Second Elegy, Third Verse
Not Lost, Just Going On Before

 

 

 

04 Octavus 6490
Officer's Club, Battlestar Galactica

"Way to go, Starbuck!" Boomer raised his beer in a toast. "Two sectons as his wingman and he runs away. How do you do it?"

" If I didn't know for a fact that I'm great company, I think I'd be insulted by that." But Starbuck frowned and shook his head. "You know as much as I do, Boom-boom. He was here yesterday. He wasn't here this morning. He didn't even leave me a bloody message. Instead, I get to spend the entire duty day as Kyle's third arm."

"My unwanted third arm," said Kyle. "I didn't know what the hell to do with you all day. I never saw someone with a worse case of the sulks."

"I was not sulking!"

"Balls. Why else did you think I banished you to the picket line for five centars? I'd had enough of you glooming over in the corner of the Duty Office."

"You'd gloom if you were made to do the filing!"

Kyle laughed. "You do it so well, Starbuck, and here's me never been sure in the past that you could even read."

"Ha-bloody-ha," huffed Starbuck.

"Do you know where he's gone, Kyle?" asked Lange.

Kyle shook his head. "All Colonel Tigh said to me this morning was that Apollo would be back in about a secton."

"Remember when he was here last time, the T18 job?" said Boomer. "It was pretty clear that he wasn't sent down onto that planet just because he happened to be handy and at a loose end. He was in on that job from the beginning."

"How did you work that out?" demanded Kyle, his eyebrows raised. "I'd have thought it was a Strategy Unit operation."

"I didn't. Detective Starbuck here worked it all out. It was very convincing."

Jillia sniffed. "Starbuck's always convincing, especially when he's persuading someone outa their pay."

"He's even more convincing about persuading ladies out of their undergarments," said Lange. He caught Jillia's glare and quailed. "So I'm told."

"Apollo was SSI, remember? They almost always go into the Unit. Starbuck worked it out that Apollo did work for them." Boomer caught the look on Starbuck's face and buried himself in his beer, hurriedly.

"Oh, yeah, I remember now." Lange shrugged. "You could be right, which explains why no-one will tell us where he's gone. So wherever he is, he won't be talking about it when he gets back and, thank the Lords, he won't be handing round the holiday snaps."

Boomer laughed with the others and waited until the talk became general, not to mention loud and acrimonious about people's chances in the up-coming Triad season, before shifting his chair closer to Starbuck's and apologising quietly. "Didn't think, sorry. I guess Apollo doesn't want to talk much about working with the geeks back in HQ."

"He isn't allowed to say much." Starbuck rubbed at the back of his neck. "I don't like this, Boomer. I don't like him going off without telling me. I'm supposed to be his wingman."

Boomer looked at the rather dulled-down version of Starbuck that they had that day and decided desperate measures were called for. "Come and help me get the next lot of beer in." He added, while they were on their way to the bar, "You just don't like him going anywhere without you."

"No. No, I don't. And I don't like him going places without me and not telling me where he's going. I don't like it."

Boomer watched him brood, trying not to smile. "You've got it bad, old buddy."

"We're friends," said Starbuck, very firmly. It was a little spoiled when he grinned at the eye-roll Boomer sent in his direction. "I know. We're managing though."

"I don't know how you do it," said Boomer, and it was true. Starbuck was the sort of guy whose sexual life was pretty much at the forefront of everything he did. A celibate Starbuck—and Starbuck had been that since Apollo had arrived—was an unnatural Starbuck. The barman had reached them now. "Six beers, Sam, thanks. On my account."

Starbuck didn't pretend not to know what Boomer meant. "I have self-control. Really I do. I think about the Imperious Leader."

"You what?"

"I think about the Imperious Leader. I don't think about killing the Imperious Leader because that's likely to get me excited and, you know, that's not exactly the point, is it? So I think about the Imperious Leader with no clothes on."

Boomer's mouth fell open. "But we have no idea what the Imperious Leader looks like! How can you imagine it naked?"

Starbuck shrugged. "They were reptilian-type things once, weren't they? So whichever politician was last in the news is a good enough substitute."

"Oh. Yeah. That would do it." He was grateful for the distraction Sam offered as the new bottles were handed over. He signed the bar chit on automatic.

"Besides," said Starbuck, with a hint of his old wickedness. "I didn't say who didn't have the clothes on while I was doing the thinking."

Boomer almost dropped the beer. "Oh, don't," he implored. "Just don't.

Starbuck laughed. Boomer was glad to see that some of the old insouciance had been restored. "Enough about slimy politicians. What I want to know is, who's that new tech?" Starbuck nodded towards a distant table where the engineers were sitting.

"Ooh. Pretty."

"Yeah," said Starbuck, thoughtfully as they arrived back at their own table.

"Not now, Bucko. Jolly's here and it's his birthday and you can't duck out on him now."

"Suppose." Starbuck smiled at Lieutenant Jolly and handed him a beer. "Happy birthday, Lieutenant! Now, drink that and let's have a few toasts, and consider yourself a privileged man because just for tonight I'm prizing you above newly-arrived engineers with red hair and big—"

"Starbuck!" protested Jillia.

Starbuck laughed. "Just for tonight."

Boomer noticed that more than once Starbuck's gaze wandered over to the red-haired engineer with the impressive chest, and that Starbuck was smiling and gracious and preening, especially when the red-haired engineer stared back. He wondered what Apollo would make of it, and shuddered.

Sometimes, he thought, being Starbuck's friend was all too wearing. Wherever Apollo was, he was well out of it.