"It's a deal," Apollo said.
He glanced over at Starbuck, still seated in one of the flight sims. He had watched Apollo's confrontation with the new cadets, ready to jump in, if it looked necessary, but his old buddy had handled it, and so he went back to his retraining.
"How's he doing?" Apollo asked Boomer. "Seriously."
"Seriously? He's doing amazingly well," Boomer said. "He doesn't seem to have lost a step and he's biting at the bit to fly again."
They watched Starbuck for a while; the fluidity of movement was still there. When he was in the cockpit, Starbuck was like some weird hybrid of man and Viper, but the concentration on his face… that was something different, wasn't it? Apollo worried it wasn't quite as easy for Starbuck as he tried to make it seem, at least when he knew they were watching him. Unaware of their scrutiny, Starbuck had let the mask slip a little, and Apollo wasn't sure he liked what he saw beneath the disguise.
"What does his doctor say?"
"The same thing you're thinking," Boomer said. Apollo looked surprised, but supposed Boomer knew him as well as almost anyone. "He's concerned, and thinks it may be premature, and that Starbuck needs more time to heal. Well, that is what you were thinking, isn't it?" Apollo smiled crookedly. "Can you guess my weight, too?" he joked.
Boomer shrugged and nodded toward Sheba. "I can't, but she probably could," he said. "Why, Commander, are you blushing?"
"I have a pocketful of cubits," Apollo told Starbuck, leaning against the flight sim. "So you can ride this thing all day, if you want."
Starbuck hadn't heard him approach, and his face was still etched with the same serious concentration Apollo had seen moments earlier from across the bay. He looked up, focused, and favored Apollo with a big smile as if the grim determination his friend had seen had never been there at all. He could almost believe it… almost.
"How are you doing?" Apollo asked. "No felgercarb."
"No felgercarb, I'm doing great," Starbuck answered. His face was still a little flushed, and rivulets of perspiration ran down his brow, but otherwise, he looked as well as he claimed. Perhaps they were all being overly-cautious, Apollo thought. Or perhaps Starbuck just wasn't being cautious enough. "I'm ready if you need me," he said. "And with the loss of so many pilots, you're going to need all the help you can get."
"You're right about that, Starbuck," Apollo agreed. "But you just take it easy for now. I don't want to lose you again."
You're my closest ally and my dearest friend, Apollo thought. He would very shortly regret not having said this to Starbuck. But they were close friends, closer than some brothers, and even if Apollo didn't say these words, he knew Starbuck sensed them.
"You can't blame yourself for what happened," Starbuck told him. "With me and the explosion. And whatever else may happen… you understand me?"
Apollo didn't. Not at all. But he was a little frightened, at that moment, for his friend.
"Things happen. Things have to happen in certain ways, even if we don't know why." Starbuck finished, seemed a little shaken by the things he had just said, as if he were merely the medium, not the message. And then, because he was Starbuck, talk quickly turned to women. "I'm at a crossroads," he said. "There's someone who would like to get serious with me—"
"Gods help her," Apollo answered automatically. He didn't know the special someone was his own sister. "Gods help anyone who wants to get serious with you."
"You don't think I can do it? Settle down with just one woman?" Starbuck asked, a little crestfallen by Apollo's blunt appraisal.
Apollo chuckled, gave Starbuck a playful pop on the shoulder. "You're a great guy, a great friend, and there's no one I'd want more than you covering my ass in a fight, but, let's be honest—I wouldn't want you dating my sister."
"No," Starbuck agreed, softly. "Certainly wouldn't want that." He forced a smile to his face, and he was Starbuck once more, the rogue whom no one could hurt because no one ever got close enough. "I don't know what I was thinking, getting serious with one woman… must have been the head injury and near-death experience talking."
"Must have been," Apollo agreed, and confessed, "I felt so helpless, just watching you. Not being able to help when you were comatose."
Starbuck glanced up from the flight sim. "You helped," he said. "I knew you were there."
"You did?"
