"I'd better let you get your rest," Athena said, her cheeks red and hectic. She rose and hurried from the room, past the ward of empty med-berths and past Cassiopeia, who was filling out her duty log at the desk.
Cassie didn't bother to look up. She was quite used to seeing women leave a room in tears when Starbuck was involved. She had done that more than once herself. He was a rogue, impossible not to love, but impossible to stay in love with for any great length of time. She had always known that Starbuck was not the kind of man to ever love one woman, but still, there was always the hope that he would, if she were the right woman. And Cassie had tried to be that woman, leaving her socializing behind like a change of old clothes, and throwing herself into her med studies, but she was coming to face some hard and unpleasant truths.
As much as he might be the man she loved, she was not the woman he loved. Not enough, anyway.
She looked up from her duty log and watched Starbuck lying in his med-berth. His eyes were still open, despite the tranks coursing through his system.
Starbuck could still feel the tingle of Athena's cheek on his knuckles, and he wonderingly rubbed the tips of his fingers over the back of his other hand. He looked over at Cassie, who sat with her head bowed over her notations, studiously avoiding making eye contact with him.
"Cassie," he said, softly, little more than an exhalation of breath that formed her name. He loved her, gods knew he did, but he'd hurt her so many times before without meaning to. It was as if some part of him refused to allow anyone to get close enough to hurt him, as if breaking their heart was little more than a pre-emptive emotional strike. He didn't mean it that way, but he was beginning to wonder what this said about him.
He couldn't hurt Cassie again, not after all he'd put her through already, and in his heart, he had already begun to say goodbye to her. If he were honest, he had begun to say goodbye to her after she had first declared her love for him, as if he collected hearts the way some savage tribes collected fleshy mementos of their conquests.
Still, he couldn't deny the idea of a serious relationship, after playing the field for so many yahren, was appealing to him, and Athena, hard-headed, two-fisted Athena, might be woman enough to go the long distance with someone like him. Maybe it was time for just one woman… but he didn't want to hurt the sister of his best friend. Adama had taken Starbuck in when his own family was killed, raised him as if he were his own son; how could he repay that kindness with his usual coin of hurt and disappointment? Apollo, as understanding as he was, would not understand if Starbuck hurt Athena. Was it worth the risk of destroying his friendship with Apollo?
The idea intrigued him, and frightened him, as well—more than facing a Chitain warship.
Cassie's replacement had arrived and began making her rounds, stopping at Starbuck's med-berth to check his monitor readings.
He felt the old rogue's smile coming to his lips, an involuntary reflex, the way a man's leg will spasm when a doctor taps it with his rubber hammer. Starbuck just couldn't help it.
The attendant—Tamara, according to her ID badge—paused a moment, long enough to return his smile with one of her own. Their eyes met and held for a moment too long, and Starbuck could feel the old dance of seduction beginning yet again.
Maybe it was time for a serious relationship… and, then again, maybe not.
"Hey!" he called out, "where's that fumarello and ambrosa I asked for?"
Ahhhh, frack! he thought. That coma's looking better all the time.
Apollo had seen more of the science lab in the last hour than he had in the past three weeks, but he had to admit, it had been an eye-opener, both times.
Doctor Wilker called up two images from the computer and projected them on the monitor. Apollo looked at them, unable to determine any great difference between the two. "What am I looking at?" he asked.
"Human DNA, and Cylon DNA," Wilker answered. "Notice anything?"
Apollo looked closer; apart from a few very minor differences in the cellular structure, he had to admit he did not notice anything.
"They're almost identical," Apollo said. "What does this mean?"
But he thought he already knew.
"The DNA sample on the left is human, taken from Doctor Salik," Wilker explained. Salik held up his palm, to indicate a small bio-plasteen patch where the sample had been recently taken. "The sample on the right is taken from the biological brain of the destroyed Cylon we've had in storage all these yahren."
"I think you can guess the implications," Salik added.
