Chapter Three
Starbuck crouched down as he approached the transport shuttle. He could hear Diallo's voice once again as he surveyed the area, trying to figure out where he could hide and still get a look at what the package was. He circled wide of the transport, briefly noting her identity code—CA 135.
Lords, he had a bad feeling about this. It just didn't sound on the level. What would Imara be thinking? She had looked like a cervidae caught in a headlight. Poor kid. Kid? She was the senior flight leader for Roc Squadron. Frack, she had looked more like a child when she had heard her father's voice . . . It was those enormous brown eyes that he could so easily get lost in.
Focus, Starbuck! This is no time to go off on one of your tangents. He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. Now, unless you get lucky . . . incredibly lucky . . . you're not going to see whatever they have already loaded in the belly of that shuttle without giving yourself away. However, if you can just get close enough to hear something that either exonerates or incriminates. He shook his head wondering what Colonel Diallo would think if he knew the young man who was trying to get into his daughter's pressure suit, was poised to either clear his good name or implicate him in . . . something. Lords, life was weird sometimes.
He positioned himself behind some storage containers to the rear of the shuttle. He could vaguely see the men inside. They looked as if they were leaning over something, but he couldn't make out what they were looking at. Just a little bit closer . . .
Starbuck lay down and began to squirm along on his belly. He hadn't done that since the first six sectons of basic training. He hadn't missed it either. He tucked in close to a tarpaulin and tried to make his way beneath it as he continued to approach the shuttle.
"Nice. So, we finally got them? They look a lot like the old ones. What's the modification?" an unknown voice asked.
"They have a stun setting." Sergeant Brand replied.
"What the frack for? We're at war."
"Fracking conservatives." Brand said, as if by explanation.
Starbuck could hear the others muttering their agreement. He pulled himself beneath the tarpaulin, ensuring he was totally covered, and then peeked out again. Colonel Diallo stood alone on the ramp of the cargo hold. The cadet considered that Imara must have inherited her looks from her mother as he looked at the Arian countenance of the man. Like the stereotypical people of Aries, he was pale of skin and hair colouring with penetrating blue eyes, a definite contrast to his daughter. In his hand, Diallo turned over a Colonial Blaster. Starbuck could see the man handle the weapon almost reverently, as he stroked the barrel. He then straightened his arm pointing the blaster in Starbuck's direction, as he tested the weight of the newly modified weapon.
Starbuck held his breath while he watched the Colonel move the barrel, slowly sweeping the area, as if he was doing surveillance during a combat mission. He reminded himself that if the lasers were new, they would be transported uncharged. Still, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest as Diallo suddenly took a step in his direction. He tensed his body as he prepared to run.
"Colonel!"
Diallo stopped and turned back towards the shuttle. "What?" he barked as he retreated into the cargo hold.
Starbuck wasted no time in wriggling backwards from under the tarpaulin until he was again huddled beside the storage container. He stayed low and quickly made his way back towards Imara.
Frack, frack, frack. Now what in Hades Hole was he supposed to do? He had a very strong suspicion that the executive officer of the Caprican Academy was possibly selling arms to . . . Who the frack would he be selling them to? What would the Cylons want with Colonial blasters? That didn't make any sense. Frack! You really have to pay more attention in class, Bucko.
He sprinted the last twenty metrons to the Starfighter. Imara was a flight leader; she might have a better idea what to do. He practically leapt onto the fightercraft, eager to get them both out of that hangar and to the relative safety of just about anywhere else. Hades, even perching in the Quercus tree was a viable alternative to the hangar right now.
"Let's get the frack out of . . . " his voice trailed off as he gazed into the cockpit. Imara was gone. He raised his hands in frustration and bit back the growl that threatened to tear free from his throat. Apparently, Colonels' daughter's were much like Commanders' sons.
FLASHBACK
It must have been something that senior classmen, flight leaders or just the children of military personnel had in common. They didn't listen to Starbuck.
