Another Way: Chapter 11
Enemy of My Enemy
Manacled, chained and leashed with a metal collar, Starbuck rolled her shoulders to alleviate a cramp as the Heavy Raider docked with the BaseStar.
Pushed and pulled at the same time down the gangplank, she shook her hair out of her face and took her mind off the wet squelching sounds her flight boots made as she crossed the organic matter that carpeted the flight deck by focusing on how much damage she could inflict before she was done 'redecorating'. She had promised that she would come willingly and without a fight. At no point had the parley they settled on include post-abduction behaviour. If anything, a sense of calm spread through out her mind and body as she prepared herself. Everyone was safe: Cally, Lee, the Old Man, and Helo – everyone. She did what she had signed on to do when she scrawled her name on the dotted line almost seven years ago.
He shocked her by using her 'other' name when she was least expecting it. The way she figured it, turn about was fair play.
Kicked to her knees, the smooth fabric of her flight suit suctioned to the moist decking as her body made contact. A lock of hair fell across her eyes even as a large shadow blocked her view; a gentle hand swept her bangs aside as a warm, brown gaze locked onto her hazel-green eyes.
"Hello, Kara."
"Hello, Zak. Or should I call you Anders?"
Taking a deep breath, she faced him like the demon he was, not the man she saw standing over her who shared the same face.
"After all, bouncing him was just like frakking you. I'm surprised it took me this long to figure it out. But then again, it was supposed to be, wasn't it? How many hours did you spend coaching him on how to act like you?" Sneering and making her voice as disparaging as possible, she added, "However long you spent with him, it obviously wasn't enough because he never took the 'downtown train', and you know how much I like to have my ticket punched by a decent 'conductor'."
"No one ever gave you enough credit Kara for that brain of yours. I've always told people that you were smarter than you looked and wilier than you let on." Zak continued to look down at her. "No one ever doubted how dangerous you are, though. But I think you might have forgotten that your claws have no affect on me, Persephone. I. Know. You."
"Don't call me that. My name is Starbuck." Kara ground out.
Memories, images, flashes of another life threatened to overwhelm her. Every time he spoke, a fresh wave washed over her, pulling at her need to stay in the moment, to focus on the fact that she was now a Cylon prisoner with no means of escape readily apparent. Stepping off the Heavy Raider, she had to stifle the shock of actually looking at the machine that she once promised to share the rest of her life with and marry. He looked like the Zak she knew, but that was where the similarities ended. He moved differently. His voice did not ring with the same inflections. The way he would have normally drawn her out of her foul moods with his easy smile or infectious laugh – or deflect one of her pissy attitudes with a moment of spontaneity was gone. In its place was a machine that had been created for one purpose: to bring her to her destiny - what ever the frak that was supposed to mean. Holding onto her anger, holding onto the devastation of her home world that she saw with her own eyes, holding onto the promise she made when she invoked Blood Rights to send this BaseStar to Hades was the only way she was going to do what needed to be done when the time came.
"Because, you see, I do not use those words flippantly." Undaunted by the way she slung her words at him, he kept the same tone that he used when he first greeted her. "I loved you. And, if it is God's Will, then you and I will be together again. If not, God will not abandon you, Kara. He loves you. Through Him, you will see why you have suffered and what a gift it is to be moulded, fired, broken and reshaped by His hands to do His works."
"What am I? Some sort of pin-up girl you Cylons fall in love with at the drop of a hat? First you, then Leoben – who's next? As interesting as girl-love is, Six is not my type. She looks feminine, but she really is too butch for me to have a lasting relationship with, not to mention we would always be fighting over who would be on top." Her Starbuck smirk and a withering attitude carried her meanings. "And apparently you have developed a hearing problem since you did a full-body implant on the tarmac, Zak. My. Name. Is. Starbuck."
