Fic: E&A, 6a/7. M (unfortunately split for length)
Title: Eris and Aurora, 6a/7
Length: 6302 for entire chapter
Rating: M. Sex references, language, violence.
Characters: Kara/Lee, Adama.
Genre: Drama, Angst, Romance.
Notes: AU, begins during the mini-series. Occasional backstory flashbacks. No spoilers for anything beyond the episode Act of Contrition at this point. Naturally, characters and concepts are property of RDM / SciFi / Larson.
Believe it or not, I wrote this, or nine-tenths of it, in 2006. Certain concepts will echo things said in the show, well after I wrote them. I feel kind of proud of that! I also must absolutely grovellingly thank Wisteria and Indigo, who helped me tremendously with the beta work on this chapter, back in the last life when I thought I was about to post the rest of E&A.
The final chapter is written and will be posted soon.
Summary:
"In a perfect universe," she retorted, trying to be bitter. It was harder, with him this close.
"We don't have that," he agreed, and brushed the sticky ends of her hair off her forehead, let his hand slide down to cup the nape of her neck. "But I've got your back in this one."
Eris and Aurora, Part 1/7. PG
Eris and Aurora, Part 2/7. PG
Eris and Aurora, Part 3/7. M
Eris and Aurora, Part 4/7. NC-17
Eris and Aurora, Part 5/7. M
-4 months. Commander’s Quarters, Galactica, on station off Caprica.
Commander William Adama threw the dispatches down and looked down at the photograph on his desk one more time: Zak, in his first dress grays, stoic for the camera, but his eyes smiling, grin just peeking through. Adama’s teeth ached with the force of his clenched jaw, and he felt his short, blunt nails digging into the palm of the other hand. "I'm sorry, son," he told the picture, told the boy whose existence now was restricted to images like these and a bitterly scant handful of memories. Most were good memories, the golden recollections of his baby son, the dark laughing eyes looking up at him from the swing or the bicycle. But the good memories were overshadowed when one could not overlook how quickly that smile had left the world.
Zak had always wanted to fly. It had started, he remembered, on the very swings he recalled with such clarity: four-year-old Zak, his arms recklessly flung wide as the swing climbed higher and higher. "Faster!" he'd called. "I want to fly like a Viper, Daddy!"
It hit him to the heart, even then: the boy was so truly his son. Flying had galvanized the young Bill Adama, had turned him from a well-intentioned but confused recruit in a long and terrifying conflict into a warrior with a purpose. It took his talents and honed them. He'd loved it like nothing else, and nothing had ever quite displaced it until his sons were born. He'd seen the same love spark in Lee, but Lee didn't reach out, like his little brother did. He didn't share his joy in the idea of it, at least not with him. Lee was already following his own road, even then.
So it was Zak he played with on his infrequent shore leave visits, Zak he took to the Base with him, a proper little soldier in imitation khakis, his sharp and often-practiced salute charming all the pilots and officers. Lee, tagging along when Zak begged him to, wore jeans and shirts - neat but out-of-place - would watch everything and say nothing, seeming much older than his years and looking much younger, but Zak would exclaim and ask questions and demand to sit in the pilot's seat.
When Lee finished school and went to university, it hadn't been a surprise. A disappointment, perhaps, but not a surprise: he'd hoped both sons would follow in his footsteps and serve the Colonies. Of Zak he had no doubts. The surprises had come later. His older son completed his studies in history, military history, ethics and philosophy with honors and then joined the Fleet as a reserve officer. Lee was placed in the pilot program fast enough to gratify even his old man. And Zak? Charming, charismatic, outgoing and desperate to fly, Zak applied straight out of basic training. And was rejected.
Unjustly, Bill Adama told himself, just like he had at the time. Husker had made few friends among the admiralty, over the years; he was too attached to his own methods, and it wouldn't have been the first time a kid was turned down as a backhanded insult to his family. It was the very existence of such politicking that had made Adama so determined to go his own way. The injustice was clear: Zak had had the knowledge; he had the brain for it. He even had the instincts; how could he not, when he got a civilian pilot's license at just seventeen, with brilliant scores on his theoreticals? How could anyone say he didn't have the physical capability to fly?
He'd made it happen for his son - the merest request in the right ear, the old friend who now wore Admiral's pins and couldn't stand the brown-nosing and back-stabbing that was so much a part of Fleet Command: he passed the written evals, surely he deserves a shot? - and he'd never regretted that. Not even later, when his son was killed. No matter what, Zak had wanted to fly, had been determined to fly, and Bill Adama, remembering the way Zak's face had lit up at the news, couldn't wish those strings unpulled.
It had been natural, after that, to keep tabs on Zak's progress, make sure he wasn't suffering anything else due to his old man's stubbornness. He'd been so proud when the kid's theoretical grades came back so high, even if his flight and tactical evals were much less stellar: Zak was one up on Husker there, because the science had never been Bill's strong point. The rest would come in time, he was sure.