Whether it was him telling Imara to stay put in the Starfighter, or him telling Apollo . . . well, just about anything . . . they seemed have this innate sense that he wasn't to be taken seriously. Just because he tended to act a bit on the nonchalant side of things sometimes, that didn't mean he didn't know what he was talking about for Sagan's sake. Oh, admittedly Apollo had come a long way from the previous yahren. Lords, then it had really been bad . . .
Starbuck still remembered having to get up close and personal with his fighter before Apollo would take him seriously about a mechanical problem.
"A ping?" Apollo asked incredulously.
"Yeah, a ping." Starbuck replied as he paced beside the two-seater Starfighter. "You really didn't hear it?"
"Over the roar of two ion propulsion engines? No, I guess it slipped by me." Apollo replied, somewhat sarcastically.
Starbuck simply stood and stared at him, hands on hips. Hey, it worked for Eryn.
Apollo sighed. "Did you run a diagnostic?"
Starbuck rolled his eyes. "Please! Give me a little credit. Of course I did." He raised his hands beseechingly.
"And?" Apollo asked in frustration. His eyes strayed over to where Eryn was waiting for him by the door. She was tapping her foot and looking at her chronometer. Not a good sign.
"It was inconclusive." Starbuck replied, somewhat elusively as he watched Apollo's attention wander.
"She was clear." Apollo translated after a pause.
"Well, yeah. But I still heard a ping." Starbuck insisted.
Apollo shrugged and racked his brain. Starbuck could get like a daggit with a bone sometimes. Unfortunately, it was usually when he had a date with Eryn. He looked over at Eryn again. She was tapping her chronometer and staring at him pointedly.
"A bit impatient, isn't she?" Starbuck noted.
"You think?" Apollo replied sardonically. "Look, why don't you go harangue . . . ask Sergeant Linnick. He's the head mechanical engineer after all." He was also the most ill-spoken, contrary person at the Academy. The man wandered about chewing on his fumarellos, and treating the cadets as if he took every mechanical problem with the fighters or shuttles as a personal affront.
"Why, Apollo, I do believe you're trying to get rid of me." Starbuck grinned.
"You know I have a date." Apollo returned.
"I'm a bit worried about you. You have that . . . trapped look."
"What are you talking about?" Apollo asked him in disbelief.
"Trapped. Caged. Restrained." Starbuck elucidated as he watched Apollo glance nervously again at Eryn. "Incarcerated. Enslaved."
"I get it! And I do not!" Apollo replied vehemently. Hades, he and Eryn had something wonderful. A mature, warm, sharing relationship. They could talk about everything. They had megons in common. He had never been so happy.
"You do. I've seen it before, buddy. You're much too young to be committed to just one woman at this point. Hades, she graduates in six sectars. Ten to one, she'll end up posted far from the Academy. Are you honestly going to pine for her until the incredibly remote possibility occurs that you get posted together in a couple yahrens, at the earliest?"
Apollo blinked at him. "You're the one who told me to ask her out."
"Ask her out, yes. Marry her, no." Starbuck clarified.
"Why am I even listening to him?" Apollo addressed his question to the heavens.
Starbuck glanced dramatically skyward and then at his shoulder. He brushed an imaginary something off of it. "Ah, the age old question. Because I'm right. I'm wise beyond my yahrens." Starbuck replied confidently. "And I'm right about the ping too."
Apollo chuckled. "Wise beyond your tankards is more like it."
"Care to make a little bet on it?" Starbuck challenged him.
"Starbuck, I don't have time for this right now."
"If I win, you'll come out with us on our next pass to see how the other half live." He carried on as if Apollo hadn't protested.
"And if I win?" Apollo cocked his eyebrows.
"I'll get you a couple tickets to see the Colonial Cup Finals." Starbuck could see Apollo's eyes light up at the thought of seeing the professional triad competition.
"How would you do that? They're sold out." Apollo returned, but he was definitely intrigued. He had hoped to take his father to the final if the Commander made it home for his leave on schedule.
"I have a few connections."
"Do I want to know?" Apollo asked hesitantly.
"Probably not, but . . . I can still get you the tickets."
"Sounds like a lose-lose situation." Apollo said skeptically.
