Part One

 

For Alice

The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequence of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also.
                                            Oscar Wilde

 

Starbuck was firmly of the opinion that one day, someday soon, Apollo was going to wake up and realise just what he'd been passing up for so long; he'd finally see what Starbuck was so faithfully offering him ("Faithfully, Apollo!  Even you can't deny that."), grab it, and they'd finally have the chance for which Starbuck had been angling for sectars.

"On offer?" said Apollo.  "You have something to offer?"

"My hand and heart, Apollo," said Starbuck, with deep reproach.

"Ah."  The better part of two hundred metres of cold vacuum between them and Apollo's amusement was still obvious.  "There are some people in the fleet, my poor deluded sister being one of them, who'd say you don't have a heart, Starbuck."

"Because it's yours."

"No, I don't think they'd say that.  I think they'd just say that you don't have one to give."

"You know that's not true."

"No," said Apollo after a micron or two, and the amusement in his tone took on a different quality: softer, warmer, affectionate.  "I do know it isn't true.  But I also know that your reputation is well earned."

Starbuck grimaced at his faint reflection in the Viper's clear tylinium canopy.  "I think it was suffering from a case of mistaken identity."

"If we're still talking about your heart, it suffered from several dozen cases of mistaken identity and they're just the ones I know about."

"But now it's yours, and yours alone."

"Along with your hand.  Funny that, I knew you were offering an appendage.  I just wouldn't have put a bent cubit on it being a hand."

"I come as a package of several, fully functioning parts," said Starbuck, promptly,  "and, even if I do say so myself, very nice parts in a package with devilishly handsome and sexy wrappings."

"Just waiting to be unwrapped, I suppose".

"By the right person."  Starbuck grinned when Apollo laughed.  "Now you're getting the idea."

There was a short silence.  Starbuck fidgeted, waiting for a response.

"Are you thinking it over?" he enquired.  "Why not just follow your instincts?"

"Because unlike yours, my cock and my brain are not mutually exclusive," retorted Apollo.  "And yes, I am thinking about it.  But mostly what I'm thinking is how very sorry I'll be if the Galactica decides to monitor the comms channels."

"They'd never monitor our private channel!" protested Starbuck, shocked.  "That'd be like blasphemy or something.  It's perfectly safe to talk out here.  Fact is, the Galactica's getting so crowded that there's nowhere to go where it's safe to talk—"

"Or do anything else," murmured Apollo.

"—to talk," repeated Starbuck, "because you won't let me do anything else yet—without someone walking in on a man and putting him off his stroke.  Out here, there's no-one to overhear us, no-one to interrupt."  He heaved a loud sigh.  "Do you realise that we're closer and more private out here with all of space between us than we can ever be on the Galactica?"

"Oh.  Poetic."

"Not poetic, just deprived.  Well, I am until you give in, and then we can use that bedroom of yours.  That's private.  That's quiet.  That's just tailor made as the best place for nice appendages to be unwrapped."  Starbuck listened to Apollo's helpless laughter and grinned at his reflection.

Oh yes.  One day. 

Someday soon.





Viper scanners naturally didn't have the power and range of the Galactica's, but still they were finely-tuned and sensitive over a very wide bandwidth: both Starbuck and Apollo started picking up the audio transmissions while the Vipers were still well outside the orbits of the outermost planets of the system they were scouting.

"You getting this, Apollo?  Try tuning in to a frequency—" Starbuck checked the readout again, "—somewhere around 864tfz."

"Got it."

"Whaddya think?  I don't think it's an echo from the fleet.  It's speech pattern, definitely, but it doesn't sound familiar.

"Uh-huh.  Give me a centon."

Starbuck idly tuned in the scanner while he waited.  One frequency gave him something that might have been singing.  That definitely wasn't coming from the fleet.  That was alien.  It wasn't completely unpleasant, although, as he remarked to Apollo, he preferred something with more rhythm and less uncertainty about pitch and key.

"Maybe, whoever they are, they hear in infra-red or something," he said, wincing at one very high note.

Apollo depressed Starbuck's pretensions to culture and stuck to business.  "You have tin ears and the only songs you know are very dirty ditties.  It's coming from the second planet, agreed?" 

"Agreed."

"That's the only planet in the system with an oxygen-rich atmosphere—scanners read the outer planets as uninhabitable gas giants and the inner planet looks a mite hot to sustain life.  Atmosphere reads like chemical soup, as well."

Starbuck checked his own scanner readings and nodded, regardless of the fact Apollo couldn't see him.  "Second planet," he agreed.  "Are we going in?"

