While a pilot technically didn't need to know all the routes around the Galactica, just from the barracks to the launch tubes were required, Starbuck had taken the time to read the schematics, and read them again when he and Apollo had to go out and save the day from a raging inferno in the landing bay and engines. Knowing your terrain was important. He took the lift to the lowest level it could go, knowing that it wasn't as far down as he could get. There wasn't a lift in the Galactica that spanned the whole distance, broken up into a series of smaller sections as a safety precaution so fire or boarding cylons could not reach every part of the battlestar from one shaft.
He quickly calculated the least traveled sections of the ship, below the engines, or the launch tubes or even better yet, the sanitation reclamation tanks. No one went there that didn't have to. He jogged down a hallway, feeling his blood pump and his heart pound in rhythm to his footfalls. The lighting was dimmer in these unused corridors, but the shadows rather than being indistinct had come alive with varying shades of gray and blue. Rainbows still swam at the edges of his vision. He found the lift he needed and took it down three more levels.
As the lift doors opened, the lights came alive in the corridor, bursting into color one by one, little explosions that had him ducking as he moved down the corridor. "Like Gommorray" he thought, remembering back to the dangerous drop into the heart of a Cylon city. It should have been a quick in and out mission. There hadn't been a lot of back up, just him, Apollo, Bojay, Boomer and Sheba with Cassie along as a medic. It was a suicide run, and in the end, it had been just Boomer and himself sneaking into a Cylon command center. The whine of all the centurions had been almost as deafening as the charges they used to blow up the fuel depot. Then there were the charges they had to toss into the command center, the blast nearly knocking him from his feet. He'd been blinded by the white solenite flares as his nostrils filled with the smell of Bojay's blood and fear. Lords help him, his focus had been on Cassie. She didn't have combat experience and while he hadn't been speaking to her much during that time due to her involvement with Cain, he also couldn't have lived had she been hurt on that mission. If she had been injured or killed, he wouldn't have returned to the Galactica.
On Gommorray his heart had jumped up into his throat and pounded as hard as it did now. When the shuttle had picked them up, the relief was so great he'd had to slip in a secret dose of snap just to keep from weeping in gratitude . When Cassie found him, he'd been floating on the euphoria of that dose, as well as on the fact that her death was not his fault. She could have told him she was going to leave him for Cain or all of Blue squadron and he still would have been happy to see her smile just so his heart would remain in his chest.
He slid to a halt. Where was he? This wasn't Gommorray or the shuttle. Why was he thinking about Gommorray and Cain? Why was he down here where it smelled like mong?
An irregular skip of his heart, followed by a long pause before it thudded hard three times, shook loose the tumblers in his brain and they slid into place. "You're looking for a place to ride this out, remember Bucko?"
He had Cassie back now that Cain was gone. He almost lost her after Ortega's murder. Then there was the base ship and the mission Apollo talked him into. It hadn't been the same between him and Cassie since then. They were still together. He hadn't even thought about somebody else in ages, but it didn't mean that Cassie wasn't still wary. She wasn't just worried about him cheating on her, no, she was worried he was going to leave her in another way. She looked at him sometimes like he was already dead.
There was a distance between them now, one that seemed even wider than the minefield on the way to Carillon. Sometimes when he fell asleep in her bed and the dreams came, the bad ones from the battle of Cimtar, and his buddies were going up in smoke around him, she woke him by wrapping her arms around him, whispering that it was okay, but the gulf between them swallowed him whole and spat him out on a barren asteroid. He tried not to fall asleep at her place anymore. He thought he'd been bridging that gulf, proving to her he wasn't going to leave her if she would just let him in.
But if she found out he was buying illicit drugs from random guys, it would be over.
The thought exploded in his chest as all his muscles seized. He crashed to the ground, his jaw clenched. He heard a cracking in his head, his teeth grinding hard as his face impacted with the deck below him. The wind was knocked out of him and he writhed in agony at the pain. He willed his muscles to relax. In reply his legs and arms shook and all his tendons in his body pulled tight. His vision exploded, and the deck beneath him vibrated and jumped.
"What the frak?" He tried to curse but it came out as a garbled mess around a mouth full of saliva and blood. His head swung back, knocking into the corridor wall hard. The sound reverberated in his body as he tried to pull his head away from the wall. His limbs were not listening to his commands and his head snapped back striking the wall again as his back arched.
"Frak, help me," he tried to call, but all he heard was garbled whine issuing from his throat. Just as suddenly his muscles went slack. A dark fog descended upon him. For a moment he thought he should fight it, but he was too tired to muster up a defense and let it envelop him in its warm embrace.
"Finding him should be easy," Apollo said, relating how he had escorted his friend to the bunkroom. "I practically tucked him into bed. He should still be there sleeping off his efforts to destroy his viper."