His hand came down and for a moment Starbuck thought she had pushed his buttons enough to provoke him to strike her. She needed him to become like others in her life that used physical punishments to drive their points home. Once they crossed that line, she could re-classify where he fell in her life, putting him a different category, changing the way she looked at him. Obliterating their history as far as she was concerned. Instead, he knuckled the soft skin underneath her chin and gently tipped her head up so that she had nowhere else to look but in his eyes – he knew what she was trying to do and stopped her cold.
"And it is Starbuck who has kept you from your destiny. Kara, you are free of her now. I saw you, you know – when we were together." His fingers spread wide and he twisted his wrist so that he was now cradling her jaw line. If it were any other setting, the word 'tender' would be the adjective used to described him. "You thought you only let me see Starbuck. Don't misunderstand my perceptions as weaknesses; Starbuck may have a part to play in this before God completely reveals his intentions. In a way, it is because of her that you are here today. Well, among others. It was your fear that made me let you go when you returned to Caprica. Now, God has told me it is time for you to conquer your fears and be the instrument you were created to become."
Tilting his head, a certain level of ruthlessness wrapped itself around him even as he talked to her like she was a three year old trying to understand how someone can have a first, middle and last name all at the same time.
"Your name is Persephone, Kara and Mine."
Stepping away, Starbuck watched him nod to the Centurions who held the reins to her bonds. Gagging slightly as she was dragged to her feet, her flight suit pulling away from the decking with difficulty, she took a look around her.
Rows of Raiders hung from the ceiling like bats in a cave. The Heavy Raider was being moved into a staging area and already Centurions were pulling out fuel hoses to prep the ship for a future launch. Everything was neat, orderly and a sensation of the Cylon world being very antiseptic pricked at the analytical side of her mind.
Zak's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"I have had more than two years to prepare for you, Persephone and they have not been spent lightly."
Zak motioned to the guards one more time. Now she was being pushed-pulled out of the hanger bay.
"Where are you taking me?" Starbuck asked. The sounds of her flight boots tearing furrows into the organic decking had Zak stopping and turning to face her one more time.
"Just wait until you see what awaits you. Your life is going to change and become what it was meant to be." Falling instep beside her, Zak added, "I am going to make sure we do things right this time. God has promised his children their rightful place and so it shall come to pass."
Breathing might be difficult with the metal collar around her neck, but her private voices was working loud and clear as the hanger bay fell behind them and she was manoeuvred deeper into the BaseStar.
"Who knows, Kara – maybe God will choose to bless us with a second child."
We'll just see about that, won't we?
Bsg Xxx Bsg Xxx Bsg Xxx Bsg
He worked.
He ate.
He went to the Physical Training Centre every day.
He flew his CAPs, oversaw refuelling runs, organized security details and did his job every day.
He even slept.
When he worked, he worked alone.
When Captain Adama ate, it was either by himself or with Helo as there was little room at the table due to the star charts, papers and diagrams layered around him for much else.
When Captain Adama worked out, snippets of conversations, extrapolations or astral-calculations would hiss out over his teeth as he punished the speed bag and ran hard, uphill, on the treadmill.
CAPs found Captain Adama behind the stick. Captain Adama set up protocols to ensure his people stayed safe.
The only time he gave anyone a clue that Captain Adama had once been Lee Adama or even Apollo was when he went to bed or tended to personal business.
As CAG, it is his job to clean out lockers when pilots are 'no longer with the Fleet'. He oversees the auctions. He assigns rack space.
Hot Dog, after a moment of empathy, found himself the bearer of five extra maintenance shifts when he quietly asked if Apollo would like him to clear out Starbuck's stuff for him, if it would it make it any easier on the Senior Pilot. And that was before Helo pulled the younger man aside and asked Constanza if he liked walking up-right without the aid of a foot up his ass.
Not one item of Kara's ever went to auction. Her triad cards still held her last shuffle. Her shower kit rested along side his. The wooden box with its velvet wrapped contents stayed exactly as she left them. Her boots stood along side his larger shoes. The brass on her dress greys clinked against the pins on the sash that crossed his own dress uniform whenever he jangled the two garments together when reaching for something he needed. One locker to one person, one person to one rack – that was the ratio built into the bunkrooms on a Battlestar. And that was still the case because Lee moved his belongings into her space; Starbuck and Apollo were the different sides of the same person. The small cubby-holes in her rack-space were crowded as he mingled their precious few mementos when he stopped sleeping in his rack, crossed the bunkroom and settled into hers.
