He doesn't quite grasp the significance at first -- maybe it's an Earth thing? -- until John says her, and he remembers. That bossy, beloved chicken John carries almost everywhere to keep him grounded. The one he named for someone he loved and lost.
Gaeta exhales, a little shakily, and accepts the feather with a nod. He holds it tight between two fingers like it's a replacement for his cigarette: something to keep his hands busy while, at last, he talks.
"The Colonies," he says, "were destroyed about four years ago by a race of sentient machines called the Cylons. Only about fifty thousand of us survived, mostly because we were in the air at the time. The Cylons kept hunting us for every last one of those four years to wipe out the rest of humanity. And my commanding officer, Admiral Adama -- "
His jaw twitches.
"When a few Cylon models split off from the rest and came to the Fleet claiming they could help us, he let them in. Couple months later, it turned out someone high up the chain who'd been on Galactica for years was a sleeper agent, and the admiral didn't care. He let them stay. He was about to let the Cylons graft their own tech onto Galactica even though the only reason we survived in the first place was because the ship's a frakking antique and they couldn't hack into our system. We had nowhere to go, nothing left we could possibly do, and instead of leading, he threw what's left of humanity to the godsdamn wolves."
He hasn't raised his voice this whole time, but gradually, it's become more strident, more furious. The simmering anger that flickers under Gaeta's genial demeanor every so often has finally erupted to the surface.
"So I mutinied. I allied with someone on the civilian side who'd overthrow the president at the same time, and we did what we had to do." He huffs half an unamused laugh. "Obviously it didn't work. Not in the end. We came close, but -- " Some of the anger gutters, winks out. "But I wasn't going to sit by and watch him lead us all to our deaths again."
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Gaeta exhales, a little shakily, and accepts the feather with a nod. He holds it tight between two fingers like it's a replacement for his cigarette: something to keep his hands busy while, at last, he talks.
"The Colonies," he says, "were destroyed about four years ago by a race of sentient machines called the Cylons. Only about fifty thousand of us survived, mostly because we were in the air at the time. The Cylons kept hunting us for every last one of those four years to wipe out the rest of humanity. And my commanding officer, Admiral Adama -- "
His jaw twitches.
"When a few Cylon models split off from the rest and came to the Fleet claiming they could help us, he let them in. Couple months later, it turned out someone high up the chain who'd been on Galactica for years was a sleeper agent, and the admiral didn't care. He let them stay. He was about to let the Cylons graft their own tech onto Galactica even though the only reason we survived in the first place was because the ship's a frakking antique and they couldn't hack into our system. We had nowhere to go, nothing left we could possibly do, and instead of leading, he threw what's left of humanity to the godsdamn wolves."
He hasn't raised his voice this whole time, but gradually, it's become more strident, more furious. The simmering anger that flickers under Gaeta's genial demeanor every so often has finally erupted to the surface.
"So I mutinied. I allied with someone on the civilian side who'd overthrow the president at the same time, and we did what we had to do." He huffs half an unamused laugh. "Obviously it didn't work. Not in the end. We came close, but -- " Some of the anger gutters, winks out. "But I wasn't going to sit by and watch him lead us all to our deaths again."