"You ought to know, buddy." Starbuck shrugged, again looking towards Eryn.
"That was low."
"Oh, I can go much lower, just ask Ortega." His eyes twinkled with merriment. "C'mon, how about it? What do you have to lose?"
"I don't know why I'm doing this." He rolled his eyes.
"Because then I'll leave you alone and you can go meet Eryn." Starbuck pointed out the obvious and nodded towards the second-in-command of Phoenix Squadron.
Apollo sighed. "Exactly. All right. You're on."
Well, there was only one course of action after the bet. Starbuck had to find Sergeant Linnick. As usual, the man was up to his elbows in grease and cursing up a storm at the pilots who had last flown his current project, a Colonial shuttlecraft. The cadet explained his predicament and got the predictable response.
"You lilium-white Academy officer-wanna-be's are all the same. You haul your prissy candy-astrums in here and tell me what's wrong with my ships. Ain't one of you willing to get your hands dirty though. God forbid you actually learn something useful about how these babies work." He raved at Starbuck, his fumarello quivering furiously from his mouth as he spoke around it.
Starbuck stood back and watched the man vent. Generally, there didn't seem to be much resentment between enlisted men and officers, but Linnick was certainly an exception.
"I spend my fracking life fixing them up, just to have you Mama's boys take them out and over-rev the turbines. Ion propulsion systems, tylium energizers, fusion reactors, they're all just fancy titles in your textbooks. You don't even know a variable that determines acceleration to velocity of light, and you come here complaining to me that you heard a ping." He angrily spat his words out at the cadet.
"The thrust to mass ratio." Starbuck replied quietly.
Linnick pulled his fumarello out of his mouth and hawked noisily, spitting on the ground. "Think you're fairly fracking smart, do you? Well, how is thrust generated?" He pointed his chewed smoke at the cadet.
"Through the reaction of accelerating a mass of gas." Starbuck replied. "The gas is accelerated to the rear and the engines and ship are accelerated in the opposite direction. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Basic physics."
Linnick narrowed his eyes and looked Starbuck up and down. "Are you afraid to get your hands dirty, boy?"
"No, Sarge. I'm only afraid of being called a lilium-white, prissy, candy-astrumed Mama's boy again." Starbuck replied.
Linnick nodded slowly and cracked a smile, again firmly wedging the fumarello between his teeth. "Show me your Starfighter, son."
Centars later, Apollo returned to find Starbuck and Linnick leaning against the Starfighter in the main hangar, each of them puffing on a fumarello, and their arms covered in grease. Starbuck seemed to be in the middle of a tale.
"So this arrogant Tagan is visiting a humble farmer from Umbra. They look out over the Umbran's spread, which only covers a couple hectares. The Tagan dusts off his fancy boots and tips his expensive hat to the Umbran and says, where I come from, it takes me half a day to drive my tractor from one end of my spread to the other. The Umbran smiles knowingly and replies, Yeah, our tractor is needin' fixin' too."
Sergeant Linnick laughed heartily and smacked the young man on the back. "Nice one, son!"
"Hey, you're back!" Starbuck exclaimed when he saw his friend. "How went the date?"
"Great. Eryn had to help Zoltan draw up the new roster, so I thought I'd try and track you down." Apollo replied. He had felt a little guilty about discounting Starbuck's concerns and had gone in search of him. He had actually expected to find his squadron mate in the barracks. It was Dorado who had reported seeing him in the hangar. "How goes the search for ping?" He couldn't help the smirk that spread across his face. Especially, when he saw Starbuck scratch his cheek, leaving a streak of grease upon it.
"Apollo, you know Sergeant Linnick?" Starbuck introduced him formally and winked at the Sergeant. He wedged his fumarello between his teeth, and grinned ear to ear as Linnick held out his hand to Apollo.
Apollo nodded and reluctantly took the greasy hand. "Sergeant."
"Cadet." Linnick nodded, mischief apparent in his blue eyes, but his face as stern as ever. "Small problem with a hairline crack in the CD nozzle. Could have been a major problem, as you can well imagine."