"Once we've called home and told them not to hold dinner for us.  Galactica should be picking it up by now.  Call it in, Lieutenant; it was your find."

Colonel Tigh was straight on the comm almost before Starbuck had managed to get across his call sign and the first few words of explanation.  Galactica had picked up on the audio signals, said the Colonel, and he had just been about to warn the forward patrols.

Apollo cut in smoothly, and between them they agreed to call back all the patrols except for him and Starbuck and institute the First Contact Protocol.  There was a note of chagrin in Apollo's voice when he acknowledged Colonel Tigh's orders.  The protocol for handling first contacts was his: detailed, thoughtful, beautifully choreographed, and he was very proud of it.  He would normally run the squadrons from the bridge until the actual moment when aliens and fleet were about to exchange the first real words, when he would come out, take command and carry through the contact himself.  It had to gall him that it would be Bojay on the bridge in his stead, directing his squadrons.

"They've done it in training so often that there's no way even Bojay could get it wrong," said Starbuck on their private channel.  "And at least you're out here ready when the linguists crack the language."

"I just don't trust that bastard on the bridge."

Starbuck grinned.  "You just don't trust the bastard, full stop."

"No.  I don't.  Well, you heard the Colonel, Starbuck.  We're to make a careful reconnaissance."

"I'm always careful."  Starbuck kicked in his turbos, ignored Apollo's derisive snort  and followed Apollo's Viper into the system. 

Apollo took them in on a long, elliptical approach that kept the various other planetary bodies in the system between them and their target.  Starbuck reflected that Apollo was always a cautious soul.  He wasn't complaining, mind you—it was what had kept them alive all this time—but it did take a lot longer than just bulling in there and saying hello.

"We’re monitoring all transmissions," said Tigh in their headsets.  "No changes so far to indicate that they've picked you up."  

"Apollo—"

"I see it.  And there's another, a few hundred miles to the left.  And another."  Apollo sighed.  "Put it in park for a few centons, Starbuck, and stay back where you are.  Colonel?"

Tigh was there instantly.  "What have you got?"

"A network of satellites, Colonel.  They might be a planetary defence grid but could be forward listening posts.  They're more likely to be military than civilian, this far out."

"I'm not getting much in the way of energy readings from them," said Starbuck.  "So far as I can tell, they haven't scanned us.  Maybe they're all on standby."

Tigh cut in.  "We've got them.  You're right—they're in a networked pattern.  We have to assume that they have the approaches to the entire planet covered."

"Some satellites might be civilian," said Starbuck, doubtful.  "I'm reading what looks like some sort of public broadcasting system.  I'm getting visual now."

"Relay it through to us," ordered Tigh.

"They look human," said Starbuck, after a centon.  "They look very pretty, if you like the muscled, bronzed look."

"I'll take that assessment into account, if ever I'm in the market for shallow observations, Lieutenant," said Tigh, voice cold enough to cut through steel, and Starbuck winced.

Apollo rescued him with a neat little diversion.  "Anything from Linguistics yet, sir?"

"The computers are working on it,.  The linguists are all flapping about and squealing.  They say it’s a satisfyingly complex language.  I think that translates to it being centars before we get past the baby talk stage to a workable vocabulary and grammar.  The anthropologists, on the other hand, will play it cool over the transmissions you just sent through, but the Lords only know how it'll take them to have an opinion about the planet's society and how to approach it."

"We'll be in high orbit in less than fifty centons, sir.  We're only a couple of hundred thousand miles out."

"Well all I can say is that you may have to rely on charades to get your message across, Captain, because we're not likely to have the words." 

"Do you want us to pull back and wait, sir?  It might be wise until we can work out which frequencies take their military traffic and the anthropologists have some idea on social structure and whether we're dealing with one society or a collection of nation states."

"Hold off the 'Greetings, aliens, we come in peace' bit until we've got some rudimentary vocabulary," agreed Tigh.  "Or at least until we can pass the time of day without bringing a storm of high explosive down on your heads.  Go for one pass and gather as much intel as you can manage, then come back home and take command of the contact protocols until we can get to the complex sentences bit.  Keep this channel open and keep streaming the data back to us.  We'll monitor you."

"Yes, sir.  Starbuck, we'll move to co-ordinates 34.66 by 465 by 82.3 alpha.  You wait for me there.  I'll do the pass."

Starbuck grimaced at the console.  That would take him round the planet to relay Apollo's sensor sweep back to the Galactica, but it kept him well back, away from the satellites.  It was standard procedure to keep one Viper back in reserve, but he didn't have to like it.  "Acknowledged."