He'd made a surprise visit to Picon the summer of Zak's second year in Flight, and glimpsed Zak leaving the post with a woman, an athletic blonde in a uniform that had officer's bars. It worried him, because with just over a year to go in Flight, he should be too busy for anything like that, let alone a relationship that was potentially a fraternization problem. But he'd let it go: after all, Zak was his son. It was almost to be expected.
Gossip sometimes floated back to him in Galactica's remote posting: Lee won his entry to War College by writing a thesis debunking his Strategy instructor's favorite theories. Lee won his entry to War College by kicking his Flight Instructor's ass in the sims. Lee won his entry to War College by being brave enough to ask his CO's permission before trying to date his daughter. Bill had shrugged over all three options: Lee had never talked to him about any of it.
Zak on the other hand, was involved - and it seemed serious - with his own flight instructor, and Adama hadn't liked that at all. His suggestions that Zak cool it off, at least until after he graduated, got him a taste of the sharp end of Zak's generally easy temper. There had been a chill in Zak's eyes that day that not even the sweltering heat could mitigate. His own son, that charming, affectionate kid, had looked his old man in the eye and told him "I need her" - and it hadn't been with the hot passion of a lover defending his love, but with cold certainty. It had shocked Adama to see that at first, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed just the kind of reaction a man - an Adama, that was - deeply in love would give.
Bill tried to understand, and he sympathized. But he'd been right, after all: Zak had paid for it. She'd been in charge of his final flight evals. When he failed that eval, Zak called him, the panic in his voice obvious even over the intervening immensity of space, and Bill had flown to Picon to find him. There he was, pacing up and down his tiny dorm room, utterly furious and utterly confused by turns. "How could she do this to me?" he'd asked. "Why?"
Bill Adama didn't know what had happened between his son and this Kara Thrace, but that didn't matter. The switch from affection to indifference could happen in no time at all, so the relationship should have been irrelevant. Everyone should understand that: these things happen. But Zak had said she shouldn't have failed him, and he believed his son. Zak had said it was over between them, and that had been all the motive needed, in Bill's mind.
So he made it happen for his boy. He'd made sure his son had a fair shake, and when the second examiner passed him - just barely, but passed him - that was proof. But Zak hadn't bounced back quickly, despite getting his wings. For the first time, in that tiny, messy bunkroom, he'd seen doubt in those eyes, those bright laughing brown eyes. Bill saw a fear that had never been there, never once, no matter how high the swing flew, or how much skin he lost when he tumbled off the bike.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Zak had told him. It had repeated over and over in his mind when he stood next to Zak's coffin. It echoed in his head still, and always would until he found some kind of justice.
And here, on his desk, was the result of his final throw of the dice: every bit of influence he could muster, every favor he could call in, and the woman who'd planted the doubt in Zak's eyes was being promoted when he hoped he'd see her mustered out, released, sent to fly shuttle detail on some remote rock. Oh, she’d been drummed out of Sparta, though not with open dishonor, and he'd had a hand in that; sent to a post that was supposed to get her forgotten, but now she was being promoted. Captain Kara Thrace. And nobody would help him anymore, not with this. Not when every C.O the woman ever had seemed to find her so godsdamned wonderful.
Commander William Adama screwed the terse dispatch into a ball, swept it off the desk onto the floor, and poured himself a glass of whiskey to soothe the bitter taste on his tongue. Captain Kara Thrace was Starbuck, Lead Pilot of the Archer-class scout ship Aurora, and his son was ashes in space and a name on a stone planted over an empty coffin.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. In the photograph, Zak's grin didn't waver, but then, it was only a photograph.
---
+1 month, two days. Pilot officer’s wardroom, Galactica
"All of them? You washed all of them out?" Captain Adama's tone was incredulous. "We need them on deck. We needed them on deck yesterday."
"They're not viper pilots."
Kara spun the empty tumbler in a slow circle on the table, watching the harsh overhead light split into rainbows on the metal surface, the last precious drops of water drying on the inside of the lip. Her mouth felt just as dry, and she could feel the way her tanks clung unpleasantly, circled in sweat at the chest and under her arms. Showers were cut off, obviously, and there were lines of sticky heat in every crease of her body; she felt grimy with it. Dirty.
She felt even more so when she looked up at Lee, across the table. In his dress blues, straight from a watch in CIC, he looked crisp and cool, and far too perfect to want someone like her. Not that she could be sure that he did, not right now: his eyes looked hard, and his mouth had a stern crease that - she'd never dream of telling him - made him look just like his old man. Unlike his old man, though, he was purely professional, had been ever since they let her out of hack eight days before. She should have expected it, of course, but that didn’t ease the sting. Eight days, and he’d barely said a word to her. But here he stood, CAG to her Instructor, as though twenty-eight days ago, he hadn’t looked at her like she was Aphrodite herself.
"Not yet they're not," he agreed, stressing the yet. "Give them a chance, Starbuck."