The only thing he moved was her picture of the three of them. It was old. Older than he cared to think about, because it was from another life, another time when his biggest worries were centred around his career, his brother and the woman he tried to keep at arm's length. The photo was creased, and worn, and there were smudges from her fingers tracing each of their faces. But he kept the picture the way she had it; folded so that it only showed her and him. In a way, it was them: each of them looking away from the other while making sure each of them were close enough to touch, if they wanted too. This, he pressed smooth against the 'roof' of his – hers – their – rack. He needed her to be exactly where he left her when he closed his eyes because it was the only way he could be sure she would still be there when he woke up in the morning.
He still mingled with the people in his command. Or rather, they made sure he stayed connected to them, even if the Triad games were less boisterous. The MP in the brig did not have his favourite tenant in hack but took the time to tell Captain Adama that her cot was waiting for her the instant got back. The Chief's Special Brew wasn't passed around with the same amount of mirth. Not that their lives were put on hold, or that there was a pervasive feeling of mourning crowding the corners of the rec rooms. She was a prisoner of war, not dead. Her Viper had been recovered and towed into the hanger bay, the only time her name plate came off was when the Chief and Cally took it down to replace it with one that depicted her new rank.
Even knowing that all she had to do was come back didn't prevent people from noticing that there was a certain sparkle missing from the Battlestar.
That the element of unpredictability was no longer in the air, suspended inside a cloud of blue tinged cigar smoke. Sure, people played pranks on one another and egos still inflated to the point where the deck crews joked about the rivets popping from the strain, but the good natured arguments over who was Top Gun ceased. As if any of them could put a picture of a BaseStar on the side of their Viper. Drinking was still a favourite past-time, drinking games still went on way too long, but it was different now. Not sombre, but calmer. The only personality anyone felt when someone walked into the room before they were seen was the CAG's. No one else made anyone else's head turn just by entering the room.
Where he spent the remainder of his time was no secret to anyone on Galactica: Pilot's Ready Room. The answers were there, in the length of celluloid and digital recordings of one pilot giving herself up so that humanity might live to struggle another day.
Tonight, he was meeting with Helo even as he reviewed the notes he took when he got together with Colonel Tigh. The man had fought against the Cylons and had forty years to think about them – he had to have some ideas about what made a Cylon tick. The XO was one of the staunchest people to talk about Starbuck in the present-tense. He knew what Captain Adama knew – they would not do what they had done just to kill her once they had her.
Answer: The thing you have to understand about machines, Captain, is that they only do as they are told - nothing more, nothing less. Cylons never do anything without a plan.
Capt. Adama leaned back and slung an arm across the back of his chair as he remembered watching his father's oldest friend recall moments where Saul did not think he would live to see his next birthday. The man spoke the truth. There is always a goal, a need, an accomplishment behind every Cylon action. Just because it was not laid out in front of him in big block letters did not mean it wasn't true. Tapping the ends of his pen against the table top, he looked back at the empty chair that previously held the older man. Only, he had treated their time together as more of a debriefing than a brain-picking session. War College taught him many things. Among which, the more information you had, the more contingencies can be counter measured.
Question: What do you think they want?
Answer: To chase us across galaxy after frakking galaxy until every single man, woman and child is dead.
Tigh's mouth had moved without him even having to think about the answer to that question.
Tapping the ends of his pen against the table top again, he reached for the remote controlling the audio-visual equipment. Helo was late but that didn't mean Capt. Adama was going to wait for Agathon to get there before getting started.