"Of course. You've always been there for me. And I'm here for you, Apollo," Starbuck said, with great gravity. "You know that, right?"
"Of course I know—"
"Even the Lords of Kobol can't take me away." They gripped one another in a Warrior's handshake, and in that moment, Apollo felt a terrible chill slither up his spine and perch at the crown of his skull, as if icy fingers had traced their way up his vertebrae.
Apollo studied his friend's face; this was an odd talk, as if he were saying goodbye and didn't realize it. Before Apollo could pursue it Starbuck's attention was drawn back to the flight sim and the battle with Cylon Raiders he was fighting there.
Apollo backed away, watching Starbuck for a moment or two, then turned away, almost bumping into Sheba. "I just wanted to tell you," she began without preamble, "I'm here for you, too. I know things haven't worked out for us, Apollo, but at the end of the day, I'm still your friend and I always will be."
On an impulse, she kissed him, and hurried away. It was a chaste kiss, so chaste it might not have been there at all. The boom of thrusters broke through Apollo's musings, and he watched Troy's Viper streak down the long launch pad and disappear into the aperture. A moment later, Trays' Viper, followed by Dalton's, sped after him.
Starbuck, hidden inside the flight sim, felt his hands tremble and jitter, unable to grip the navi-hilt. He grabbed one hand with the other, and wrestled them down into his lap, forcing them to quiet. He squeezed his eyes closed, biting his tongue against the cry of pain that kept laddering up and up, until he felt certain his head would simply explode. And, as quickly as it had begun, the attack was over. He sat back in the cockpit mock-up, letting his tense muscles uncoil. A sound of alarm on the sim's audio told him his Viper had just been fragged by a Cylon Raider.
Game over. No problem. He could just reset the controls and start over. In here, anyway. Out there, he wasn't going to be so fortunate.
He opened his eyes, wincing at the pain, and, with hands that barely shook at all, started the sim once more.
CHAPTER SIX
WHOEVER SAID Love is blind just missed it. In truth, Love makes us blind might have been a little closer to it.
Bad enough, Troy thought, to have to fly patrol over a dead planet, but it was worse to have to fly patrol over a dead planet with Trays and Dalton. Their antics together made Troy's stomach clench like a fist ready to strike a solid blow. He supposed others might have felt the same way when it was himself and Dalton, but this was just obnoxious.
"You're getting off formation," Troy warned the hotshot new pilot over their helm-link. "Trays—"
"Cool your thrusters," the voice Troy hated crackled back. "You sound just like Apalling."
Troy's face flushed red. "That's Commander Apollo, Trays," he said, through gritted teeth. "Show the man the respect he deserves."
"Lighten up, Boxey," Dalton interjected. Fine, Troy thought, it's going to be like that, is it?
"I'll show him some respect when he respects my abilities," Trays answered, and let fly a wild, giddy Whoop!
He jammed his Viper's navi-hilt forward and his little fighter went into a power-dive toward the face of the storm-wracked planet far below them. Before the Viper could disappear into Kirasolia's roiling atmosphere, Trays put it into a long, graceful backward loop. Troy remembered something Commander Apollo had said to him long ago, when the whole horrible nightmare was just beginning, and Troy was just a kid they all called Boxey: Fighter ships are no place for boys. The admonition was right, it was just wasted on the wrong little boy.
"Very impressive," Troy said, peevishly. "Now, cut the felgercarb and g
et back into formation before— "
And then, Dalton's Viper was tumbling out of formation and bulleting after Trays' ship. The two errant Vipers zig-zagged around one another, like children playing tag. The planet wheeled along beneath the ships, as they wove in and out in opposing arcs, their vapor trails leaving long, fiery streaks in their wake, like the tails of shooting stars.
"Think you're pretty good, don't you?" Dalton asked Trays.
"You think I am, too," he answered smugly.
Troy bit his lower lip; it was like eavesdropping on lovers, and he supposed that's just what he was doing. And then, she was laughing, free and alive, and Troy wondered if he had ever made her laugh like that, and if he would ever again have the chance. He watched them go, playful as daggits, and would have palmed the tear from his eye if it weren't for the shimmering energy screen that enclosed his Warrior's helm.