"I can guess," Apollo muttered, "but I'd rather have no room for error. What does this mean, exactly?"
Wilker thumbed a button on the computer key-pad and the two slides converged in the center of the screen. Apart from a mismatched strand or two, the DNA samples lined up almost exactly. "It means this," Wilker said, turning to look over his shoulder at Apollo. "They're using human DNA to upgrade and stabilize their own reptilian DNA. We know the Cylons are ever-evolving—or, perhaps more accurately, ever-adapting-their race, whether it's scientifically or, in this case, through genetic enhancements. They're obviously looking for ways to improve their stock and evolve a race genetically superior to humans. I'm afraid, Commander, based on the sample taken from our frozen friend—and remember, he joined us on our trip many yahren ago—they may be very close to doing just that."
Outside the science lab, Gar'Tokk waited.
His thoughts, like Apollo's, were his own, but he would be surprised to learn they were not so different in the long run. Gar'Tokk thought of family, and friends, and a home he would never again know, and he missed all of them. He had loved someone, once, long before Apollo bested him in combat and earned his servitude. Now, of course, the one Gar'Tokk had loved was gone, dead, as all the Borellian women were. Perhaps that was just as well: she would be too shamed by his fealty to a mere human to love him in return. He could expect no less, and who was he to win the heart of his woman, when he could not even win his own freedom?
He watched silently as two of his people passed him in the corridor and disappeared at the juncture farther on. They had seen Gar'Tokk, but had chosen to ignore him; he was dead to them, after all, no longer fit to wear the crown of leader of the Borellian Nomen. If, on those rare occasions, he ever wanted to return to his people, something like this would quickly remind him it was best not to. He was dead to their world, and the dead cannot care. At best, they can only be missed.
Missed… and then, forgotten.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE OFF-DUTY officers club—the ODOC—was a dark room filled with a scattering of tables and a long, wide bar made of rare katsaguri wood. This, like Adama's chair in what was now Apollo's sanctuary, was one of the very few items made of wood in the entire fleet.
The Viper pilots who came here did not come for the ambiance; they came to get drunk. They came to brag; they came to meet socialators; sometimes, they came to fight; but sometimes they came because love was where you found it.
It was no different for the female pilots who came here; they had their own cliques, their own friends, their own stories to tell, their own drinks and their own fumarellos, their own hearts to break or have broken. It was a Warriors' bar—genderless, simple, and functional, with male and female pilots and cutthroat games of pyramids—where mostly they commiserated with one another over the circumstances in which they found themselves. They were men and women of action, all of them; the inaction was making them edgy and quick-tempered. It was ironic—peace was what they fought for, what some of them died for, and peace seemed to be the hardest battle they would have to survive. Even the young ones, who had never fought a battle, were edgy, trained to be weapons and having no enemy at which to point themselves. Sooner or later, those weapons would turn upon one another, the only release they knew for their frustrations and tensions.
Jolly was trying very hard to live up to his name.
Flanked by Omega and Rigel, Jolly had spent the last half centon tell
ing the story of how he had been out on routine patrol when he spotted a contingent of Cylon Raiders hiding behind an asteroid, waiting to ambush the Warriors. It had taken so long to get to this point in the story because Jolly kept remembering details he had previously omitted and felt necessary to backtrack and factor in. During his numerous trips back to the starting point, the size of the Cylon ambush squadron grew large enough to almost encompass the entire Cylon empire.
He was making it up as he went, of course, the few grogs he'd already quaffed making it difficult to maintain the narrative thread of his story, but that was all right. Everyone knew he was felgercarbing, but no one minded. The pretend battles were the best, because they always ended heroically, with as few tears and heartaches as possible. No one badly injured, no one dead. It was all anyone could ask from a story.
Jolly looked up, saw Troy, and waved at him. Troy nodded and kept looking for Dalton.
"Where was I?" Jolly asked the little group. They had imbibed almost as much ambrosa as he had, and couldn't recall. Magnanimously, Jolly said he would just start at the beginning.
