AN: Several parts of season 2.5 made me cringe, so I decided to delete them here. Namely, "Black Market" in its entirety never happened in my little universe. So...moving on to Scar!

Numbers may have been important since the Cylon attack, but they weren't in the favor of Galactica's pilots. As the days began to pass, it seemed like each fresh faced pilot being added to the fleet's squadrons was getting killed even faster than the nugget they were replacing.

"Riley's dead for one very simple reason," Kara told Kat, Ilana, Shadow, Duck, and Hotdog as they cleaned out the late pilot's locker and bunk. "He couldn't control his fear."

"Yep, poor idiot cut and ran," Kat added. "Gave the toaster a free shot up his ass."

"Scar spooked him," Kara continued. "He saw that mother frakker's red eye coming straight for him and he panicked. Riley was a good stick. A little short on guts, but a good stick."

"Beano sure had plenty," Duck commented. "It took Cally an hour to clean out his cockpit." Ilana and Hotdog grimaced at the memory.

"Does anybody remember the name of Riley's girlfriend?" Kat asked, holding up a picture that she'd found of the dead pilot with his arm around a pretty girl.

"Karen, I think," Duck suggested. "Died on Picon. Karen."

"No, it was Katherine…or Kathy?"

"You guys, what does it matter?" Kara asked them. "Gonna hold a little prayer circle? Have a good cry?"

"Actually, it does matter," Kat snapped, but any further comment she might have had was cut off by two new pilots entering the room.

"Hey," one of them said. "I'm Ensign Baxton."

"Ensign Clark," the other added. "And I guess we're your new bunkmates."

"Welcome," Kat told them. "Pick an empty rack."

"We just finished Viper training on Pegasus," Baxton said as he chucked his bag onto one of the beds. "Ready to kick some Cylon ass."

Shadow snorted as he and Hotdog got up to leave. "So was Beano."

"Who's Beano?" Baxton asked. Ilana pulled a label off of the bed that Baxton had chosen and showed it to him. 'BEANO' was written on it. She didn't blame the pilot for looking a little sick at the revelation. Ilana handed him the tape and left the room.

She didn't particularly feel like spending time with the other pilots and although her mind was moving at light speed, her body wasn't wound up enough to go beat the crap out of something in the training room. Ilana wound up wandering the ship for a little while, and was surprised when her feet finally took her down to the brig without any conscious input from her brain.

A corporal opened the door for her, letting her into the room where Galactica's Cylon lived in a metal and glass cage. She didn't look any older than Ilana was, and didn't seem as sinister as Pegasus' Toaster had once been back before she was broken like kindling. The Cylon known as Sharon Valerii looked like anyone else in the fleet, and carefully eyed her visitor as she came in the room. She got up from her bed and approached the telephone on the wall; Ilana picked up the receiver on her end.

"D-do you know who I am?" she finally asked. Sharon shook her head slightly.

"No."

"My name's Ilana Adama." She let that sink in for a moment, although she wasn't sure what she was looking for on the Cylon's face. There wasn't remorse, although perhaps…pity? Understanding? "I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here…I guess I just wanted to see what the person who shot my father looked like."

"It wasn't actually me."

"Does it make a difference?"

"Yes. It does." Ilana considered that. Finally, she hung the phone back on its hook, turned, and left the room without another word. It wasn't hard to hate the Cylons after all of the things that they had done, but she was really getting sick of having so much to hate them for.

"If you ask me, I think Scar's a coward."

A brash statement from a relatively new pilot. JoJo wasn't as fresh-off-the-simulators as some of the others sitting around in Galactica's mess hall, but he was still pretty new when compared to Starbuck's original group of nuggets. The fact that Academy-trained pilots were becoming a rarity in the fleet was actually a little unsettling.

"This isn't dueling pistols at dawn," Starbuck chastised him from the next table over. "This is war. You never wanna fight fair. You want to sneak up behind your enemy and club him over the head. Scar understands that. And so do I. So, that's why I'm going to kill him."

"You?" Kat asked with a snicker. "Starbuck, you can barely walk." The sad fact of the matter was that she was right; Ilana hadn't seen the other woman hit the bottle as hard as she'd been doing of late since the days after Zak's death.

"Look who's talking, Stim Junkie," Kara shot back. The whole room 'ooh'ed.