It was always the same procedure. Date and time stamp his notes. Watch the playback as if it were the first time he was seeing the recordings. Once finished, he would bring out his sheaf of previous notes and painstakingly compare them to the most current editions and see what new piece of information he dredged. He had learned to turn off his anger at Starbuck for doing what she did over the course of the last six weeks while watching the videotapes. But that didn't mean he didn't curse her name when all the little things she did to make his job easier as a CAG, all the big things she did to frak with his life as Lee and everything in between she did to his Captainship didn't happen. Or the transition from seeing her do something selfish – as if she were the only one to save the Fleet – to something idiotic – doing something only she would do to save the Fleet – was any easier.
He had his father to thank for that.
Adama never stopped him from watching the recordings. Adama never questioned him about his latest efficiency kick. Adama looked the other way every time his son paled in the wake of another FTL jump. He did call his son into his quarters and tell Lee – not Captain Adama – that, in no uncertain terms did he have the cornerstone on grief, anger or self-reproach. Adama was very clear that everyone was beating themselves up over what happened, that no one could have foreseen what had happened and that the last person in the universe that could be considered predictable was Kara. There was no way to know what was going to happen because she didn't want anybody to know what was going on.
Brushing invisible lint from a fresh piece of paper, Lee started to make another list of questions.
Picking up speed the more he thought and wrote, he almost missed Karl letting himself into the Ready Room.
"I'm late – I know." Lowering himself into a chair, Helo skipped formalities as he turned the folder he was carrying flat and upside down against the tabletop.
"What's up? Anything I need to know about?" Lee switched from theorist to CAG with a flick of his eyes.
"Yeah – but it will keep." Looking at Lee's finger clench his pen with whitened knuckles he added, "Really – it is nothing urgent. Kat stopped me in the hallway and, well, she took a while to spit out her question." Nodding at the page nearly filled with Lee's thoughts and ideas, he asked, "Watcha got, Apollo?"
Helo – Karl – was the only one Lee tolerated hearing his or Kara's given name roll off their tongue besides his father. Though, truth be told, the few times Lee had said her name in Adama's presence, the Old Man seemed suddenly older and reflexively pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. The same went for his other name; Helo and the Commander were never corrected for using his call sign, unlike the rest of the crew. If he was in the air, that was one thing; that was work and responsibility and regulations. But out of the cockpit, he was Captain Adama and expected to be addressed as such. It wasn't like he could tell people that hearing his call-sign come from someone else's mouth made him hear her tease him about breaking his ship or remind him she was in stealth ship and that he shouldn't be able to find her because she was in a stealth ship. And that was just not the place for him to be, as a leader, when someone was just trying to talk to him. Hearing everyone else use Starbuck or Captain Thrace to refer to Kara was fine – no problems there. If anything, it made him smile because even her more embarrassing exploits, dumbass stunts or toe-curling acrobatics were recounted by crew members as a matter of having bragging rights to having seen her pull one stunt or another in person. It was a double standard, but it was his and everyone else could go frak themselves if they had a problem with it or him.
Dropping the pen and tipping back his chair until two legs lifted off the ground Lee leaned forward and re-balanced the chair.
"Let's try something different, Helo."
"Okay – what are you thinking?" Pulling a pen from his back pocket and helping himself to some of Lee's paper, he got ready to follow Apollo's lead.
"Let's take it from another point of view."
"The Cylons?" Helo clarified. "We've been over that already."
"No," Lee clicked his pen several times before launching into his idea, "Kara's."
Attempting some levity, Helo snarked, "Thinking like Starbuck can be dangerous to one's health, Apollo. I thought you knew that?"
"That is why we're going to look at things like Kara saw them, not Starbuck." Cracking a half-hearted smile and ribbing his best friend who couldn't clock him for adding, "I don't think the quartermaster has enough brain-bleach in stock if that happened, do you?"
Tucking away his own smile for another time, Helo stood up and joined Lee at the dry-erase board. By the set in the younger man's shoulders, it was easy to see that playtime was definitely over. Wiping it clean, Lee drew a long line the length of the board and made a heavier mark at the far end of the line.
