Mission: SAR

[faithful_lt]

He'd waited around in the corridor after his shift until the XO came out of CIC. Hoshi falls in beside Tigh as he walks, and begins to plead his case.

"Sir, I know our resources are limited, but it won't take much--"

"Pull yourself together, Lieutenant," Tigh growls. "They know where the Fleet is."

Hoshi doesn't budge. "That’s my point, sir. It was a false alarm, and everyone has jumped back."

Everyone but Raptor 718. Everyone but Felix. He swallows the fear back yet again and continues, urgently,

"It's been over two days now, and they’re still not here. Just give me a Raptor and a pilot, and -- "

Tigh stops walking and turns around, pinning Hoshi with a look. "And what would you do with that, jump randomly?"

It's a fair question. What he's proposing is a wild chance, one in a million or more, and yet... it's still a chance.

Hoshi draws a quiet breath, and meets Tigh's eye with a steady gaze.

"Sir. There is something in the universe, something we can't understand - something that let us find Earth, dead as it is. Now I know--"

He rushes on even as Tigh starts to shake his head.

"-- I know I can find Felix. Me and Felix..."

Hoshi trails off there, but continues to hold Tigh's glance all the same. Silence hangs heavy between them for a long beat.

"There’s been too much loss already," he finishes, quietly.

Tigh heaves a sigh. "I’ll have to run it by the old man."

It's tacit permission, and they both know it. Hoshi doesn't waste any time.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you."




It's all he can do to keep himself from running through the corridors.

Hang on, Felix. Help is on the way.

He makes it to the rec room in record time all the same. Hoshi slams through the door with enough clatter to draw everyone's attention from the usual card game to him in an instant.

Comments

[bsg_npcs]

"Where's the fire, Lou?"

Racetrack's voice is casual, faintly sardonic -- but she's lowered her cards, and she's studying his face.

[faithful_lt]

"Hopefully nowhere," he says. He manages to keep it dry, but he can't completely hide his concern.

Nor does he need to, nor would he want to. Not here; not with these people, his friends, who also just happen to be pilots, too.

"It's just ... Raptor 718 still hasn't checked in."

[bsg_npcs]

A low ripple of reaction goes through the room; eyes being lowered, faces turning away.

Racetrack's hands fold over her cards. "You looking for them in here?"

[faithful_lt]

"That'd be quite a trick, wouldn't it?"

Hoshi shakes his head. "No. Nothing like that. And of course I know that there's nothing to do about it under regs--"

He knows it; they all know it. These are the people who live with this sort of risk every single hour of every single day. You do what you can, and try not to worry about what you can't change.

Except, of course, that he can't stop himself. Not this time.

"-- but I happened to be talking with Colonel Tigh, and he allowed that there'd be no objection to an unofficial search."

Please. It's the nearest he can manage to a prayer; the Lady's universe isn't his, but surely, surely...

"If anyone's got a couple of hours and would be willing?"

Please.

[bsg_npcs]

The pilots exchange glances, and a silence slowly congeals around the room. Skulls is the first one to move, but only to drain his glass and reach for the bottle in the middle of the table again.

They all know it: if the Raptor hasn't found the Fleet again by now, it's even odds as to whether they've been destroyed or gotten stranded at the wrong coordinates. In either case, searching for them is likely to be an exercise in futility.

Or desperation.



Racetrack shrugs, tosses down her cards, and hauls herself up from the table in one smooth motion. "Boring game anyway," she says, with a lopsided grin. "Where we headed, LT?"

[faithful_lt]

Relief washes over him; he does his best to keep it from showing too much. Hoshi grins back.

"I've got the coordinates from the planned flight path," he tells her, as they leave the rec room and the door shuts behind them. "Shouldn't be too hard to run a search pattern from there, right?"

He's going to owe Laird a big favor for getting them a bird, too, he knows, but that's okay.

[bsg_npcs]

"Shouldn't be," she agrees. "You got any clue which way to start looking?"

Her tone's as light and ironic as ever, but the sidelong glance she gives him seems better fitted to looking at a friend just released from sickbay about a week too early. Like she's wondering if he's about to collapse, or if it might not be better if he did.

[faithful_lt]

"Communications officer," Hoshi reminds her. "I thought I'd run a match between the flight path and the point in time where the last recorded transmission was made, peg that as the last known position, and start there."

He sees her glance, but he ignores it. He'll take ribbing for this for however long it lasts, as long as they find the missing Raptor.

As long as they find Felix.

[bsg_npcs]

"Makes sense."

That faintly worried glance stays on him for another half-second, and then she's brisk and untroubled again. "Let's get to it."

They suit up while Laird's people prep the Raptor. Racetrack stays cheerful as they climb on board and run through the preflight checks; no word at all, not even good-natured grumbling, about how she's giving up her few precious hours of downtime for this.