"I wouldn't be calling anyone a junkie if I were you, Starbuck. Not the way you've been pounding back booze. One Colonel Tigh on this ship is bad enough. I got…" Kat counted her money, "I got 200 here, says I nail Scar's chrome-plated ass. And when I do, you hand that Top Gun over to me and pour me my first drink."

"Your lips will never touch the rim, little girl," Starbuck said, before taking another sip.

"We'll see," Kat shot and turned back to her own glass.

"What's your deal?" Ilana asked her. The other pilot gave her a curious look.

"You two buddy-buddies now?"

"No. Kara and I tolerate each other because we try not to have anything to do with each other off the clock. But I know what the order is around here."

"Well, I say the order around here is a little out of date. You get to be the best by beating the best, right?"

Ilana watched Kara continue her drunken antics across the room. "She's off her game. You'd never take her in a fair fight."

Kat grinned, finishing off her glass and gesturing to JoJo for more. "You heard her yourself – you never want to fight fair."

"This isn't war; it's your own frakking squadron," Ilana told her. "You don't have to share a bunkroom with the Cylons."

Kat laughed. "That would be a sight to see. Do centurions even sleep?"

"We've put the lights out on Raiders," JoJo offered up, and the conversation moved in the direction of their past victories. Regardless of how Ilana felt about Starbuck's actions and judgment, she didn't like the atmosphere that was taking over Alpha Squadron. She had already had the experience of living on a ship with a crew that didn't trust each other any farther than they could throw each other. She didn't want to do it again.

The next morning's briefing was a chore. Starbuck was late (again) and extraordinarily hung-over (again) and Kat was determined not to cut her a single break (again). The more sarcastic Kat got, the more pissed off Kara got, and a circular chain of cause and effect was created.

"Lieutenant Adama!" Kara called out once the meeting was finally over. "A word?" Shadow offered her a little smile before he followed the others out of the ready room. "When was the last time you were in a Viper?" Starbuck asked once they were alone.

That threw Ilana for a bit of a loop. "Um…about a year ago, just for kicks, on the Pacifica. Pegasus was short on Raptor pilots, so that's all I flew with them."

"Well, you're not on Pegasus anymore. We've started rolling new fighters off the assembly lines, but pilots aren't as easy to replace, and you just happen to already be trained."

"Like I said, it's been a while. And never in combat situations."

"Well, there's a first time for everything. We have a training exercise this afternoon that I want you to sit in on. I won't be sticking you in a cockpit quite yet, but you could probably use a few refreshers."

"Yes, Sir."

That afternoon's session was an exercise in targeting. One of the advantages of having the Pegasus was the newer training equipment that the ship had possessed. "A raider is a squirmy son of a bitch," Kara explained to the pilots. "You won't be able to keep him in your sights for more than two seconds. So, you have to deliver a killing burst within that time or he will turn and nail your ass. All that yanking and banking gives you one hell of a case of vertigo, and that's what this chair simulates."

The newest pilots on the ship went first on the contraption, a chair within three spinning concentric rings. When the spinning stopped, the occupant had to fire, blind, at the target in front of them. No one in the lineup before JoJo was even able to hit the target. One pilot's shot went wild enough to hit the clock on the wall – a clock that had already been incapacitated by another pilot's bullet.

"What's the all-time record?" JoJo asked as he got up.

"Four hits on the X-ring," Hotdog replied.

"Are you kidding? Who did that?"

"I did," Kara replied. Ilana could practically see the light bulb go off over top of Kat's head.

"Mind if I give it a try for old time's sake?" she asked Starbuck. She nodded.

"Be my guest."

When Kat stopped spinning, Kara handed her the reloaded gun. "Two seconds. Go." Five rounds quickly left the chamber, each striking true on the target's X-ring.

"Five," Hotdog proclaimed. Kat ripped the blindfold off her head to see for herself.

"Yes! Whoo!" she cried, jumping up to celebrate with the other pilots.

Kara did her best to ignore them. "Adama. You're up."

Ilana never let the image of the target leave her mind while she spun in the chair. When the gun was thrust into her hand, she knew exactly where she was aiming. She pulled the trigger five times, and then lifted her blindfold to see the result. The first shot was a little wide, but the other four were just as clean as Kat's had been; she'd tied Kara's record.

"What the frak is up with that gun?" JoJo asked. Ilana handed the weapon back to Starbuck, locking eyes with the CAG for a moment.

"Just lucky, I guess," she told JoJo as she got up.

TBC...