They moved carefully, keeping on the outside of the ring of satellites.  Not one satellite reacted to their presence.  There was no surge of energy or communications chatter; nothing to indicate that they'd been scanned and detected.  Starbuck was beginning to think the satellites were all dead; some remnant of a long-gone civilisation, maybe.  Apollo said that he might be right, but all the same, he might be wrong.

"I get it.  No chances."

"Stay back here," said Apollo.  "I shouldn't be long."

Starbuck flicked the comm unit to their private channel.  "Be careful."

"Is my name Starbuck?  I'm always careful.  And unlike you, I can say that with a straight face."

"Yeah, right."  Starbuck watched the flare of energy from Apollo's engines as the turbos kicked in.  He settled in to wait, uneasy.  He never liked Apollo going places without him.  It didn't seem right.

He focused all his attention on the scanner screen, switching it to monitor his forward sensors, and making sure that everything got recorded.  He pushed a new data crystal into the recording drive, just in case.  Apollo's ship showed as a tiny blip of light moving between the stationary, quiescent symbols that represented the points of the satellite network.  He had to admire Apollo's technique: the little Viper stayed equidistant from each satellite, moving carefully and cautiously between them.  It was precision flying at its best; the sort Apollo excelled at.  Starbuck wasn't naturally like that.  His style was all dash and verve and excitement, but there was a lot to be said for Apollo's meticulous approach.

"Nice flying," he said, relaying the sensor readings back to the Galactica.

"Thank you.  Anything your end?"

"Quiet as the grave.  I'm not reading anything other than very basic power in any of the satellites.  I think I might be right, you know, and they maybe aren't even switched on or they ran out of juice."

"Not a risk I'm willing to take, funnily enough.  I think I'm close enough.  Getting the data?"

Starbuck glanced down at the screen.  "Yes.  Relaying it back to Galactica now.  Huh.  That's odd."

"You seeing the same thing I am?  Or rather, not seeing."

"It’s unusual.  No cities and yet we have a sophisticated satellite system?"

"Could be a purely agrarian society, I suppose," said Apollo.

"Farmers don't usually build satellite grids.  They're usually too busy milking bovines to look up.  And those broadcasts weren’t about being down on the farm, either."

"Yeah.  Looked like a cityscape they were filmed against.  But no city, Starbuck."

"That doesn’t make any sense.  You going to make one orbit?"

"Just the one." 

Starbuck frowned, checked the system data once again.  "I don’t want you getting round to the night side with me stuck here and with an entire planet between us.  If you hold back five centons, I'll move over to that small moon.  That should mean you can bounce signals off the larger moon and I'll pick them up, and you won't be out of contact or sensor range."

"Ah.  Sweet.  You worry about me."

"I'm only thinking about achieving a successful mission, Captain, and, you know, planning ahead.  Right now I'm planning ahead to the game this secton-end and how much I can get out of you to bank roll it.  It'd be bad enough breaking in a new captain, without having to worry about whether your replacement is a Pyramid man with a loose catch on his wallet."

"As we've already established today, you're all heart.  I'm stationary – get moving."

"Five centons, tops," said Starbuck angling his Viper towards the smaller of the planets two moons.  "So, you are going to bank-roll me this secton end, right?"

"It's what I do," sighed Apollo.  "Just try not to lose Boxey's allowance this time around, okay?  I had a hell of a time explaining away that one."

"Yeah, well.  No chance of you winning parent of the yahren award."  Starbuck concentrated on flying for a few centons, ignoring Apollo's less-than-complimentary commentary on his life and morals.  "Yeah, yeah—heard it all before.  And mostly from you.  Okay – I'm in position, tucked nice and neat in beside the moon. "

"Fine.  I'm moving back to resume orbit."

Starbuck watched and waited.  From where he sat more than a hundred thousand miles out, the planet was, as most are from that distance, incredibly beautiful; all green continents and blue seas, wreathed in white cloud.  From here, he couldn't see any scars from industry or development, or damage from pollution.  The planet looked exquisite and perfect, a jewel hanging against the stars. 

Of course, Apollo, being a helluva lot closer, would be getting a better idea of what sort of damage that this civilisation—if it were still around—had done to their planet.  There was always damage.  Starbuck had never seen a planet that didn't have some.

"Hey!" said Apollo, just as Starbuck straightened in his chair in surprise.  "You getting this?"

"I am.  Well, whaddya know?  There is more to this planet than farmers.  Just the one, though?"

"Just the one that I can see," said Apollo.  "There's nothing else on this side of the planet."

