Chapter 2

Rough Ride

Mythological Sirens are sometimes said to be the daughters of the Muse Porchus and the river god Achelous. Given wings by the goddess Demeter to search for her daughter Persephone after Persephone was taken to the underworld by the god Hades, Sirens later came to be seen as enchantresses who lured men to their doom by their sweet song. In modern times the term Siren is often used to indicate any form of temptation.

- Norton, Colonial Gods and Myths

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The pilot wasn't kidding about a rough ride. The first ten minutes were smooth, but then for twenty-five minutes it was like being on a violent roller coaster that went not just up and down but side to side as well. Kara and Karl both tightened their seat harnesses and then tightened them again. Once they were slung sideways against the restraints so violently that Kara marveled they even held.

When she could get her breath again, she managed to say, "Ow!"

Karl's face was twisted in pain as he rubbed his shoulder where it had hit the side of the ship. "Are you okay?"

"I think so."

"The debris from those basestars and…and our battlestars must be really bad out there. This guy's got to be a hell of a pilot to have made it this far."

She was sorry now for what she had thought about him earlier.

"He was a Viper pilot. They're the best there is."

Just when she thought she couldn't take it any longer, everything smoothed out, as smooth as when they had started.

She looked at Karl. "What happened?"

"We must have cleared all the debris. We made it." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "We made it this far. Maybe we'll make it all the way to Caprica."

The pilot came out of the cockpit. "Sorry, that was a lot worse than I thought it would be. You both okay?" As soon as they nodded he went back inside.

"I'm going up front," Kara said. "He'll probably send me back, but I just want to see what it looks like up there."

"Go ahead. I'm going to try to sleep."

As she unbuckled her harness, he turned his face to the window again. She didn't know if he wanted to sleep or just to be alone.

There was no door leading to the cockpit, just a narrow opening. She approached it and saw the pilot's arm on the armrest of the left-hand seat.

"Can I come in?"

Without turning around to look at her he pointed to the co-pilot's seat. "Don't touch anything. And fasten the harness. When you're sitting in that seat and we're in flight, you need to be buckled in."

The cockpit was a lot smaller than she thought it would be. The opening between the two seats was really narrow. There were gauges and small computer screens and switches everywhere, even on the ceiling. She thought of her Viper pedal car again with its three painted gauges. For the first time she realized what kind of knowledge and skill it took to fly a ship like this one.

She turned sideways and carefully slid past the armrest. As she settled into the seat, she got a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. It felt good…like she belonged there. She pulled the straps over her shoulders, buckled herself in and made adjustments until everything was tight.

"Does a Viper cockpit look like this?" Kara asked.

"A Viper only has one seat."

"I know that. I mean all this other stuff."

"It's got some of these same instruments, but it's also got guns and missiles. This ship doesn't."

"I know that, too."

Outside the glass the deep black of space stretched, punctuated by the twinkle of stars.

"Cool," she said. "This is totally cool."

"You wouldn't have said that twenty minutes ago."

"I wish I'd been up here then."

He looked and sounded tired, but still managed just the ghost of a smile. "No you don't."

"Why didn't you go around it?"

"Not nearly enough fuel. We're going to be cutting it close as it is. If Picon and Caprica weren't both in the Helios Alpha system, we would have been screwed."

"So why didn't you just jump past all that radioactive junk?"

"This ship doesn't have a faster-than-light drive. They're really limited on smaller ships outside the military. We can't have every private craft out there jumping around the Colonies like a bunch of grasshoppers. There's a lot that goes into plotting an FTL jump. If you're off even a fraction of a degree you could wind up inside a skyscraper instead of fifteen miles above it. Even a lot of the larger ships don't have FTL drives. I was just lucky to find one that had N-class radiation shielding."

"Did you really steal it from a drug lord?"

"I really stole it from a drug lord."

"Wow," Kara said. "That is so radically cool."

"I'm glad you approve."

"Have you ever been to Caprica before?"

"Quite a few times."

"What's it like?"

"It's a beautiful planet. Coming in from space you see the blue oceans first. The area around Caprica City has a nice climate."

The pilot leaned back and closed his eyes for a few minutes. She was afraid he was going to go to sleep.

"Don't you need to be flying the ship right now?"

