Fic Update, Book of Jason, Part 31
Um, yeah. Here it is as I promised. Let's see... disclaimers and a link to all posted parts can be found here as usual. This part doesn't pick up immediately from the last posted part, so don't freak if you don't quite remember where I left off last.
31.
Explosions rocked the tiny Viper left and then right. Starbuck veered ‘up’, throttled faster, then nosed toward the oncoming Cylon raider. His thumb hit the firing control. A micron later, he flew through Cylon debris. Squawks of excitement and irritation alerted him to his squadron-mates’ distress. He quickly surveyed the battle. Apollo and Boomer were furthest away; Xenon was facing off against three raiders by himself. Starbuck grinned and gunned the thruster once more.
Moments later, Xenon and Starbuck were done with their lot. They shot off a few rounds at the remaining raider menacing Apollo and Boomer, but its destruction had already been assured.
Their headsets crackled. “Excellent job, cadet-pilots! One more round of patrol and then bring it back home.”
Starbuck switched to the pilot’s-only channel. “Hey, Apollo, you think Cylons are as easy to fight in real life as in these simulators?”
“One can only hope,” Apollo replied. “But I doubt it.”
Xenon’s nervous voice broke in. “Hang on a micron, guys - there’s something coming up fast - see it?”
Starbuck checked his monitor, then peered into the starry blackness. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t -“
“Behind us!” Boomer’s voice drowned out Apollo’s query. “Get ready -“
An explosion rocked Starbuck’s viper, turning it end over end. He oriented himself swiftly, his fingers tight on the stick control.
“Starbuck!” Apollo’s voice penetrated his shock. “Are you hit?”
He glanced at his instrument panel. “Nothing serious,” he replied. He was only leaking atmosphere. His helmet sealed itself around his face as he took in the situation.
Xenon and Boomer were daggit-fighting with the largest Cylon raider he’d ever seen. Apollo hung back a little, taking potshots at the evil-looking thing. Large, maneuverable cannons arrayed on either side of the raider let loose a single red-orange burst of plasma each, catching Xenon’s wing and sending him spiraling out of the way. Boomer narrowly dodged another bolt. Starbuck heard Apollo shout for back-up support, and then the answer from the bridge of the Narcissus. Pilots were scrambling, but back-up was at least ten centons away. They were on their own.
Boomer and Apollo still had control over their vipers. They fell back to Starbuck’s position. He was upside-down relative to them and the Narcissus.
“Anyone got a plan?” Boomer asked.
“Do we even know what the frack it is?” Starbuck replied.
“They’re calling it a Cylon Super-raider,” Apollo explained. “Lords know what the Cylons call it. I’ve heard reports, but never seen a picture of one before.”
“Felger.” Starbuck had heard rumors, too. One Super-raider had enough firepower to take on a small batttleship. Three had taken out a dreadnought, although some claimed it was a lucky hit and bad defensive maneuvers on the part of the strike captain.
“We can’t let that thing get to the Narcissus,” Boomer said.
“Well, gentlemen. Looks like our work’s cut out for us.” Starbuck waited a beat, then asked, “Anyone got a plan?”
There was another beat of silence, and then Apollo’s voice. “Yeah. I got one. Starbuck, you’re with me. Boomer, hang back. If this works, you’ll know when to hit it hard. If it doesn’t, you need to get back to Narcissus and warn the others.”
Boomer’s swift acquiescence vied for comm-space with Starbuck’s ‘why do I have to be the hero?’ Apollo didn’t answer and despite his verbal reticence, Starbuck kept within visual distance of Apollo’s Viper.
They approached the mammoth spacecraft. Its immense size relative to the typical Cylon raider made Starbuck nervous. He longed for a fumarillo and bemoaned the regulations that forbade even small fires in Viper cockpits. He waited for Apollo to announce his brilliant plan as the Super-raider grew steadily larger in front of them.
“Ready when you are, Apollo,” Starbuck said quietly. He hoped Apollo wasn’t choking on the enormity of the task. This training mission was clearly designed to test their readiness to face the unknown in battle, to strategize swiftly and implement the leadership skills and training they had supposedly received in their almost four yahrens at the Academy. These last series of tests had to be passed if they were to earn their right to start logging time on actual Vipers in actual space. A small part of Starbuck’s brain wondered if this exact mission had been flown before, in real life, and what the original pilots had done.
“Right. Starbuck, you see that turret on the Narcissus-side of the Super-raider?”
“I see it.” The thing was twisting and circling, seemingly undecided to take aim at the approaching Vipers or the Narcissus still fairly far away.
“We’re going to focus our attention on it.”
“We are?”
“Yes. See how slowly the Super-raider is maneuvering? To target the Narcissus after this, it’ll have to swing around completely. We’ll buy time that way.”
“If we can take out that gun.”
“We can. On my mark.”
There really was no choice. Apollo’s plans always worked out, sometimes spectacularly. And plans tended to work out best when everyone involved did their part to make it work. So Starbuck did his part. He followed Apollo in a tight attack run, he fired as soon as he had a clear shot, and to their excited surprise, the turret exploded into crumbles of mechanical debris.
And then the Super-raider swiveled. It was not as lumbering as Apollo had believed.
Starbuck didn’t have time to curse before a series of panels swung open along the side revealing gun after gun after gun and all of them aiming directly at him and Apollo.
“Frack!”
Apollo, it seemed, found time to curse.
**
“Do either of you cadet-pilots have a reasonable explanation for your actions? Well?” Commander Axbar leaned back in his chair, his expression cold and implacable.
“A reasonable explanation, commander?” Starbuck asked, his eyes wide with innocence. He glanced at the still-stone-faced Apollo. “I suppose that would depend on your definition of ‘reasonable’, sir.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the commander snapped. “Not from you, anyway. We have it on Cadet-Pilot Boomer’s word that you put yourself in charge of this operation, Cadet-Pilot Apollo.”
“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Starbuck tried again. “It was just, well, he had the idea. It’s not like it came to a vote or anything.”
“I said I didn’t want to hear it! Now that’s enough out of you unless you want to be put on report this instant for insubordination!”