"They had it already," she negated. "Look, Captain, I've trained recruits into pilots. It's what I did, for years. I can tell when they've got the chops, and when they haven't. Some of these, if we had time to train them, simulators to train them on ... maybe they'd make the cut. But you Adamas are telling me to read them the basic flight manual and then expect them to go out there and put their asses between the toasters and the fleet, ASAP, and all that'll happen is they'll get dead. I won't do it."
Through the tirade, she'd heard the shrill note in her own voice, the rising edge of something other than professional assessment, and cursed under her breath. She sent the empty water-glass spinning away, the erratic orbit carrying it off the edge of the table. Lee's hand flashed out and caught it, and the lack of smash, of some small cathartic destruction, pissed her off. She should have expected this, should have expected all of it. "Frakking bastard," she snarled, loud enough for him to hear.
The insult didn't make a dent: not angry enough. Or perhaps he just knew her just well enough. "Kara -"
"Sir?" she responded, icily, knowing it was already too late.
"Zak dying... that wasn't your fault."
She jerked in her seat, got up so sharply that the metal legs of her chair screeched against the deck plating. Whirling so that her back was to him made the damp tendrils of her hair stick to her face, and it felt like the aftermath of sex, or tears. "Don't, Lee."
"Don't, what? Tell the truth?"
"It's not all the truth. And anyway, you really think it'll matter what the frakking truth is?”
He made a small sound, like the start of a counterargument, and she turned again, cutting him off with a raised palm and more words and a glare that felt like it burned her eyes to give it. “You think I don't know that if I sign off on their V-2's and let them fly, every time one of them comes back in a bag, or not at all, your old man will say it's my fault, that I didn't do my job?"
Lee's mouth opened, ready to speak, as though there was anything to say to that, then shut again in a thin, frustrated line.
"And if I don't pass them, Lee, what then?" She stalked across the room, reached for the coffee-pot, even though it wouldn't really help her thirsty throat. "Think it'll be any better? It won't. Then I'll be blamed for current pilots being overworked and tired, or for their deaths when they're flying a double CAP after too many double CAPs. Or he'll decide I'm doing it out of spite, or because I had grudges against the nuggets, or against you for breaking it off with me, or against him for any one of a million frakking reasons. Or maybe he'll decide I'm screwing one of them and am too selfish to pass him. It doesn't matter, does it? No matter what the reason is, it'll still be me who's wrong."
By the time she quit talking, her voice was scratchy with something more than dehydration, but the coffee pot was near empty, down to the last thick, bitter dregs. She set it down, heard Lee slide his own chair back and come towards her. His hand was heavy on her shoulder, but he just turned her around to face him. "I haven't broken anything off with you," he said quietly, looking right in her eyes, a stare as sharp as a searchlight, and as blinding. It felt as though it cut right through her. "And I don't give a frak what he thinks, Kara. Neither should you."
If only it were that simple! "His godsdamned battlestar, Apollo - he's the Commander. Not caring what he thinks might work for you, but -" His grip flexed on her arm, and then he let her loose altogether, started to turn away. Kara's chaotic emotions took on the abrupt overtone of guilt, and she reached for him. "Gods, Lee, just... damned if I do, damned if I don't."
He stopped, and the set of his shoulders relaxed. "Then all you can do is what you think is right, by both sides."
"I can't send them out there, Lee. Not yet. They need more time. They all need more time." She stared at the clean, graceful lines of his profile, feeling the silence stretch out while he neither turned nor spoke. “I need more time.”
"Then you've got it."
It was so abrupt it made her head spin - or was that the dehydration? Who knew? Both, maybe? "What?"
"I'm the CAG. I say who is - or isn't a pilot on my flight deck. And just in case someone wants to argue with me about it, we're going to go over these flight evals and you're going to give me a detailed run down. And then we'll both be doing our jobs - exactly as ordered - and that's all there is to say about it."
"In a perfect universe," she retorted, trying to be bitter. It was harder, with him this close.
"We don't have that," he agreed, and brushed the sticky ends of her hair off her forehead, let his hand slide down to cup the nape of her neck. "But I've got your back in this one."
The room was too public, the ship too busy for what she thought he was about to do. But he just leaned his forehead against hers, so close. "Yeah?"
"Always." He licked his lips, which left her a little cross-eyed and feeling more warmth against her sticky clothes, and took a deep breath. "I meant what I said, Kara: this isn't over. We're going to go to the mess and get you something to eat and a water ration, and we're going to go over these files. And then I'm going to take you somewhere quiet and prove it to you."
---
+1 month, six days; 0915hrs. Pilots Ready Room, Galactica
The way the flight suit pulled, slick and stubborn, like an ill-fitting but heavy skin, just added to the nerves. But the way that the pilots, in their varied duties and uniforms and suits just like the one she had struggled into, walked around the knot of jittery trainees without paying them the slightest heed? That pissed her off. Louanne Katraine hated to be ignored, or kept waiting.