"We're still almost four hours out from Caprica so I've got it on autopilot. Right now I'm letting the computer handle everything. It's been resting for the last half-hour."

She finally noticed that his shirtsleeves were rolled up several turns, the navy tie knot was loosened and his top shirt button undone. As he leaned over the left side of his seat, she saw a deep sweat stain down the right side of his shirt. He fumbled around and finally came up with a silver flask.

He unscrewed the cap that was attached to the flask by a short chain. He pinned it against the neck with his index finger. "Cheers," he said before he turned it up and drank. Then he leaned his head back against the seat's headrest and closed his eyes. He sat that way for so long that she thought he'd gone to sleep. Carefully she grasped the flask. He opened his eyes.

"My turn," she said.

He grinned. The color was back in his face now. "I don't think so."

"Come on. Quit acting like my mother. I've tasted it before."

"When?"

"Me and Karl took one of his father's beers down to the field behind the base one night earlier this summer. I thought it tasted awful. Yuck. Even Karl couldn't drink but a few sips. We poured it out."

"This isn't beer."

"I know that. You don't keep beer in a flask. What is it? Bourbon? Karl's dad has a friend who drinks bourbon out of a flask. He comes over sometimes and Sergeant Agathon and him work on his boat motor. He always has a flask with him. Karl said it was bourbon."

"You ever tasted bourbon?"

"No."

He handed the flask to her. "This isn't bourbon, either. Go ahead, but make it a little sip. It's a lot stronger than beer. After what you've been through tonight, though, you deserve it."

She took the flask, grasping it like he had with her index finger against the chain. She turned it up and thought she had just swallowed liquid fire. She coughed and shuddered, the feeling going all the way through her.

When she got her breath she asked, "What is this?"

"My own special blend."

"You made it?"

"Not made, mixed. Part ambrosia, part smooth aged whiskey, part 80-proof peach brandy. I call it a Siren's Kiss. Bet you don't know what a Siren is, do you?"

"Beautiful women who sit on rocks near the ocean and sing and cause sailors to crash their ships. Some famous general made his men put beeswax in their ears so they couldn't hear the Sirens' songs, but he wanted to hear them so he had his men tie him to the mast of his ship so he couldn't steer them into the rocks."

"I'm impressed. I heard you weren't much of a scholar."

"I may not study a lot but I listen in class when the teacher is talking about interesting stuff."

The pilot smiled. "The general's name was Odysseus by the way."

"You know it's nothing but a myth. A stupid one if you ask me. Why would a sailor crash his ship just because some women were singing? Duh. That is totally lame."

"Not every myth should have such a literal interpretation. Sometimes a Siren's song…or kiss…might be a way of looking at temptation…something that can kick your butt if you're not careful. Cards….drink…a woman."

"Whatever." The drink's aftertaste was getting sweeter. She thought she could taste peaches. She started to turn it up again. "This is pretty good."

"No you don't." He grabbed the flask. "I said one sip. This stuff is near-lethal, especially on an empty stomach."

"I ate over at Karl's house tonight. His mom is a super good cook. So my stomach's not empty."

"Mine is. I missed dinner tonight. I probably shouldn't be doing this."

"Why didn't you eat? Was the hot-shot Viper pilot afraid he would hurl in the cockpit?"

He looked at her and gave a short laugh. "I was busy stealing this ship about that time."

"Right. That sounds good, anyway."

"Damn, you've got a smart mouth. Does your mother let you talk to her like that?"

"No."

"I didn't think so."

"How do you know so much about my mom?"

"I've known her for fifteen years. I learned a couple of things about her during that time."

He turned up the flask again looking at her the whole time before screwing the top back on and slipping it into the seat pocket.

The cockpit lights were dim, but she got a better look at his eyes. They were green just like her own. A crazy thought formed in her mind that she immediately dismissed. So he'd known her mom for fifteen years and they'd kissed but that didn't mean they'd…no way.

He was still looking at her in a way that Kara couldn't interpret. "What?"

"It's just weird. That's all. It's the end of the frakking world and I've got a thirteen-year-old girl sitting in my copilot's seat sharing my flask with me. It's not exactly like I imagined I'd leave Picon for the last time."

Kara decided that her mom must have told him she was thirteen.

"So you really were a Viper pilot?"

"I was."

"During the First War?"

"The last three years of it and a couple of years after it ended, right up until I lost my leg."