Starbuck didn’t want. He clenched his jaw and began hoping like hell Apollo could get himself out of this jam.
“I had the idea, commander,” Apollo said, his voice quiet. “It was my plan, my responsibility.”
The commander nodded. “I thought as much. Go on.”
“I believed the gun turret on the Narcissus-side of the Super-raider to be a weak spot. I thought we should attack it and thus give the Narcissus time to get her pilots launched and near enough to set up a more viable defense. I was wrong.”
“Indeed you were. How did you come to learn of the Cylon Super-raider?”
If possible, Apollo straightened even further. “My father, sir. One of his strike wings encountered one a sectar or so ago.”
“I cannot believe Commander Adama gave his son classified information.”
“He did not, sir.” Apollo seemed, if possible, to become even tenser. “I am in receipt of only declassified information. The sort of thing any fourth yahren cadet-pilot might be aware of. What the Super-raider looks like, that it encountered some Galactica pilots, what one did to the Cerberus itself.”
The commander regarded Apollo with a strangely thoughtful look. “I believe you,” he said, and Starbuck felt something in his midsection ease. “After all, had you been aware of anything classified, you would never have attacked that turret. You would have gone for the thing’s thrusters. There’s a vulnerability there. No, the turret is the obvious target. It brings the Vipers in close, breaks apart, and then the gun ports open up and shred the Vipers to bits. That’s what happened to the Galactica pilots.”
Starbuck swallowed hard.
“The Cerberus pilots didn’t even get that close before the thing started shredding the Cerberus’s outer plates. Hull breach after hull breach rendered the ship incapable of supporting life and the crew was forced to evacuate. Over ninety percent of the crew were lost.”
Ninety percent!
“I... I didn’t know that, sir.” Apollo seemed as thrown by the news as Starbuck.
“No way you could have.”
It seemed the earlier storm had subsided and they were no longer in trouble. After all, if they weren’t supposed to have known about the Super-raider when they faced it in the training simulation, then anything they did or didn’t do to combat it was moot, right?
“However... there is still the matter of your tactics. Now. Before I drum you both out of the Academy as sorry excuses for rational-thinking cadets and a waste of the taxpayers’ money, which one of you had the bright idea of ramming your Vipers into the hull of that monstrosity instead of waiting for reinforcements like you were trained to do?”
Starbuck tested a sunny grin. “It worked, didn’t it?”
**
“I can’t believe it,” Boomer muttered. “I can’t fracking believe it.”
“What’s not to believe?” Starbuck asked. He slouched comfortably across his narrow bed and sucked on the end of a fumarillo.
“Everything.”
Apollo entered from the shared lavatory. “Well, it’s the truth. You can believe it. You’re looking at the best shot any of us have for winning the McCallum Prize at graduation.” He shook his head at Starbuck who grinned back at him. “Lords of Kobol, help us all.”
“Hey! I’m brilliant!” Starbuck protested with a laugh. “The commander said so.”
Boomer shifted sideways on the edge of Apollo’s bed, allowing the other cadet to sit down. “You’re fracking lucky, is what it is,” Boomer said to Starbuck. “Just fracking lucky.”
“Luck or skill,” Starbuck replied, “what’s the difference?”
“What really kills me,” Xenon said, breaking into their repartee, “is that you destroyed both Vipers and he still praised you.” Xenon, on the floor by Starbuck’s feet, folded closed the letter he’d been reading.
“Hey - I only destroyed one. Apollo didn’t have to follow me.”
“I wasn’t following you,” Apollo protested. “I mean, I was, but I thought you’d veer off at the last micron. Who’d think you were suicidal?”
“Eh,” Starbuck said, waving away a plume of smoke, “not suicidal. It was a simulation.”
“So you wouldn’t do that in real life.”
Starbuck looked genuinely startled at the thought. “Frack, no. I’m too pretty to die this young.”
“If you say so,” Apollo said amidst their friends’ appreciative laughter. “Only if you say so.”
**
In the end, Starbuck did earn the McCallum Prize. He was awarded a small block of Lucite with his name inscribed and the year, as well as a thousand credits which he promptly lost on six spins of the wheel at a gaming parlor later that evening.
“Come on, Starbuck,” Apollo said, slinging an arm across his drunken friend’s shoulders. “I’ll take you home now. You’ve had a long day.”
“She’s not here,” Starbuck slurred as Apollo guided him outside. “She left me, you know.”
“I know. You’ve told me before.”
“They all leave me. I must... I must not be...” He floundered to a verbal stop. “I must not be worth sticking around for.”
Before Apollo could protest, Starbuck faced him in the dark street. “So you know what I’m going to do?”
He shook his head.
“I’m not going to give any of them the chance to leave me. I’m going to leave them. They’re going to be so sorry when I’m gone. I’ll be the best fracking thing in their life, but when I’m done, I’m gone and they’ll be sorry. They’ll be the ones crying in their ambrosa while I’m living it up with the next one. That’s what I’m going to do. Yeah,” he added, more quietly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
They started walking down the street once more, Apollo’s arm now more supportive of a decidedly morose Starbuck. After they’d gone several meters, Apollo found the courage to say, “I’ll never leave you, Starbuck.”
Starbuck looked at him from the corner of his eye, then coughed a little laugh. “Of course, you won’t. You wouldn’t. Too honorable by half.”
“I am not.”
“I know you. I’ve been living with you for the past four yahrens. Don’t you think I know you by now?”
They stumbled across a narrow ditch. “I think you think you know me,” Apollo said softly. “But I don’t think I even know me, so how can you?”
“Huh?” Starbuck shook his head, then winced. “Too much thinking.”
“Too much drinking.”
“That too. We graduated today.”
“Yes, we did.”
“That’s something, right?”
“Yes.”
“No one thought I’d ever make it this far, did you know that?”
Apollo couldn’t answer. He couldn’t lie and say he never had any doubts, which is what he supposed a true friend would say, but neither could he tell the truth about his initial skepticism regarding Starbuck’s academic qualifications.
“Did you know,” Starbuck said in a hushed voice, “that someone cheated to get me into the Academy?”
Apollo’s throat felt tight. “Did you...?”