Especially seeing the one pilot they were waiting for was fifteen minutes late for this check-flight; especially seeing the one pilot in question was Capt. Kara Thrace, or ‘God’, as she’d insisted the recruits address her. And fifteen minutes of shifting foot-to-foot in terrified anticipation, wearing the flight suit, the new helmet clutched protectively under an arm, was sending her adrenaline levels on a mad wave.
"Where the frak is Starbuck?" It wasn't the first time she'd asked, but it was certainly the loudest. If she'd been less nerve-wracked, she probably would have been more circumspect, but tyro or no, Louanne had never really been much good at minding her manners. And that query, however sharply put, at least managed to get a reaction from one of the officers in the ready room: the tall, lanky one that her instructor had laughingly called 'Tubby'.
He looked up, as did a half-dozen other pilots, some of whom paused momentarily in their activities and glanced towards her, but rather than giving her the usual stare, like a parent who objected to the noisiness of someone else's kid, Tubby dropped his clipboard and got up.
"Captain Thrace," he said, with emphasis, "is a combat pilot and officer of this battlestar. If she finds it necessary to take care of other matters before she gets around to you," and his intonation made it perfectly clear that he was addressing persons of lower priority than a pilot's shoe-shine, sleep and social activities, "that's her decision."
Louanne bridled at that: these jet-jockeys couldn't afford to dismiss other pilots, even future pilots, so casually. But before she could point that out, Tubby had flicked his eyes over her squad mates and back to her, and forestalled her with some information of his own.
"Capt. Thrace has a full set of responsibilities as well as training. While you were all sleeping in your little bunks at oh-five-hundred, she was already flying CAP. I suggest you keep it in mind that Viper pilots don't always get to live by nice, neat little predictable schedules, and that Cylons certainly don't care if they interrupt your sack time. So sit down, read your pre-flight checklists over, and remember that the same person who's holding you up right now is the same one who's saved this fleet - that means your personal, protected little asses - a dozen times so far."
There as a few breaths of silence before she heard Costanza's muttered 'yes, sir!' and tacked her own reluctantly on the end of it.
It wasn't as though she'd forgotten, not really, Louanne told herself, because it was a pretty impossible thing to forget. Captain Thrace walked the decks of Galactica in a kind of bubble, like the aura around her was palpable. The pilots were of one worshipful opinion of her on the flight-deck or in the fight, and whether they loved or hated her on the deck, they found in Starbuck something like a figurehead. Captain Adama was the boss, and his word was law when he found it necessary to give an order, but Starbuck was the High Priestess of Vipers. Where she led, they followed, or tried to. And Flight Lieutenant Alex Wayre had just made it crystal clear that nobody without a Viper's insignia on their breast was going to criticize their top gun.
The thought sent a shiver of a different excitement through the trainee; less physical, less palpable, more envious: what it must be like, to have that respect from everyone around you! To be the undisputed pack-leader, to have people who might want to break your jaw in the bunk-room back you up on the deck? That would be worth anything, Katraine decided. That would be worth having the prissy pressed-and-ironed CIC officers, the ones whose war didn’t require them to break a sweat, sniff when they went past you, would be worth the chewing-out the Chief of the Deck might give you for combat damage or rough landings. It would even be worth this training crap, as though she needed it; she'd do it, just to prove herself. She was a good pilot, and she knew it, and she'd make these other pilots know it too. And one day, these people would look at Louanne Katraine like they looked at Kara Thrace.
There was a stir at the hatch and Louanne blinked back dreams of being the best in the fleet to see what it was. A royal entrance, though Capt. Thrace didn't look like queen of the deck just now, and while the full-fledged pilots of Galactica all acknowledged her with wisecracks and greetings and grins, there were a few worried looks in the worship. A few creased frowns, a few exchanges of silent questions between members of the pack. Katraine thought that Thrace looked tired, not relishing the adoration at all; she didn't even seem to notice it.
Three steps behind her, the CAG came in, which had everyone scrambling to their feet, including the trainees, who clumsily followed HotDog's lead. Apollo waved them down, his gaze firmly glued to the back of Starbuck's head. He nodded at the sharp salutes (and the sloppier ones of the recruits) and his 'at ease, people' was obeyed, but almost every eye in the room stayed on him. And on Starbuck.
The two of them huddled, almost, for a second by the duty board, and the CAG said something too low to hear, before disappearing out the forward hatch. And Thrace pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, and then something happened. In her, or to her, Katraine couldn't quite figure it, but all of a sudden, there she was: the Pilot everyone wanted to be. Her eyes crackled fire. Her grin was wide and vicious. The tired, worried woman vanished, leaving a goddess in her place.
She turned the divine smile on her trainees, and Katraine felt her nerves flutter once again. "Well, children, time to test out your sphincter control. Get your asses to the flight deck, and apologize to the Chief of the Deck for being late. Go."
Indignant, Louanne grabbed for her pre-flight and followed Costanza and the others out the hatch, but in her fury at the sheer cheek of Starbuck, she was slower. Slow enough to hear one of the pilots ask 'God' how she was holding up. And to know that Captain Thrace didn't answer.
