"Was there some poor guy doing paperwork while our worlds burned? How many forms did that require?" Starbuck wondered as he tried to clear his desk of the half filled cups of java and scraps of notes he'd scattered about. He really needed to get some sort of system going. "Nah, some other crises will come up and blast it all to hades if I did."
He'd resisted the urge to check on his wife, putting his trust in Crius that he'd get Rene and Jake back home to safety. Starbuck had to trust that his wife would stay there as he headed for the duty office and the desk he had been flying more often than his viper. The extra cubits and the chance to make decisions that came with the promotion had been appreciated, but he was debating if the extra work was worth it. After his excruciating long range patrol, a long night out and a full command briefing, he'd been hoping for an easy day where he could use his rank to utilize the privilege of knocking off early. At his current rate or speed, he'd be working late.
Choosing the easiest task made sense since he'd been the last one to organize the training modules before finding Dilmun. "Ahh the good old days," he mused, when Apollo was his Captain and his biggest concern was if he could get a reservation on the Rising Star so he could propose to Cassiopeia. Bringing up the files brought up a swirl of comparisons from his life before to his life now. He missed the predictability of those post destruction days. Life had been simple, stay alive, kill as many Cylons as possible and enjoy the times in between. Back then he didn't have to look far to find his friends, they were right beside him on patrols, seated beside him in the mess hall, and sleeping one bunk over.
"Friends but were they family?" They were, but it was different from what he had now. Yes, before people relied on him, but now without him, he wasn't sure if his new family would survive, as evidenced by how his duties for the day had changed. The maintenance logs might make a difference where Rene slept tonight, in their quarters or in the brig.
"Might be the best place for her," he muttered, "how much trouble could she get into in a cell? I'm sure I could find something to do to get me tossed in too and then for once we might be alone. I could use the quiet."
The duty office was loud, full of chatter and pilots looking lost. Under normal circumstances, he would have barked at them to get back to work, but he understood how they were feeling. As pilots, their whole life was a gamble where the odds were stacked against them, and that was before the destruction. Every single death shifted the probability that tomorrow their marker might be called. The addition of Dante's warriors had changed the odds. Starbuck still hated the sadistic boray, but as a Commander, Dante had made some wise decisions such as training every warrior to be able to fly. It upped their odds of survival. Even his idea of increasing their population was prudent, despite the way he'd gone about it. Dante was playing the long game on that wager, especially if you started putting kids in a cockpit as soon as they could reach the controls. On the surface it seemed like a wise idea to increase the population, just don't look too deep as it quickly went rotten.
With a larger fleet and an exponentially larger number of pilots, many in the fleet had begun breathing easier. Brody was the first loss since merging the fleets, a union that was a forced compromise but it had seemed to be lucky in the end. That luck was fading.
Starting modules might give the pilots something to do, something that could make them feel like they were in control. Once Crius entered the office he tossed the task to his wingmate, "Get them started since most of them are here."
Crius gave him an "Aye aye, Captain," while flashing him hand signs indicating that Rene was safe at home. Starbuck's shoulders stopped crowding his ears. He hadn't been aware of his worry until that signal. He sucked in a breath deciding it was time he faced his own doubts about his wife and pulled up the maintenance logs. Usually he gave these a cursory glance, assigned them to the officer of the day and signed that they were done. Today he'd have to pour through them in detail. Lords, he hated the minutiae of the petty details. He trusted the flight deck and viper technicians. Like all the personnel of the Galactica, they relied on the pilots to keep the Cylons from giving the Galactica too big a pounding. They did their job well, helping him to do his job. It felt wrong to be double-checking their work like somehow he was an expert. He just needed to find enough to prove Rene was innocent, he reminded himself, but that was going to be hard to do when all of the Copper squadron's log signatures were in the same handwriting. Sure, the names were different on each one, but the writing had the same swoops and slants. He was hard-pressed to say if it was Rene's or Crius's, or anyone from the squadron. He didn't know any of his family's handwriting well enough to make a guess.