"Security has already been by the bunkrooms," Adama interjected. "Starbuck was there when they searched his locker. As you intimated Boomer, they found nothing of note, so Starbuck was not taken into custody. According to Lt. Jolly, he left, with no indication of where he was headed. I am hoping to intercede before Security issues formal requests for questioning."
"We already checked the officers club, the triad courts and the mess hall." Tigh added.
"He might be with Cassiopeia," Apollo suggested but Tigh shook his head no.
"We think he has left the Galactica," Adama added. "Once out in the fleet, we may never find him before it's too late. He is well known and well liked. He would find a safe harbor on nearly every ship in the fleet."
"No. He's still here. I would bet my cubits on it," Boomer stated.
"Why so confident? He's forged many a furlough pass," Apollo said, wishing he could roll back the hands of time and suggest that Starbuck come to his quarters for some peace and quiet where he could have kept an eye on him. It wasn't like it would have been the first time he'd offered up his sofa to his friend. Starbuck had sought him out on many a night when he just couldn't find the peace and quiet he needed in the bunkroom. Often he'd pace Apollo's small quarters before Apollo would insist that Starbuck have a drink and unwind.
Now he had to reevaluate all those times. Was Starbuck's inability to let go of the worries of the day and relax just part of his nature, or was it the drugs coursing through his system?
Apollo felt betrayed, no worse, like his friend had been making a mockery of him. Apollo had dealt with it too often in his life, everyone around him assuming that he was the straight-laced perfect son of a decorated Commander. He'd been held to a higher standard and had felt an obligation to live up to that standard, but that didn't mean he didn't have his own faults and desires. But Starbuck had never ridiculed him for it. His friend seemed to revel in corrupting Apollo, until he realized that Apollo wanted to be corrupted.
Not since their first yahren at the academy had Starbuck teased Apollo about his upbringing and his need to make his father proud. Even then, Starbuck had used his taunts sparingly, saving them like markers to pull out only when Apollo balked at some of the crazier exploits Starbuck cooked up. Once his friend realized that Apollo had his own wild oats he wanted to sow, he'd only heckle Apollo about being prim and priggish after they were both in trouble.
But then why couldn't he trust me with the fact that he was taking stimulants? It would have made things so much easier had he known. Apollo wouldn't have reported him to command. He would have encouraged his friend to cut back, or find healthier alternatives.
Boomer looked at him now like he was reevaluating Apollo before he spoke. "He's broke. He's borrowed cubits off nearly everyone and owes all of blue squadron and half of red. He can't afford a ticket. And Commander, while you are right he is well liked, he doesn't feel safe in the fleet. When he broke out of the brig after Ortega's murder, he wasn't headed for another ship in the fleet. Apollo, didn't you say he was going to launch and find some planet somewhere?"
He thought back to that terrible moment, Starbuck's viper prepped and engines warm. Had Apollo arrived just a moment later, he would have been tasked with the duty of going after his friend, and perhaps shooting him down. He still thanked the Lords of Kobol; it never came down to that. He'd had to pull out every last stop to try to convince Starbuck to stay, to trust in the Colonial system, a system that had let Starbuck down as a child. He even had to go so far as calling the bravest man in the history of the Colonial service a coward. In the end, Starbuck threatened to take Apollo down the launch tube with him, the desperation making his overly confident friend a hurt animal lashing out. Starbuck had heard him out, then told him to get off his viper. With dread Apollo watched as Starbuck lowered his canopy. Apollo had choked on his own failure to save his friend.
It came that close. Too close. But Starbuck hadn't fired his engines.
Boomer was right. Starbuck wasn't planning on staying in the fleet then, and he would not seek refuge in the fleet now.
"I'll take that bet Boomer. So where do you think we will find him?" Apollo tried to put away his jealousy that Boomer might know Starbuck even better than he did. It didn't matter. What mattered was that they found him before he wound up dead.
"I honestly don't know. Did we try the simulators? He hangs out there when he's depressed about a girl or missing home."
"Missing home?" Apollo found himself turning the phrase over in his mind. Starbuck had never had a home, unless you counted the cockpit of a viper. His home was in the stars. "Wait, I have an idea of where he might be."
"Lieutenant? You okay?"
The voice was a distant buzz, as a hand shook his shoulder. He groaned as every part of him ached like he had crash landed.
Crash landed. The thought blasted through his body and he scrambled to get to his feet, to get to the water. Tin heads don't like water. He scrabbled at the ground beneath him, but his boots squeaked and slid on the smooth decking.
"Hey, what's wrong? Lieutenant?"
He grabbed out at the tree to pull himself up, but the tree held on to him hauling him to his feet.