"This is right now, six weeks later." Backtracking, he made another thick mark. "This was then." A series of heavy marks were added. "This is Kobol, coming back from Caprica, leaving for Caprica, the tylium raid, Leoben's interrogation, her crash landing, and this," the other end of the time line was cut-off as he put the cap back on the marker. "This is the end of the worlds. Somehow, between then and now, the Cylons developed some sort of fixation with Kara."
"Says who?" Helo wasn't being flip, he was thinking out loud. "Who says it started with the end of the worlds? What if they were gunning for her way before that?"
"How far back are you thinking?" Lee asked. This was an interesting tangent. He always suspected that it took a few dozen Raider-kills for Starbuck to show up on the Cylon radar. What if he was wrong? No, he had already considered that, which was why his timeline started with the Holocaust and not Kara's academy or Pyramid days. "No way, Karl – how would they find her, one woman, among the billions of people who made up the population of the colonies?"
"I don't know – maybe they were watching someone else and all they had to do was wait to see who would show up?"
"Like who, Helo?"
"I don't know, Apollo. Think of it as a blind date. You know she is coming, she is going to be at a certain place at a certain time, but you don't know what she looks like. What do you do? You get there early, you stay put until who ever she is shows up at the appointed time at the appointed place." Helo explained.
"Okay – let's come back to that later." Turning back to the board and popping the cap off the marker again, he added two more items to the board.
Helo read the words as quickly as they appeared: Persephone, Caster.
"Who is Persephone?" Lee asked, even though he knew the answer.
"Kara," Helo responded automatically. The story of Persephone, the only daughter of Demeter, kidnapped by Hades and because she ate of the fruit of the underworld, a compromise was struck where it was decided that she was to spend half the year on earth, with her mother, and the other half of the year as queen of the underworld played out in his imagination.
"Why?" Lee needed to hear Helo's reasoning.
"Because when she answered, Caster didn't blow her up." Helo justified his logic.
"So that makes Caster the Heavy Raider?" Something about that question did not ring true with Lee.
"Why would a Heavy Raider be called Caster?" Helo following what Lee was saying, but it wasn't clicking with him as of yet.
"You said it was."
"When?"
"Just now – when you said that the Heavy Raider blew up Ambush but not Starbuck," Lee explained.
Seeing his point, Helo countered, "What about this – what if the Caster was aboard the Heavy Raider and not the Heavy Raider itself?"
"What if The Caster was on the BaseStar and told the Heavy Raider to blow up anyone who said they were Persephone but wasn't?" Lee took Helo's idea one step further and applied what he learned from Tigh about how Cylons operated.
"That would have to mean that Caster and Persephone knew one another in order for Caster not to be fooled by Ambush's lie." Helo connected the dots but the picture was still not complete.
A sudden thought had Lee thinking inward before he shared his idea.
"Is it; The Caster – as in a ship's name or a fishing term, like throwing your line, trying to catch something? Or is a call sign; Caster?"
Helo popped both his eyebrows at those questions. "Both work, but based on the fact that he was hailing Persephone, I don't think it is unreasonable for it to be a call-sign of sorts."
"And who gives out call signs?"
"Flight instructors, mates and stories that will never be told to your children," Helo said.
"Kara gives out call signs." Lee threaded a few more dots and drew a ragged breath over his teeth. "Oh, Gods, Karl – Kara gave Caster his call-sign! That is why she knew him that was why he knew her."
"But Kara has been Starbuck since the Academy. She has never been designated with any other name," Helo picked up the role of trying to poke holes in Lee's logic. Remembering the triad game where Starbuck clocked Tigh, he said out loud what his memory replayed. "She said she got it after she got thrown into hack for drunken and disorderly conduct."
"So you were right Karl, this does go back before the end of the worlds." Lee conceded. He felt a chill run under his skin at the concept of Kara being marked when the plans for the holocaust of the Colonies was being planned by the Cylons.
Standing up, Helo started to pace. "What if we were wrong about something else, Lee?"
"Like what?"
"You have listened to the recordings how many times?" Helo looked at Lee as the captain waved his hands signalling that he lost track of how many times he watched the movies and said, "Nearly every day, right?"
