Ensign Baxton, or "BB," had very quickly gone from a cocky little nugget fresh off of Pegasus into a worried little nugget that was liable to get someone killed. It wasn't very surprising when that 'someone' turned out to be himself.

From her spot underneath her Raptor, making repairs, Ilana could see JoJo immediately lose his lunch upon getting out of his Viper. The reason his patrol had only come back with one ship had apparently been very traumatic.

"It's all right, JoJo," one of the crewmen told him, handing him a towel. Tyrol and some of his knuckle draggers were working on securing the pilot's ship as well as the others that had just landed.

"Shutdown complete," Kara reported to the Chief.

"Nothing you could do, Captain," he told her. "Your alert fighters were just too far away."

"Nice work, Starbuck," Kat told her as she sidled up to the CAG's Viper.

"What the hell happened to BB?" she asked.

"What happened? He did exactly what you told him to do, Captain. They had bingo fuel and a head start home, but instead the FNG turned and attacked. And Scar lit him up like a pinwheel."

"Why would he try to take on Scar by himself? Stupid idiot."

"I believe your words were, 'Try and run and you're dead,' were they not? You drilled that into the poor moron's head."

"You and I both know that 99 percent of the time that is the right move."

Kat shrugged. "Not this time."

Ilana watched her walk away. As she saw Kara still sitting in her cockpit, staring at nothing with her mind a million miles away, she began to wonder if things affected the mighty Starbuck a bit more than she let anyone see.

Kara turned and caught her gaze, holding it for a moment. " Lieutenant Adama," she called over to her. "You're a Viper pilot. Starting today."

There was a different patch on Ilana's right sleeve the next morning as she climbed up in a Viper that still had a dead man's name stenciled on the side. At the rate that they were losing pilots, it was a waste of paint to start re-labeling them. "You ready?" JoJo asked her from his spot in the plane next to her once she'd gotten her headset in her ear and her helmet on. The canopy closed over her cockpit.

"As I'll ever be."

Ilana had trained on Vipers at the Academy, just like her brothers. Some had called her 'a natural', following in her father and Lee's footsteps. She'd been flying right behind her twin when he killed himself. Still had a scar on her leg from a chunk of shrapnel that had cut straight through her fighter. Talent was the only thing that had kept there from being two fireballs that day.

She'd been sidelined by the injury for a few weeks, time that she spent on the Galactica with her father. When she climbed into a Viper for the first time after the accident, heading back to Picon to finish her training, she'd seen how white Adama's knuckles turned as he held the railing on the hangar deck and watched her run through her preflight checks. She'd promised herself that she wouldn't put him through what Zak had. Back at the Academy, she'd traded Vipers for Raptors and hadn't regretted it once. Now, as her Viper shot out into open space, she tried not to picture her father listening in on the wireless chatter from CIC.

"Galactica, JoJo," the other pilot called in. "Patrol is departing."

"Copy that," Dualla replied. "Be safe."

The asteroid field was one hell of a scary place to be; there were far too many hiding places that were known too well by the enemy. "So…correct me if I'm wrong," JoJo commented as they flew, "But wasn't Starbuck supposed to be out here this morning?"

"The short answer is yes," Ilana replied. "The long answer…you many not want to get me started."

"I've got time," he replied with a chuckle.

"Well, from what I could tell in the bunkroom, she got monumentally plastered last night. Apparently waking up this morning was too much of a challenge for her to manage."

"I guess it's a good thing she bailed, then."

"How do you figure?"

"Would YOU want to fly with a hungover Starbuck?"

"I'd prefer that the CAG not be that drunk in the first place."

"I'd prefer not to have to be OUT HERE in the first place, but the Cylons don't ask what we want, and neither does Starbuck."

Ilana smiled. "You got that right."

The patrol was mostly uneventful, and Ilana was starting to feel more comfortable by the end of it. She'd never trained on a MarkII, so it took some getting used to, but the feel of the fighter was familiar. "Let's take one more pass and then escort the miners back so they can refuel," JoJo suggested.

