Chapter 25

Lieutenant Kara Thrace, Flight Instructor

Kara Thrace sat at her desk in the small office she shared with the other Viper flight instructor at the Air Base on Caprica. Captain Desmond Valinski, call sign Dizzy, was a dark-skinned man who had graduated four years ahead of her at the Academy. He was married to a beautiful woman and they had three young children, stair-steps judging by the pictures that were on his desk and his file cabinets. His hobby was playing trumpet in a jazz band that she had heard on occasion at a nightclub in Caprica City. It was one of the few things she knew about him. She and Valinski rarely discussed their personal lives.

Medium height and slim with a prematurely graying buzz cut, he was an excellent instructor, much better with the book part of Flight School than she was. But she had him in the cockpit. It was generally acknowledged around the Air Base that no one was better in a Viper than Lieutenant Kara Thrace.

Kara had no pictures on her file cabinets and only two on her desk. One was taken the morning of her graduation from the Academy and was of Colonel Conrad Burgher pinning her lieutenant's bars onto her collar. For most of the other cadets, their mothers or fathers pinned on their new bars, but Kara's mother had said she wasn't up to making the trip and she hadn't heard from her father in years. She didn't even know where he was. So she had asked the man she had grown to respect and care for like a grandfather. As he pinned the bars on her collar, she had seen tears of pride in his eyes.

The second picture was taken fourteen weeks after the first and was of Colonel Burgher pinning on her wings. Her mother hadn't made it to that either. Not that Kara really cared by then.

Major Connelly was there, though, when she graduated and when she got her wings, too. They had managed to stay friends despite the odds. He loved her, and she loved him, too. Just not in a romantic way. The desire was still there for both of them, but both of them had found ways to deal with it.

They had consummated their relationship only once, the night they had met. She was drinking that night and still believed that she could get away with anything. And he was hot and good-looking and she was horny. What had happened afterward had taught her several of life's hard lessons.

She had learned that careless, selfish and immature acts sometimes reached far into not only her own life, but the lives of others as well. She had learned that not all rules and regulations can be ignored without consequences. And she had learned just how frakking fast your fortunes can change. How high you can be one minute and how low, the next. How the smallest act can have the biggest consequences.

Sometimes she still touched the lieutenant's pins on her collar with a feeling of awe. And her wings. That she had actually gotten them both was something she considered akin to a miracle. That she had made it through the Academy and Flight School without frakking up and getting kicked out was another. There had been one time when she had almost lost it all, but Lee Adama had risked his career and saved hers.

She could never think of Lee without thinking of two things. The kiss they had shared on the night of his senior dance and how things had ended for them. Their ending wasn't that definite, but the fact that she hadn't heard from him in almost three years was a good indication to her that he had forgotten her.

But try as she might, she couldn't forget him. Couldn't forget the way he had kissed her the night of the senior dance. It was a hot kiss, filled with an adolescent horniness. But it was more than that. She had felt his heart in that kiss, and a promise, too. Nobody had ever gotten to her with just one kiss the way Lee Adama had. Even though it wasn't a kiss that she believed he could walk away from, in the end, he had.

She'd heard from him several times while he was in Flight School, the last time being right before he had gotten his wings. He had replied to an electronic message from her, a message she had sent a few days earlier and had almost decided he wasn't going to answer. There had been nothing in his message to indicate he was dropping her from his life. In fact at the end of the message he had said he missed her. And he'd mentioned their song, the one they'd danced to on the terrace that long-ago night. She knew the whole message by heart. She'd printed it and kept it in the drawer by her bed and sometimes when she wanted to really torment herself, she took it out and read it.

But there had been nothing from him since then. Not a single reply to the half-dozen or so messages she had sent him after that. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. And she was still trying to figure out why. A couple of times she had thought about sending him a message. Hey, Lee, just what the hell did I do wrong? But he'd probably ignore that one, too.

She'd heard a few things about him, though. From Karl. Saw Lee at a party on Picon after the fleet did war games. Some hot-looking dark-haired babe with big ta-tas was sitting on his lap. And from her former roommate, Dana. My sister, the one in Communications on Picon, said Lee's really made a name for himself with one of the Intel girls. Lee had obviously left Kara behind without a second thought.

The last she'd heard, Lee was on the Atlantia. She had wondered if they would see each other during the year she spent on the Triton right after she graduated from Flight School, but their paths had never crossed. She might still be on the Triton if she hadn't done something stupid, but she had and as a result she had been ordered back to the Air Base on Caprica and given a job as a flight instructor.