“Not me. Someone at the Induction Center must’ve.” He frowned. “Or maybe it was just Divine Intervention. But I’ve never really had that in my life. Not counting you.”
Something warm spread through Apollo’s chest at Starbuck’s words. “Yeah? I’m a result of Divine Intervention?”
“Divine something, anyway,” Starbuck muttered, his eyes falling closed.
Apollo had to wrap both arms around Starbuck to prevent him from collapsing completely into the street. A few revelers, graduates and shore-leaving warriors and their entourages pushed past, oblivious and uncaring of Apollo’s struggling. “Come on,” Apollo said. “I’ve still got some money. We’re getting a hire-car to take us the rest of the way.”
It was the work of twenty meters to the next street and a few short centons’ wait before a hire-car showed up, the driver unimpressed by Starbuck’s inebriation. He barely blinked at Starbuck’s drunken insistence on laying his upper body on Apollo’s lap for the short journey back to the Academy, and when Apollo offered him more credits than his stated fee to forget what he’d seen, the driver waved him off. “What you and your boyfriend get up to is no business of mine. I’ve seen worse.”
“Thanks.” Apollo slung Starbuck over one shoulder, staggered a bit under the weight, and then strode as swiftly as possible to their room. He met a few over-stimulated third-yahrens celebrating their new status as ‘lords of the school’ now that ‘fourthers’ had officially moved on, but they paid him no mind.
When he got to his room, he called out for Boomer or Xenon to help him with Starbuck, but no one answered. He saw a paper stuck to the cork notice board just inside the door. Gone to visit family. Took Xenon. See you tomorrow. -Boomer
Great, Apollo thought. He kicked the door shut with his heel and tossed Starbuck flat onto his bed. Apollo stretched for a moment, recovering from the unexpected exercise and his lopsided gait. He considered letting Starbuck sleep just as he was, fully dressed and with his feet on the floor. But that wouldn’t be quite honorable, to borrow Starbuck’s word for him, so he knelt at his friend’s feet and removed his boots, carefully peeling off the oft-repaired socks.
It was strangely intimate to see and then touch Starbuck’s bare feet, his slender arches and the rather delicate toes. Starbuck’s instep was smooth and pale and led to a vulnerable ankle and the occasional glint of golden hair. He had to shake himself to focus on his ostensible task of getting his friend ready for a more comfortable sleep.
Apollo hoisted Starbuck’s legs onto the mattress, then pulled at his shoulders to straighten his position on the bed. He hesitated, then undid and removed Starbuck’s uniform belt, setting it aside as he’d seen the other do so often before, in an untidy spill on the floor. But why stop there, he wondered. Starbuck’s jacket had to be uncomfortable to sleep in, fitting him across the shoulders as well as it did, and Apollo knew from experience sleeping in uniform pants tended to chafe tender skin.
Within centons, he had Starbuck’s jacket off, his pants unbuttoned and his shirt untucked. There, Apollo thought, that should be enough.
Then Starbuck muttered something and his eyes fluttered open. “Wha’... ‘pollo?”
“You’re fine,” Apollo replied. “Go to sleep.”
Starbuck reached up with one hand and grabbed Apollo’s left wrist. He tugged on it. “Thanks,” he said.
“No problem,” Apollo replied. He tried to take his hand back, but Starbuck held firm.
“I mean it,” Starbuck went on. “You didn’t have to. You’re a good guy.”
“Thanks. You’re, uh, a good guy, too.”
Starbuck smiled sloppily. “Nah. That’s just what I want you to think.” He giggled.
“Whatever. Go to sleep.”
Starbuck tugged harder on Apollo’s arm. “Sleep with me.”
“What?”
Another tug. “Come on. Sleep with me.”
Apollo felt himself tilting forward, losing his balance, almost as if he were being magnetically drawn to Starbuck’s body, his fevered blue eyes and his moist lips and those broad shoulders - and then he had to brace himself with his right hand not to crush Starbuck beneath him onto the mattress. They were face to face, almost nose to nose. Apollo was tense, his left arm bent awkwardly, his wrist still tight in Starbuck’s grasp. The moment paused. Apollo blinked. He let himself look at Starbuck close-up once more, at the teasing dimple and the ready smile and the mess of golden hair, and he relaxed, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been keeping to himself.
Centimeter by centimeter, he eased himself onto Starbuck’s body, finding it comfortable and natural to do so. Starbuck shifted his thighs; Apollo rested on his chest. Starbuck let go Apollo’s wrist; Apollo thrust both hands into Starbuck’s hair. Starbuck’s eyes grew darker. Apollo’s breath grew short. Starbuck’s hands took hold of Apollo’s waist. Apollo touched Starbuck’s mouth with his lips.
Apollo well remembered their first kiss yahrens ago in the shower in the Adaman family cottage in Natacapra. Every season since Apollo had made a point of showering at least once in that bathroom and reliving those precious moments as best he could by himself. He thought he could recall every detail with perfect clarity. He was wrong.
Kissing Starbuck was nothing like he’d remembered it, and yet they moved together with synchronous perfection. Their mouths opened, their tongues thrust and slid, their hands clutched and stroked and pressed together and apart and together again. Apollo wasn’t quite conscious of himself, but everything felt so incredibly good he didn’t question it. Starbuck’s mouth tasted of ale and chips, his skin of salt and sweat. Starbuck’s body surged beneath him and every movement sent waves of increased pleasure through Apollo’s body. He was hard and becoming more desperate. He wanted. He needed. He had to have - more. More skin. More movement. More Starbuck.
Apollo began pulling off Starbuck’s shirt and tugging down his pants. When Starbuck sat up, pushing Apollo’s hands away, he made to protest, but Starbuck put a finger to his mouth.
“Shh,” he said. “This’ll go faster if...”
Apollo stared hungrily as Starbuck yanked off his shirt, revealing the hard muscularity that was once again Apollo’s to enjoy. He began stroking Starbuck’s chest and shoulder with his fingertips, then bent his head forward to trace the curves with his tongue. Starbuck muttered something as he shoved off his pants, but as he immediately lay back down again, Apollo didn’t ask him to repeat it.