"They can't make anything easy, can they?" Well, at least their logs were submitted properly and in a timely manner, almost as orderly as Silver Spar. He couldn't say the same for Blue Squadron. They were a haphazard jumble of backdated and incomplete scrawls.
He was so engrossed in the reports that he hadn't noticed when Boomer entered the office until he dropped a datapad on his desk, startling him.
"Cause of death is consistent with hypoxemia. The beginnings of hypothermia indicate a loss of atmosphere in his cockpit."
Starbuck nodded as Boomer spoke, his hands using the Rat's silent language to ask, "Did she do it and how?"
It wasn't an all-out accusation, but it was another confirmation that everyone was thinking the same thing. He started to form the answer in hand signs, but decided there was no point in hiding his response since it seemed everyone was wondering the same thing.
"She didn't do it. She wouldn't. Accidents happen."
Looking down, Boomer seemed to be trying to find a way to say something indelicate. Starbuck saved him the effort.
"I know how it looks, but she wouldn't hurt anyone."
Boomer met his eyes. "She had no problem poisoning Bojay over a matter of disrespect and making sure we all knew what she could and would do if you crossed her."
Wincing Starbuck looked away from his friend, reading the room and noting how many were interested in the conversation.
"Yeah, she does have a way of making an impression. But she didn't kill him, Boomer. I'll prove it." Starbuck said, pointing to the monitor. "Give me time to go through the records and I will find…something."
"How do you prove someone is innocent? Guilt is easy, you look for motivation. She had motivation." Boomer said softly.
Starbuck choked down the repetitive refrain of her innocence. The truth was she had a lot of reasons to kill a lot of pilots. He was amazed at how she was able to work with anyone from the Zakar after what she had been through without drawing her blaster and shooting them right in the balls. The only thing that kept him from seeking his own revenge was the common enemy about to darken their doorstep again. He needed the pilots.
"Yes, she had motivation. So do a lot of the gals, and a few guys too. Hades, Boomer, so did I! We could round them all up and open tribunals, but that would put almost half of the new pilots on trial, and the other half in the brig with me, just in time for the enemy to attack. Won't that be fun?" Starbuck snapped. He found himself running his hands through his hair, trying to think before he spoke.
"I'm just saying," Boomer started holding up a hand to halt Starbuck's anger, "she had motive and she had the opportunity. A man is dead, granted not a popular guy, but others are concerned with how she did it, to make sure it doesn't happen to someone they might like."
"I can tell you how it happened." Starbuck spun his vid screen around for Boomer to see the report he was compiling. "He got sloppy. He never ran a preflight check. He never filed a maintenance log and he avoided his turn as officer of the deck. He ditched out on training, and he was generally an unpleasant person. It shouldn't all add up to cause his death, but he sure as hades didn't help himself to stay alive. That's the truth, but the truth has never been as much fun to spread around as lies and gossip. You're the last person I thought would stoop so low as to…"
"Whoa there, Bucko," Boomer started.
"That's Captain Bucko to you!" Starbuck's raised voice silenced the room and he cursed under his breath. If even "steady, by the facts" Boomer was spreading rumors, it was going to be a lot harder to work with everyone. Sucking in a deep calming breath, he faced his friend, "Yes, she had motive, and lords know she could kill him in a thousand different ways that we would never be able to prove, so why this way? Why so publicly and in the cockpit?"
"That's what we are all wondering. Maybe she wanted to make an impression. She wanted everyone to be afraid of her," Boomer said, taking a seat on the edge of the desk.
"Trust me, she doesn't. She's been working extra hard at making friends. She's tossing around gifts to everyone she works with."
Boomer thought for a moment before musing, "Gaining support for when she does take someone out?"
"And making all the pilots edgy gets them on her side?"
Boomer shook his head no, agreeing it was a bad idea.
Starbuck continued. "No, it doesn't. She's not dumb, and I'm not just saying that because she sealed with me.. ."
"Although the case could be made," Boomer interrupted with a smirk.
"Besides, it's Pallus she really wants dead."
"Taking out Brody makes that easier," Boomer reasoned.
"I know, but I'm telling you, if she killed Brody, she would have been smarter than this."