"It's not even that big.  It's not as big as Caprica City was, anyway."

"It's the only city there is.  I'm not picking any other conurbation.  I'm passing about five hundred miles east of it."  A pause.  "Cities always look pretty at night.  It's lit up, all white and..." he paused.  "Lavender.  That's the predominant colour.  Pale lavender or violet."

"The poetry you hide underneath that crusty exterior is your secret and mine," said Starbuck.  He checked that the data crystal was recording properly and prepped another one, just in case.  "So, we have a planet with a single city on it.  Not exactly over-populated, then."

"A functioning city with power – and that implies a lot about industry and power generation.  Are you getting the power readings?"

"If that's what they are," said Starbuck, doubtful.  "I don’t recognise the power signature."

"Not me.  Never seen anything like it.  We'll let the scientist's fig… hey!"

There was a burst of static.

"Apollo?"

Starbuck waited.

"Apollo?"

Something in his gut tightened

"Apollo!"

Two microns later and the only warning he got was the slight flare of that odd energy signature, enough warning so that he hurled his Viper to one side.  The pale violet energy beam flashing from one satellite to the next, arced past him, barely missing him and catching the Viper in some sort of wash, and then he was spinning and spinning, all power gone, tumbling over and over away from the planet, yelling and pounding on the control panel, pulling on the joy-stick trying to get the little ship under control.

The tumbling grew slower and slower the momentum finally dying away, and then he was dead in space: no power, no communications, no weaponry.

Starbuck jabbed at the comms unit.

"Apollo!"

Nothing.

"Apollo!"

Still nothing.





The first time that he woke up, it was because someone, somewhere, was insistently calling his name; a low, urgent-toned voice that teased at him and fretted him, until he frowned.

"He's awake!" said the voice, and what the voice said seemed so utterly and fundamentally foolish—it was damned obvious that Starbuck was awake since the damned voice wouldn't let him sleep—that Starbuck forced open his eyes to see who it was.

"Hey, buddy," said Boomer.

It was like being in fog, so dense and thick that he couldn't see very much, so he lay still and blinked up at it, feeling sleepy and heavy.  Someone, a shadow in the fog, loomed over him.  Something icy cold and wet was pressed to his lips, melting against them until cool water dribbled into a mouth that he was just beginning to realise was dry and parched as the desert on Gemina.

"Just relax, Starbuck," said the shape, and it was a different voice, a woman's voice.  Someone he knew, he thought.  Cassie.

"Stay with us, Bucko," said Boomer.  Something, a hand, closed over his forearm.  Starbuck couldn't see him in the fog, but he knew Boomer was there.

He grasped at that certainty, still blinking slowly as his vision cleared.  He narrowed his eyes against the brightness, turned his head on the pillow.  He was warm and Boomer's hand was heavy on his arm, holding him down.  Far off in the distance somebody's hands and feet hurt and ached, but he was too tired to care about it or even wonder who it was.

Cassie was back, her pretty face close to his; close enough to kiss if he wanted to.  Once he might have wanted to kiss Cassie.  Not now.  Not after she dumped him for Cain, of all people.  And definitely not now he was so close to catching Apollo.

"Starbuck?  Are you with us?"

"You know," said Starbuck, enunciating as clearly as he could despite the dryness of his mouth and the general feeling that someone had stuffed it with cotton wool, "it's a great mistake if you lead with the main suit and discard the foundation stone."

"That's good advice," said Cassie, her tone soothing and honey-sweet.  She moistened his lips with a little more ice-cube on a stick.  "Is that better?"

Someone, somewhere, sighed.  It sounded like it might be Boomer, but Starbuck was tired, so very weary that he had to let his eyelids close and the warm darkness swallow him up, while another voice said, in that far distance, that it was only to be expected, Commander, given the heavy sedation; and Starbuck slid away before he could work out who it was who was speaking or wonder why Apollo was being so quiet





When he woke again, the fog had lifted a little.  He still had to blink to clear his eyes and bring the ceiling into focus, and somewhere in the middle distance there was an annoying murmur of voices pitched just a fraction too low, so he couldn't make out what it was they were saying.  He found it very irritating.  He wished they'd either go away or speak up.

"Boomer does it all the time," said Starbuck.  "It's the sort of safe strategic move he's famous for.  It's why he never wins."

Cassie was still there.  This time she was holding a glass of water.  Her other hand cupped the back of his neck to support a head that felt terribly wobbly when he raised it.  The water tasted like the finest nectar.  "Are you still on about Pyramid?  I'll tell him that, shall I?"