6b thisaway -->
Length: 6302 for entire chapter
Rating: M. Sex references, language, violence.
Characters: Kara/Lee, Adama.
Genre: Drama, Angst, Romance.
Notes: AU, begins during the mini-series. Occasional backstory flashbacks. No spoilers for anything beyond the episode Act of Contrition at this point. Naturally, characters and concepts are property of RDM / SciFi / Larson.
Believe it or not, I wrote this, or nine-tenths of it, in 2006. Certain concepts will echo things said in the show, well after I wrote them. I feel kind of proud of that! I also must absolutely grovellingly thank Wisteria and Indigo, who helped me tremendously with the beta work on this chapter, back in the last life when I thought I was about to post the rest of E&A.
The final chapter is written and will be posted soon.
Summary:
"In a perfect universe," she retorted, trying to be bitter. It was harder, with him this close.
"We don't have that," he agreed, and brushed the sticky ends of her hair off her forehead, let his hand slide down to cup the nape of her neck. "But I've got your back in this one."
Eris and Aurora, Part 1/7. PG
Eris and Aurora, Part 2/7. PG
Eris and Aurora, Part 3/7. M
Eris and Aurora, Part 4/7. NC-17
Eris and Aurora, Part 5/7. M
-4 months. Commander’s Quarters, Galactica, on station off Caprica.
Commander William Adama threw the dispatches down and looked down at the photograph on his desk one more time: Zak, in his first dress grays, stoic for the camera, but his eyes smiling, grin just peeking through. Adama’s teeth ached with the force of his clenched jaw, and he felt his short, blunt nails digging into the palm of the other hand. "I'm sorry, son," he told the picture, told the boy whose existence now was restricted to images like these and a bitterly scant handful of memories. Most were good memories, the golden recollections of his baby son, the dark laughing eyes looking up at him from the swing or the bicycle. But the good memories were overshadowed when one could not overlook how quickly that smile had left the world.
Zak had always wanted to fly. It had started, he remembered, on the very swings he recalled with such clarity: four-year-old Zak, his arms recklessly flung wide as the swing climbed higher and higher. "Faster!" he'd called. "I want to fly like a Viper, Daddy!"
It hit him to the heart, even then: the boy was so truly his son. Flying had galvanized the young Bill Adama, had turned him from a well-intentioned but confused recruit in a long and terrifying conflict into a warrior with a purpose. It took his talents and honed them. He'd loved it like nothing else, and nothing had ever quite displaced it until his sons were born. He'd seen the same love spark in Lee, but Lee didn't reach out, like his little brother did. He didn't share his joy in the idea of it, at least not with him. Lee was already following his own road, even then.
So it was Zak he played with on his infrequent shore leave visits, Zak he took to the Base with him, a proper little soldier in imitation khakis, his sharp and often-practiced salute charming all the pilots and officers. Lee, tagging along when Zak begged him to, wore jeans and shirts - neat but out-of-place - would watch everything and say nothing, seeming much older than his years and looking much younger, but Zak would exclaim and ask questions and demand to sit in the pilot's seat.
When Lee finished school and went to university, it hadn't been a surprise. A disappointment, perhaps, but not a surprise: he'd hoped both sons would follow in his footsteps and serve the Colonies. Of Zak he had no doubts. The surprises had come later. His older son completed his studies in history, military history, ethics and philosophy with honors and then joined the Fleet as a reserve officer. Lee was placed in the pilot program fast enough to gratify even his old man. And Zak? Charming, charismatic, outgoing and desperate to fly, Zak applied straight out of basic training. And was rejected.
Unjustly, Bill Adama told himself, just like he had at the time. Husker had made few friends among the admiralty, over the years; he was too attached to his own methods, and it wouldn't have been the first time a kid was turned down as a backhanded insult to his family. It was the very existence of such politicking that had made Adama so determined to go his own way. The injustice was clear: Zak had had the knowledge; he had the brain for it. He even had the instincts; how could he not, when he got a civilian pilot's license at just seventeen, with brilliant scores on his theoreticals? How could anyone say he didn't have the physical capability to fly?
He'd made it happen for his son - the merest request in the right ear, the old friend who now wore Admiral's pins and couldn't stand the brown-nosing and back-stabbing that was so much a part of Fleet Command: he passed the written evals, surely he deserves a shot? - and he'd never regretted that. Not even later, when his son was killed. No matter what, Zak had wanted to fly, had been determined to fly, and Bill Adama, remembering the way Zak's face had lit up at the news, couldn't wish those strings unpulled.
It had been natural, after that, to keep tabs on Zak's progress, make sure he wasn't suffering anything else due to his old man's stubbornness. He'd been so proud when the kid's theoretical grades came back so high, even if his flight and tactical evals were much less stellar: Zak was one up on Husker there, because the science had never been Bill's strong point. The rest would come in time, he was sure.