Troy was learning that, although love may be where you find it, it may not always stay where you last left it. He had not seen much of Dalton lately; with the fleet diminished as it was, they were all required to assume extra duties, and Dalton had spent most of her free time in the med-unit, waiting for word on her father. Understandable, of course, but frustrating for a young man in love.
He regretted he had not been able to be with her as she passed the long and lonely hours in the med-unit, but he had managed to arrange the duty roster so that he had a little free time when Dalton had hers. It would be good to see her, spend time together again, and as he thought that, he realized how much he truly missed her, how deeply he cared. It is usually during such moments of romantic self-realization that the world explodes; there is nothing the universe loves so much as bitter irony.
As he entered the ODOC, Troy spotted a group of young cadets and Warriors gathered around a small table, like the spokes of a wheel, and something in his heart told him only Dalton could command such intense interest in so many men. As Troy made his way through the crowded bar, weaving between tables and chairs and a tangle of legs and feet, he could see the face that was becoming daily more dear to him, just above the shoulder of a cadet who sat with his back to Troy. Dalton was smiling and laughing and she seemed radiant… more radiant, in fact, than she had seemed in quite some time, and Troy felt a wild slurry of emotions washing through him. Somehow, he knew, her happiness did not extend to him, had nothing at all to do with him, in fact.
Dalton felt his eyes upon her and she looked his way and nodded, then returned her attentions to her original focus. Annoyed, Troy walked closer, seeing now the object of Dalton's interest. As Troy feared, it was another man. He was blonde-haired and possessed of handsome, chiseled features, blue, piercing eyes and a sly, winning smile. And he was sitting beside Dalton, his arm around the back of her chair, her body language open and inviting. There was the crackle of electricity in the small space of air between them, the sound of a close connection being made.
The other cadets and Warriors greeted him warmly, offered Troy a chair around the table, as if nothing were wrong, as if this were the most normal thing in all the world, and a feeling, like drowning, told him perhaps it was. Perhaps this had been going on all along.
"What's going on here?" Troy asked, trying to keep something like calm in his voice.
The interloper glanced at Troy, a casual thing, but Troy felt he was sizing him up with that glance. Taking the measure of him… and then, dismissing him, just as casually. The interloper turned back to Dalton, Troy already forgotten.
Troy slipped in on the other side of Dalton, taking her firmly by the arm. "I'm talking to you," he said, his lips pressed close to her ear.
"Boxey, what are you doing?" she snapped.
Boxey? She only called him that as an endearment… or an embarrassment. Troy could see the smirk spreading on the interloper's face, and understood at once which of the two it was.
"Boxey," the new man repeated, and laughed.
"Come with me."
Troy stood up, almost jerking Dalton to her feet. She bumped the table with her hip, rattling the load of drinks, making the glasses chatter amongst themselves, as if in admonishment, spilling the more precariously balanced glasses.
"Are you crazy?!" she shouted. "Troy, stop it! You're hurting me!"
Hurting you? he thought; gods, you have no idea what real hurt is.
"She's doing fine right where she is," the interloper said.
"This is none of your business," Troy snapped, rounding on the man. He pulled Dalton closer to him, his hands gripping her shoulders. "You and I—we have to talk."
Dalton raised her arms, bringing them up between Troy's, and levered his hands away from her shoulders. "I'm not in the mood to talk about anything serious," she informed him. "But if you want to act like an adult, sit here and have a drink with the rest of us. You're more than welcome to stay."
"Act like an adult?" he parroted. Her words, on top of her inexplicable actions, nettled and stung him. "I'm not the one sitting here, making time with a Starbuck-simulacrum."
Dalton's mouth worked without forming words; her expression was as if Troy had slapped her. Before either could say anything else, the new man was there, grabbing Troy by the shoulder and spinning him around.
Trays, Troy remembered, a sudden burst of useless illumination. His name is Trays, and he's from Commander Cain's group of pilots. Grew up on Poseidon.