"Okay, LT," as the engines rev up, "let's go hunting."

[faithful_lt]

The blackness of space closes around the Raptor as they launch, and Hoshi unconsciously takes a deep breath and leans forward, scanning the stars around them.

There's nothing to see, of course. Still, he had to look.

Hoshi glances back down at the console in front of him. His hands are perfectly steady as he plugs in the data and starts the first calculation.

[bsg_npcs]

Racetrack's hands are steady on the controls.

The Raptor that seems so large on the hangar deck shrinks to a minnow beside the bulk of its parent Battlestar; shrinks further, to a drifting mote of dust, against the vast emptiness of the night between the stars.

It's nothing new, of course. A pilot gets used to it, because a nugget who can't get used to it washes out early.

Still ... it's easier not to notice when there's something shooting at you, or when there's a specific somewhere in all the nowhere that you're trying to get to. Searching for something in it, something no bigger than themselves, that's different.

Well, whatever. Not like she's got anything better to do.

[faithful_lt]

"Here." He calls up the grid and paints a trace on it, the thin line of light standing out against the blackness and leading to a pinpoint speck.

"That's where the last signal originated from."

[bsg_npcs]

"So that's where we start."

She glances at him again. "You plot the course, Lou, I'm just the pack mule."

[faithful_lt]

"Hardly that," he protests, but his fingers are already flying over the keys.

Hoshi's been thinking about it since realizing that the Raptor had gone missing. Although the standard expanding-squares grid remains useful in a flight-based search over planetary landscapes, it all falls down quickly when dealing with n-dimensional spaces and multiple planes of intersection... not to mention limited time.

"I'm putting in a sector-based pattern that uses an iterated grid algorithm with unimodal convergence," he says. "The distance between the origin and destination points -- Galactica and Zephyr -- should serve to define the maximum parameter space and the limits needed to calculate the reduction ratio..."

He stares at the plot as the first solution flashes up, then glances over at Racetrack.

"... I tried to minimize the number of jump points needed to cover it all," he says, quietly, as the screen begins to fill with line after line of data.

[bsg_npcs]

She doesn't even have to say it: the number of jump points is still much higher than they could conceivably cover in a week. In a month.

Dammit, Lou.

"Well," brisk, "if we're gonna get anywhere, we better get started."

[faithful_lt]

Grateful for her forbearance, he nods, and silently programs the first set of coordinates.

As the drive begins to spin up, Hoshi murmurs,

"I'll factor in sphere reductions based how far your scans can reach out from each point, reduce the overall number that way..."

A long pause.

"... thanks, Racetrack."

[bsg_npcs]

A long pause.

"Yeah," she says to the controls, low.

Glancing up at him again, soberly: "I mean, I get it. You know that, right?"

[faithful_lt]

Hoshi nods.

"Yeah. I know."

She's a pilot; it could just as easily be her out there.

And Felix is her friend too.

[bsg_npcs]

The thought's crossed her mind: it could just as easily be her out there.

And odds are good that no one'd be stupid enough to try a stunt like this for her sake.



Racetrack doesn't say anything else for the moment; the drive's finished spinning up, and they're ready to jump.

[faithful_lt]

There's nothing to be found on the first jump.

Or the next, or the next, or the next after that.

Nothing but the empty night around them, speckled with stars.

Hoshi draws a deep breath, and reaches for the keys to plot another set of coordinates.

Felix, I know you're out here... where are you?

[bsg_npcs]

There isn't much hope. Racetrack knows it to begin with: this isn't likely to succeed.

She's still searching the blackness around them at each jump, as closely as Hoshi is.

"There's nothing here. Frak." She sighs, small and frustrated. "Sorry."

[faithful_lt]

"Not your fault," Hoshi assures her.

He hesitates for a moment, studying the plot, then punches a few commands.

The screen flickers, and flashes a new plot into view. Instead of showing the sequential continuation that he'd so carefully calculated, it displays all the rest of the potential jump points as bright specks on the grid.

He sits back in his seat, studying the display. There's a near-preternatural sort of stillness about him as he says, very calmly,

"Spin the dial."

[bsg_npcs]

She studies the display.

It's easier than trying to look at Lou's face right now.

"Yeah," she says, very low, and reaches for the controls.

Space blurs around them.

[faithful_lt]

There are too many points. Too many possibilities. Not enough time.

He knows it; they both know it.

The sick desperation surges, threatening to overwhelm him. Hoshi fights it back and stares out at the stars.

Please, he thinks. Please.

[bsg_npcs]

Nothing on this jump; more nothing on the next.



Racetrack looks out at the empty space between the stars, and breathes out slowly.

"Hey," she says, quiet, not looking at him. "You okay?"