He'd made a surprise visit to Picon the summer of Zak's second year in Flight, and glimpsed Zak leaving the post with a woman, an athletic blonde in a uniform that had officer's bars. It worried him, because with just over a year to go in Flight, he should be too busy for anything like that, let alone a relationship that was potentially a fraternization problem. But he'd let it go: after all, Zak was his son. It was almost to be expected.
Gossip sometimes floated back to him in Galactica's remote posting: Lee won his entry to War College by writing a thesis debunking his Strategy instructor's favorite theories. Lee won his entry to War College by kicking his Flight Instructor's ass in the sims. Lee won his entry to War College by being brave enough to ask his CO's permission before trying to date his daughter. Bill had shrugged over all three options: Lee had never talked to him about any of it.
Zak on the other hand, was involved - and it seemed serious - with his own flight instructor, and Adama hadn't liked that at all. His suggestions that Zak cool it off, at least until after he graduated, got him a taste of the sharp end of Zak's generally easy temper. There had been a chill in Zak's eyes that day that not even the sweltering heat could mitigate. His own son, that charming, affectionate kid, had looked his old man in the eye and told him "I need her" - and it hadn't been with the hot passion of a lover defending his love, but with cold certainty. It had shocked Adama to see that at first, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed just the kind of reaction a man - an Adama, that was - deeply in love would give.
Bill tried to understand, and he sympathized. But he'd been right, after all: Zak had paid for it. She'd been in charge of his final flight evals. When he failed that eval, Zak called him, the panic in his voice obvious even over the intervening immensity of space, and Bill had flown to Picon to find him. There he was, pacing up and down his tiny dorm room, utterly furious and utterly confused by turns. "How could she do this to me?" he'd asked. "Why?"
Bill Adama didn't know what had happened between his son and this Kara Thrace, but that didn't matter. The switch from affection to indifference could happen in no time at all, so the relationship should have been irrelevant. Everyone should understand that: these things happen. But Zak had said she shouldn't have failed him, and he believed his son. Zak had said it was over between them, and that had been all the motive needed, in Bill's mind.
So he made it happen for his boy. He'd made sure his son had a fair shake, and when the second examiner passed him - just barely, but passed him - that was proof. But Zak hadn't bounced back quickly, despite getting his wings. For the first time, in that tiny, messy bunkroom, he'd seen doubt in those eyes, those bright laughing brown eyes. Bill saw a fear that had never been there, never once, no matter how high the swing flew, or how much skin he lost when he tumbled off the bike.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Zak had told him. It had repeated over and over in his mind when he stood next to Zak's coffin. It echoed in his head still, and always would until he found some kind of justice.
And here, on his desk, was the result of his final throw of the dice: every bit of influence he could muster, every favor he could call in, and the woman who'd planted the doubt in Zak's eyes was being promoted when he hoped he'd see her mustered out, released, sent to fly shuttle detail on some remote rock. Oh, she’d been drummed out of Sparta, though not with open dishonor, and he'd had a hand in that; sent to a post that was supposed to get her forgotten, but now she was being promoted. Captain Kara Thrace. And nobody would help him anymore, not with this. Not when every C.O the woman ever had seemed to find her so godsdamned wonderful.
Commander William Adama screwed the terse dispatch into a ball, swept it off the desk onto the floor, and poured himself a glass of whiskey to soothe the bitter taste on his tongue. Captain Kara Thrace was Starbuck, Lead Pilot of the Archer-class scout ship Aurora, and his son was ashes in space and a name on a stone planted over an empty coffin.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. In the photograph, Zak's grin didn't waver, but then, it was only a photograph.
---
+1 month, two days. Pilot officer’s wardroom, Galactica
"All of them? You washed all of them out?" Captain Adama's tone was incredulous. "We need them on deck. We needed them on deck yesterday."
"They're not viper pilots."
Kara spun the empty tumbler in a slow circle on the table, watching the harsh overhead light split into rainbows on the metal surface, the last precious drops of water drying on the inside of the lip. Her mouth felt just as dry, and she could feel the way her tanks clung unpleasantly, circled in sweat at the chest and under her arms. Showers were cut off, obviously, and there were lines of sticky heat in every crease of her body; she felt grimy with it. Dirty.
She felt even more so when she looked up at Lee, across the table. In his dress blues, straight from a watch in CIC, he looked crisp and cool, and far too perfect to want someone like her. Not that she could be sure that he did, not right now: his eyes looked hard, and his mouth had a stern crease that - she'd never dream of telling him - made him look just like his old man. Unlike his old man, though, he was purely professional, had been ever since they let her out of hack eight days before. She should have expected it, of course, but that didn’t ease the sting. Eight days, and he’d barely said a word to her. But here he stood, CAG to her Instructor, as though twenty-eight days ago, he hadn’t looked at her like she was Aphrodite herself.
"Not yet they're not," he agreed, stressing the yet. "Give them a chance, Starbuck."