Starbuck frowned.  "Isn't he here?  He was here.  I remember."  He waved his right hand.  "Over there somewhere."

"He was here yest… a little earlier.  You've been asleep."  She smoothed his forehead with her fingers.  "Stop scowling at me.  Doctor Salik's gone to call him and the Commander.  They'll be here any centon."

"Am I sick or something?" wondered Starbuck.

"You have been.  You'll be fine.  You're just a bit woozy with some of the drugs we had to give you."

"Good," said Starbuck, earnestly.  "I wouldn't always want to be this stupid." 

She laughed, kissed his cheek and walked away, taking the water with her.  Starbuck stretched out a hand to stop her and stared at the heavily bandaged mass on the end of his arm.  He raised both hands and looked at them for several centons in silent astonishment.  Both were bandaged until he looked like he were wearing two large white mittens.

"Huh," he said and while he thought about it, wondering what had happened, he closed his eyes to rest them.

"He isn't asleep again?" demanded Boomer, disgusted.

"No," said Starbuck, squinting against the bright lights.

"Take it easy," Cassie said, her voice sharp.  She patted Starbuck's arm gently, so he knew she wasn't being sharp with him.  "He's still a little disoriented."

"He's right here," said Starbuck.  "It's rude to talk about me as if I wasn't."

Boomer grinned at him.  "How do you feel?"

"Stupid."

"No change there, then."  Boomer's hand rested on Starbuck's forearm.  "You gave us a bit of a fright, buddy."

Starbuck shook his head.  "What happened?"

"Your ship went into emergency shut-down and put you into stasis," said Boomer, ignoring the shushing noises Cassie was making.  "It took us a couple of days to get you back, Starbuck, and another couple of days to defrost you.  You're going to be just fine, though."

Starbuck frowned at him.  "Stasis?"  He raised his bandaged hands and frowned at them as well.

"You have some frostbite damage," said Cassie, giving Boomer a look that would have destroyed planets.  "Second degree cold-burns with a little infection.  Nothing serious, I promise.  It's all healing nicely."

Starbuck looked at Boomer.

"You'll be back playing cards in no time," said Boomer, who knew him only too well.

Starbuck nodded, reassured.  He was still feeling thick-headed and dreamy.  He turned his head when the door to his room whooshed open and the Commander came in.  The Commander never ran anywhere, but he looked pretty hurried right then.

"Boomer?"

"He's just woken up, sir, and he's still a bit woozy."  Boomer glanced down at Starbuck and kept up the reassuring grin.  "I haven't said anything yet."

Said anything?  And why had his ship put him into stasis?  That made no sense whatsoever…

The Commander looked surprisingly sad and old.  "Starbuck, can you remember what happened?"

"What happened?" repeated Starbuck.  What had happened? . 

And then just as the Commander opened his mouth again, memory came back to Starbuck in a rush.  He gasped out loud.  He felt like he'd been gut shot and despite the weakness and feeling like his head was spinning off, he sat bolt upright, bandaged hands reaching for someone who wasn't just being quiet.

Apollo wasn't there.

"Apollo!"  he said… yelled, so alarmed that his heart started thudding in his chest and the blood pounded in his temples.  "Where's Apollo?"

"Well yeah, Bucko," said Boomer, and he looked as sad as the Commander.  "That's kinda what we wanted to talk to you about."

Starbuck fell back onto his pillow, ignoring Cassie's clucking and fussing, not able to do anything but stare at the Commander and Boomer and realise why they both looked so sad.

"Apollo!"

Still nothing.





It hurt almost beyond anything he could bear when he realised that they hadn't gone in to find and rescue Apollo.

Starbuck's Viper, damaged and leaking fuel and air, had spun far enough away from the satellite ring for the Galactica to find him and risk sending in the rescue shuttle without provoking another attack.  By then, Starbuck had been in hypothermic stasis for over a day and all they'd had to go on in working out what had happened to Apollo, was the information on a cracked data crystal retrieved from Starbuck's Viper.

"Took Wilker about three days to extract the data in one piece and start analysing it," said Boomer.  "He only got it all yesterday.  We had no way of knowing what happened except that you guys ran into an energy field or beam or something that's nothing like anything we've ever seen before—and I mean nothing, Bucko.   It even has the theoretical physicists stumped.  We have no idea what it is, how it's generated, or what it can do.  We have no defences against something that unknown.  None at all."