"You mean maybe having someone else do it like she did with the drugs in the pilot's food."
It was a bitter pill he swallowed as he nodded to Boomer's words. "Yeah. Like that. If she really did it, no one would suspect a damned thing, Boomer."
The gears in his head began to churn. She had been ingratiating herself to her new coworkers on the flight deck, handing out jewels and other contraband she'd brought back from Caprica. Maybe she didn't have to ask anyone to do it. Maybe they did it on their own out of some misguided act of friendship or loyalty.
"Can you go over Red squadron's reports? I need to talk to the maintenance chief."
Boomer raised an eyebrow, "You think that's a good idea? You don't want people saying that you are helping Rene cover her tracks. "
"She's not a killer!" He wanted to shout it for everyone to hear. Instead, it came out a strangled hiss of words as two scenes came to mind, her blasting Agenor and the other man in the face followed by her thrusting a grenade at Dante. She was a killer.
Shaking his head, he tried to rationalize the thought. The events on Dilmun were in self-defense. Her brother had been blown apart right before her eyes and Iblis's part in it all couldn't be forgotten. She'd been in survival mode and had not been herself. This was different and she deserved to have her friends on her side.
"How did you and Apollo clear my name when Ortega was murdered?" he asked as he turned the monitor back to himself and added his last comments to the data.
"We found who did it," Boomer said, getting up from the edge of the desk. "Want some help?"
Starbuck shook his head, unsure if he wanted a witness to the conversation he was about to have. "You can help me by going through the reports. I have evidence that Brody skipped all safety protocols. A few more incidents of his sloppiness would help make my case that it was suicide by negligence."
"Be careful. Apollo was almost killed, remember?" Boomer reminded him before moving aside. Starbuck got up, straightening his jacket and taking a quick swipe at his new insignia, shining them up. He might be pulling some rank on people today.
The exhaustion of the night sleeping on the floor and a tumultuous morning caught up to him on the short walk to the landing bay. He had to reach out to brace himself against a wall as a spasm gripped his back, nearly doubling him over. "Frak me, I'm getting old" he muttered to himself as he tried to regulate his ragged breaths and willed the muscles to relax. He wanted to pretend it was the busy days and the drama his wife seemed to attract that was causing his backache. It was easier than facing the truth of the Cylon tech that was embedded in his body. He wanted to forget Caprica and that helpless feeling of not being able to save Rene and himself. "It's over. We survived," he whispered the mantra Dixon had given him as he waited for the pain to subside.
It took longer than he wanted, and he debated turning a corner and heading to the Life Station instead of the Landing bay. If he hadn't ordered Crius to take Jake home, the young man would have been on duty and would help him out, with the added bonus that he might know for sure Rene's level of involvement in Brody's demise. "He might know, but he sure as hades isn't going to tell you. Thick as thieves," a voice whispered in his ear. He gritted his teeth and pushed forward. The last thing he needed was another confirmation that everyone else knew his wife better than he did.
Once in the landing bay, he saw that Brody's viper had been towed away from the middle of the bay off to the side of maintenance with several technicians at work, the canopy removed and laying upside down on the deck. The Maintenance chief was pointing something out to another tech when he noted Starbuck's approach. He stepped away from the viper, wiping his hands and sauntering across the bay to meet Starbuck halfway.
"I haven't finished my report yet," Chief Tyrol began, "but it is starting to look like an equipment failure that was missed by my crew and should have been caught on a preflight check. We let you down. Simple as that."
"We? Not anyone specific? Who last serviced the viper? Who was in charge of his preflight check?"
Tyrol finished wiping off his hands before he met his eyes, then gestured that they should walk to his office. They took a few steps before Tyrol spoke .
"You know, in my yahrens in the Colonial service, I've met a lot of pilots. Some of those pilots saunter onto my flight deck acting like they are a God and we are all just their minions here to do their bidding."
The Chief glanced at him, a sly smirk on his lips. Starbuck was confused about where this conversation was going, but he had the feeling he should let the man talk. The Chief nodded to him, then winked.