Somehow, Apollo’s own shirt and pants ended up on the floor as well. They were naked together, this time in a bed. Apollo’s brain didn’t try to make sense of the ‘how’ and it already knew ‘why.’ He was mating with Starbuck. That alone excused a thousand lapses in logic.
They lay almost side-by-side on Starbuck’s bed. They couldn’t seem to stop kissing each other, or to keep their hands from roaming across each other’s chest and back and hips. Their cocks, hard and hurting, swollen to an almost uncomfortable degree, kept rubbing and stroking, each of them seeking that pinnacle of pleasure, that necessary release. And then Apollo’s hand took hold of Starbuck’s cock, and Starbuck followed suit, and they had to stop kissing because it was all becoming too intense. Starbuck stared at Apollo’s face, revealing so much of himself in his eyes that Apollo almost could not bear it. He looked down between them. They were still so far apart. He could not bear that, either, so he took his hand away, took Starbuck’s hand away, shushed Starbuck’s protest with a kiss and filled the space between them with himself. Apollo bodily pushed Starbuck onto his back. He dominated Starbuck’s mouth, plundering it, claiming it for his own. He held tight to Starbuck’s hand, their fingers intertwined.
It was his chance to reclaim everything - those moments yahrens ago in the shower, these lips that had sampled so many other bodys, this heart he sometimes suspected Starbuck himself did not accept. Conscious control of himself seemed an impossible thing and a useless goal. He gave himself over to instinct.
Glorious. Carnal. Exquisite. Desperate instinct.
Apollo almost couldn’t breathe. He mouthed across Starbuck’s cheek and chin and throat, gasping for air as an after-thought. Starbuck began panting loud and louder, then muttering phrases Apollo could not understand yet that sent his blood racing.
Starbuck. My Starbuck. Mine.
“Yes, Apollo, yes,” Starbuck cried out. “Yours. Please!”
Apollo bit at Starbuck’s throat, sucked a reddening mark, then lifted his head to stare into Starbuck’s eyes. He wanted to speak, but what words? He tried showing Starbuck everything with his eyes. Starbuck clenched harder at Apollo’s shoulder with his free hand, then led their linked hands behind him. He loosed his grip on Apollo’s hand then wordlessly urged Apollo to grab hold of his taut buttock.
Apollo took a firm handful of the heated flesh. Starbuck’s thighs came up around his hips and gripped him tight.
“Do it,” Starbuck said, his breath puffing hot. “Do it hard. Do it now.”
Momentarily confused, Apollo slowed his constant movement. “Do what?”
“Frack me,” Starbuck said. Then, as if that wasn’t clear enough, he resorted to cruder language. “Fuck me. I want you to. Anything you want - please.”
“Oh, Lords,” Apollo choked out, desire and need and amazement and a burgeoning sense of fulfillment taking hold of him. He almost collapsed on Starbuck’s body, his own body taken over by an unstoppable need to rut. “I can’t - can’t,” he gasped.
Starbuck clenched tighter around him, and when Apollo shot his release onto Starbuck’s quivering stomach, it was joined a scant micron later by Starbuck’s own. Apollo fell, still shaking, into a light sleep.
**
The next morning, Starbuck woke to find himself alone in his bed. He didn’t understand his initial panic until he sat up, his muscles protesting. Apollo’s bed had been stripped and the mattress tied into a roll. His luggage sat open on the floor, mostly filled with neatly folded civilian clothing. Apollo’s dress uniform and two work uniforms still hung in the narrow closet. Starbuck gritted his teeth. He hadn’t started packing yet and they were due to vacate their rooms in - he checked the chronometer - less than one centar.
“Frack!” he shouted, initial panic forgotten in a fresh wave of tension. He jumped to his feet and heard a cracking in his back. He stretched, feeling strange aches in his body that he ascribed to alcohol and celebration, and then Apollo came in through the bathroom door clad in his underclothes. Their eyes met, and Starbuck’s first panic returned.
“Good morning, Starbuck,” Apollo said. If he were thinking what Starbuck was thinking, his voice betrayed none of it. He sounded as he had every morning for the past three yahrens: polite, cheerful, friendly. Certainly not like he had burned up the sheets the night before. Definitely not like he’d burned up the sheets with Starbuck the night before.
“You should get a shower. I can take care of your bed, if you like,” Apollo went on.
“S-sure. Okay.” Starbuck stepped past him, acutely aware of his own nudity and Apollo’s bare chest, and was that a love-mark on his neck? He had no time to examine it and no courage to ask. By the time he had combed his wet hair and hastily shaved, Apollo had not only rolled up Starbuck’s bed, but he’d donned his dress uniform.
“Ten centons.”
“I’ll make it.” He shoved his clothes into his single duffel bag, scrambled into his uniform and took one last look into the mirror. He was a cadet no longer. In a few centons’ time, he would receive his first set of orders and discover what the rest of his life held in trust for him. Would he be assigned with Apollo? Would he ever even see him again? Or would Apollo be just one nice memory for those long, cold days at the end of his life, a smile no one would ever understand?
They gathered their bags and joined the other newly-made Colonial Warriors in the long trek to the main hall to discover their collective fates. Separated by the alphabet, Starbuck lost sight of Apollo and Boomer. He and Xenon managed to keep each other in sight as they waited in line, but then Xenon’s line went faster and soon he had hugged Starbuck good-bye. “I’m off to the Pegasus!” he laughed. “Commander Cain, here I come!”
Starbuck wished him luck and watched him go. He knew everyone in their yahren, of course, and managed to pass the little time remaining with idle conversation. Eventually, he, too, reached the table and collected his orders.
It wasn’t the Pegasus. It wasn’t the Galactica. It wasn’t even the Percheron. He stared at the pages, certain there was a mistake. He was the highest-scoring cadet-pilot in fifty yahrens. Sure, he was no academician, but what in all the Lords of Kobol was he doing being sent to Liberty Station?
***END PART ONE***
Coming in Part Two: Just what is Starbuck doing at Liberty Station? (And what is Liberty Station, anyway?) And how does he get to the Galactica? And where’s Apollo and Boomer? And just how much longer until the Destruction of the Colonies, anyway? Eh. You’ll see.