The Commander had left earlier after a short discussion with Starbuck.  Starbuck had answered his questions mechanically, stunned and quiet—"In shock," Cassie had diagnosed, tossing her head with impotent anger.  Starbuck wasn't entirely sure why she was being so protective.  It wasn't as though he still cared about her that way.  If he ever had.  It seemed to him that he'd been marking time, waiting for Apollo, for a long time.  So he inclined his head out of the way when she attempted to put her hand on his brow and didn’t respond when she touched his shoulder briefly before following the Commander out of the room.

"You've not sent out any patrols or searches?"  He lifted his hand to rub against his temple, where it ached and throbbed until every heartbeat reverberated through his head.  He stared at the white bandages for a micron.

"No defences, Starbuck," repeated Boomer.  "The Commander decided that we couldn't risk it until we'd had the chance for Wilker to work through the data and for us to talk to you, to see if you could tell us what happened."

"You just left him behind."

Boomer looked uncomfortable.  "It wasn't like that.  We couldn't risk the fleet against some sort of energy beam that we’ve never come across before.  You have to see that."

"Apollo would never have left anyone behind.  I can't believe—" Starbuck shook his head, unmindful of the extra thumps of pain this produced in his temple.   "I can’t believe we've left him behind."

Boomer grimaced, but said nothing.  He looked guilty.  He had every bloody right to look guilty.

"How long has it been?  I can't work it out.  Four days?"

"Nearly five."

"Five days," said Starbuck.  He lifted up his hands and hid his face in them.  The bandages smelled of antiseptic, a false chemical freshness that didn't reassure.  His fingers hurt quite a lot, itching and burning.  "I think his ship went down," he said, voice muffled by cotton gauze.  "He didn't have time to say anything.  Or maybe his comms got scrambled.  I dunno.  He could have made it down."

"Yeah.  I know."

"We've no idea how hard the landing was."  Starbuck wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, letting the bandage absorb the tears.  He kept his voice steady.  "He was a fucking good pilot.  One of the best.  He'd have got her down in one piece, I'm damned sure of that.  If anyone could, he could,  But he could be hurt.  He could be hurt and you've just left him there."

"Nobody wants to leave him, Starbuck.  It's… it's complicated, all right?  The Commander's hands are tied, here.  If it were any one of us, he'd have to weigh up the risks to the fleet—risks we can't begin to assess—against the pretty low chance we got through a hard landing in hostile territory.  He can't make a different decision because Apollo's his son."

"He always makes it harder because Apollo's his son."

"Huh.  Yeah, I don't exactly disagree with you there.  It's worse this time.  The Council—"

"The Council?" repeated Starbuck, astonished.  "What the hell does the Council have to do with it?"

"The Council took fright.  They want to keep the fleet well away from the system.  You can't blame them for that, Starbuck."

Starbuck stared.  "Oh yes I can."

"Most of the fleet's unarmed and helpless.  Look, I don't want to leave Apollo any more than you do, but those ships out there are our responsibility, Bucko.  It's our job to keep them safe and it takes precedence over everything else.  And Apollo would be the first to say so."

Tired and aching now, Starbuck lay back.  "Yeah.  He would.  But he'd never leave one of us behind without a fight, Boom-boom.  He just wouldn't."

"We argued."  Boomer looked tired, himself.  "But in the end, we had to do what the Council and the Commander told us.  No-one's happy about it."

Starbuck's chest ached savagely.  He rubbed at it.  "Okay.  So the fleet's staying well away and… what?  Going around?"

"The next door system's empty.  We're going through that."

"What about Viper patrols?"

Boomer hunched one shoulder.  "We don’t know how long their reach is, whoever those people are.  So, no.  Not any closer in than the outermost planets, trying to pick up on any transmissions they're making."

Starbuck looked up hopefully.

"No," said Boomer.  "Nothing.  The linguists are making good progress though."

"Good for them."

Boomer's hand closed over Starbuck's shin, heavy and comforting even through the blankets. 

"I can't believe he's gone," said Starbuck, choked.

"I know.  Doesn't seem possible."

"No," said Starbuck, fierce with sudden anger and a pain that was rising up through his breastbone and threatening to choke him.  "I mean, I can't.  Not just that I won't, but I can't.  He's alive.  He's down there and we left him, the Lords forgive us.  We left him."





Starbuck's hands were more troublesome than anyone expected, despite Cassie's cheery words of reassurance.  His feet had been better protected in his combat boots and were only mildly frost-bitten.  He had a few days of discomfort while the sores healed and then they stopped bothering him.  His hands were a different matter.  For days they ached and burned and whenever Salik or Cassie changed the dressings, the yellow sores and necrotising tissue looked worse, and more dying flesh had to be debrided.

