ANOTHER WAY: CHAPTER 2
RING AROUND THE MOON
Somewhere in Deep Space…
The Viper is a beautiful piece of machinery. Sensitive, responsive, tough, resilient, nurturing even, it was the embodiment of what every mother, father, brother, sister, lover, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend and frak-buddy should be. It tells you when something is wrong, it shows you when you have something right and it is always there for you in the same condition you left it when you landed it last.
"Damn, Starbuck – didn't know you were going to get all deep on us this afternoon."
Frak! Did she just say what she was thinking out loud, over the comm system? She must be more tired than she thought.
"Can the chatter, Hot Dog. If you don't, I guarantee that you will be learning a new language as soon as we clear the hanger deck," Starbuck promised.
"Oh yeah, Lieutenant – and what language is that?" Hot Dog pressed his luck. Starbuck must really be thinking about other things if she let him sass her.
"Grunt-ese, lowly-little-nugget because your jaw will be wired shut by the time I am done with you." Glancing in the direction where Hot Dog flew in formation, she barked out, "Clean up your pitch Hot Dog or the Chief will have whatever is left of you for dinner if you gouge Kat's bird."
Filling her view port, a beautiful gas giant with a heaving atmosphere spun slowly on its axis, layers of perfectly shaped rings circumnavigated the oversized planet. Hovering near its stratosphere, billowing clouds of pressure-released gasses collided and curled around each other in a deadly dance.
A fabulous thought came to her mind. Carefully checking the trajectory of the fleet and their current position, she hailed her training group.
"Okay boys and girls, you are going to learn something today that was only taught in simulators back at the Academy."
"What do you have in mind, Starbuck?" Kat was all ears, her curiosity piqued.
"You all are going to learn what it means to have minor case of whiplash." Starbuck flipped a few switches and transmitted freshly calculated co-ordinates and flight speeds to everyone in her group.
"Um, Starbuck, I don't think I am reading this right." All previous cockiness was gone from Hot Dog's voice as he pieced together the information Starbuck streamed into his console.
"Starbuck to Galactica Actual, come in Galactica Actual." The image of The Old Man was as clear in her mind as if she were standing in right front of him.
"Go ahead Starbuck, this is Galactica Actual." The gravely tone of Commander Adama filled her headset.
"Sir, we're gonna make a Ring Around the Moon. Wanna fire up The Bucket and join us?" Her eyes danced as if she were speaking to him face to face.
"That's a negative, Starbuck. These old bones of hers would be pressed into the burners if I tried that now. But good luck and enjoy the ride. Galactica Actual out."
The line clicking dead was the equivalent of having his blessing being served on a tylium salver.
"Okay folks. Here's what we are going to do. We are going to use the gravity of this planet to sling-shot ourselves around the planet. Hugging just the right plane, you'll see why the Viper Mark Seven is actually an inferior flying machine to these twenty year old pieces of aeronautic perfection currently separating us from the cold emptiness of space. Just do what the read out tells you to do at the precise time the read out tells you to and you will thank me for it. You all can thank me now for the fly-by we are going to do as we come out from behind the planet, streak across Galactica's bow and give everyone in the observation deck something to brag about seeing for the next couple of weeks." Anticipation filled her voice. "We'll bring the Ring to the Old Man."
"Starbuck – why is it called Ring Around the Moon?" Kat asked. "I thought 'ring around the moon' meant 'bad weather coming soon'?"
"If you were flying the grandfather of the Mark Two and you did the manoeuvre properly and handled the fluctuations in the g-forces aptly enough, you could connect the tail of your burn from where you finished to where you started. That's the kind of speed we are talking about folks." Deliberately not answering Kat's question was Starbuck's way of saying that the question was not worth answering.
"So what does that mean little boys and girls?" Starbuck loved her pop quizzes.
"Run a safety and operations check on all your systems." All four voices sounded in her head set.
Pop quiz number two was fired off as the Vipers settled into a staggered formation around her.
"Tell me sub-humanoids: what do we do when we find our attention wandering?"
"Run a safety and operations check on all your systems." Three male and one female voice recited an axiom of flight safety.
Noting that everyone was now in place, Starbuck looked off her port bow. "Kat, you are first. Skid Mark, you're on deck. Hot Dog, you're third and Monkey Boy, you follow Hot Dog. I am going come up from behind you, slide into that lovely little hole I know you all are going to make for me, and then we are going to scare the pants off of those people on the Observation Deck."