"They had it already," she negated. "Look, Captain, I've trained recruits into pilots. It's what I did, for years. I can tell when they've got the chops, and when they haven't. Some of these, if we had time to train them, simulators to train them on ... maybe they'd make the cut. But you Adamas are telling me to read them the basic flight manual and then expect them to go out there and put their asses between the toasters and the fleet, ASAP, and all that'll happen is they'll get dead. I won't do it."
Through the tirade, she'd heard the shrill note in her own voice, the rising edge of something other than professional assessment, and cursed under her breath. She sent the empty water-glass spinning away, the erratic orbit carrying it off the edge of the table. Lee's hand flashed out and caught it, and the lack of smash, of some small cathartic destruction, pissed her off. She should have expected this, should have expected all of it. "Frakking bastard," she snarled, loud enough for him to hear.
The insult didn't make a dent: not angry enough. Or perhaps he just knew her just well enough. "Kara -"
"Sir?" she responded, icily, knowing it was already too late.
"Zak dying... that wasn't your fault."
She jerked in her seat, got up so sharply that the metal legs of her chair screeched against the deck plating. Whirling so that her back was to him made the damp tendrils of her hair stick to her face, and it felt like the aftermath of sex, or tears. "Don't, Lee."
"Don't, what? Tell the truth?"
"It's not all the truth. And anyway, you really think it'll matter what the frakking truth is?”
He made a small sound, like the start of a counterargument, and she turned again, cutting him off with a raised palm and more words and a glare that felt like it burned her eyes to give it. “You think I don't know that if I sign off on their V-2's and let them fly, every time one of them comes back in a bag, or not at all, your old man will say it's my fault, that I didn't do my job?"
Lee's mouth opened, ready to speak, as though there was anything to say to that, then shut again in a thin, frustrated line.
"And if I don't pass them, Lee, what then?" She stalked across the room, reached for the coffee-pot, even though it wouldn't really help her thirsty throat. "Think it'll be any better? It won't. Then I'll be blamed for current pilots being overworked and tired, or for their deaths when they're flying a double CAP after too many double CAPs. Or he'll decide I'm doing it out of spite, or because I had grudges against the nuggets, or against you for breaking it off with me, or against him for any one of a million frakking reasons. Or maybe he'll decide I'm screwing one of them and am too selfish to pass him. It doesn't matter, does it? No matter what the reason is, it'll still be me who's wrong."
By the time she quit talking, her voice was scratchy with something more than dehydration, but the coffee pot was near empty, down to the last thick, bitter dregs. She set it down, heard Lee slide his own chair back and come towards her. His hand was heavy on her shoulder, but he just turned her around to face him. "I haven't broken anything off with you," he said quietly, looking right in her eyes, a stare as sharp as a searchlight, and as blinding. It felt as though it cut right through her. "And I don't give a frak what he thinks, Kara. Neither should you."
If only it were that simple! "His godsdamned battlestar, Apollo - he's the Commander. Not caring what he thinks might work for you, but -" His grip flexed on her arm, and then he let her loose altogether, started to turn away. Kara's chaotic emotions took on the abrupt overtone of guilt, and she reached for him. "Gods, Lee, just... damned if I do, damned if I don't."
He stopped, and the set of his shoulders relaxed. "Then all you can do is what you think is right, by both sides."
"I can't send them out there, Lee. Not yet. They need more time. They all need more time." She stared at the clean, graceful lines of his profile, feeling the silence stretch out while he neither turned nor spoke. “I need more time.”
"Then you've got it."
It was so abrupt it made her head spin - or was that the dehydration? Who knew? Both, maybe? "What?"
"I'm the CAG. I say who is - or isn't a pilot on my flight deck. And just in case someone wants to argue with me about it, we're going to go over these flight evals and you're going to give me a detailed run down. And then we'll both be doing our jobs - exactly as ordered - and that's all there is to say about it."
"In a perfect universe," she retorted, trying to be bitter. It was harder, with him this close.
"We don't have that," he agreed, and brushed the sticky ends of her hair off her forehead, let his hand slide down to cup the nape of her neck. "But I've got your back in this one."
The room was too public, the ship too busy for what she thought he was about to do. But he just leaned his forehead against hers, so close. "Yeah?"
"Always." He licked his lips, which left her a little cross-eyed and feeling more warmth against her sticky clothes, and took a deep breath. "I meant what I said, Kara: this isn't over. We're going to go to the mess and get you something to eat and a water ration, and we're going to go over these files. And then I'm going to take you somewhere quiet and prove it to you."
---
+1 month, six days; 0915hrs. Pilots Ready Room, Galactica
The way the flight suit pulled, slick and stubborn, like an ill-fitting but heavy skin, just added to the nerves. But the way that the pilots, in their varied duties and uniforms and suits just like the one she had struggled into, walked around the knot of jittery trainees without paying them the slightest heed? That pissed her off. Louanne Katraine hated to be ignored, or kept waiting.