"Yeah – pretty much." Lee agreed.
"Have you ever noticed that Kara says Cast-or and it is everyone else who calls 'him' Cast-er?"
"She does pronounce it Castor – doesn't she?"
Helo nodded; Lee's mind was working a parsec-a-minute and he knew better than to interrupt – just like Kara.
"Kara – Persephone – knows Castor. Knowing that Castor is a Cylon, and that the Cylons have been after her for a while now, since when – Caprica?" Lee looked to Helo for confirmation.
"Before that – Kara said Leoben alluded to her destiny and Sharon confirmed it on Caprica as I was patching her up, just before Starbuck brought us to Kobol."
"Right – she was shot and the bullet knicked her kidney, right?"
Lee's question was rhetorical, but it took Helo a moment to make up his mind about something.
"We rescued her, you know."
"Rescued who?" Helo's sudden change in topic caught him off guard.
"Kara – we rescued Kara on Caprica. Well, she rescued herself – for the most part. By the time we got there, she was face down in the dirt with Centurions firing on her. We laid down some cover and then Sharon swooped in with a Heavy Raider she stole and air-lifted all of us to safety. But I re-bandaged her myself – she suffered more than a bullet wound. It looks like she was operated on, Lee."
If Lee ever needed Captain Adama it was right now. Hearing what Karl just told him would have made Lee throw up and Apollo ready to lead a strike team to obliterate into the Cylon home world for what they did to his wingman. Captain Adama could be counted on to be cold, analytical and protective all at the same time.
"To what end? Why would they do that? What does she have that…" Cottle's addendum came into sharp focus in his mind's eye even as his voice trailed off.
"I don't know, she wouldn't tell me. And she said that she was the only one who could protect herself from them." Helo was holding something back, but Lee did press the larger man for more details. Sharing what he just offered obviously breeched some level of confidentiality between Karl and Kara.
"So why, after all this, knowing that Castor is a Cylon, that the Cylons had orchestrated this elaborate trap just for the sake of capturing her, why did she do it?"
"Because she was protecting us," Helo answered automatically.
Lee's mind whirred into overdrive.
"She was, but on several different levels."
"Spit it out, Lee."
"She knew who he was, he knew who she was. She got the Fleet away from the Cylons, but by doing so, she also kept Castor from the Fleet." Turning to the board, Lee looped several circles around the names Persephone and Castor. "Do you know why she did that?"
For the second time, Helo let Lee go where his mind was leading him.
"She could have ended her own life, or had me order one of the Vipers to fire on her after she ejected but before she was hauled on board. Hell, we could have blown that Heavy Raider out of the sky before it docked with the BaseStar."
"So why didn't you, Apollo?"
"But she told me that she was releasing me from our end of our agreement. She wanted to be – she needed to be – alive to uphold her end of the bargain."
"She struck an accord, Apollo. She gave her word: her for the Fleet." Taking a seat and propping his ankle against his knee, he sat back and dared Lee to contradict the magnitude of Kara's sacrifice.
"No – I am not being clear. Listen to me Karl." Lee leaned forward and braced his fingertips against the tabletop. "What she did, very few of us could ever say we would do if we were in her shoes. But it was a smoke screen, Karl. It was a secondary objective. Saving the Fleet was her priority, yes, but she was running a defensive play at the same time she laying down the Codes of Conduct."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that she kept Castor as far from the Fleet as she could because we know who Castor is, Karl."
Lee's words filled every square inch of the Ready Room.
Helo stood up and in one smooth motion kicked a chair and watched it tumble and crash. Only when the chair came to rest did he turn and look at Apollo; his act of frustration didn't knock the rigidness out of his stance.
"Frak, Lee – not we as in the Fleet. We know as in you, me and the Old Man know who Castor is."
Lee opened his mouth again in the wake of Karl's insight. Only this time, it was more of a prayer to the woman who resided in the warrior.
"Come on Kara – help us find you before it is too late."
I need you.