Link to Part Two: Interlude
31.
Explosions rocked the tiny Viper left and then right. Starbuck veered ‘up’, throttled faster, then nosed toward the oncoming Cylon raider. His thumb hit the firing control. A micron later, he flew through Cylon debris. Squawks of excitement and irritation alerted him to his squadron-mates’ distress. He quickly surveyed the battle. Apollo and Boomer were furthest away; Xenon was facing off against three raiders by himself. Starbuck grinned and gunned the thruster once more.
Moments later, Xenon and Starbuck were done with their lot. They shot off a few rounds at the remaining raider menacing Apollo and Boomer, but its destruction had already been assured.
Their headsets crackled. “Excellent job, cadet-pilots! One more round of patrol and then bring it back home.”
Starbuck switched to the pilot’s-only channel. “Hey, Apollo, you think Cylons are as easy to fight in real life as in these simulators?”
“One can only hope,” Apollo replied. “But I doubt it.”
Xenon’s nervous voice broke in. “Hang on a micron, guys - there’s something coming up fast - see it?”
Starbuck checked his monitor, then peered into the starry blackness. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t -“
“Behind us!” Boomer’s voice drowned out Apollo’s query. “Get ready -“
An explosion rocked Starbuck’s viper, turning it end over end. He oriented himself swiftly, his fingers tight on the stick control.
“Starbuck!” Apollo’s voice penetrated his shock. “Are you hit?”
He glanced at his instrument panel. “Nothing serious,” he replied. He was only leaking atmosphere. His helmet sealed itself around his face as he took in the situation.
Xenon and Boomer were daggit-fighting with the largest Cylon raider he’d ever seen. Apollo hung back a little, taking potshots at the evil-looking thing. Large, maneuverable cannons arrayed on either side of the raider let loose a single red-orange burst of plasma each, catching Xenon’s wing and sending him spiraling out of the way. Boomer narrowly dodged another bolt. Starbuck heard Apollo shout for back-up support, and then the answer from the bridge of the Narcissus. Pilots were scrambling, but back-up was at least ten centons away. They were on their own.
Boomer and Apollo still had control over their vipers. They fell back to Starbuck’s position. He was upside-down relative to them and the Narcissus.
“Anyone got a plan?” Boomer asked.
“Do we even know what the frack it is?” Starbuck replied.
“They’re calling it a Cylon Super-raider,” Apollo explained. “Lords know what the Cylons call it. I’ve heard reports, but never seen a picture of one before.”
“Felger.” Starbuck had heard rumors, too. One Super-raider had enough firepower to take on a small batttleship. Three had taken out a dreadnought, although some claimed it was a lucky hit and bad defensive maneuvers on the part of the strike captain.
“We can’t let that thing get to the Narcissus,” Boomer said.
“Well, gentlemen. Looks like our work’s cut out for us.” Starbuck waited a beat, then asked, “Anyone got a plan?”
There was another beat of silence, and then Apollo’s voice. “Yeah. I got one. Starbuck, you’re with me. Boomer, hang back. If this works, you’ll know when to hit it hard. If it doesn’t, you need to get back to Narcissus and warn the others.”
Boomer’s swift acquiescence vied for comm-space with Starbuck’s ‘why do I have to be the hero?’ Apollo didn’t answer and despite his verbal reticence, Starbuck kept within visual distance of Apollo’s Viper.
They approached the mammoth spacecraft. Its immense size relative to the typical Cylon raider made Starbuck nervous. He longed for a fumarillo and bemoaned the regulations that forbade even small fires in Viper cockpits. He waited for Apollo to announce his brilliant plan as the Super-raider grew steadily larger in front of them.
“Ready when you are, Apollo,” Starbuck said quietly. He hoped Apollo wasn’t choking on the enormity of the task. This training mission was clearly designed to test their readiness to face the unknown in battle, to strategize swiftly and implement the leadership skills and training they had supposedly received in their almost four yahrens at the Academy. These last series of tests had to be passed if they were to earn their right to start logging time on actual Vipers in actual space. A small part of Starbuck’s brain wondered if this exact mission had been flown before, in real life, and what the original pilots had done.
“Right. Starbuck, you see that turret on the Narcissus-side of the Super-raider?”
“I see it.” The thing was twisting and circling, seemingly undecided to take aim at the approaching Vipers or the Narcissus still fairly far away.
“We’re going to focus our attention on it.”
“We are?”
“Yes. See how slowly the Super-raider is maneuvering? To target the Narcissus after this, it’ll have to swing around completely. We’ll buy time that way.”
“If we can take out that gun.”
“We can. On my mark.”
There really was no choice. Apollo’s plans always worked out, sometimes spectacularly. And plans tended to work out best when everyone involved did their part to make it work. So Starbuck did his part. He followed Apollo in a tight attack run, he fired as soon as he had a clear shot, and to their excited surprise, the turret exploded into crumbles of mechanical debris.
And then the Super-raider swiveled. It was not as lumbering as Apollo had believed.
Starbuck didn’t have time to curse before a series of panels swung open along the side revealing gun after gun after gun and all of them aiming directly at him and Apollo.
“Frack!”
Apollo, it seemed, found time to curse.
**
“Do either of you cadet-pilots have a reasonable explanation for your actions? Well?” Commander Axbar leaned back in his chair, his expression cold and implacable.
“A reasonable explanation, commander?” Starbuck asked, his eyes wide with innocence. He glanced at the still-stone-faced Apollo. “I suppose that would depend on your definition of ‘reasonable’, sir.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the commander snapped. “Not from you, anyway. We have it on Cadet-Pilot Boomer’s word that you put yourself in charge of this operation, Cadet-Pilot Apollo.”
“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Starbuck tried again. “It was just, well, he had the idea. It’s not like it came to a vote or anything.”
“I said I didn’t want to hear it! Now that’s enough out of you unless you want to be put on report this instant for insubordination!”
Starbuck didn’t want. He clenched his jaw and began hoping like hell Apollo could get himself out of this jam.