Monkey Boy broke into her transmission. "Starbuck, ah… Monkey Boy is not my call sign."
"It is if I say it is nugget. And since I saw the ropes of hair that came off your back and clogged the drain in the forward showers, I went to the C.A.G. and had it changed. Actually, you owe your new name to the C.A.G. He told me that the name I had chosen for you – a lovely five word combination, if I do say so myself – included a series of letters, of which held specific definitions, that are classified as 'forbidden' on five of the twelve colonies. Do you want to keep going, Monkey Boy?" Starbuck's syrupy sweet voice was more lethal than one of her menacing tirades.
"No, ma'am," Monkey Boy said, her point hitting just the right place on his need for social survival.
"Now be a good little knuckle dragger and get your ass in the line up." Bad Ass Starbuck was back as she snapped her order in the comm system. Down shifting her excitement, she called out, "Branch out people and don't crowd. Give each other plenty of elbow room."
"Okay Kat. You can do this. Do you feel it?" Starbuck asked the nugget.
"Yeah, I feel it, Starbuck."
The thrill of the unknown stretched from cockpit to cockpit as the five Vipers hung suspended in space.
"PUNCH IT, KAT!"
Off her starboard bow, the strengthening glow of an engine burning as it built to maximum velocity spoke to her soul and had Starbuck thanking the Gods for blessing her with the love of flying.
Seeing Kat disappear around the far edge of the gas giant, a whoop in her headset as Kat began her sling shot brought a genuine thrill to every part of her body. Stamping down the urge to revel with her nugget, Starbuck was again the flight instructor these four had come to depend on.
"SKID MARK, PUNCH IT!" Starbuck commanded.
Counting backwards from ten to one, the same whoop that Kat hollered was repeated as the g-forces converged to push the young Tauron faster than he had ever flown before.
"GO HOT DOG!"
It was just her, Monkey Boy and the exhilaration that fuelled Hot Dog's jubilant, "FRAK ME!" Starbuck thought she could actually hear when he was slammed into his seat by the excess of forces.
"Get ready, Monkey Boy," Starbuck advised. Looking over at the other man, Starbuck saw nervous anticipation wrap around his bird. "Wait for it. Don't rush it. Just follow the flight plan and know that you own what you do. Everything else will come naturally, I promise."
"Okay, Starbuck." Monkey Boy settled into a more natural position in his seat and Starbuck could swear the whole demeanour of the Viper changed once his personal logic took a turn towards confidence.
"Three, two, one," Starbuck counted down. "FLY MONKEY BOY, FLY!"
Watching the last of her nugget class disappear around the planet, she mentally ran through a safety and systems check before flexing her fingers around the throttle of her Viper.
A war cry worthy of scattering a hundred enemy Raiders reverberated inside her cockpit and into the headsets of her students. Punching up the burners, the Old Man was right when he said the g-forces would break apart the bones of The Old Girl. As it was, she felt her cheeks being pushed down her throat. The pressure against her legs as she kept her feet on the pedals as she banked at an off-the-instruments speed only increased as she started her slingshot. Both ears popped as the life-support systems fought to maintain minimal safe limits and she felt like her ribs were actually pressed against her lungs as breathing became laboured. It became harder and harder to breathe out versus breathing in.
Running along the planet's equator she felt, rather than reading the display on her instruments, when she passed the planet's meridian. This was the most dangerous part, and the quickest. For a just a minute and a half, all directional capability would be sacrificed as the inertia dampeners kicked into over drive to keep the plane free of the planet's gravity and yet close enough to the surface of the atmosphere to use the power of the planet's gravity to push the bird to something just shy of faster-than-light.
Fifty-seven seconds to go. Looking ahead, all four of her people had made it and like good little nuggets, they had left her a neat little hole to slide into. In fifty-three seconds she thought her group would appreciate hearing what good little nuggets they were. On her DRAEDIS console, the familiar blip identifying Galactica was a beacon calling her home.
That is, until her DRAEDIS screen began to resemble a Picon snowstorm. Screw that – a Picon blizzard during a previous ice age.
An explosion from the planet's volatile surface blew a horizontal hole through one of inner rings circling the gas giant. A violent chain reaction spread from ring to ring – driving more and more super-heated, statically charged detritus and particles directly into her flight path.
She was flying right into the worst of it with both hands tied behind her back.
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