Chapter 34 Space
Sitting in the cockpit the next morning, waiting for the clearance to launch, Starbuck flexed her hands, the vague fear that had been haunting her since the Six had threatened her with the loss of her hands surged forward again. What if there's nerve damage? What if she's lost the touch that distinguished her flying, made her the best, then what?
She stretched her gloved fingers again before taking a firm grip on the stick and shutting out everything but the voice of the LOS as he gave her the all clear and initiated the launch sequence. The familiar G-force shoved her back in her seat as the Viper was propelled from Galactica's bulk and into the vastness of space.
Tentatively at first, then with growing confidence, she tested the bird's reaction to her control. A relieved sigh escaped her as the ship responded to her caress.
Then a voice crackled over the comm, "Starbuck, Apollo. Stop frakking around and form up on my wing." His clipped voice confirmed for her that even out here, where Starbuck and Apollo had always found harmony, those days were a thing of the past. Pain flicked her own anger to the surface.
"Copy that Apollo," she replied, tone equally chilly as she slipped into the wingman's slot.
They spun through basic, and then increasingly more difficult maneuvers, with only the minimum of comm chatter between them, all exchanged in the same curt tones. By the time she set her Viper down on the deck again, all the joy she'd initially had felt at her return to the cockpit had been sucked away by Apollo's disparaging manner.
Kara had hoped that at least in flying together they might achieve a truce. She was already feeling raw after he had pointedly ignored her throughout the entire pilots' briefing that morning. Reporting to the hanger bay for the re-certification testing, she'd tried to catch his gaze, but he had kept his eyes on the clipboard as he'd stated their order of testing. "Starbuck, you're first," had been his only acknowledgment of her presence before striding off to his own ship.
Now, waiting for the crew to move her back to the flight deck, she stared at her hands, realizing that though they were undamaged, the Cylons had crippled her in too many other ways to count. And what the Toasters hadn't broken, she had already destroyed before ever settling on New Caprica.
She'd been a fool to think she'd be allowed to make reparations and things could return to the status quo. Lee hated her. The Admiral hadn't sought her out, and Helo, well, she guessed that he was too busy playing house with his Toaster to come looking for her. And now there was no Starbuck and Apollo either, just clipped bitterness as cold as the space they'd flown through.
Stepping from the cockpit, she ignored the Chief's 'welcome back' and silently signed off his checklist before walking away without ever looking over to where Lee was climbing from his own ship. She knew she'd passed the testing, so there was nothing else to say between them.
She didn't know that a pair of conflicted blue eyes hungrily followed her receding form.