"A crack?" Apollo replied in surprise and concern. He was well aware that a cracked CD nozzle could break apart with the change in ambient pressures from one altitude to another. The result could be a complete loss of power or even an explosion if the highly combustible gases ignited.
"Defective part apparently." Starbuck commented. When they had finally traced the ping down to the propulsion system and subsequently the defective nozzle, he had felt in need of a particularly large Sagittarian Ale . . . or ten. Unfortunately, all Linnick could offer the shaken cadet was a fumarello.
At first, it tasted like something scraped off the bottom of his boots after spending a day roaming the fields around Umbra. Now, however, it was growing on him. It would also make one Hades of a prop in a card game. Hmm.
RETURN TO PRESENTStarbuck paused atop the Starfighter and took a good look around, hoping he would spot Imara. Where the frack had she gone? Granted, he hadn't known for certain that there was something nefarious going on when he went to check out what Diallo and Brand were up to, but still . . .
He let out a long breath and tried to remind himself that Imara was not only a senior Cadet with the Academy, but she was also the flight leader of Roc Squadron. It really wasn't likely that she would sit huddled in the fighter, waiting for him to reappear. After all, it would go against her feminist doctrine.
She would either try to follow him, in which case he would have likely have passed her on the way back, or she would be assuring they had an escape route. As long as she wasn't walking up to dear ole Dad and asking what he was up to, it was fine with him. He tried to remember where all the exits were in relation to Diallo's location. It would make the most sense for her to aim for the north exit, assuming she would avoid her father. Starbuck reasoned that his presence alone would likely affect that course of action.
He climbed off the fighter, again taking a good look around. So, now he was searching for Imara while trying to avoid the others. Hades, it would make a great training exercise. He toyed with the idea of submitting it as a suggestion to the Colonel anonymously. Maybe he should wait a while on that.
Starbuck moved cautiously towards the north exit. He huffed quietly as he realized that mere centons ago, he and Imara had been in a passionate embrace just ahead of his current position. Lords, how could he have come so close to his favourite fantasy being fulfilled and then . . ?
"Starbuck!" Imara's voice whispered.
He looked over to where she was crouched beneath the nose of another Starfighter, this one a single-seater. Its parts were strewn about, most of them hanging out of the cockpit. He wondered if she realized she was only metrons away from where they had been embraced so recently. Imara looked anxious as she watched him approach. Her features suddenly changed and she looked at him in horror, opening her mouth to warn him . . .
Rattle, rattle, clang!
He looked down in dread to see that he had just kicked the illuminator that they had dropped. Starbuck froze on the spot and listened to see if the others had heard the noise. It had seemed to reverberate through the hangar, but maybe that was just his perception.
"Fan out!" A voice cried.
Or maybe not. Frack! He sprinted forward and caught up with Imara who was already racing towards her chosen exit.
"This way!" Imara hissed, not even looking back. She ran as though Hades' demons were on her heels as she leapt over and around obstacles. Within microns they were through the door that she had quickly coded open.
Starbuck slammed the door and immediately looked for something to jam it shut. Technology be damned! He grabbed a huge stone and crashed it into the digital locking unit. Sparks flew and a satisfying hiss erupted from the mechanism. Imara nodded at him in approval before they sprinted away through the academy grounds.
The exhilaration at getting away free and clear was intoxicating as they tore through the cold night air. Imara grabbed his hand and tugged him towards a small treed area that would afford them some privacy, assuming no other cadets were utilizing the infamous romantic rendezvous.
She took a quick look around and turned to embrace him with a smile on her face. "We made it."
"We're not exactly back in our barracks yet." Starbuck replied ruefully. "Nice escape route."
"Nice job with the lock, if not a trifle . . . barbaric." Her smile contradicted her words.
"Haven't you heard that about me?" Starbuck asked with a grin.
"Oh, constantly. It must lend to your animal magnetism." Imara replied. She leaned in and gave him a kiss.
