MONDO EXTRAS

"I've seen officers happier about a promotion," Helena says, and Kendra protests that she is happy, for that. She makes the mistake of wondering aloud how she possibly could have earned it. "Don't, Captain. Don't do it. Don't look back. Sometimes, we have to leave people behind, so that we can go on. So that we can continue to fight." Jürgen Belzen, Gina Inviere, Mrs. Laird, Blue Squadron. "Sometimes, we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of, if only to show the enemy our will." Blind jump, comms relay, the cannibalizing of the civilian Fleet. Gina again, most terribly.

"Yesterday, you showed me that you were capable of setting aside your fear, setting aside your hesitation, and even your revulsion. Every natural inhibition that during battle can mean the difference between life and death. When you can be this? For as long as you have to be? Then you're a razor." She holds up her knife. It is a gift. "This war is forcing us all to become razors. Because if we don't, we don't survive. And then we don't have the luxury of becoming simply human again. Do you understand me?" Do you understand yourself? Becoming simply human again isn't a luxury, it's your fucking mandate. You get better or you die. But nobody wants the embarrassment of absolution. When Helena Cain dies, her last words... What if what she really meant, all along, were just this? "Frak you, for hurting me so badly that I couldn't turn back."

Now, on the radio, we shed those luxuries: President Roslin's issued an executive order outlawing abortion. She started burning things off before New Caprica was even a glimmer on the horizon. Since then, she's lined crewmen up against the wall, lied as easily as breathing, kidnapped a daughter and told her mother she was dead, conspired to subvert democracy, explicitly condoned child slavery, committed sedition and terrorism, and employed interrogational torture so far beyond the simply cruel and unusual that I almost vomited. Forgiven.

Now, Starbuck and Shaw's SAR team gets close to the experimental base, even as the Pegasus is taking heavy fire and leading the Guardian Raiders away. The team ejects, and blows out to the base. Their Raptor is destroyed. And the funny Guardians, at the helms of their funny Raiders: the boss says, in a funny computer voice, "Enemy target destroyed. All wings regroup and continue pursuit of Battlestar Pegasus." And you already know what the rest of them say: Amen. "By your command."