"You know, when you came to the Galactica, well with a name like Starbuck, that confident strut of yours and that gold cubit hair, I thought you'd be one of the worst. You surprised me, all of us really. You treated my crew with respect, even deigned to say please and thank you. Hades, you even went so far as to treat my crew like they were your fellow warriors."
"That's because they are," Starbuck said, narrowing his eyes, not sure if he'd been insulted.
"See, there you go proving my point." Tyrol slowed his stroll. He took a quick scan of the landing bay, even to go so far as to turn around to check behind them before turning back and picking up his pace again. The Chief's voice was lower when he spoke again, "But not all pilots are like you, realizing we're all part of the big picture, so sometimes when one of you keeps acting like you're one of the Lords of Kobol, we make you meet your Lords, or at least think that you might. Then you come limping back here begging for us to save you, and you learn who the real gods of this tub are."
Starbuck's steps faltered, and he nearly tripped as realization dawned upon him. In a low voice he asked, "You did this?"
The Chief didn't answer right away as he took another scan of the bay before facing him and halting their progress.
"Me? No. What gave you that idea? I'm in charge and would never stoop so low. I'm just telling you a story."
"A story, huh?," Starbuck replied, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the ground crew would deliberately sabotage a Viper. "But you know who did this," He felt a sudden desire to check his back. He couldn't stop himself from looking over his shoulder to Brody's viper before turning back to the chief. The man's expression had changed. Gone was the congenial smile and the smirk.
"Did what, Captain? Encourage Lt. Brody to skip his preflight check? By no means would I or any of my crew suggest such a thing. In fact, we highly recommended he run through the safety protocols. He chose to ignore our very wise advice."
There was that, Starbuck thought to himself. They wouldn't be having this conversation had the pilot just followed procedure. Could he just leave it at that?
"A pilot is dead," Starbuck started, hoping to get the Chief to cut the felgercarb and just tell him the truth.
"A death he could have prevented in so many ways."
"Look, this looks bad. Lives are on the line. What am I supposed to tell Command, and more importantly, my pilots?"
The Chief leaned in closer, his voice a low growl. "Tell your pilots to follow procedure. Tell them that the Colonial Creed is alive and well. I will tell the commander the truth, it was an accident."
"The truth, huh?" Starbuck asked softly.
"Damn straight."
"Any other truths you want to mention?"
Tyrol nodded sharply, leaning in. "While we're on the subject, Brody should have kept his hands to himself."
Starbuck groaned as if he'd been punched in the gut. There was definitely more than Rene involved. Maybe another gal Brody had manhandled? Had he laid hands on the maintenance crew?
"Yeah, he had a problem with that. I should have talked to him. But now it makes it look like Rene did it, since she did talk to Brody about that problem of his," Starbuck said, hoping he could scrounge up what the chief might want in order to give up the name of who was responsible.
"A lot of people talked to him about that handsy problem of his, including myself. I spoke with command and they said they talked to him. Brody knew he should stop. He didn't." The Chief backed away, clearing his throat and straightening his spine, "Captain Starbuck, officially as of right now, my records show it was just an unfortunate accident. May I ask what yours indicates, sir?"
Starbuck shook his head wondering if it would really be that easy to get away with a pilot's demise. First Brody, who would be next? He opened his mouth to speak again, but the look on the Chief's face told him Tyrol wasn't going to give him a name, because it might be his own. "My logs show the same."
Tyrol patted Starbuck on the shoulder and guided him to start walking again, this time the two of them side by side. "Ahh the beauty of the Colonial Service, records don't lie, do they? If they start to pin it on her, I'll make the person come forward. A double shift, avoiding confrontation with a difficult warrior, it can all be explained away. Oh and the fact that until then, I serviced his viper and ran his preflight check."Tyrol nodded, warming up to his story. "We can be comforted with the fact that sometimes the Lords hear our prayers and solve our problems for us. Isn't that nice of them?"
Starbuck was still shaking his head as they walked, "They are all-seeing, all-knowing.."