He pulled her against him once again reveling in the heightened sensations that kissing a beautiful woman after escaping a crazy Colonel pointing a Colonial Blaster at him . . . Oh, frack!
"Imara . . . " he pulled back from her and his hands settled on her arms. "We better figure out what we're going to do next."
The look on his face cooled her ardour more effectively than a blast of cold water. "Why? Just what did you see, Starbuck?" She had convinced herself that whatever her father was up to, it was legitimate. She had just been waiting for Starbuck to confirm that.
"Colonial blasters. The new ones we've been hearing about with the dual setting."
Imara pulled herself free of him and turned away. Her mind raced to come up with a logical explanation. "Just what exactly are you saying?"
"Lords, Imara, it seems pretty clear. They're stealing military weapons and selling them." Starbuck told her as he looked at her back. She was quiet for a long moment. Eerily so. In retrospect, it was almost as if he was standing in the eye of a storm just before it abruptly hit him.
Imara whirled on him. "Why do you have to assume that this is NOT on the up and up? C'mon! The top brass doesn't tell the cadets everything that's going on. SO, why do you just automatically concludethat this isn't legitimate?" Her eyes flashed angrily at him. Her body was tense, as though poised to strike.
"Imara, you heard them too. Talking about getting a new contract and about their retirements. Then I followed them to find them with a supply container full of Colonial Blasters . . . "
"Did you actually see a container of Colonial Blasters?" She cut him off. "Did they actually say they were selling them? Tell me exactly what you saw and heard, Starbuck!" Imara as much as ordered him.
"Well . . . " Starbuck thought about her words as he regrouped. Was he jumping to conclusions? No, he hadn't actually seen a full container of weapons. No, they hadn't directly mentioned selling them. But he just had this feeling . . . his instinct was telling him he was right on the money. How was he supposed to explain that? "Okay. Maybe you're right. Maybe I am drawing a few conclusions, but . . . surely you can understand why? I mean, what else could it be?"
"I don't know!" she spat at him. "But, I do know that my father wouldn't be involved in something criminal. I know he's a tough officer, but he's also honourable and respectable. He has a family, for Sagan's sake!" She blinked back tears that threatened to spill over.
"Okay. Okay." He held up his hands, silently imploring her not to cry. "Look, why don't we just quietly check around? See what we come up with?" He suggested, backing off a bit.
"You want me to try and incriminate my own Father, Starbuck?" She asked incredulously. "You really don't get the whole family concept, do you? Your parents must have raised you a lot differently than mine did. Maybe that's why you never talk about them." She attacked him in anger and fear. "Well, we're a close family. I admire my father. Why in Hades do you think I followed him into the Service?"
"Maybe you should think of it as trying to clear him then. Not of incriminating him." Starbuck countered, ignoring the remarks about his family . . . or lack thereof. He had never discussed with her his being orphaned as a toddler. It had never come up, and frankly, was one of his least favourite topics. He despised that look of pity that people gave him when they learned of his past. Hades, it wasn't as if he was the only orphaned child since the war with the Cylons began. In fact, it was just the opposite.
"That's where you're dead wrong! I don't think he's guilty of anything! I know my father."
"Look, Imara, we can't just let this slide. There's every probability that . . . " Starbuck tried to reason with her.
"NO! I don't even want to discuss this any further, Starbuck. It's over." She took little gasping breaths as she glared at him, clenching her fists. "We're over."
"We're over? Just what do we have to do with your father?" Starbuck asked, a little stunned.
"Everything." She remarked coolly, before turning and walking away.
"Imara, wait just a centon . . . " He started after her.
She pivoted on her heel sharply, turning to face him. "Let it go, Starbuck. I'm going to forget that all of this even happened. I suggest you do the same. My father wouldn't take kindly to you nosing around the Academy trying to set him up. Neither do I." She threatened him, not knowing what else to do.
The emotions that crossed his features, a mixture of anger, confusion, betrayal and hurt, almost stopped her as she turned away and walked back towards the Brites Building on her own. However, she steeled herself against him, knowing that the old proverb that her Father had drilled in to her yahrens before was true; blood is thicker than water.