Title: A Little Education
Author: SabaceanBabe
Rating: PG
Word count: 665
Characters: Kara Thrace, Sue-Shaun
Setting: s2, between Resistance and The Farm
Beta(s): none, all mistakes mine own
Author's note: This was written for
taragel in honor of her birthday. Keep the Kara love burning, my friend. Tara wanted maybe some badass Kara military action, but this was the closest the muses got. Hope you like it anyway, chick!
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“You’re doing it wrong.”
Nearly black eyes met Kara’s, although the woman didn’t make any other movement to indicate she’d heard. Helo had called her Sue-Shaun. Sue-Shaun’s gaze slid away from Kara, once more looking outward into the night. “Frak you.”
Kara grinned. “You want to effectively guard the perimeter, you’re too damn close to your home base.” She looked out in the same direction as the former ball player. The night was quiet, still, not even a breeze to stir the leaves on the trees. And there were a lot of trees, something Kara had thought she’d never see again.
“Just because you’re Fleet,” Sue-Shaun spat the word out like an epithet, “doesn’t make you some kind of expert.”
“Well, actually, it kinda does.” These people were unbelievable. How they’d managed not to get themselves killed, let alone take out a bunch of toasters and sting the ones that remained was a mystery. Not even sure why she cared, Kara walked closer to Sue-Shaun and dropped down beside her. “But hey, at least I didn’t find you asleep on your watch.”
Sue-Shaun looked over at Kara again, this time moving her whole head to do so, instead of just her eyes. “You and your buddy aren’t gonna just waltz in here and take over.”
“Sweetheart,” Kara laughed, “we don’t want to. All we want to do is get off this rock and back to the fleet, but in the meantime, neither of us wants to die because some yahoo can’t figure out how to set up a decent watch.”
Rather than take offense, Sue-Shaun snorted. Kara figured she was amused based on the flash of white teeth when she smiled. “Sam’s no yahoo.”
Kara shrugged. “Remains to be seen. What, did he get the idea from a movie?”
The other woman remained silent, watching out over the trees. The moon had risen and it was bright enough that they should have no trouble picking up the glint of moonlight on chrome. Of course, if any skinjobs attacked, they’d be both harder to see and to hear, especially with the lights and sounds of the base camp maybe a hundred meters behind them.
“The idea is good, but the execution sucks.”
“So enlighten me, great and wise leader.”
Sarcasm. Kara grinned again. She was beginning to like this Sue-Shaun. “First of all, you need to have your sentries far enough away from base that what you see and hear from base doesn’t mask an enemy approach.”
A subtle relaxation of the ball player’s muscles told Kara that she wasn’t quite as hostile as she’d been a few minutes earlier, that she might actually be listening. The impression was strengthened when Sue-Shaun said, “And second?”
“Your buddy over there.” Kara nodded toward an older man in a yellow shirt about twenty-five meters to their left. “He’s too close to your position. I shouldn’t be able to make out the color of his shirt in this light, or have any idea that he’s in his mid to late fifties.” Sue-Shaun looked at Kara again. “I can see way too much detail. He should be within calling distance, but not visual distance. Overlapping circles, not practically on top of each other.” Kara jabbed a thumb to the right, toward the red-haired woman she’d seen earlier with Anders. “Same goes for Red, over there.”
After that, the two sat in silence, neither said anything, Sue-Shaun keeping her watch and Kara keeping her thoughts to herself. A few minutes more and Kara stood, brushed leaves and dirt and twigs off the seat of her trousers. “Well, it’s been fun, but I’m for some rack time,” she announced and headed up toward what had once been a school.
If the gods were at all kind, she and Helo would get out of this without getting shot or captured by Cylons.
Kara grinned to herself again in the night. She knew full well that the gods weren’t kind, the frakking little bitches.