"So how old are you now?"

"How old do you think I am?"

Kara rolled her eyes. "I don't know. Do I look like an oracle or something?"

"Thirty-eight. Ancient, huh?"

"My mom's thirty-eight. She's not ancient. So why can't you fly a Viper anymore?"

"It takes two good arms and two really good legs. After the accident the docs told me right away I'd never fly a Viper again."

"But you are flying. I know that's a pilot's uniform. I've seen them before when we were at the Picon spaceport."

"I was flying for a private charter service…taking corporate types around the Colonies, movies stars, anybody who had the money and didn't want to fly commercial. Thanks to the Cylons I guess I'm unemployed."

"So how'd you manage to lose your leg after the war?"

"You're not afraid to ask the tough questions, are you? How old are you? How'd you lose your leg?" He was smiling when he said it, though.

She shrugged. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine with me. You're the one who mentioned it earlier."

"No, it's okay. I came out of the First War in one piece. I started flying off a battlestar just before I turned nineteen. I was twenty-two when the war ended. I should have died a hundred times over out there, but I always pulled it out of the fire somehow. Maybe that's why I was such a cocky bastard and thought nothing could happen to me. To tell a really long story in a couple of sentences, I had a motorcycle. I like speed. I was stupid. Goodbye leg."

"I like speed, too. Karl and me take our skateboards down to the Skate Park a few blocks off base. There're some good ramps there. I like to go up to the high one. When you hit the bottom you're going so fast. It's awesome."

"You wear your helmet and knee and elbow pads every time, don't you?"

"I'm not stupid."

"That's good."

The sweet liquid fire from the Siren's Kiss was spreading though her veins. She grinned sheepishly. "Sometimes we hitch behind a car to get to the Base Exchange. We go even faster then."

"Holy Hera! Do you want to get run over? Look at me and see the result of being stupid. Don't ever do that again!"

"Not much chance of that, is there? My skateboard's back on Picon." They sat in silence for a few minutes. She was sure that he knew she would get around to the next question sooner or later. "So where did you meet my mom?"

"In a rehab hospital. She was learning to use her left arm again. I was getting a new left leg, a nice shiny metal one. The military probably took it off some junked Cylon over twenty years ago. You know, all things considered that's a really bad joke now. I should probably quit saying it. I got another leg two years ago. It looks real. It feels a lot better and works a lot better, too."

"My mother didn't have to go to a rehab hospital after she was wounded on Tauron. She was in the regular hospital a week and then she came home. So how about telling me the truth this time."

"I am telling you the truth. Tauron was the second time she was wounded. I'm talking about the first time. She was already married then, but you hadn't come along yet. Don't tell me you never saw the scar on her left shoulder? From here to about here."

Using his right index finger he traced a line on his shirt arching from the round part of his left shoulder diagonally across the front and halfway down his chest.

"Duh. I lived in the same house with her. What do you think?"

She wasn't about to tell this stranger that she'd never seen her mother in anything less than a t-shirt and shorts. Skimpy clothing was not the order of the day in the Thrace household.

"That was a dumb question, wasn't it? Your mom talked me off the ledge a couple of times, figuratively speaking. I didn't think there was anything left for me. Before the accident there was only one thing I loved more than drinking good whiskey or making love to a beautiful woman and that was flying a Viper. I lived for flying a Viper. After the accident I was a twenty-four-year-old washed-up ex-Viper pilot who didn't much care whether he lived or died. Sassy convinced me I had something to live for."

"Who's Sassy?"

"That's my nickname for your mother. She calls me Flyboy. She was the only one in that rehab hospital who wasn't afraid of what I was going to do next. She's the only one who didn't feel sorry for me. Didn't care that I was an officer and she was enlisted. When I was being a jerk to the staff at the hospital, which was a lot of the time, she'd get right up in my face and dress me down like I was a raw recruit."

He leaned back, shut his eyes for a minute and smiled. "Of course getting in my face is a figure of speech, too, since she's about a foot shorter than I am."

Kara frowned and tried to imagine her mother talking anyone off a ledge. She couldn't imagine her mother saying that many words at one time, but she could easily imagine her mother dressing somebody down. She could picture that just fine, even somebody a foot taller.

The pilot was talking slower and softer now like Karl's dad after he'd had a few beers.