"They'll scar," said Cassie apologetically, four or five days after Starbuck had woken up in Life Centre.  He wasn't sure how many days.  He didn't care.

He dredged up enough energy to offer her something for her concern.  "They tingle a lot."

"There's some neurological damage," she admitted.  "More than we anticipated.  When the sores heal, you'll need some physiotherapy to get the dexterity back."

He nodded.

Her smile looked uncertain, insubstantial.  "We'll have you back playing cards in no time."

"Don't much fancy a game," he said.  "Don't much fancy anything."

There really wasn’t much she could say to that, and she went away frowning.  Starbuck didn’t much care about that either.  He was better on his own without people trying to force him to talk.

A day or two later, more than an entire secton since he'd left Apollo behind, and he was released from Life Centre.

"No flying, of course, not even using the training simulators.  No working out until Pershing says you can.  No alcohol or other stimulants, and if you need help to sleep come back and see me about some low-level sedatives.  Keep those hands clean and I want to see you here every day for a dressing change.  Now get out of here and stop cluttering up my Life Centre."

Which typical irascible speech from Doctor Salik would have had more force if Salik hadn't been patting Starbuck's shoulder kindly as he spoke.  It rather undercut the gruff doctor act, and the irony might, under other circumstances, have amused Starbuck no end.  Now, though, he just nodded.

Boomer was waiting for him back in the real world.  Boomer had been made Acting Captain, vice Apollo—It's just acting captain, said Boomer, reassuringly, giving him cautious, almost deprecating looks; it's temporary.  Starbuck tried to be pleased for him.  God knew, Boomer deserved it and Starbuck was relieved it hadn't been given to that ambitious son-of-a-bitch, Bojay.  But all that really pleased him was that it was temporary.  He told himself that it meant that they, the Management, hadn't given up on Apollo just yet.

Boomer had yet more instructions, delivered as they walked slowly towards Starbuck's quarters.  "No-one's going to talk to you about it," he said, "or I'll space the insensitive nosy bastards myself, so don't worry about coming into the OC.  You've got free rein of the ship while you're on sick leave except—" Boomer paused and looked self-conscious, "—except the flight decks.  I'm telling you now that the flight crews have specific orders not to let you anywhere near a Viper or a shuttle.  Clear?"

Starbuck didn’t let so much as a muscle twitch with the sudden jab of disappointment.  "Clear.  Thanks for the trust, old buddy."

"The Commander's orders, as it happens," said Boomer.  "But I don't disagree with him."  He added, more gently, "We don't want to lose you too, you know."

Starbuck halted, thought about it, and gave Boomer a faint grin.  "Too late," he said.  "You already have."




Sick leave was more boring than Starbuck could ever have imagined. 

He hated having nothing to do, nothing to occupy his mind, nothing to distract him from the relentless misery that had taken up occupation in his gut.

People were very kind, he supposed, but they had lives to get on with and jobs to do, and he had neither.  Slowly, and not caring about it, he drifted to the edges of a place where he had always been central, spending his days wandering the Galactica's corridors and compartments restlessly and his nights locked in his quarters, lying on his back and staring up at the grey metal ceiling.

He slept badly.  He seldom managed more than a centar or two at a time before his dreams, confusing and disorienting, had him coming awake fast in bewildered terror, Apollo's voice sounding in his ear with that last startled "hey!" before vanishing into silence.  Sometimes he woke in tears, sometimes he woke laughing—as he said to Boomer, it wasn't much of a valedictory message and he expected that the bathos of it was annoying Apollo as much as it was breaking Starbuck.  Boomer had put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed tight before chivvying him into going to Salik.  He mumbled something to the doctor, nothing much, but it was enough to get what he needed to help him find a few centars where he didn't dream at all.

He couldn't decide which was worse: dreaming about losing Apollo or not dreaming about him at all.  And whether he dreamed or not, every waking was the same: a centon's disorientation, another centon of wondering why it felt like he had a lead weight in his chest, and then the miserable realisation, every day, that Apollo was gone.

Boomer spent as much time with him as he could, off duty.  Without Boomer he wouldn't have bothered eating, but at least once a day Boomer walked him into the Commissary, half the time without Starbuck even noticing where they were headed, and they'd join their usual table with their usual friends—no, wait, with one notable exception—and almost literally stand over him until he forced down the tasteless mass on his plate.  It was hard to eat.  Every mouthful he ate was like chewing on ashes, and the cold misery in his gut rose up to choke him.

