spiral, pointing at the old man for emphasis. "But twice. And cuter." She tilts her head again, listening to Devlin, and grins. The tight lines around her eyes ease and her pain-paled complexion pinkens up rather nicely.
Wade nods to that "Yes, I've been thinking about that, and you are right, we have to worry about the how." He goes silent for a few seconds pressing his lips "I don't think this curse thing is…true, that's…ridiculous. But you know, that ship has been out there for a long, long time. I don't know, I keep running of the idea of it holding…some sort of beacon. Something that we can't track, something that transmits coordinates. That would explain the why….why do they just appear like that" he snaps his fingers "I don't know, it's a theory of course but I want to talk with engineering to broaden their range when trying to find outgoing frequencies." He clears his throat "The other one and the one I really hope is not the case, is that we have a Cylon agent on board…" He taps on the poddium and looks over his shoulder at the recordings showing in the monitors. "Fact is…we got that ship here, they started to appear."
Pallas raps his knuckles on the arm of his chair at Wade's words, sitting up with an angry look. "Of course we have a Cylon agent on board, Lieutenant frakking Obvious! We might as well put up a frakking sign up that says 'Skinjob Hotel, Cylons Welcome'. How long did Abbot live after we knew he was one of them? For frak's sakes, they brigged Apostolos for trying to kill one that we knew was the enemy." He's too angry to stay seated, so he gets back up on his feet and starts pacing the room. "We have known Cylon sympathizers living on this ship, working in uniform, watching our every move. You wanna know the how? Why don't we go pay them a visit and ask them some questions - not the way the Fleet's been doing it, with JAGs and juries. The old way, the military way, with a pair of tie-wraps, bandaged knuckles, and locks in socks. That's how you get real Gods-be-damned answers."
"Whoa," Psyche says, after gazing and blinking in silence at Spiral's rant. "Actually, I was totally with you until we started savagely beating people for holding unpopular opinions." She pushes a hand through her unevenly shorn hair, sighing. "I mean, other than being cray-cray, it doesn't sound very effective. I doubt Cylons would use-slash-confide in human sympathizers, if that's really what the morons who like to talk peace, love, and understanding actually are. Dangerously unreliable. So other than getting your hate rocks off, I don't think torturing people — people people, human people — is going to garner any info. Aye-em-aych-oh."
Wade just shakes his head and snorts at Spirals' first comment. "Are you frakking nuts, Spiral? Are you goint to call yourself judge and executioner and go around beating people up with socks and bars of soap? You are turning things into a gods damn witch hunt!" He takes a deep breath "That is not the way of doing things Spiral, you should know that better than anyone else. And even so, Cylons sympathizers or whatever it is you want to call them, do you have /proof/ that they are indeed, helping the Cylons to frak with us?" He shakes his head at that "That is /not/ the way to do things" He clearrs his throat and looks at Psyche, nodding at her "Exactly." he shakes his head again "Spiral, really…we know that the attacks happened when that ship got here. Does it have something to do? I don't frakking know. But I am more than willing to bug as many souls as possible to ensure that a strong investigation is driven to find, something" He nods "In the meantime, we, as a Squadron, we do what we do best, and we shoot those frakking tin cans out of the sky"
Roland clears his throat, "We got one job.. Fly Vipers. Someone else needs to work out the why. You just deal with whats in front of ye. Today its those frackin stripes." He glances back down at the deck falling silent.
"I didn't say anything about torture," Pallas responds to Psyche. "It ain't torture when you bruise a bastard up to straighten 'em out. Officially, it's just a boxing session of PT that got a little heated. We used to break a few ribs if we wanted to keep the frakker off the flight roster for a few days, now those made for more interesting reports." Ah yes, the good ol' days. "And of course the sympathizers aren't being confided in by the Cylons - not directly. They're peace-blinded shit-brains, but they aren't suicidal. But you start questioning them about people who've been asking them some questions, acting strange, or wandering places they shouldn't've been, I guarantee you'll start getting answers. I guarantee it." At Wade's words, he throws his hands up in disgust and starts walking away to the hatch. "You've all gone frakking soft. You probably think Apostolos went and killed herself, too, instead of being murdered by a Cylon and set up to look like a suicide. She was the only one in this Squadron - no, this frakking Fleet - with any real balls. And I'm gonna do what she would've done - whatever it takes to win. Win this firefight, win this battle, win this war. Soldiers don't sit around waiting for proof - that's a frakking deathwish. So you all can sit around while more pilots get shot out of the sky. Me, I don't need frakking proof. I know what's right."
Psyche stares blankly at Pallas for a moment. When an expression finally resolves, it's heartbroken. "Tis killed herself, Spiral." It's said gently and sadly, like she's breaking the news for the first time. "She'd been despondent since Shiv was killed. It's not like you can't logically lay that act at the feet of the Cylons, as well. Everything that drove her to it… it's all their doing, in one way or another… but…" She shakes her head. "She wasn't murdered. It's just — it's just the way it is. There are plenty of real reasons to hate the enemy, y'know? If you hop on the Frothing Paranoia Express… it makes you less effective. If you want to figure this out, you've got to keep your shit together."
"See that you put the same passion while out there, Spiral. Protect your wingman, protect your Squadron. You are a gods damn good Viper pilot and while you can be a frakking prick sometimes…" Wade shakes his head "You are a Black Knight, one of us." He nods and adds "We are all, Black Knights" Now, he looks at Psyche and nods to her words "Paranoia can get the best of us and while, sometimes our Paraonoia can lead us in the right path, there are ways and ways of doing things." He nods to her again, showing a brief smile. He runs his fingers over his forehead and over his hair afterwards, he looks at the others now and nods firmly to them "Like I said, we are all good pilots here, let's not give them the chance to bring us down out there." He clears his throat and closes his folder "Do we consider this meeting, over?"
Pallas rounds on Psyche and holds up a finger toward her almost threateningly from across the room. He looks like he's about to yell at her or come after her or something, but he stays frozen in that position long enough for Wade to start talking. And all throughout the little inspirational speech, he holds his finger and unblinking, angry eyes on his former bunkmate. A moment of still silence hangs before the old man lets his finger drop. "I don't need you to tell me how to do my frakking job," he spits to Wade. "And save your little feel-good speeches for the Chapel." And out he goes. It's safe to say that he considers this meeting over.
Psyche is pointed at and sits up straighter, looking right ready to be blasted by the furnace of Spiral's anger and pain. She had to have known she was provoking such a reaction. Who knows why she'd go ahead and do such a fool thing, anyways. But there she sits, and stares down the Baleful Finger of Doom. Finally, she says, "She'd own it, Pallas, and you know it. She'd punch you right in the nuts for making excuses for her." Only once he's gone does she look down and away, sagging a little, dull pain creeping back into her expression. "Yeah," she agrees with Wade. "I think we're done here."