Tyrol clapped him on the back. Starbuck winced as the man's hand landed on the spot still sore from where the doctor yanked out cylon tech. "Lucky us. And it's not so bad for Brody. He gets to be remembered as a hero, not a boray. We should all be so lucky."
"I think I'll pass on that lucky break if you don't mind. I'd like to see that no more of my pilots get lucky. We want to stay ahead of the real enemy, Chief." Starbuck said, hoping the chief saw his point.
"Oh I'm almost certain that we won't see any Gods or Goddesses on my flight deck meddling with people's lives any time soon. Would you agree?"
Starbuck took the chief's words for what they were, ground rules for peaceful coexistence. Reign in the pilots and there would be no more problems. His only problem was how to do that with Dante's crew. "Yes chief, I don't think we'll see any more Lords of Kobol either. But just to hedge our bets, I'll make sure I say a few prayers to them, and I'm sure they'll stay in the heavens where they belong."
"See, I knew you would understand. We are all just minions to the Lords trying to survive another day. I'll send my report to the Commander and he knows where to find me if he has any questions. You have a good night, Captain hot shot."
The chief walked into his office, shutting the door behind him, leaving Starbuck truly lost on what his next move should be. This isn't right, he thought. A man was dead.
"He wasn't a good man," a voice sounding far too much like Iblis whispered in his head.
"That might be," he answered back, "but he hadn't deserved this." Or had he? Had he just ran his preflight check, he'd be alive.
It was that fact that seemed to have settled the debate in his mind. He had enough to make a case that Brody died due to his own negligence. He hoped that would be enough to prove Rene wasn't involved.
But now what? He wasn't used to actually solving the Rats problems so easily, and this one should not have been easy. Who did he have to thank for it, luck or the Lords. In a way he had Brody and his difficult demeanor to thank. "The Lords it is," he said finally, taking the first deep breath of this cycle. This might all come back as one big mong pile rolling downhill and gaining more mong as it picked up speed, but at least others would be caught up in it with him and Rene.
That was a task for another time and It seemed that today he had only one task left to do. He checked his chrono. He'd promised to check on Cain before he called it a day. It might ease Rene's mind. So would finding out she was not being accused of killing pilots. He thought he might save that one for the morning and let the worry teach her a lesson. "Naw, if she stays up all night worrying about it, I won't get any sleep."
He went by the recruits barracks to find they were starting the recruits on their physical training. As he headed to the gym, he decided he would wait until he had Rene alone on their date that night, under the stars in the celestial dome, still worrying about her fate, she might be persuaded to reconsider her plots for revenge.
The recruits were running through the basic exercises that all fresh recruits were subjected to, pushups and sit ups and pull ups. It was nice to see some things hadn't changed despite their desperate situation since the destruction. A fit pilot was a better pilot, his drill sergeant had intoned daily. He caught Cain's eye, flashing him a sign asking if it was going good, and he received a thumbs up from the young man, and a smile he tried to hide as those around him began to point Starbuck's way.
"That's right, he's mine. Take good care of him," Starbuck whispered to himself, waving to Cain's new friends before he left and headed back to the duty office.
Once back in the office, now less crowded as pilots had been sent off to sims or trainings, he grabbed a cup of java and settled behind his computer screen.
"Sent you those reports," Boomer said from his desk beside him. "I'm assuming the talk with the maintenance chief went well?"
"Very. Looking like an equipment failure. The vipers are getting old and missing a preflight check can be…" he hesitated hating himself for just a moment that he was going to go along with this, but then he remembered how Brody had sneered at him every time Starbuck and Pallus had shared words, and punches. "It can be one of the ways to meet the Lords of Kobol sooner than you were supposed to. Pallus was just upset and wanted to blame someone. He lost a good friend and grief makes people irrational. Make sure everyone runs their checks and if anything is missing, like a breather, the launch is scrubbed. We need to be smarter than the tin heads." His own words calmed his guilt. Brody should have caught the missing breather. He should have cancelled his launch. He should have bitched and moaned about his viper not being serviced like it should. Brody should have still been alive and his generally unpleasant self. Instead he'd join the league of heroes.