"The night before she was discharged from rehab she came into my room. I'd been a total jerk that day. Chewed out the guy who was helping me with the new leg. Told everybody again how I wished I had died in the accident. I knew your mom and everybody else was really tired of putting up with me and my attitude. I was lying there in the dark trying to decide how I was going to do it, whether I was going to wait until I was discharged or try to do it right there in the hospital."

"Do what?"

He pointed his index finger at his temple and made a motion with his thumb like he was pulling a trigger.

"You mean kill yourself?"

"That's what I was seriously thinking about. Anyway, Sassy comes in and gets right up on the bed, kind of straddles my chest, and says since I want to die so bad she's going to do me one last favor and help me out. She jerks the pillow out from under my head and pushes it down hard over my face. She isn't very big, but damn, she's strong. And it was already hard to breath with her sitting on my chest like that. Anyway, it took me about three seconds to realize I didn't really want to die that bad."

Kara could picture her mother shooting somebody, but not trying to smother somebody with a pillow. She was still trying to assimilate that information when the pilot went on.

"I started fighting and she says, 'Damn it, Flyboy, I'm trying to do you a favor. You keep fighting and I'm going to think you want to live.' Well I kept fighting and the next thing you know the pillow's on the floor and we're kissing and then we're…oh, damn, I shouldn't be telling you this. I'm sorry. Blame it on the Siren's Kiss and thirty-six hours without sleep. Damn, I'm sorry. I start talking sometime and don't know when to shut up."

"Don't sweat it," Kara said smugly. "I'm not dumb. I know exactly what you're talking about."

"Not from personal experience, I hope."

"Sex-ed class. I know all about it. But it's pretty gross if you want my opinion. I can understand what you said earlier about liking whiskey and flying a Viper, but this other thing, why would you and my mom want to do that? Yuck."

He leaned his head back against the seat and started laughing.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No, Kara. I'm not laughing at you. I'm sorry. Don't pay any attention to me. I shouldn't have had that second drink. I'm going to shut up now."

"So how did my mom get wounded the first time?"

He sounded genuinely surprised. "She never told you?"

Kara shook her head.

"A new recruit was fooling around with what he thought was an unloaded assault rifle. He pulled the trigger. The round hit her shoulder and shattered the joint. She spent nearly three months after it was replaced learning to use her left arm again. It took a couple of surgeries, too. Military wanted to give her a medical discharge, but she wouldn't take it. She wouldn't give up. It didn't matter how much it hurt. I can still see her face as white as chalk from the pain while she did the exercises. She's a tough lady, your mom, tough and beautiful, a lethal combination for a guy like me."

"What does that mean?"

"It means…it means I'm really attracted to her."

"Oh."

"She was discharged the morning after she came into my room. She didn't even come tell me goodbye. I realized that night that I was in love with her and probably had been for months. I'd just been so wrapped up in feeling sorry for myself I couldn't see it. All I could think about after that was getting to the point I could be discharged, too, so I could see her. I knew she wouldn't come back to see me. I knew if I wanted to see her again, it was all up to me. She knew it, too."

"So I guess you did see her again."

"Oh, yeah. She'd been married to Dreilide Thrace maybe four, five years at the time. I tried to get her to leave him. She wouldn't. They'd been together since tenth grade. I'd get mad at her and see other women. She'd get mad at me and say she was going to work on her marriage. It never lasted."

"So do you have a lot of girlfriends?"

He hesitated for a few moments. "Whenever I was part of your mother's life, there was never anybody else. She's the only one I've ever loved. The only one I wanted to marry. She just wouldn't have me. Even after her husband left, she still said no. She told me that once was enough for her."

"They fought a lot. Were they fighting about you? Were you the reason he left?"

"I don't know. Sassy and I never talked about it. We should have, but we didn't. Hell, I think he'd been gone a couple of months before she even told me. Most of the time we didn't do a lot of talking. She didn't do a lot of talking. I talk too much sometimes. Did you miss him after he left?"

"Not really. He was gone most nights playing with his band or doing concerts and stuff. He slept during the day so I had to be quiet. He'd come out of the bedroom and yell at me if I woke him up. Other than that I didn't see him much. He never came to my ball games or anything like that. We weren't close, not like Karl and his dad are close."

