"What do you mean you can't tell me?" Serena Adama demanded with a little girl whine. After two weeks in orbit above planet Zodiac, the novelty of fresh meat and greens had worn off, and she'd been toying with her food, pushing it around the cracked plastek plate. For the first time in three years Galactica had enough food, and so Lee couldn't fault his wife's picky appetite. Putting down her fork she leaned closer to him. "Come on Lee, tell the wifey. How soon are we going down to settle in? The shuttle pilot says there's this wonderful bluff just north of where he's been landing and I want to pick out the best building plot before they're all gone." Working her eyebrows suggestively, she said, "I'll let you sleep with me tonight. Come on, you know you want to."
Concerned about eavesdroppers, inadvertent or otherwise, Lee quickly glanced around them, but their closest fellow diners were two tables away and the large compartment held less than a dozen all told, and none of Serena's select clique of cronies were here, which was a mixed blessing of sorts. She wasn't showing off her most prized possession by hanging all over him, but he had no one to palm her off on. Serena hated to eat alone.
It was mid-second watch, and even without definite orders most of Galactica's crew had already begun sorting out and packing up the remaining bits and pieces of their lives. From all reports, Zodiac would be very similar to the twelve Colony worlds, and like everyone else in the fleet, the Galactica crew men and women ached to feel dirt under their feet, breathe fresh air and run in the rain. They were Colonial soldiers, but they were also human beings. And they'd been through enough pain.
Although Zodiac wasn't their original destination -- the half-mythical Earth -- it was the best planet for human habitation they'd found so far, and after three years in space they'd lost more than ten thousand people to Cylon sabotage, attacks, suicide, murder, famine, and plague. They couldn't afford to look anymore.
Lee couldn't be sure if Serena was serious. By his standards his wife's priorities were often rather … odd. "It wouldn't be much of a secret planning committee, if we started telling everyone, now would it?" he asked her. Although he'd been trying to keep his voice free of irritation, this time it had slipped out. Serena used sex like a warrior used a weapon and lately it had grown old.
Right next to being the daughter-in-law of the fleet commander, Serena loved nothing better than insider information and she was more than happy to nag for it. In her previous existence before Judgment Day, her husband had been Colonel Rashen Woolcott and she'd been important in Geminon high society. Lee's father, Galactica's commanding officer William Adama, had known Colonel Woolcott and recognized his lovely young trophy wife on Colonial One.
As an excuse to bring her onto the Galactica, Commander Adama had given Serena a job helping Lee with his Commander Air Group paperwork and scheduling, which had been more than the inexperienced young captain could handle at the time. Perhaps it had been her many years of juggling a jam-packed social calendar, but she'd done well.
Serena had been close to Lee every day and she'd been both lonely and lovely, an irresistible combination, and in the shared horror and misery of those first months, he would have fallen in love with anything warm and alive, much less a pair of bottomless blue eyes, soft brunette curls and a body that willingly fit his like a launch tube fit a Viper.
Serena hadn't responded to Lee's snappishness. He glanced up and saw her so fixedly staring over his shoulder that he turned and looked too. His best friend and fellow Viper pilot Lieutenant Kara Thrace had just come in, probably for a post-patrol snack since she still wore her dull green, worn-out flight suit. All of their clothing was beginning to fall apart after three years of almost continuous use. Except for Serena's. Somehow she always managed to find enough attractive clothes, soap, and makeup to keep all eyes turned her way.
Kara attacked the huge roast on the serving counter with a carving knife. The roast didn't have a prayer against the determined onslaught. Two huge slices joined the mountain of greens on her plate.
Serena said, "You told her, though, didn't you?"
Lee's head came back to his wife. "What makes you think that?" The truth was that he had, at least some of it. Although he'd been furious with Kara for a long time after Judgment Day -- she'd kept secrets that had nearly destroyed Lee's relationship with his father -- the logistics of survival had forced them eventually to reconcile; it had been either that or kill each other.
They'd tried the latter only once in a fistfight that had completely freaked out Serena. She'd thought Kara was going to kill him or something, but he'd come away with only a black eye and a loose tooth. He'd also lost his academy ring, apparently forever. Kara had done a little worse, with a broken nose and sprained wrist. Having come up through the ranks, she'd had no ring to lose. Only his father's pull, the shortage of trained pilots and their exalted rank had kept them both out of an extended stay in hack.
"Sometimes I feel like you're married to her, not me," Serena said.
"That's not fair, sweetheart. Kara and I have to work together."
Kara was Lee's deputy CAG. He'd had to tell her at least part of the committee's plan. The attack on the Cylon home world would be the Viper battle of a lifetime, something no true fighter pilot would want to miss. Lee didn't plan to. He assumed all his pilots would feel the same, and since there wouldn't be enough Vipers to go around, he needed Kara's opinion on who to take and who to leave behind.
The choices weren't easy. Those who went would probably die in a last desperate attempt to win this war. Those who stayed might very well have to give up space flight, which was for a pilot only a slightly lesser death.
