After spending several days testing and evaluating the Starfury, Starbuck received new orders from Commander Crichton. Her reports had convinced the commander that the Starfury was in many ways superior to the Viper. Some of the few drawbacks were that the Starfury was not capable of atmospheric flight, and that it would take more time and resources to build. Crichton decided that the Starfury would not replace, but complement the viper as a Starfighter. Reports from Chief Spencer showed that it was possible to produce a ship very similar to the Starfury with the technology and materials currently available to Crichton's group of survivors.
The abandoned space station had become a treasure trove of supplies, technology, and living space to the group of Colonials that had followed John Crichton away from the destroyed Colonies. Engineers were already figuring out how to duplicate the pulse cannons that were part of the station's defense system and how to install them on the Battlestar Pacifica. Crichton had been wanting to install directed energy weapons on the Battlestar for a long time. Colonel Horace Atwood, the newly minted CO of the station, had even gone so far as suggesting to build a brand new Battlestar incorporating the technology found aboard Babylon 4.
Since Starbuck had been a flight instructor at one point in her career, her new orders were to train pilots to fly Starfuries and to have them flight qualified by the time the new fighters were ready. Crichton had decided to have his engineers reverse engineer the Starfury and build an entire squadron to be stationed aboard Babylon 4. The station was not equipped with Viper launch tubes, but had facilities to launch Starfuries instead. So it made perfect sense to base the first squadrons of soon to be built Starfuries on the station. Now Starbuck's task was to train two classes. The first was a class of advanced pilots who had already been trained and qualified to fly Vipers and Raptors, and the second a class of complete nuggets who had no flight experience at all. There was a simulator room aboard Babylon 4 for the pilots to train in. The simulators only needed reprogrammed to simulate battles against Cylon ships, which was a relatively simple task and did not take long.
Crichton's group of survivors was lucky that Babylon 4 had been evacuated in a hurry shortly before the station became fully operational. Many facilities had already been installed and a great amount of food, spare parts, and other supplies had been left behind.
A group of worm aliens decided to search for coffee on Babylon 4 again. After the Colonials had rescued them from escape pods when their freighter got destroyed in a battle, the worm aliens found a new home aboard Babylon 4. People and supplies were still being shuttled aboard from various ships. Other supplies already aboard Babylon 4 were moved around to make more room and to optimize the available storage space. With all that traffic in the corridors it was relatively easy to grab some coffee that was carted from the docking bays to various storage areas. The four worms had done this already a few times before in the recent few weeks, but this time they got off the elevator on the wrong floor.
The worms came to a large room where the human woman they had rescued weeks earlier was giving instructions to a group of humans standing inside mockups of Starfury cockpits. The cadets had just finished their first round of simulator training, after hours of theory over the last several days. These were pilots who had already flown vipers and raptors, but they still had a lot to learn, because the Starfuries handled completely differently and their controls were arranged in a different layout as well.
"See that big fracking button that says EJECT? Next time rather than waste 0.85 seconds articulating Oh frack!..., you press that first. ", Starbuck shouted at one of the hotshot wannabees, pointing at a button on a panel in his cockpit. The Starfury's entire cockpit module could be detached as an escape pod, allowing the pilot to separate themselves from the engine assembly and escape harm in the event of catastrophic damage. This was different from the Viper, which was only equipped with an ejection seat and made its pilot rely on their vacuum suit until rescue arrived.
After Starbuck had dismissed the class and gone to lunch, one of the worm aliens, the one who used to pilot their freighter when they had discovered Starbuck, snuck back into the simulator room and situated himself inside one of the simulators, while the others continued their search for coffee. He turned the simulator on and followed the tutorial. At first he had problems, being used to piloting sluggish big freighters and not nimble little Starfighters. But he slowly got used to the controls and to the speed and maneuverability of the Starfury. It took him a while, but he soon got good at piloting the simulated Starfury through asteroid fields and later through attacking waves of Cylon raiders.
Several hours passed and Starbuck had long finished her lunch and was now teaching a different group of pilots in a classroom across the hallway how a Starfury worked. These were freshly recruited cadets, as opposed to the more experienced pilots she had trained that morning. In the meantime, the worm tried out more difficult levels. The worm learned how to launch and land the Starfury, how to evade obstacles as well as enemy fire and how to use the Starfury's weapons against Cylon ships.
After the theory lesson, Starbuck led her class into the simulator room, so they could put theory into practice.
"These are the Starfury simulators. We got one for each of you", Starbuck explained. The cadets, who had no previous flight experience, were excited to fly, even if it was in a simulator at first.
"I will go over the controls with you one more time before we start the first simulation," Starbuck said. "So, get into your simulators and listen carefully.
"Ma'am, one of the simulators is already on", one of the cadets reported.
Starbuck turned on the monitoring system that showed each pilot's screen in a separate window and could not believe what she was seeing.
At first she thought the pilot inside the simulator was one of her pilots who had snuck back into the simulator after her earlier class. She turned his simulator off. The worm alien's simulated Starfury was being chased by two Cylon raiders when suddenly the screen went blank and the cockpit stopped moving and shaking.
When Starbuck opened the simulator she was surprised to see one of the worm aliens standing inside the mockup cockpit.
"What the frack are you doing in here?" she asked angrily. She hoped that he hadn't messed up any of the settings. "Get out of here, you fracking worm!"
With a defeated look on his face and his antennas hanging down, the worm climbed out of the simulator.
Starbuck suddenly forgot all her anger when she looked at the worm alien's scores and started replaying parts of the simulated battles he had participated in. That was when she realized that he had not been playing around.
"Stop! Come back!" she shouted at the sad worm alien, who was heading out the door of the simulator room.
"I really can't be mad at you. In fact you are doing better than all my other trainees. Why don't you join my class?"
The worm was excited. "Those damn trash cans blew up my freighter! Now I am gonna make 'em pay!" he shouted, raising his fist.
The worm alien was excited about his opportunity to become a fighter pilot. He has been dreaming of becoming one since his childhood, but on his homeworld this was a privilege for the warrior class only. His race was divided into several sub species. He belonged to the worker and peasant class that made up the majority of his race. The warrior worms were taller and more muscular than his kind.
Alfred Tweedle's formal wear business on Tauron had been destroyed when the Cylons had attacked the Twelve Colonies. Lucky for him he had been on his way to Aerilon to shop for fabrics for a new style of tuxedo when the attack happened. The ship he had been on was one that had joined Crichton's fleet, and very quickly he had set up a new shop aboard one of the ships from the mystery fleet after it had been discovered by Crichton. Tweedle had spent the two years since then mostly making uniforms for the military, which was now his biggest customer. He had just moved his business from the ship to Babylon 4 where he would now be able to mass manufacture clothes on an industrial scale. Civilians would no longer have to wait three or four months for a new shirt or a new pair of pants. And military personnel could now have new uniforms within less than a week.
Tweedle had just read a message from Babylon 4's new quartermaster regarding a new set of uniforms for a pilot.
"What crazy times we live in", he said to two of his seamstresses.
"Why, what do they want this time?" Sue Ann asked.
"I hope not another uniform for that dwarf", Antonia said, referring to Colonel Atwood.
"No, they want us to make a flight suit for a worm alien. The guy wants to know when he should be in to be measured." Tweedle answered.