"Roger that." There was so much debris everywhere around them; chunks of rock, pieces of their own ships, or possibly an enemy in wait. It was so hard to know for sure; Dradis was practically useless.

"I take left, you take right," Jojo said as they came upon mass of rocks that was so dense it couldn't safely be flown through.

"Sure thing," Ilana replied. She wasn't expecting to hear an,

"Oh, frak!" a moment later.

"JoJo?"

"He was hiding in the debris! I can't shake him!" Ilana decided 'over' would be faster than around, and pushed her Viper to the max to come to her wingman's aid. However, she rounded the top of the rock pile just in time to see JoJo get added to the graveyard that the asteroid field had become. Scar turned his red eye on her next, but then jumped away before she could do anything.

"Galactica, Athena: I've lost my wingman. Repeat: JoJo's gone!"

Ilana had managed to keep her breakfast down while she was in the hangar bay, but it was a good thing that there was a bathroom just down the hall. When she'd finally pulled herself together enough to come out, she found that her father was waiting for her by the door, a cup in his hand.

"Here," he said, offering it to her.

"I don't think alcohol's going to help."

"It's tea." Ilana relented, taking a sip.

"That wasn't exactly how I wanted my first day back in a Viper to go," she said as they started walking, heading back towards his office.

"I'd agree with you, there."

"I just…there wasn't even anything I could do. It was too fast…I shouldn't have been out there."

"You've had a lot more in the way of training than most of these kids do."

"No, I mean I really shouldn't have been out there. I wasn't supposed to be on patrol. Maybe someone else would have realized it was a trap, would have reacted faster, or would have been able to shoot the frakking bastard before it jumped away."

"Or maybe there was just nothing anyone could have done." He opened his door and they both went inside.

"Does it ever feel like we're just slowly slipping into nonexistence? One by one, until we're all gone?" Adama led her over to the couch in the corner.

"Only on the bad days," he quietly replied. "Lie down and get some rest." Ilana obliged, curling up on the couch as he put a blanket over her. He kissed her forehead before returning to his desk. Before beginning his work again, Adama contemplated the picture sitting between stacks of papers; an old photo of him and his three children at the base on Caprica. The part that he hadn't said aloud to his daughter was that most every day was a bad day.

Ilana was awakened from her much needed nap when Tigh came down from the CIC to report that Galactica had a new Top Gun. Kat had managed to smoke Scar once and for all and, appropriately, a celebration was being held in the officer's mess. By the time Ilana, Tigh, and Adama arrived, the alcohol had been broken out and everyone was enjoying themselves.

"Yo, Starbuck!" Kat called from the stage, lifting her mug in the air. "My cup runneth dry. Seems I recall someone boasting that my lips would never touch this rim."

It was dead silent in the room, and Ilana was sure that more than a few people were wondering if Kat was about to get her lights knocked out. However, Kara simply walked over, albeit grudgingly, and refilled Kat's drink.

"You earned it," she told the other pilot. Kat smiled smugly, and was about to resume her own celebration, but Kara turned to the crowd gathered and raised the bottle she was holding. "To BB. JoJo. Riley. Beano. Dipper. Flattop. Chuckles. Jolly. Crashdown. Sheppard. Flyboy. Dash. Stepchild. Puppet. Fireball…"

At that point, she'd listed far more names than any other senior pilot on the ship would have been able to do off the top of their heads. It was surprising that Kara actually remembered all of the ones that they'd lost, and sad that everyone else couldn't say the same for themselves. Perhaps they still did have a lot to learn from their instructor, no matter how good of pilots they all thought they were.

"To all of them," Lee finished his best friend's toast. Ilana stood beside her brother, raising her glass as well and mentally adding a few friends that she'd lost on Pegasus to the list.

"So say we all," Adama offered, and everyone else echoed him.

"So say we all."

TBC...