Starbuck logged in to his messages to bring up Boomer's report, to make sure it matched the report he'd already written. The message was there, but right after it was one from the IFB with Zara's name. He opened it, intrigued by what she might want, and hoping to put to rest the unpleasant gossip that would follow Brody's death and Pallus's accusations that Rene was behind it.
The message was not what he had been expecting. Instead it contained picture files and a short message from Zara. "Here are the records we have on your wife that you asked for. Perhaps we could get another interview with the happy couple as a follow up to our successful filming of your wedding?" He chuckled as he opened up the first picture. That woman never gave up.
The image opened filled his screen. It was not what he had been expecting. It was Rene as a young kid. He barely recognized her. The picture looked like a government id, and attached to it was an official file that he brought up. It was her induction record for the Colonial Orphanage system. He should have recognized the picture for what it was right away, he had many of the same shots of himself, done yearly or to document when he'd entered a new facility or a new foster home. He had to do a quick calculation of the date, and her natal date, figuring she was eight yahrens old in the photo. He quickly read the file that she was being placed in the system due to the death of her father, with no other relatives to care for her. He flipped back to the photo, noting her eyes, startling blue, and shining as they did when she had scored a point or cheated someone. She was tan and had some dirt on her cheek. Her hair was a ratty mess, and was that a leaf in the tangles? She must not have been playing with dolls, he thought as he took in the grin. He knew that grin well, and it wasn't usually a good one. It was one that meant she had scored a point by cheating. It meant she had bested someone by not playing fair. It was not the typical face of a new orphan. There were no tears in those eyes. He flipped back to the record. He scanned the details noting that a police report was also attached to the file, another link to follow and he clicked on it bringing up a report on the death of her father.
Now that was very interesting. Rene had said that her father had died in combat, but come to think of it, that didn't make much sense since she said he'd been home since the death of her mother when she was two. The police report indicated he had died at home. Had Starbuck remembered the facts wrong? No, Rene had stated a few times that her father had died in combat. The report read that Rene had found her father in bed in a pool of blood. His throat had been slit and a suicide note had been left on a data pad near the bed.
Suicide? Rene had never mentioned that her father died by his own hand. Not once had she said, "Oh yeah, I found my dad in a pool of blood." Always it had been "died in combat."
Starbuck closed the link on the file, staring back at the photo of a young Rene. The smile sent a shiver down his spine and he closed the file, before bringing up fleet records. He input her father's name, and brought up his old file buried in the archives. His id photo looked like an older version of her brother Arimis. Same brown hair, same cut to the jaw, but her father's eyes were Rene's stormy blue. Or should he say she had his eyes? He was a decent looking man. The photo didn't betray that the man had been a huge boray.
He read the file, most of it data about his various postings and his rank. He followed the list down to where he had been stationed on Caprica due to the death of his wife. So he couldn't have died in combat, unless maybe it was a training accident and Rene had confused it as combat? But no, there it was, date of death, just a few sectons before Rene's induction into the care of the Colonial system. Cause of death - Suicide. Attached to his records was the same link to the police report, which came up even quicker this time. He read it again, found at home by his daughter Rene in a pool of blood, throat slit, carotid artery severed, knife in his hand, no foul play suspected, a suicide note on a data pad.
Why had Rene lied? "Okay, maybe not lied," he thought to himself, "but she changed the facts that's for sure. Why would she not tell me the truth? I mean, it doesn't really matter, or does it?" A chill ran down his spine again and he felt the muscles in his back spasm for just a moment before relaxing. "Did she kill her old man? He had been abusing her. I mean what kind of sick person fraks an eight yahren old?"
Something bounced off his desk, knocking his cup of Java over as he heard Boomer shout "Starbuck!"
Thank the lords, the java cup was nearly empty. He reached to set it right, shouting back, "What?"
"It's the coms for you. No one has picked up the kids from the child care center and Jason showed up looking to take them home, but they won't release them to his care since he's a minor and he's raising a fuss. What has you so engrossed? I've shouted your name a couple of times."
"Yeah, uh, nothing, what? Whose turn was it to get the kids?"
