I do not own the characters.
Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was walking quickly in the Pegasus corridors toward Admiral Helena Cain quarters. She was in hurry. Starbuck was to give Cain a status regarding the rescue mission plan. The guards let her enter the quarters and an aide had indicated to her to wait. Cain was occupied.
That was fine with Starbuck and she was hoping for that. When the aide left, she surreptitiously, removed a frame photograph hidden in her flightsuit and placed it back on the shelf. In the last briefing, she had taken the photograph and gave it to Lt. Felix Gaeta to scan the picture, and find out who that pilot was standing next Cain. Just in time, Cain stepped in. She motioned Starbuck to brief her on the final preparations. Cain was pleased at the latest progress and nodded in approval at the final plan.
"You must be excited to go?" asked Cain, rhetorically as she filed the mission plan.
Starbuck nodded and smiled. She couldn't wait to get started and find Sam.
"I don't need to tell you how to do your mission but stay the course. Kara, be careful out there," said Cain, as she dismissed Starbuck.
As the Pegasus CAG, Starbuck had her own quarters though small it gave her all the privacy that was always lacking aboard a military ship. She had several messages waiting for her, most were routine. One message was marked Urgent; it was from Felix. It read, "Good news. Come quickly."
When Starbuck had asked Felix to be part of the mission, he came aboard the Pegasus
On Temporarily Duty (TDY) assignment with a reluctance. He was to help out on navigation and jump calculations. At first, he was apprehensive of Cain however, Felix was elated. He wanted to thank the sweet-natured officer who given him all the ships library, computer disks, and movies. While on the Pegasus, Starbuck had also asked Felix to determine the identity of the female pilot that stood next Cain.
Felix didn't mind; it was a change of pace from Galactica. He hoped to have an opportunity to meet that nice officer. Meanwhile, he got to work with the modern computers. He could tell right away that the Pegasus had more state-of-the-art computers compared to Galactica. Galactica had been slated to be mothballed so its computers were never upgraded.
Felix logged in the Colonial Fleet database and scrolled down the menu page until he found the Colonial Personnel records button, and selected it. An online form popped up and he selected the appropriate tabs, and filled out the form for a search query. His first search query had the following parameters: female + officer + pilot + Tauron + AirBase + [25 age 35]. This resulted in hundreds of records, therefore too many hits. He could have also searched by image alone but it would take up too long and consume too much Pegasus' computing resources, possibly arousing suspicion.
Instead, Felix tried a different approach; he had a known given – Cain. He did a new search query by searching on Cain's previous postings and worked backward. The new result was more manageable. He found what he was looking for, the years when Cain served as Air Base Commander of the Tauron Airbase.
To double check, Felix pulled up the scanned picture and zoomed onto Cain's flightsuit arm patch. It had the Tauron Air Base insignia and the words Air Base Commander embroidered on the bottom of the patch. Then he zoomed onto the female pilot's patches, she had two of them: the particular squadron and one of the Tauron Air Base. He furthered zoomed in on the squadron patch and found the name.
Felix revised his first search query by appending the following parameters: timeframe of Cain's tour and the name of the squadron patch. The search pattern yielded twenty records. He opened up each record and compared each military picture to the scanned photograph, until he finally found her. He sent an urgent message to Starbuck of his success. The information displayed presented was public which was no different than the military ID. It just had name, rank, previous tours with years, and a photograph.
When Starbuck arrived, Felix brought up the record again.
"Tell me what you think?" asked Felix.
Starbuck could see the new image was the woman in question; she was now a Colonel, a squadron CO. She compared it to younger image and it was a match.
"Yep, that's her – Good job!" said Starbuck as she grabbed the record and image printouts. "Thanks Felix."
He loved a good mystery but Starbuck wouldn't say. Oh well, as he purged the search query results and deleted the picture.