“I had the idea, commander,” Apollo said, his voice quiet. “It was my plan, my responsibility.”
The commander nodded. “I thought as much. Go on.”
“I believed the gun turret on the Narcissus-side of the Super-raider to be a weak spot. I thought we should attack it and thus give the Narcissus time to get her pilots launched and near enough to set up a more viable defense. I was wrong.”
“Indeed you were. How did you come to learn of the Cylon Super-raider?”
If possible, Apollo straightened even further. “My father, sir. One of his strike wings encountered one a sectar or so ago.”
“I cannot believe Commander Adama gave his son classified information.”
“He did not, sir.” Apollo seemed, if possible, to become even tenser. “I am in receipt of only declassified information. The sort of thing any fourth yahren cadet-pilot might be aware of. What the Super-raider looks like, that it encountered some Galactica pilots, what one did to the Cerberus itself.”
The commander regarded Apollo with a strangely thoughtful look. “I believe you,” he said, and Starbuck felt something in his midsection ease. “After all, had you been aware of anything classified, you would never have attacked that turret. You would have gone for the thing’s thrusters. There’s a vulnerability there. No, the turret is the obvious target. It brings the Vipers in close, breaks apart, and then the gun ports open up and shred the Vipers to bits. That’s what happened to the Galactica pilots.”
Starbuck swallowed hard.
“The Cerberus pilots didn’t even get that close before the thing started shredding the Cerberus’s outer plates. Hull breach after hull breach rendered the ship incapable of supporting life and the crew was forced to evacuate. Over ninety percent of the crew were lost.”
Ninety percent!
“I... I didn’t know that, sir.” Apollo seemed as thrown by the news as Starbuck.
“No way you could have.”
It seemed the earlier storm had subsided and they were no longer in trouble. After all, if they weren’t supposed to have known about the Super-raider when they faced it in the training simulation, then anything they did or didn’t do to combat it was moot, right?
“However... there is still the matter of your tactics. Now. Before I drum you both out of the Academy as sorry excuses for rational-thinking cadets and a waste of the taxpayers’ money, which one of you had the bright idea of ramming your Vipers into the hull of that monstrosity instead of waiting for reinforcements like you were trained to do?”
Starbuck tested a sunny grin. “It worked, didn’t it?”
**
“I can’t believe it,” Boomer muttered. “I can’t fracking believe it.”
“What’s not to believe?” Starbuck asked. He slouched comfortably across his narrow bed and sucked on the end of a fumarillo.
“Everything.”
Apollo entered from the shared lavatory. “Well, it’s the truth. You can believe it. You’re looking at the best shot any of us have for winning the McCallum Prize at graduation.” He shook his head at Starbuck who grinned back at him. “Lords of Kobol, help us all.”
“Hey! I’m brilliant!” Starbuck protested with a laugh. “The commander said so.”
Boomer shifted sideways on the edge of Apollo’s bed, allowing the other cadet to sit down. “You’re fracking lucky, is what it is,” Boomer said to Starbuck. “Just fracking lucky.”
“Luck or skill,” Starbuck replied, “what’s the difference?”
“What really kills me,” Xenon said, breaking into their repartee, “is that you destroyed both Vipers and he still praised you.” Xenon, on the floor by Starbuck’s feet, folded closed the letter he’d been reading.
“Hey - I only destroyed one. Apollo didn’t have to follow me.”
“I wasn’t following you,” Apollo protested. “I mean, I was, but I thought you’d veer off at the last micron. Who’d think you were suicidal?”
“Eh,” Starbuck said, waving away a plume of smoke, “not suicidal. It was a simulation.”
“So you wouldn’t do that in real life.”
Starbuck looked genuinely startled at the thought. “Frack, no. I’m too pretty to die this young.”
“If you say so,” Apollo said amidst their friends’ appreciative laughter. “Only if you say so.”
**
In the end, Starbuck did earn the McCallum Prize. He was awarded a small block of Lucite with his name inscribed and the year, as well as a thousand credits which he promptly lost on six spins of the wheel at a gaming parlor later that evening.
“Come on, Starbuck,” Apollo said, slinging an arm across his drunken friend’s shoulders. “I’ll take you home now. You’ve had a long day.”
“She’s not here,” Starbuck slurred as Apollo guided him outside. “She left me, you know.”
“I know. You’ve told me before.”
“They all leave me. I must... I must not be...” He floundered to a verbal stop. “I must not be worth sticking around for.”
Before Apollo could protest, Starbuck faced him in the dark street. “So you know what I’m going to do?”
He shook his head.
“I’m not going to give any of them the chance to leave me. I’m going to leave them. They’re going to be so sorry when I’m gone. I’ll be the best fracking thing in their life, but when I’m done, I’m gone and they’ll be sorry. They’ll be the ones crying in their ambrosa while I’m living it up with the next one. That’s what I’m going to do. Yeah,” he added, more quietly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
They started walking down the street once more, Apollo’s arm now more supportive of a decidedly morose Starbuck. After they’d gone several meters, Apollo found the courage to say, “I’ll never leave you, Starbuck.”
Starbuck looked at him from the corner of his eye, then coughed a little laugh. “Of course, you won’t. You wouldn’t. Too honorable by half.”
“I am not.”
“I know you. I’ve been living with you for the past four yahrens. Don’t you think I know you by now?”
They stumbled across a narrow ditch. “I think you think you know me,” Apollo said softly. “But I don’t think I even know me, so how can you?”
“Huh?” Starbuck shook his head, then winced. “Too much thinking.”
“Too much drinking.”
“That too. We graduated today.”
“Yes, we did.”
“That’s something, right?”
“Yes.”
“No one thought I’d ever make it this far, did you know that?”
Apollo couldn’t answer. He couldn’t lie and say he never had any doubts, which is what he supposed a true friend would say, but neither could he tell the truth about his initial skepticism regarding Starbuck’s academic qualifications.
“Did you know,” Starbuck said in a hushed voice, “that someone cheated to get me into the Academy?”
Apollo’s throat felt tight. “Did you...?”
“Not me. Someone at the Induction Center must’ve.” He frowned. “Or maybe it was just Divine Intervention. But I’ve never really had that in my life. Not counting you.”