"All right, Boxey," Trays said, a sneer curling his lip. "She asked you politely to leave her alone. If I have to ask you, it won't be so nice."
"I'm so glad you said that." Troy balled his fist and brought it up in a powerful uppercut, corkscrewing his wrist as he struck, the extra torque splitting open Trays' lip. Trays staggered back, clapping his hand to his spurting wound.
The sounds of the bar stopped all at once as all heads turned toward the fight.
"That your best… Boxey?" Trays asked, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. "Maybe I should be babysitting you instead of beating you."
That was enough for Troy; he flung himself headlong at Trays, taking as many serious blows as he landed, feeling the dull impact of the other man's fist thudding off his ribs, his chin, his belly. But it was only pain; he'd lived through painful times before, and he'd survive this.
Trays fought wild, and that made him dangerous. He had his own style, which he had learned growing up on Poseidon, and Troy was having a hard time finding a pattern, some little bit of body language that Trays had that telegraphed the blow. Troy thought he spotted an opening, and swung, realizing a micron too late that he had only set himself up. Trays sidestepped the punch easily, and brought his outside leg up in a snap-kick, catching Troy full in the stomach.
The air whoooshed! out of Troy's lungs in an explosive exhalation, but he refused to go down. Instead, he lurched forward and grabbed Trays, pinning his arms and standing too close for him to use his legs again. That made no difference to Trays; he simply snapped his head forward, bashing Troy's nose with his forehead. What kind of scraps did Trays get into on Poseidon, where he learned to fight like this?
Dalton, watching this display of territory and testosterone, let fly an inarticulate cry of anger, turned on her heel, and ran from the lounge.
By this time, the other pilots had pulled Troy and Trays apart, although they were finding it somewhat more difficult to keep them that way. Each combatant surged forward against the hands that gripped him, wanting only to finish decisively the battle they had begun. Troy, jostled around by the Warriors holding him back, saw Dalton just as she left the ODOC.
"Just calm down," Jolly said, gripping Troy's shoulders. "She's gone, you don't have to prove anything to anyone now."
This gave Troy's struggles to break free a renewed strength, and he shook himself loose. He pelted after Dalton, pushi
ng past the curious bystanders who blocked his way, and caught up with her out in the main concourse, in front of the restaurant.
"Didn't you hear me calling you?" he asked, touching her on the inside of her elbow.
"Just who the frack do you think you are?" she spat, rounding on him so viciously that Troy found himself taking an involuntary step backward. "You don't own me! Nobody owns me! So you can just take your jealousy and stuff it up your exhaust baffle!"
Troy blinked, found his own anger rising. "Well, forgive me if I misunderstood," he said, "but for some reason, I had the impression you were interested in me. After all, you were the one to come onto me, remember, so what was I supposed to think?" A fine, crimson spume of blood flew from his lips as he spoke.
"That doesn't mean we're sealed," Dalton said, folding her arms across her chest. "I'll live my own life, without your approval, and right now, I have a father who's dying and I don't need you interfering with who I hang out with and how I deal with my grief!"
"How long has this… have you two… ?" Troy stammered. He wasn't sure he really wanted to know.
"Does it matter? Either one?" she asked, her head bowed, her chin touching her collar bone, her hair framing her face.
She blinked back a tear, and for a moment, all Troy could think about was Dalton, and how much pain she was in, and how much he wished he could take some of it for her. He reached to touch her face, and she slapped his hand away.
"Just—stay away from me," she said, and stalked off, leaving Troy to wonder just when his life had slipped so far out of control.
Starbuck slept; it seemed funny to think a man who had been in a coma for more than three weeks would want to sleep, but he was ravenous for it and wouldn't have needed the tranks at all if Dr. Wilker had just waited a few more microns.
Cassiopeia stood watch beside Starbuck's med-berth.
"They always look so cute when they're sleeping," Athena said "from behind Cassie.
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