His father was taking the plan to President Roslin tonight. Tomorrow they'd all know the decision.
"Kara was looking for you a few hours ago. She said she had some information you'd want before the next meeting."
"And you didn't tell me? Frak." Lee rose to his feet.
"Sorry. I forgot." Serena's innocent upturned face held no trace of guilt. She hated Kara. For that matter they hated each other. Kara called Serena "that stupid bitch." Serena called Kara "Butch." For his part, Lee hated being in the middle. He caught it from both sides. Whenever he defended Kara, his wife kicked him out of bed. When he stood up for Serena, Kara laughed herself silly.
Lee was furious with Serena now, and there was nothing more he wanted to say. As he turned to go, she called after him, "Hey, how about a kiss?" But he only scowled over his shoulder. If Serena didn't get her way, she always did her best to make him look bad. The other diners could hardly miss that bit of byplay.
Stalking across the compartment, Lee wondered if his marriage was worth saving. At least they didn't have children to worry about because Serena was sterile, a fact she'd conveniently forgotten to mention until they'd been married and childless for a year. She'd had a tubal ligation five years earlier at age twenty-one.
"Well, have it reversed!" he'd insisted. Right behind staying alive, babies were their highest priority.
Serena had refused. "My mother died in childbirth," she'd told Lee. "I'm not going to."
No one else knew. Not even Lee's father.
"Hey, Starbuck," Lee said, addressing Kara by her Viper call sign as he sat down opposite her. "What's up?"
Kara's usual full-lipped sunny smile answered him. "Hey, boss! Thought they'd spaced ya."
"Not yet." Out of the corner of his eye, Lee caught a glimpse of Serena coming their way, and across the table from him Kara looked ready for an upfront fight. Her eyes were narrowed and her fists had clenched around her knife and fork. But Serena just walked silently behind Lee then on to the tray racks. A few seconds later, she was out the hatch.
Kara leaned forward and whispered, "Tell me, Lee, 'cause I keep forgetting -- Just what did you see in that bitch?"
Lee closed his eyes, shook his head and answered the only way he could in a public place. "Kara, I don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Sure. Anything you say, but she's still a bitch."
.
"Starbuck, you're hopeless," Lieutenant Kara Thrace told herself as she flopped down on her back to look at the blue and white planet hanging overhead. The silver disk of its moon was still completely hidden. It wouldn't be visible for a few hours yet.
The Galactica orbited Zodiac with her flat ventral side facing the planet and her dorsal gun batteries facing deep space. Twenty of the fleet ships were in the tight orbit with them. The other twenty were further out, about level with the moon. The Galactica's course took them over both of Zodiac's poles every twelve hours. They had just passed the equator and were headed south … or north. The geophysicists hadn't yet decided which was which.
She had an excellent view of the entire length of the Galactica. The long black gouges from the Judgment Day nuclear explosion still scarred the port landing pod, and there were dozens of new dents as well as a dark empty hole where one of the starboard Tylium tanks used to be. Since Galactica had attracted most of the bullets over the last three years, she was the most beat up ship in the Fleet. But she was built to take it and hold together. When the other ships had been hit, they'd simply blown apart. They'd lost ten that way and thousands of people.
On a solitary prowling expedition about a year after Kara had transferred onto the Galactica, and long before the Cylon Judgment War, she'd found this abandoned observation box that had once been used to direct cannon fire. Although the Galactica's ventral guns had been removed at least twenty years ago, the observation box was still there and Kara used it when she wanted to be alone. She took her occasional lovers other places; this one was just for her. Usually the small empty compartment with a hatch on one side and the scratched translucent plastek everywhere else felt like flying a Viper, close to the velvet black of space and the stars. But here above Zodiac it felt more like a springboard at a swimming pool, as if she could take a dive off the Galactica right into the atmosphere.
Zodiac was going to be humanity's new home, but from what Lee told Kara about the committee's secret plans and his own intentions, it wouldn't be his. And if it wasn't Lee's, it wouldn't be hers either. Where Lee went, so went Kara. That's the way it always would be, right up to the end, and if Kara had her way, beyond.
"Lee's not only married, he's your boss," Kara muttered. Unzipping the chest pocket of the flight suit she still wore -- it was cold in the observation box -- she brought out a crested man's ring and turned it so she could see in Zodiac's light the mantling phoenix insignia and Lee's graduation year.
When their fistfight had ended almost two years ago Serena had tried to drag Lee away, but he'd shaken her off; and giving Kara his hand, he'd pulled her up in one easy motion. "Are we going to be friends now?" he'd asked. His bruised eye had already begun to swell.
Kara had started the fight, by accusing him of being a spoiled and arrogant bastard among other things, so it had been a fair question. She'd answered, "Just try to get rid of me." It had sounded a little honky because she'd been holding her aching broken nose.
"Good. I've missed you, Starbuck." After they'd shared an all too brief comradely hug, he'd walked away, his pretty wife fluttering around him like some excitable exotic bird. Only when Kara turned to leave the empty compartment had she seen Lee's ring lying on the deck. She'd picked it up, intending to return it the next time she saw him. Somehow she never had. Not yet. Sometime. Eventually, when she didn't need it anymore.