Troy pushed his Viper to chase after them; they had already disappeared over the slow, graceful curve of the planet's horizon, and he had to thumb the apex pulsar for a little more speed. He felt the hum of the thrusters behind and beneath him, and took some comfort from that. It was like a mindwipe as Troy felt the reassuring vibrations of the powerful engines thrumm through his nerves and muscles. At least he could count on his ship.
His Viper was still far above theirs, skimming along the very top of Kirasolia's stratosphere, and so his monitor could see farther over the horizon.
Blip.
Troy glanced down at his scanner, puzzled. What was there to go blip?
The starfield consisted of only what a pilot could see through the canopy of his or her Viper, but the laser readout on Troy's helm's face shield gave him a detailed map of the planet and its moons. Whatever his scanner reacted to, it was not there when the survey team had mapped Kirasolia and its satellites just a few cycles earlier.
But coming up over the rise of the planet, Troy could swear he saw a moon— two moons, in fact. Only, as he got a little closer and the shadow of the planet no longer obscured the moons, Troy realized just what he was looking at.
"Gods," he whispered.
It was two Cylon warships, shaped like basestars but larger, more heavily armed, and those two idiots were piloting their Vipers straight for them. Did love really make them that blind? Did love make them stupid? But then, he already knew, first hand, the answer to that one.
"Get out of there!" Troy shouted into his comm-link, but he was already too late. He watched as a cluster of Cylon Raiders birthed from the launch bay of the first basestar. They hadn't seen Troy's Viper yet; they were intent on Trays and Dalton.
Troy's heart thudded against his chest like a first beating on a closed door as he watched the first Cylon Raider target Dalton's Viper, and she was still unaware of its presence. Troy locked his firing screen on the Raider and thumbed the turbolaser on his navi-hilt. He watched anxiously as the beams sizzled across the distance and struck the Raider; a moment later, a fiery new star blazed just above the planet, and winked out. He'd saved Dalton; he just wondered if he'd have made such an effort for Trays, and of course knew he would. The question was, would Trays do as much in return?
"Dalton!" he was almost screaming in the comm-link. "You've got Raiders on your tail!"
"Troy, what are y—?"
Troy watched as Dalton's Viper took a tangential hit from Raider lasers, but she was able to slam her navi-hilt hard to the left and avoid the next barrage. The lasers just missed her, but he knew the Raider was already targeting her for another pass, and this time she wouldn't be so lucky.
Trays was arcing his Viper back around, headed straight for the onrushing Raiders that were close to Dalton's ship. He was a lot of things, but Trays was not a coward. Either that, or he was just completely insane. Troy hadn't quite decided which. Troy broadcast a narrow-beam emergency signal back to the Galactica, then dropped his fighter into formation above and behind the Cylon Raiders. Between Trays's head-on suicidal rush and Troy's somewhat more classical maneuver, the two Warriors had this phalanx of Raiders locked in a deadly crossfire.
And then, another wave of Raiders blasted from the launch bay of the basestar.
"Prepare to pull out!"
Commander Cain could not credit his ears with the news they brought him. "Pull out?" he repeated Apollo's orders to the fleet. "Did I hear you right? You want us to pull out?"
"This isn't the time for debate, Commander," Apollo reminded him; the sound of klaxons resounded throughout every ship in the fleet.
"There are only two basestars!" Cain roared, incredulously. "We have to stand and fight them! We haven't got the fuel to outrun them! We—"
Apollo silenced the flatscreen, but the giant image of Cain continued to thunder on, without sound. It trans-vid to the rest of the fleet and ordered them to prepare to escape into space.
She's going to make it, she's not going to make it, she's going to make it…
These thoughts chased after one another, like a daggit following its own tail, through Troy's mind as he watched Dalton's Viper speed back toward the fleet. The void above Kirasolia was filled with Cylon Raiders, and only the Warriors' superior flight training had kept them alive this long. Trays threaded his Viper in and out between the laser blasts from the attacking ships, running interference for Dalton. Her Viper had been more badly damaged than they had first believed, and her little fighter limped its way along.