She'd liked serving on the Triton, but she liked being back on Caprica better. On the Triton she was bored unless she was in a Viper and she drank too much, played cards too much and generally had too much attitude because she was the best Viper pilot on the battlestar and she knew it. No, she hadn't made too many friends on the Triton.

There had also been an incident with another Viper pilot. Lieutenant Ivan Brindle, call sign Horse. Frakking bully, he deserved the punch she had given him. He deserved a lot worse, but he had family in high places. The commander of the Triton had no choice but to discipline her. The result was a reprimand in her folder that they both knew she didn't deserve. But that's the way life worked. The rich and powerful ruled. Her commander finally solved his problem by posting her back to Caprica with the recommendation that she become an instructor.

Kara hadn't know anything about teaching when she started, but she did know Vipers, forward, backward, and upside down. She didn't think Captain Valinski had been too impressed with her until he saw her put a Viper through the paces. After that he helped her with the book part and she got better with every class. She was almost as confident in the classroom now as she was in her ship.

Back on Caprica she got to see Connelly again. And Colonel Burgher. She stopped drinking as much. In fact she was hardly drinking at all now except a little on the weekends. And she started taking her job seriously. She began to see herself making a contribution to training new pilots and training them well.

She dropped by the Academy about once a month and had lunch with Colonel Burgher. She and Connelly met occasionally, too, for lunch or drinks, and once in a while she thought about what might have been if Stacey hadn't gotten herself pregnant. They had a little girl now, a beautiful, dark-haired little girl who looked like him and who was the apple of his eye.

He was still a damned good looking man. And still as hot as the night they had met. And as off-limits now as he had been then. But for a different reason. If Lee Adama had still been a part of her life, she would never have thought about Connelly as much as she did. But Lee wasn't a part of her life anymore. And Connelly was.

There had been a couple of guys during the last four years. Nothing serious, though. The Computer Specialist assigned to the Triton for six months as a civilian contractor to help upgrade and network all their systems. He was a quiet, shy guy who was okay in bed when she met him and an excellent lover when they parted. Not that there had been all that many opportunities, but there had been enough. He was on the Columbia now working with their computer systems, and they still kept in touch by electronic message. Not that it would ever go anywhere, but it was nice to hear from him occasionally.

There had also been a few one-night stands. Guys she'd picked up or let pick her up in bars when she was on leave. Physically satisfying as far as they went, but otherwise nothing to her. None of them.

For the last year no one had shared her bed and she was getting used to it. She'd been thinking about Lee. A lot. Funny she never dreamed about anyone but Lee. Every hot, sweet dream she'd had since the Academy had involved Lee. She almost laughed out loud. If they ever did get together she bet he would be a real disappointment.

Okay, Kara, she said to herself. Enough traveling down memory lane. A new class of nuggets was arriving next week and she had to review their Academy grades in Basic Flight, look at their sim scores and look for their weak areas so she could work on them. She took the sealed 10x12 manila envelope that had just been delivered to her that morning and slit the end with a letter opener.

Carefully she slid the pages out. There were six pages per cadet, with his or her class picture stapled to the first page. The same information was on her computer, but since Command still insisted there be a paper copy of everything, she had gotten in the habit of using the paper.

The student records were arranged in alphabetical order. His was on the top. She looked at the picture and then at the name and then at the picture again. Zak Adama. No way this could be a coincidence. Kara Thrace laughed out loud. Life certainly had its ironies. She might be teaching Lee Adama's younger brother to fly. What would Lee think about that?

She looked up as Captain Valinski came in.

"Good morning, sir."

"Morning, Lieutenant. Sorry I'm late today. My middle child flushed a couple of pairs of my socks down the toilet. I had to wait for the plumber to get there." He shook his head. "Kids. One day you'll know what I'm talking about. Are those the new nuggets?"

"This was just delivered." She split the stack in half, keeping the top half for herself and handing the bottom half to him. "Read 'em and weep."

They had worked out a way of dividing the class between them that was a little unorthodox, but worked for them. After they had both reviewed all the records, they took the pictures off, wrote the names on the back, shuffled them a number of times like a deck of cards and dealt them in two stacks. She should have known the gods were laughing at her when Zak's picture was the third one that Captain Valinski dealt to her stack.

TBC…