She brought the ring to her lips and kissed it. She took it on every mission and patrol. Kara told the ring, "Not only is Lee my boss, he's an Adama. If I touch him, he'll catch my curse, just like Zak." That's how it felt sometimes, that she'd cursed Lee's younger brother.
She'd been Zak's flight instructor and he'd been the forbidden fruit that tastes all the sweeter. Zak should have failed the flight school and been permanently grounded for pure lack of flying talent, but she'd passed him. Lee had blamed his father Commander Adama for pulling strings to get him assigned to a Viper squadron. But it had been Kara's fault; she'd killed Zak.
It was a secret truth that had haunted Kara for two years until she'd finally told Lee right before the great battle at Ragnar. She'd thought for sure they'd all die, and she didn't want him to hate his father anymore. But after they'd made it through the battle intact, Lee had hated her.
Kara still hadn't told the Commander her secret, and as far as she could tell, neither had Lee, a kindness for which she was deeply thankful. To have that wise old man repudiate her would be too much to bear.
Sitting up, Kara put the ring back in its pocket then pulled the lid off the paper cup of hot coffee she'd brought with her. After taking a sip of the brown liquid she made a face. They hadn't yet found a decent caf. substitute on Zodiac. Give them time, she told herself. All good things take time and it's only been a few days.
All in all, Kara felt that she'd lived a good life considering how it started in the Caprican slums, her born the seventh of thirteen children. After the devastating first Cylon war, official Colonial policy had encouraged large families and the government had paid her unmarried mother a subsidy for each child. Mother's many boyfriends had drunk more than half of that away. The remainder hadn't been much to live on, and petty thievery had landed Kara in Go-lol Prison in her sixteenth year. Her mother had said "good riddance" and the judge had taken exception to the sassy little thief. Kara still remembered the five months she'd spent at Go-lol. She'd liked the almost daily fistfights and regular food. The barren walls, the metal bars and the lack of privacy had been too much like home to be a problem. Kara had always found Galactica's brig comfortable. It held no fear.
The Go-lol prison counselor had seen something worth saving in the wild blonde child and had arranged to commute Kara's sentence to a four-year hitch in the Colonial fleet. She'd worked her way up through the ranks to pilot school, which is where she'd met Lee Adama and through Lee his brother Zak. It had been a long and odd trip from slums to space, but one she'd never regretted. She never looked back either. She hadn't seen or heard from her mother or any of her sisters or brothers for ten years. They hadn't really been a family. They'd been strangers sharing a house. Now they were all gone. Dead but not buried. Ashes and bones scattered across a dead planet.
Frak, she was morbid tonight.
The coffee gone, Kara carefully replaced the lid and set the paper cup aside. She'd been using this particular cup for three months. After it was gone there'd be no more and the galley frowned on crew carrying away the regular table service, mostly because there was so little of it left. Everything breakable had been shattered long ago in one battle or another.
Being around Lee was a little like being around Zak. Not the temperament, of course. Lee was all hard angles and straight lines in his thinking. Zak had been … fuzzy, soft and warm. He'd almost been hers.
For a few brief months Kara had felt part of a real family. Kara had lived with them, vacationed with them, and later when Zak had died, even cried with them. The Adamas were her true family and always would be. Maybe that's why Kara loved Lee.
But she could never tell him that. Revealing secrets had always gotten Kara in the worst kind of trouble. She planned to keep this one forever.
These past few days it had been Lee who was keeping secrets from Kara. He'd hinted that the Galactica wasn't going to be staying here at Zodiac and would leave on a critical mission in ten days, but he hadn't explained much else. As they'd gone over the pilot roster together, the reasons he'd given for his rankings had been suggestive -- that one is married, this one has a girlfriend, that one is just a boy. They'd ended up with Keener ranked first and Miffler last. Miffler was a decent Viper pilot, but he was just twenty and already engaged to be married.
Lee didn't expect to come back from this mission. He was expecting to die. If he died, so would she.
Kara had few regrets in her life. Zak, of course, that was the big one. And she really should have gone back to the old neighborhood at least once to make sure that it was really as bad as she remembered. And over the years, she'd been in a few Pyramid games where she should have followed her instincts and bet the house. But then she would have won a fortune, stayed planet-side … and later been killed in the Judgment.
She had no children and didn't want any -- she'd had her fill of family life during her early years on Caprica -- but occasionally she found herself looking at Lee Adama and wishing that things could have been different, that Lee hadn't married Serena or that she'd been brave enough to say how much she loved him when it could have made a difference. It certainly wouldn't now.
Standing up, Kara grabbed her empty cup and opened the hatch into the deserted passageway. Very few people made it to this part of the ship. There was little here to hold their interest. She stepped out and closed the hatch behind her. It was time to go to bed. Tomorrow would come too soon, and the only really good thing about it would be Lee.