"Sir, you okay?"
It wasn't a tree. It was soft to the touch, yet firm and had a face, a young one, with wide blue eyes.
"Sir? You're bleeding. Are you okay?"
Sir? Cylons don't call you sir.
He shook his head trying to clear away the fog as he looked into the face of the kid. It wasn't Kyle, even though they looked the same age. The dark haired kid was wearing a workman's coveralls with Colonial insignia.
"Sir?" the kid asked again and Starbuck tried to answer, words coming out in a thick slur.
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just fell down."
"You're bleeding."
Starbuck could feel the wetness on the back of his head. He willed his hand to reach it, and his fingers responded, seeming to pull the rest of his arm with them as he touched the back of his head, pulling the fingers back into his view. They were covered in red.
"Hit my head," he slurred again wondering briefly where he was. The base ship? No, a human was in front of him, not a cylon.
"I should call the medics." It was a statement not a question, and Starbuck realized he needed to belay that command. Cassie would find out.
He briefly wondered what she would find out, that he set his solenite charges wrong? That he'd blasted himself instead of the Cylons?
He shook his head again, feeling the wetness slide down his neck as he reached to rub it away. No, not solenite.
"Did we get hit?" he asked, his words feeling more solid on his tongue.
"Hit? Do you think someone hit you? There's no one down here but me." The crewman answered him offering him a rag. Starbuck took it in his hand, confused for a moment why the kid would hand it to him, until he felt the wetness sliding down his neck. He pressed the cloth to the bump at the back of his head.
"Are we under attack?" Starbuck asked, trying to remember which way led to the lift to get him to his viper.
"No, sir. I would have heard the klaxons. I'm just down here doing my duty and there you were. We're the only ones down here. I should get you a medic."
"No!" His shout bounced off the walls of his head, cutting with each rebound. He winced, swallowing down bile. "No, I'm okay. I just fell. It's okay. Just point me to the lift."
The young crewman pointed behind him, as the knowledge bloomed in his mind that the lift is not the way Starbuck wanted to go. He needed to hide, to wait and ride this out until his pulse could stop dancing and he could think straight. Would they put him on the prison barge or just kick him out of the service? Where could he go as a civilian? "Dealer on the Rising Star wouldn't be a bad gig. Maybe I could bunk with Chameleon?"
He thought he'd said it to himself inside his head, but the kid cocked his head and asked, "The last shuttle to the Rising star left a centaur ago. Are you trying to find your bunk room? You are really lost."
"No, uh thanks crewman. I just need to…" he trailed off, not able to think up a competent lie that would fit the situation. "That way you said?" Starbuck pointed to the corridor behind him.
"Yeah. I can show you. You should see a medic."
"Noted," Starbuck replied, turning to head for the lift. He'd need to find another place to go. "I'm good. Get back to your duty, that's an order." He didn't have much experience bossing people around, but he must have added enough force to the words as the kid just asked again if he was okay, then headed down the corridor.
Starbuck limped his way in the other direction towards the lift, staring at it for a long moment as he plotted where to go next. The rag in his hand was bright red and he stared at his own blood, marveling at the vibrant color, vivid in the gray haze of the corridor.
"Can't go down. Might as well try up. Celestial dome." The words bloomed in his mind, a command issued by a voice that was not his own. Was it good or bad? It sounded like Iblis, but that guy was long gone. "Not a bad guy really. He gave us food."
Starbuck chose to follow the voice, pushing the up button for the lift. It opened immediately, blazing brighter than the corridor around him. He took the step in and felt his stomach drop as it began to ascend. In the reflection of the lift door he stared at a strange face with a swollen lip, hair in tangles falling into haggard eyes. It was the bright red rag in the man's hands that made him realize he was looking at his own reflection. "You've seen better days," he mumbled to himself, chuckling as his reflection answered, "I'm still handsome."
"Right you are. Now let's keep that handsome face out of prison where those looks could be a detriment." The lift opened and he stumbled out into a corridor that thank the lords was empty. It took him a centon to orient himself before heading for the rear of the ship and the dark and loud passageways above the engines. As he got closer, his head throbbed in time with the engines, but his heart rate was keeping a rhythm all its own, one that wasn't regular or predictable. The warmer it became, the harder he found it to breathe and he almost considered turning back. "Back to where?" he wondered to himself. There was no point in looking back. He couldn't change anything in his past, not the crappy hand he'd been dealt no matter how many times they shuffled him around from home to home. He'd only found luck when he moved forward and faked and forged his own opportunities. What would he find backwards on his path? Just trouble and people who would judge his actions. And he had tried. He'd put his heart and soul into being a better person time and time again, only to fall short in so many ways.