"This Karl's a good kid? You trust him?"

"He's my best friend."

"You don't have any girlfriends so you can talk and giggle about clothes and boys and wearing makeup and stuff like that?"

"Are you kidding me?" The disdain in her voice was clear. "Boys. Yuck. Except Karl. He's like my brother."

"You'll change your mind about boys one day."

"Ha. You just keep believing that."

Again there was a minute or two of silence. Finally she blurted, "This thing you and my mom were doing, did you ever…did you ever make a baby? Because my eyes are green just like yours."

The pilot sat for a long time before he answered her. "Your mom told me I should just go ahead and tell you. She said if I didn't that you'd figure it out. She was right. So to answer your question, Kara, your mom and I made a beautiful baby. We made you, and you're the only person who owns a bigger piece of my heart than she does. You have from the first minute I saw you."

At least it made sense to her now why this pilot had risked his life to steal a drug lord's ship and take her across the stars to safety. He was her father, her real father. She had a funny feeling in her chest, thinking that someone cared that much about her. It made her feel like she was going to cry. And she hardly ever cried.

She turned and looked directly in his eyes. It was almost like looking into a mirror. "Ever since I was a little girl I've wanted to be a Viper pilot. Now I know why."

He reached over, took her hand and squeezed it. She wasn't going to cry, but when she saw him struggle with what she had just said, and then saw the tears in his eyes, she couldn't help it. She wanted to be tough and strong like her mother, but when she saw she'd made her father cry, her face crumpled and she started crying too.

He used his shirtsleeve to wipe his eyes. "Damn, I'm sorry I made you cry. I wouldn't make you cry for anything. I should have handled this better. Everything happened so fast and I was so busy getting this ship that I didn't have any time to think about what I was going to say to you."

She made herself stop crying and dried her eyes on the bottom of her t-shirt.

"No, I'm okay. I'm just not as tough as my mom. She never cries."

"You're every bit as tough as your mom and just as beautiful, too."

He reached for the flask again and this time he handed it to her first. It went down easier this time. She passed it back to him.

"The first time I saw you, Sassy brought you to my apartment. You were maybe four or five months old. I hadn't seen her in a year. It was one of those times she was trying to make things work with Dreilide, and there was no way that was going to happen with me in the picture. It damn near killed me, but I left her alone."

He turned up the flask and drank. "I opened the door and there she stood holding a baby. I must have looked as surprised as I felt because she held you out to me and said, 'Before you say anything, Flyboy, look at her eyes.' You reached your chubby little arms out to me and gave me a great big smile. You had my heart even before I saw your green eyes."

"But you…you stayed away. Even after my…he left."

"I stayed away because that's the way you mom wanted it. She wouldn't marry me and she wouldn't live with me. For some reason she wanted to raise you all by herself. We still saw each other, but yeah, I stayed away. I tried to work things out, but…it was complicated. I don't want to go into any detail, but legally I had no right to even see you without her permission…and she always said no."

"I don't know why she would have cared. After we moved onto the base when I was eight…after…after Dreilide left, I was on my own most of the time. That's when I met Karl."

He put the flask away. "I did see you when I thought I could get away with it. She couldn't stop me from going to a public place. I was the guy you never noticed in the bleachers when you played ball. I've been there at the Skate Park too, watching you do things that made me hold my breath. I saw you take a bad spill a month or so ago and it was all I could do to stay right where I was. I saw your friend help you up, saw you laugh and brush yourself off, and go right back up and try it again. All I was thinking was, damn, she's not afraid of a frakking thing. I know it doesn't count for much, but I was there, Kara. You just never saw me."

Kara closed her hand over the dog tags that her mother had put around her neck. "Mom's going to die back there on Picon, isn't she? Just like Karl's dad and his mom and Marie. All of them are going to die, aren't they?"

It took him a while to answer, like he was trying to decide whether or not to lie to her. He opted for the truth. She saw it in his eyes. "Probably. I hope not, but yeah, probably."

"Why wouldn't she come with us?"

"She's a Marine, Kara. I hope someday you'll understand what that meant to her. And I hope you'll understand, too, that she would never have trusted you to just anyone. I may not have been there for you earlier, but I'm here now."

"You're here now," Kara said quietly. "That's all that counts."

His face softened and he smiled. "And I'm here from now on, too."