Within a few days his hands were freed from their dressings at last—"You were lucky not to lose a couple of fingers," Salik had said cheerfully, removing the final dressings and poking disrespectfully at the new pink skin where the yellowing sores had been—and Starbuck spent a considerable portion of his day trying to get movement and feeling back into fingers and joints that seemed permanently stiff and swollen. The cold and the tingling sensations lingered longest, made worse by the physiotherapy that relentlessly exercised damaged nerves and blood vessels into working efficiently again.

"It'll take a while," said Sergeant Pershing, not unsympathetically.  Pershing was master of physical therapy on the ship as well as being PT instructor to the warriors, and he was as ruthless about putting Starbuck through the hand and finger exercises as he was with making him take PT when he was fit.  "As soon as your grip gets a little better, I'll start you on some weight training to get some muscle tone back in your arms.  No reason why you can't do some other workout that avoids using your hands, though.  The running machine, Lieutenant.  Hop to it."

And despite his normal abhorrence for anything resembling real exercise, Starbuck came to look forward to his two or three centars in Pershing's bracing company.  While he was there he had to focus on Pershing's instructions or he could lose himself in repetitive exercise that wore him out.  In either case, he could stop thinking for a centon or two.

That was welcome.  That was very welcome indeed.





Most days he found his way up to the Celestial Dome.  It was cold up there, right on the skin of the ship, and lonely.  But then, so was he.  He and the Dome matched.

"I thought you'd be up here," said Boomer, rousing Starbuck from another quiet time spent staring mindlessly out at the stars.

Starbuck nodded.

"Up you come," said Boomer, and turned back to the hatch to help Boxey through it.

Starbuck was too startled to say anything, at first.  He'd almost forgotten about Boxey.  If he thought of him at all, it was fleetingly and absently, assuming that he was with the Commander or Athena, that he was being cared for.  Well, Boxey might be cared for, but there was no denying that the small boy Boomer was lifting through the hatch was woebegone and miserable.

"Hello," said Boxey, shyly.  "I haven't seen you for ages."

"Hey," said Starbuck.  He raised an enquiring eyebrow in Boomer's direction.

"Boxey decided he'd like to come up here to find you," said Boomer.

Starbuck felt a little spasm of guilt.  He liked the kid, he'd always liked the kid.  It wouldn't have hurt him to make sure Boxey was all right.  For definitions of all right that included your father being missing in action, of course.

"My… my dad used to bring me up here sometimes."  Boxey stuttered over the word, but he lifted his chin bravely and blinked a lot.  "He liked it up here."

Starbuck found his voice.  "Yeah, he did.  He found it yahrens ago, did he tell you that?  He spent sectars repairing it and getting it working again."

"Remember that strange transmission you picked up?" said Boomer.  "The time you two came up here with Cassie and Sheba and ended up wandering all over a Cylon baseship?"

"Uh-huh."  Of course Starbuck remembered.  Remembering was about all he did, these days.

"That was the last we ever saw of the tinheads," said Boomer, with deep satisfaction.

Well, it wasn't as though they hadn't found others to take their place.  Starbuck managed a thin smile.

"He's very brave, my dad," said Boxey, and this time no amount of chin lifting could stop his eyes from filling.  He came to where Starbuck sat in the control chair on the dais, and leant up against Starbuck's knee.  His mouth was trembling.

Starbuck swallowed back another rush of guilt.  Boxey had already lost his mother, and now Apollo.  It wasn't right to make him lose his 'uncles' as well.  He rested a hand on Boxey's hair for and instant and tousled it the way he usually did.

"Yeah," he said thickly.  "He is.  The bravest and the best."

Boxey reached up and pulled down Starbuck's hand, linking it with his.  He looked curiously at Starbuck's misshapen fingers.

"Does it still hurt?"

Starbuck drew a harsh breath and the pain and misery roiled in his gut.  "Yes."

"Will it get better?"

"I don’t know," said Starbuck.  "Some days, I don't think it will."  He looked at Boomer for help, but all Boomer did was nod.  Whether it was agreement or encouragement, he couldn't tell.

Boxey nodded.  For a centon or two he played with Starbuck's hand, gently moving Starbuck's fingers, one by one.  "Grandpa says we don't know what happened to my dad.  He says we might never know."

"No," said Starbuck.

"But you'll find him," said Boxey. 

His hands closed lightly on Starbuck's, pressing on the new scar tissue and the damaged nerves until Starbuck's fingers tingled.  Which is, of course, why Starbuck's eyes burned and he had to blink a lot himself.

"Yes," said Starbuck.  "I will."

 

 

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