Something warm spread through Apollo’s chest at Starbuck’s words. “Yeah? I’m a result of Divine Intervention?”
“Divine something, anyway,” Starbuck muttered, his eyes falling closed.
Apollo had to wrap both arms around Starbuck to prevent him from collapsing completely into the street. A few revelers, graduates and shore-leaving warriors and their entourages pushed past, oblivious and uncaring of Apollo’s struggling. “Come on,” Apollo said. “I’ve still got some money. We’re getting a hire-car to take us the rest of the way.”
It was the work of twenty meters to the next street and a few short centons’ wait before a hire-car showed up, the driver unimpressed by Starbuck’s inebriation. He barely blinked at Starbuck’s drunken insistence on laying his upper body on Apollo’s lap for the short journey back to the Academy, and when Apollo offered him more credits than his stated fee to forget what he’d seen, the driver waved him off. “What you and your boyfriend get up to is no business of mine. I’ve seen worse.”
“Thanks.” Apollo slung Starbuck over one shoulder, staggered a bit under the weight, and then strode as swiftly as possible to their room. He met a few over-stimulated third-yahrens celebrating their new status as ‘lords of the school’ now that ‘fourthers’ had officially moved on, but they paid him no mind.
When he got to his room, he called out for Boomer or Xenon to help him with Starbuck, but no one answered. He saw a paper stuck to the cork notice board just inside the door. Gone to visit family. Took Xenon. See you tomorrow. -Boomer
Great, Apollo thought. He kicked the door shut with his heel and tossed Starbuck flat onto his bed. Apollo stretched for a moment, recovering from the unexpected exercise and his lopsided gait. He considered letting Starbuck sleep just as he was, fully dressed and with his feet on the floor. But that wouldn’t be quite honorable, to borrow Starbuck’s word for him, so he knelt at his friend’s feet and removed his boots, carefully peeling off the oft-repaired socks.
It was strangely intimate to see and then touch Starbuck’s bare feet, his slender arches and the rather delicate toes. Starbuck’s instep was smooth and pale and led to a vulnerable ankle and the occasional glint of golden hair. He had to shake himself to focus on his ostensible task of getting his friend ready for a more comfortable sleep.
Apollo hoisted Starbuck’s legs onto the mattress, then pulled at his shoulders to straighten his position on the bed. He hesitated, then undid and removed Starbuck’s uniform belt, setting it aside as he’d seen the other do so often before, in an untidy spill on the floor. But why stop there, he wondered. Starbuck’s jacket had to be uncomfortable to sleep in, fitting him across the shoulders as well as it did, and Apollo knew from experience sleeping in uniform pants tended to chafe tender skin.
Within centons, he had Starbuck’s jacket off, his pants unbuttoned and his shirt untucked. There, Apollo thought, that should be enough.
Then Starbuck muttered something and his eyes fluttered open. “Wha’... ‘pollo?”
“You’re fine,” Apollo replied. “Go to sleep.”
Starbuck reached up with one hand and grabbed Apollo’s left wrist. He tugged on it. “Thanks,” he said.
“No problem,” Apollo replied. He tried to take his hand back, but Starbuck held firm.
“I mean it,” Starbuck went on. “You didn’t have to. You’re a good guy.”
“Thanks. You’re, uh, a good guy, too.”
Starbuck smiled sloppily. “Nah. That’s just what I want you to think.” He giggled.
“Whatever. Go to sleep.”
Starbuck tugged harder on Apollo’s arm. “Sleep with me.”
“What?”
Another tug. “Come on. Sleep with me.”
Apollo felt himself tilting forward, losing his balance, almost as if he were being magnetically drawn to Starbuck’s body, his fevered blue eyes and his moist lips and those broad shoulders - and then he had to brace himself with his right hand not to crush Starbuck beneath him onto the mattress. They were face to face, almost nose to nose. Apollo was tense, his left arm bent awkwardly, his wrist still tight in Starbuck’s grasp. The moment paused. Apollo blinked. He let himself look at Starbuck close-up once more, at the teasing dimple and the ready smile and the mess of golden hair, and he relaxed, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been keeping to himself.
Centimeter by centimeter, he eased himself onto Starbuck’s body, finding it comfortable and natural to do so. Starbuck shifted his thighs; Apollo rested on his chest. Starbuck let go Apollo’s wrist; Apollo thrust both hands into Starbuck’s hair. Starbuck’s eyes grew darker. Apollo’s breath grew short. Starbuck’s hands took hold of Apollo’s waist. Apollo touched Starbuck’s mouth with his lips.
Apollo well remembered their first kiss yahrens ago in the shower in the Adaman family cottage in Natacapra. Every season since Apollo had made a point of showering at least once in that bathroom and reliving those precious moments as best he could by himself. He thought he could recall every detail with perfect clarity. He was wrong.
Kissing Starbuck was nothing like he’d remembered it, and yet they moved together with synchronous perfection. Their mouths opened, their tongues thrust and slid, their hands clutched and stroked and pressed together and apart and together again. Apollo wasn’t quite conscious of himself, but everything felt so incredibly good he didn’t question it. Starbuck’s mouth tasted of ale and chips, his skin of salt and sweat. Starbuck’s body surged beneath him and every movement sent waves of increased pleasure through Apollo’s body. He was hard and becoming more desperate. He wanted. He needed. He had to have - more. More skin. More movement. More Starbuck.
Apollo began pulling off Starbuck’s shirt and tugging down his pants. When Starbuck sat up, pushing Apollo’s hands away, he made to protest, but Starbuck put a finger to his mouth.
“Shh,” he said. “This’ll go faster if...”
Apollo stared hungrily as Starbuck yanked off his shirt, revealing the hard muscularity that was once again Apollo’s to enjoy. He began stroking Starbuck’s chest and shoulder with his fingertips, then bent his head forward to trace the curves with his tongue. Starbuck muttered something as he shoved off his pants, but as he immediately lay back down again, Apollo didn’t ask him to repeat it.