He'd tried to explain it to all his friends at some time or another, but all they offered were more ways he should change. His closest friends were the worst. Boomer called him out on the patrol, when the man had no idea what Starbuck was dealing with. Boomer slept like a baby most nights. The only thing going wrong in his life was the loss of his large family, but in Starbuck's reasoning, he'd already lost them when he left the family farm and joined the service. Yeah, it sucked they were dead, but it's not like Boomer saw them that often before the destruction, so what was he so upset about? And obviously he wasn't that torn up as he could shut his eyes at night and rest for eight centaurs straight without dreams plaguing him.
And then there was Apollo.
Starbuck's hands were on the rungs of the ladder up to the dome before his friend entered his thoughts. He was about to enter Apollo's most private of places, not that the man needed a quiet spot. He had his own quarters for sagan's sake, big ones since he was raising his new son Boxey. What was it like to have a room all to yourself where you could lock yourself in and no one would dare intrude? He had no idea. At the moment it sounded like heaven. He realized as he climbed the first rung that this might be the first place Apollo would look for him.
Then the thought hit him. Apollo wouldn't look for him. Too many times at the academy Apollo had told him, "You get in trouble, you're on your own." He had been true to those words, not once intervening with the pull he had from being a Commander's son. Just once, he would have liked to have his friend actually bail him out. Just once.
Starbuck winced as he placed his hands on the screw of the hatch. Even he couldn't lie to himself about that. Apollo had bailed him out when it mattered the most. While Starbuck was pretty sure Apollo thought he'd killed Ortega, his friend still had mounted a defense and found the real killer. Even when Apollo had found him after he escaped from the Brig and Starbuck was ready to launch into the unknown, his friend wasn't going to turn him in to security. He did talk him out of launching though, when what Starbuck really wanted was for his friend to join him, to have his back and help him blast his way out of the fleet. There had been no doubt in his or Apollo's mind that if ordered to follow Starbuck and shoot him down, Apollo would have done that. And his friend had been right, Starbuck wouldn't have been able to shoot back. So who was the better friend?
"Me, that's who!" he said with determination as his aching arms struggled to open the hatch. It took three tries to make it budge. He clambered his way into the small space, letting the hatch fall down on its own as he collapsed onto the floor, out of breath, his heart in his ears drowning out the engines.
"Frak me," he muttered to himself looking up to the metal petals that shielded the dome. He'd wanted to see the stars, to see anything other than gray. But he just couldn't move one more micron. "I shouldn't stay long. They'll find me here."
"And so what if they do?" he argued with himself. "What will they find?" His hand reached into his pocket fingering the last dose he had, his stash for an emergency. He pulled it from his pocket, flinging it up at the dome. It pinged off the clear tylium, bounced off the floor, skittering around before ricocheting off the dais and landing smack dab in the middle of his chest.
He laughed at the irony, his voice echoing around the room. "Trying to tell me something, oh great Lords of Kobol? You should know by now, I don't listen."
He reached to clutch the dose in his palm. He knew it would be stupid to take it with whatever Bacchus had given him raging in his veins. But there was nowhere to hide the evidence. He should have dropped it into the vast engines of the Galactica, but then what if there was an emergency? Eventually he would need it.
He heaved a heavy sigh at the thought. He'd needed a lot of things in life. He'd needed the break Boomer was trying to tell him to take. Not the psych eval break, but just a break, a cycle or two of no duties, no enemy out to destroy him and the fleet. No voices clamoring in his head.
Lords what he really needed was a warm beach and pretty girl, add a drink in his hand and a chancery to visit when the sun went down. He sighed wistfully remembering back to one of his furloughs to a resort on Piscera. He'd talked Boomer and Apollo into coming along. They'd rented individualized water craft and jumped waves in the sea all afternoon, then at Apollo's insistence had found a quiet spot on the beach to watch the sun go down before they hit the chancery for one of the best buffets of his life. He thought he had even won that night at the tables. He probably didn't but it didn't matter. He'd found a pretty gal and ones for his friends. He hadn't gotten far with her, but making out on a beach under the stars had been heavenly.
He sighed again and the breath came out thick and ragged as he suppressed a sob of grief. All that had gone up in smoke like his buddies at Cimtar. He was never going to have a furlough like that, or the retirement he had planned running the little dive bar right on the beach. He suddenly needed that fruity drink and the barman that greeted him like he was an old friend.
He never got what he needed. It seemed the dose in his hand was all he could count on these days.
"Frak me," he muttered again as he lay there waiting for his nerves to stop jumping.
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your patience with this story. Real life jobs intrude more than I wish they would and then the doubt and writer's block sets in. I hope to finish this before the end of 2022…but alas, the best laid plans of mice and men, so I won't make promises, I will only thank you for your encouragement.