Especially seeing the one pilot they were waiting for was fifteen minutes late for this check-flight; especially seeing the one pilot in question was Capt. Kara Thrace, or ‘God’, as she’d insisted the recruits address her. And fifteen minutes of shifting foot-to-foot in terrified anticipation, wearing the flight suit, the new helmet clutched protectively under an arm, was sending her adrenaline levels on a mad wave.
"Where the frak is Starbuck?" It wasn't the first time she'd asked, but it was certainly the loudest. If she'd been less nerve-wracked, she probably would have been more circumspect, but tyro or no, Louanne had never really been much good at minding her manners. And that query, however sharply put, at least managed to get a reaction from one of the officers in the ready room: the tall, lanky one that her instructor had laughingly called 'Tubby'.
He looked up, as did a half-dozen other pilots, some of whom paused momentarily in their activities and glanced towards her, but rather than giving her the usual stare, like a parent who objected to the noisiness of someone else's kid, Tubby dropped his clipboard and got up.
"Captain Thrace," he said, with emphasis, "is a combat pilot and officer of this battlestar. If she finds it necessary to take care of other matters before she gets around to you," and his intonation made it perfectly clear that he was addressing persons of lower priority than a pilot's shoe-shine, sleep and social activities, "that's her decision."
Louanne bridled at that: these jet-jockeys couldn't afford to dismiss other pilots, even future pilots, so casually. But before she could point that out, Tubby had flicked his eyes over her squad mates and back to her, and forestalled her with some information of his own.
"Capt. Thrace has a full set of responsibilities as well as training. While you were all sleeping in your little bunks at oh-five-hundred, she was already flying CAP. I suggest you keep it in mind that Viper pilots don't always get to live by nice, neat little predictable schedules, and that Cylons certainly don't care if they interrupt your sack time. So sit down, read your pre-flight checklists over, and remember that the same person who's holding you up right now is the same one who's saved this fleet - that means your personal, protected little asses - a dozen times so far."
There as a few breaths of silence before she heard Costanza's muttered 'yes, sir!' and tacked her own reluctantly on the end of it.
It wasn't as though she'd forgotten, not really, Louanne told herself, because it was a pretty impossible thing to forget. Captain Thrace walked the decks of Galactica in a kind of bubble, like the aura around her was palpable. The pilots were of one worshipful opinion of her on the flight-deck or in the fight, and whether they loved or hated her on the deck, they found in Starbuck something like a figurehead. Captain Adama was the boss, and his word was law when he found it necessary to give an order, but Starbuck was the High Priestess of Vipers. Where she led, they followed, or tried to. And Flight Lieutenant Alex Wayre had just made it crystal clear that nobody without a Viper's insignia on their breast was going to criticize their top gun.
The thought sent a shiver of a different excitement through the trainee; less physical, less palpable, more envious: what it must be like, to have that respect from everyone around you! To be the undisputed pack-leader, to have people who might want to break your jaw in the bunk-room back you up on the deck? That would be worth anything, Katraine decided. That would be worth having the prissy pressed-and-ironed CIC officers, the ones whose war didn’t require them to break a sweat, sniff when they went past you, would be worth the chewing-out the Chief of the Deck might give you for combat damage or rough landings. It would even be worth this training crap, as though she needed it; she'd do it, just to prove herself. She was a good pilot, and she knew it, and she'd make these other pilots know it too. And one day, these people would look at Louanne Katraine like they looked at Kara Thrace.
There was a stir at the hatch and Louanne blinked back dreams of being the best in the fleet to see what it was. A royal entrance, though Capt. Thrace didn't look like queen of the deck just now, and while the full-fledged pilots of Galactica all acknowledged her with wisecracks and greetings and grins, there were a few worried looks in the worship. A few creased frowns, a few exchanges of silent questions between members of the pack. Katraine thought that Thrace looked tired, not relishing the adoration at all; she didn't even seem to notice it.
Three steps behind her, the CAG came in, which had everyone scrambling to their feet, including the trainees, who clumsily followed HotDog's lead. Apollo waved them down, his gaze firmly glued to the back of Starbuck's head. He nodded at the sharp salutes (and the sloppier ones of the recruits) and his 'at ease, people' was obeyed, but almost every eye in the room stayed on him. And on Starbuck.
The two of them huddled, almost, for a second by the duty board, and the CAG said something too low to hear, before disappearing out the forward hatch. And Thrace pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, and then something happened. In her, or to her, Katraine couldn't quite figure it, but all of a sudden, there she was: the Pilot everyone wanted to be. Her eyes crackled fire. Her grin was wide and vicious. The tired, worried woman vanished, leaving a goddess in her place.
She turned the divine smile on her trainees, and Katraine felt her nerves flutter once again. "Well, children, time to test out your sphincter control. Get your asses to the flight deck, and apologize to the Chief of the Deck for being late. Go."
Indignant, Louanne grabbed for her pre-flight and followed Costanza and the others out the hatch, but in her fury at the sheer cheek of Starbuck, she was slower. Slow enough to hear one of the pilots ask 'God' how she was holding up. And to know that Captain Thrace didn't answer.
6b thisaway -->