Thirteen
Chapter Seventy-Three
The Son Becomes A Man
David Sheridan had just turned twenty-one years old when he was assigned to Starbuck's crew aboard one of the new Lenonn-class destroyers. It was the Neroon, named for the member of the warrior caste who, in his final moments, had healed the rift between the warrior and religious castes after a bloody civil war. Delenn herself had picked the name for the ship, and had asked Starbuck to take the ship out on its initial shakedown cruise.
As he came through the airlock and on board the ship, Starbuck noted just how much he looked like his late father when he was young. She didn't mention anything about it, because David always felt a little uncomfortable being compared to his father. He felt the weight of his father's legacy even more now that he had passed on.
He walked up to her and said, "Ranger Sheridan reporting for duty!"
"Welcome aboard, Ranger Sheridan! Glad to have you aboard!" She extended her hand and the young man shook it. "Have they briefed you on your duties that you'll have on board the Neroon?"
"Yes, captain, I was briefed before I came up from the surface of Marcab. So I'm to be your tactical officer, correct?" Sheridan asked.
"That's correct, but you'll also be my executive officer as well. Think you can handle it?" Starbuck replied.
"Well, I was exec on Whitestar 721 with Ranger Poleen, so I know of some of the duties. It'll probably take some time getting used to this much larger ship, though!"
"I understand. This ship is almost as big as the Galactica, but packs a hell of a lot more firepower than my old ship. The systems are a lot more sophisticated than they are on the Whitestars, but this is just a shakedown run, so it's highly unlikely we will see any action, and, frankly, it's a good thing, because we're not quite ready for it just yet." Starbuck replied.
A day later, once the rest of the crew had boarded, they departed the space docks and headed out on their shakedown cruise. The Marcab system was off the beaten track, so to speak. Much like Earth, it was in an area of the galaxy near the Rim, so few inhabited systems would be encountered by the crew of the Neroon, which was all to the good, because this crew was young and relatively inexperienced.
They jumped into hyperspace, a little more smoothly than Starbuck had expected but not smooth enough by her standards. Of course, her standards were very high indeed, and almost unreachable. She wanted to push the crew, but not break them, much like Admiral Adama had done when she was part of Galactica's crew. Like Adama had done to his crew, she wanted to instill in them the drive to be their very best, and not to be satisfied with the way that they performed their duties. It wasn't until she had started taking command that she learned just how much Adama had taught her about helming a ship.
Their first major drill was in the Lorgran system about twelve light years away from Marcab. It was uninhabited, and had a large asteroid belt in between the fifth and sixth planets of the system, which was perfect for the drills she was planning on conducting. "Bring us to within one hundred clicks of the belt, Ta'Chan!" Starbuck ordered.
"Yes, captain!" replied the Narn, and the Neroon cruised to a relative stop in front of the belt.
Starbuck activated a communications link to the flight bay and announced, "This is the captain! Prepare for combat drill! Alpha wing to be launched in five minutes!" She thumbed off the link and turned to David Sheridan and ordered him to activate the defense grid.
The weapons ports opened all along the ships, and the cannons began to warm up in preparation for firing. The plan was simple: the fighters would pick targets and destroy them as the Neroon drew closer to the belt. When the ship was in optimal firing range, the fighters would pull away from the ship's firing solution and Starbuck would let loose with everything she had.
"Fighters in position to make first strafing run, captain!" Sheridan said aloud.
"Order them to engage targets and fire at will!" Starbuck ordered, and communications officer Nancy Blumfeld sent the message out to the fighters. The leader of Alpha wing sent back a confirmation and the fighters broke into attack formation. Starbuck watched them attack the smaller asteroids with a critical eye, but had to admit that she was impressed with what she saw. "Activate graviton engines, Ta'Chan, and take us closer to the belt!"
The Narn engineer did as she ordered, and the massive cruiser started moving towards the belt. "How much longer until we're in optimum firing range, Sheridan?"
"One minute, captain! Recommend that you call off the fighters!" he replied.
Starbuck smiled and ordered, "Blumfeld, recall the fighters! Sheridan, prepare to activate forward quantum discharge cannons!"
"Aye, sir! Cannons coming online, ready for your order to fire!" Sheridan announced.