Somehow, Apollo’s own shirt and pants ended up on the floor as well. They were naked together, this time in a bed. Apollo’s brain didn’t try to make sense of the ‘how’ and it already knew ‘why.’ He was mating with Starbuck. That alone excused a thousand lapses in logic.
They lay almost side-by-side on Starbuck’s bed. They couldn’t seem to stop kissing each other, or to keep their hands from roaming across each other’s chest and back and hips. Their cocks, hard and hurting, swollen to an almost uncomfortable degree, kept rubbing and stroking, each of them seeking that pinnacle of pleasure, that necessary release. And then Apollo’s hand took hold of Starbuck’s cock, and Starbuck followed suit, and they had to stop kissing because it was all becoming too intense. Starbuck stared at Apollo’s face, revealing so much of himself in his eyes that Apollo almost could not bear it. He looked down between them. They were still so far apart. He could not bear that, either, so he took his hand away, took Starbuck’s hand away, shushed Starbuck’s protest with a kiss and filled the space between them with himself. Apollo bodily pushed Starbuck onto his back. He dominated Starbuck’s mouth, plundering it, claiming it for his own. He held tight to Starbuck’s hand, their fingers intertwined.
It was his chance to reclaim everything - those moments yahrens ago in the shower, these lips that had sampled so many other bodys, this heart he sometimes suspected Starbuck himself did not accept. Conscious control of himself seemed an impossible thing and a useless goal. He gave himself over to instinct.
Glorious. Carnal. Exquisite. Desperate instinct.
Apollo almost couldn’t breathe. He mouthed across Starbuck’s cheek and chin and throat, gasping for air as an after-thought. Starbuck began panting loud and louder, then muttering phrases Apollo could not understand yet that sent his blood racing.
Starbuck. My Starbuck. Mine.
“Yes, Apollo, yes,” Starbuck cried out. “Yours. Please!”
Apollo bit at Starbuck’s throat, sucked a reddening mark, then lifted his head to stare into Starbuck’s eyes. He wanted to speak, but what words? He tried showing Starbuck everything with his eyes. Starbuck clenched harder at Apollo’s shoulder with his free hand, then led their linked hands behind him. He loosed his grip on Apollo’s hand then wordlessly urged Apollo to grab hold of his taut buttock.
Apollo took a firm handful of the heated flesh. Starbuck’s thighs came up around his hips and gripped him tight.
“Do it,” Starbuck said, his breath puffing hot. “Do it hard. Do it now.”
Momentarily confused, Apollo slowed his constant movement. “Do what?”
“Frack me,” Starbuck said. Then, as if that wasn’t clear enough, he resorted to cruder language. “Fuck me. I want you to. Anything you want - please.”
“Oh, Lords,” Apollo choked out, desire and need and amazement and a burgeoning sense of fulfillment taking hold of him. He almost collapsed on Starbuck’s body, his own body taken over by an unstoppable need to rut. “I can’t - can’t,” he gasped.
Starbuck clenched tighter around him, and when Apollo shot his release onto Starbuck’s quivering stomach, it was joined a scant micron later by Starbuck’s own. Apollo fell, still shaking, into a light sleep.
**
The next morning, Starbuck woke to find himself alone in his bed. He didn’t understand his initial panic until he sat up, his muscles protesting. Apollo’s bed had been stripped and the mattress tied into a roll. His luggage sat open on the floor, mostly filled with neatly folded civilian clothing. Apollo’s dress uniform and two work uniforms still hung in the narrow closet. Starbuck gritted his teeth. He hadn’t started packing yet and they were due to vacate their rooms in - he checked the chronometer - less than one centar.
“Frack!” he shouted, initial panic forgotten in a fresh wave of tension. He jumped to his feet and heard a cracking in his back. He stretched, feeling strange aches in his body that he ascribed to alcohol and celebration, and then Apollo came in through the bathroom door clad in his underclothes. Their eyes met, and Starbuck’s first panic returned.
“Good morning, Starbuck,” Apollo said. If he were thinking what Starbuck was thinking, his voice betrayed none of it. He sounded as he had every morning for the past three yahrens: polite, cheerful, friendly. Certainly not like he had burned up the sheets the night before. Definitely not like he’d burned up the sheets with Starbuck the night before.
“You should get a shower. I can take care of your bed, if you like,” Apollo went on.
“S-sure. Okay.” Starbuck stepped past him, acutely aware of his own nudity and Apollo’s bare chest, and was that a love-mark on his neck? He had no time to examine it and no courage to ask. By the time he had combed his wet hair and hastily shaved, Apollo had not only rolled up Starbuck’s bed, but he’d donned his dress uniform.
“Ten centons.”
“I’ll make it.” He shoved his clothes into his single duffel bag, scrambled into his uniform and took one last look into the mirror. He was a cadet no longer. In a few centons’ time, he would receive his first set of orders and discover what the rest of his life held in trust for him. Would he be assigned with Apollo? Would he ever even see him again? Or would Apollo be just one nice memory for those long, cold days at the end of his life, a smile no one would ever understand?
They gathered their bags and joined the other newly-made Colonial Warriors in the long trek to the main hall to discover their collective fates. Separated by the alphabet, Starbuck lost sight of Apollo and Boomer. He and Xenon managed to keep each other in sight as they waited in line, but then Xenon’s line went faster and soon he had hugged Starbuck good-bye. “I’m off to the Pegasus!” he laughed. “Commander Cain, here I come!”
Starbuck wished him luck and watched him go. He knew everyone in their yahren, of course, and managed to pass the little time remaining with idle conversation. Eventually, he, too, reached the table and collected his orders.
It wasn’t the Pegasus. It wasn’t the Galactica. It wasn’t even the Percheron. He stared at the pages, certain there was a mistake. He was the highest-scoring cadet-pilot in fifty yahrens. Sure, he was no academician, but what in all the Lords of Kobol was he doing being sent to Liberty Station?
***END PART ONE***
Coming in Part Two: Just what is Starbuck doing at Liberty Station? (And what is Liberty Station, anyway?) And how does he get to the Galactica? And where’s Apollo and Boomer? And just how much longer until the Destruction of the Colonies, anyway? Eh. You’ll see.
Link to Part Two: Interlude