"You're the one who has the family duty roster written down. You should know."
"Yeah, uh, right," Starbuck said, closing the police record and bringing up a roster just like a flight roster, only it listed who was in charge of dinner, laundry, cleaning and child care. Rene's name was in the roster for kid pick up today. "Frak, it's Rene and it looks like miracles do happen because for the first time she did what I asked. She went home and didn't leave. I think she sent Jason in her place. I'll go and get them and then I'll be back."
"You want some help?" Boomer offered, but he wasn't getting up from his chair.
"No, enjoy your carefree bachelor days before Dietra ropes you into a sealing and several kids. I've got this."
"You sure," Boomer smirked, "It's all of them, including Baby Zachary. And by the way, Dietra and I will be starting with one, not a dozen."
Starbuck double checked a roster that really had little to do with Boomer, and yet he knew it better than he did. Of course he was right, Lisbet was in the sims keeping up on her qualifications for a viper. Starbuck seriously wondered if he had enough hands to carry all the babies. "Jason is there? We can handle it, unless you're done. It is on the way home."
Boomer signed off. "Let's go and start your second job."
"It's not a job," he groused as he opened up the report he'd compiled and sent it off to the Commander. "One crisis was handled. Time for a new one."
They both headed for the door. He was thankful for the help because truth be told he really didn't have the energy today to deal with twelve toddlers. He'd already solved a murder and opened up a whole new mystery. Why would Rene lie to him about her father? Was she protecting his dignity by not telling him it was suicide? No, that didn't make sense. Rene hated her father who had begun molesting her at a young age. Was it easier to just say it was death by combat than to explain her whole family situation? Maybe, but he knew all of that, so there was no reason to keep it simple for him.
"Galactica to Starbuck. Come in Starbuck." Boomer said. "You okay, Bucko? Still worried about Rene being blamed for this?"
"Huh, uh, no. No sorry, just…something Rene said."
"You mean that she didn't do it? But you're thinking she still did." Boomer said.
Starbuck halted, spinning on his friend. "No. I believed her."
"Believed. Past tense. And now?" Boomer asked.
"You don't believe her?" Starbuck asked instead of answering his friend.
"You are the one who told me about her shooting an unconscious man in the face with a blaster." Boomer offered as an answer.
"Two. She shot two guys," Starbuck said before catching himself. "That was different. They were going to kill us and Dante had flogged me and broken her hand and...it was different. Heat of the moment. You think she killed Brody?"
"I might. Does it matter?" Boomer asked.
"Frak yeah it matters. She's not a killer."
Boomer shot up an eyebrow. "You just admitted she has killed, twice, three times if you count Dante."
"That was different. That was in self defense and we were all in danger and...and Iblis was involved too."
"Okay, but she has killed before. And Brody has threatened her."
"I told you she didn't kill Brody!" Starbuck's voice rose before he caught himself. "I told you, it was an accident."
"Okay, I hear you. She's not a killer. So what's on your mind?" Boomer asked, holding up his hands in surrender.
Starbuck groaned loudly, "I think she's lied to me and yes, I know how that sounds right now."
"So she's a liar, not a killer? Is that it?" Boomer asked, a small smirk on his face.
"Forget I said anything," Starbuck said, throwing up his hands. "I just want to go get the kids and go home and lock myself in for the night and soak in a big bathing tub."
"Where are you going to find a bathing tub? Dietra and I might want in on that action."
"I have no idea, but I'd rather think about that than the fact that my wife has lied and killed and I think I am okay with it. It should matter shouldn't it?"
His friend appraised him for a moment before nodding, "It should, but…" Boomer imitated the Copper Squadron shrug of the shoulders before adding, "Context, considerations, cause, it all matters too. Just like with Ortega, there was more involved there than any of us wanted to admit."
"Yeah, there was. I didn't do it, I want that noted for the record. And Rene didn't kill Brody."
"Noted for the record. But there may be more going on here as well."
Starbuck sighed, "Ain't that the truth. And I'm too tired to solve it all right now. Come on, I'll get us both a drink once we're home."