Starbuck chose her target, a massive asteroid that was the size of a Cylon basestar. Her smile was particularly carnivorous as she indicated which asteroid she wanted to fire at. Sheridan locked weapons onto the target and awaited Starbuck's order to fire.
"Fire!" she said, and three beams shot out of the bow of the ship, triangulating their fire onto the asteroid, cutting across it with a powerful beam of energy. "Cease fire!" she ordered, and the beam cut off. When they looked again at the screen, the asteroid had been sliced in half, and each half was floating away from each other and bumping into other rocks. "Take us away, Vorchan!" Starbuck ordered to the Minbari pilot, and the female Minbari Ranger turned the ship around and headed away from the asteroid belt.
Hours later, Sheridan came into the mess hall and got some food. He looked around for a place to sit and spotted Starbuck sitting by herself, reading over some reports. He walked over to her table and asked if he could sit with her, and she nodded as she was swallowing a bite of some ravioli. "So how did you think the crew did in the drill today, captain?"
"Not bad. Not bad at all. There's room for improvement, but it went better than I had expected. Of course I'd be foolish to expect every drill to go that smoothly, but it is a good start." Starbuck replied.
"I'm glad we performed well for you, captain! Most of the crew is pretty much fresh out of training, so some rough patches are to be expected."
Starbuck nodded and added, "That's the beauty of the shakedown cruise, because you can frak up and it doesn't kill you…or it's not supposed to kill you, as the case may be. So, how do you feel you're doing as XO?"
"Okay, I guess! It's not what I really wanted, but I do what is asked of me." Sheridan admitted.
Starbuck raised an eyebrow curiously, "If you had your choice, what would you rather do?"
"Deep cover work. Going to various planets and walking among them, gathering intelligence, keeping the peace, and basically doing what the Rangers were intended to do in the first place."
Starbuck thought for a minute and asked, "So you would rather not follow your father as commander of a starship?"
"Not really. Granted, I still look up to him even though he's passed beyond the veil years ago, but I've never really wanted to follow in my father's footsteps.
"He never pushed me to go into the Rangers, and neither did my mother. I did this on my own, mainly because I wanted to do my own thing. I always insisted on not getting any preferential treatment, but sometimes I did get it anyway. The older Rangers look up to my father, and they think that they see him in me."
"And this makes you uncomfortable?" Starbuck asked.
Sheridan nodded and added, "To be honest, I wanted to be more like my uncle Mikey."
"Mikey?" Starbuck asked.
"Michael Garibaldi." Sheridan answered, and as Starbuck nodded, he continued, "He's actually my godfather, but I've always called him Uncle Mikey. He hates it, but he's never told me to stop. As much as I love and respect my father, I've always wanted to be more like Garibaldi than my father."
"Does your mom know?" she asked.
"Yeah, and it annoys her to no end. I think she wants me to be like my father, but I just can't go down that road. I'd rather make my own way."
Starbuck said, "Well, at least you had good parents. Mine, on the other hand…" She shrugged and drank some more coffee.
"They were bad, huh? Care to talk about it?" Sheridan asked.
"Nah, not right now. Maybe some other time. Besides, I've got a meeting with the flight crew in fifteen minutes anyway." Starbuck said.
Later that night as she lay on her bed in her quarters, she wondered why she still felt touchy about what happened to her as a child. Even after all these years and all the change she had gone through, her experiences in childhood still bothered her to this day in ways she hadn't never expected. Her mother had long since passed away in the holocaust, but she hadn't spoken to her since she entered the military. Before the holocaust, and even some time afterwards, she had no desire to speak to her. Now, though, she wished her mom were still around so that she could ask her why she was so abusive. She always knew her mother had problems, and, for the first time in her life, she wondered if she shouldn't have stuck around and tried to help her, but then she realized that it might have been for naught.
As she fell asleep, she wondered if she would ever have children of her own, and it occurred to her that the left ovary that the Cylons had taken from her might have been used to make some new clones. As far as she knew, they hadn't harvested any eggs from it, but she didn't know for sure. The second and third generation clones were housed on the Marcab homeworld, and were under the tightest security. Before she passed into slumber, she made a decision to see if she could find out what had happened to those eggs she had involuntarily donated.