The fleet seemed impossibly distant.
All he could think of was Zac.
Apollo watched Dalton's wounded Viper as it fought its way back to the Galactica's landing bay, but his mind was twenty yahren in the past, when his brother Zak was in a similar impossible race against Cylon Raiders. History had an awful way of repeating itself, like some old man with a faulty memory, telling the same story, over and over; Apollo prayed the ending this time was happier than the one about Zac.
Suddenly, a fourth, then a fifth, Viper rocketed into view on the monitor, seemingly appearing from out of nowhere.
"Who the frack is that?" Apollo asked of no one in particular.
Tigh shook his head.
Athena gasped but said nothing. She had an idea who it was, but prayed she was wrong.
The fourth Viper strafed the nearest Raider, its resultant fiery blast enveloping the two nearest Cylon fighters. Apollo was on the comm-link already, speaking with the launch bay, but the fighting style had already told him the pilot's identity. "Who's in that ship?" Apollo asked. "I didn't give any orders for Warriors to engage the enemy!"
"Uh, Commander, it appears Captain Starbuck has confiscated a Viper and taken off with Boomer," the communications officer hesitantly replied.
"Damn it," Apollo muttered, and ended the connection.
He glanced at Athena, who was intently watching the scanner. They both knew there was no way Starbuck was going to sit this dance out, no matter what his specific orders might have been, if Dalton's safety was involved. "You aren't ready for this," Athena whispered. "I'm not ready to lose you."
"Commander?" Tigh said, staring at the screen. Apollo had already seen what Tigh was reacting to: rising above the rim of Kirasolia, like twin moons, appeared the huge Cylon basestars.
Fight those? Apollo's astonished mind asked. Stay and fight those? Is Cain insane?
"What—" Athena gasped. "What are they?"
"Cylons," Apollo answered. "And I don't think they're here to welcome us to the neighborhood." He opened the S-cube to the science lab, and Salik's image appeared before them. "Are the devices installed yet?" Apollo shouted.
"We need just a few more microns," the holograph replied.
"That's about all I can promise," Apollo said.
As it turned out, he couldn't promise even that, for the monstrous basestars began firing at the fleet. The first blast struck the Galactica and shook her violently. Alarms sounded at once, and everyone scrambled for his or her battle station. Klaxons shrieked like souls in torment.
"Damage reports!" Apollo ordered.
Gods, he thought, this is just like my dream…
"Salik, we have to have those devices operational, now!" Apollo shouted.
Salik's holographic image said something Apollo couldn't make out as the image wavered and shredded apart.
"Do you really think the QSE will work?" Athena asked her brother. "What if Baltar has betrayed us again? Do you really want to trust our survival to a traitor?"
Apollo turned on her, his eyes almost wild. "Do you really think we can fight that?" he answered her question with one of his own. He jabbed a finger at the scanner and the massive basestar that filled it. "Look at it, Athena! It's as big as any moon!" Basestars were massive ships that tapered to a point, and had been described by many who saw them as resembling a child's top. They bristled with row upon row of plasma cannons and deck upon deck of Raider launch bays. Each class-four ship carried enough firepower to shatter a world from pole to pole.
The view on the scanner shifted to show Starbuck's Viper, followed closely by Boomer, roaring back into the fray, turbolasers blasting. Energy blasts scored the side of a Raider, ripping it open just before it could lock on target Trays' and Dalton's Vipers. The out-of-control fighter spiraled in a trail of burning fuel into the side of the Galactica. A moment later, the resulting explosion shook the bridge. Athena bit her tongue to keep from crying out.
She had to look away from the screen; Athena could no longer stand to watch the battle. It was hard enough, watching someone you knew racing into a skirmish, but it became almost unbearable when it was someone you loved, someone who was just barely recovered from his last near-death brush, heading out to war.
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