Forsaking all others
by Jen

 
They say it’s a sickness, an obsession gone so far over the edge that it’s a psychosis.  I know they’ve called it that simply to excuse their Galactican weakness.  On the Pegasus ambition was not despised, single-mindedness was not shunned, and the courage to go after what you wanted was admired, not seen as something to be diagnosed and removed under the auspice of treatment.

They’re calling it sickness not only because they’re weak but because I’m a woman.  An ambitious, able woman.  And that’s more than Adama can cope with.  Father was right: he’s a weak fool, distracted by his religion and his worship of an abstract morality.  Athena has ambitions, it’s true, but they’re all centered on a certain blond pilot.  She has her cushy bridge job, and that’s enough for her.  It’s probably just as well; judging from his reaction to me, had his own daughter shown any ambition Adama would probably have traded her for food at the first planet they came to.  But then again, I think he’d have got the better side of that bargain.

 “Believe in yourself, Sheba,” Father used to say to me.  “Because, ultimately, you are all there is.  If you don’t believe you will prevail, they’ve already won.”

But it wasn’t the Cylons he should have warned me about.  It was the old-fashioned, prejudiced idiots who pretended to be warriors.  Father can think and fight circles round them, and they don’t even realise it enough to give him the respect he deserves.

The first time I encountered warriors from the Galactica in the form of Apollo and Starbuck, I was less than impressed.  They had no discipline, were easy to outmanoeuvre, and easier still to dazzle.  It wasn’t until I moved permanently to the Galactica that I realised why: they weren’t used to women as warriors.  And certainly not to treating them as equals.  Starbuck dealt with it by ignoring me as far as he could, while Apollo treated me with an old-fashioned sort of gallantry that had me wanting to punch his teeth in.

After a while, though, I did learn to respect Apollo.  He could benefit from being more disciplined – and more ambitious – but he was a good Strike Captain.  It surprised me that he seemed willing to stay a mere Captain, given the yahrens he’d already held that role.  He should have been gunning for Tigh’s job.  Tigh was too careful, too rule-bound for a senior officer.  Father had seen that clearly and, as always, he was right.  Adama listened to Tigh too often, was too cautious – to the point of cowardice, some might say.  Would say.  Did say, except nobody would listen. 

I understand that Apollo is bound by some sort of family loyalty, but surely even he could see that under Adama’s command all that was left was to keep running until the time when there was nowhere left to run, and the death dealt by the Cylons would be a mercy, obliterating the cowardly, weak end of the most glorious worlds the universe has ever known.

“We’re responsible for the thousands of souls on those ships,” he faithfully parroted Adama’s words when I challenged him.  “If we go up against the Cylons, we risk leaving them defenceless and making them into targets.”

“So the Cylons don’t already see us all as targets?  Running away is really going to make them stop, isn’t it, Apollo?” 

His jaw set and his eyes blazed at the contempt in my voice.  His blind stubbornness enraged me further.

“For frack’s sake Apollo, surely even you can see it – you don’t believe Adama’s cowardly reasoning, do you?  One good strike, put the fear of the Lords into them the way my father did, and they’ll think twice about coming after either the Galactica or the rest of the fleet again.”

“Just like Molecay?”  Apollo’s eyes glittered.  “Your father certainly inflicted damage on the Cylons there,” he said.  “But I didn’t like the cost.”

And with that, he thrust back his chair, got to his feet and walked out of the Officers’ Club.

Idiot!  Lords, but Adama had him blinkered beyond reason.  With Adama, Tigh, and the ever-loyal Apollo in charge, we had no chance of ever winning.

“What’s that look about?”

I glanced up to find Bojay was leaning on the back of the chair Apollo had so recently vacated.

“Just thinking,” I said.  Something that a few people round here could do a bit more of.

He looked sceptical.  “I know that look, Sheba.  You’re plotting something.”  He hesitated a moment before continuing.  “Just remember, Cain isn’t here anymore.  Things are different now.”

“As though I could ever forget.”

But what Bojay seemed to have forgotten is that it’s only a matter of time before we find Father again – or he finds us.  And to do that, we need to be where he is, which is in the heart of Cylon territory, blowing the frack out of the tinheads.

“Just be careful, Sheba,” he said, before moving away.

Yes, because careful’s going to win the war.  Tigh’s proved that.  Father would have had Bojay out on his ear then and there for even using the word, let alone sucking up to the cowardly Galacticans.  Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely fair: with a decent leader, some of them had the makings of good warriors.  The weak Adama, the careful Tigh, and Apollo, so misguided by his family loyalty, were the things preventing this.

I know it can’t all be done at once.  One of the tenets of combat I absorbed at Father’s knee was to secure the ground taken before advancing further.  It has to be done one step at a time.

If Apollo were to take Tigh’s place, that would leave the position of Strike Captain wide open, and there was only one person suitable to fill it.  Especially as that person had played nicey-nice with the Commander, pretending to be flattered that he had welcomed me into his family.  It’s something else Father taught me: integrity is overrated in some circumstances.  Better to live and be victorious than be a dead moralist.

That’s yet another thing that Apollo doesn’t understand.  He’s so beguiled by Adama’s moral posturing that he would throw himself headlong into the fire to prove whatever point he had to.

In fact, that’s what he did with Iblis.  For me. 

It was then that I knew he was mine for the taking.  I encouraged, gently; I had let him appreciate my worth as a warrior first, and then, on realising how old-fashioned his views were, slowly let myself show a woman’s vulnerability.  Lords, it makes me sick to think I played along with their stupid games but Apollo was the prize who made it worthwhile.  He was the only one anywhere near my match in intelligence and birth.  Starbuck was more handsome, perhaps, but so obvious - and so obviously going nowhere.  In any case, I wouldn’t want anybody whom half the Fleet had already had, if rumour were to be believed.

So Apollo...   I even pretended to be friendly with the dull-witted Athena to get invitations to the family meals, where I played every part expected of me: the warrior who was, at heart, just a woman, and who needed protecting without her father there.  With Adama’s patronage and Apollo at my side, I knew there would be no-one to stop me moving into the post of Strike Captain when Apollo was promoted to Colonel.

And just as I had gradually come to appreciate his strengths, Apollo began little by little to warm to me.  I kept to my given role; another thing that Father taught me, early in life, was that you can’t change a system from the outside.  It was true of the Caprican military, with their hidebound, sexist approach, and equally so of the Adaman family.  They could disagree among themselves – door-slamming, screaming (Athena), passionately arguing (Apollo), tight-lipped and silent (Adama), but let an outsider criticise and they closed ranks tighter than Silver Spar up against a basestar.

Slowly, Apollo stopped being so wary.  The panic that had originally shown in his eyes when confronted by a woman who was his equal in every way became muted, and finally disappeared.  He even got to the point where he would spend time with me on our own – sharing a drink in the OC (of course, he had to order the drinks and put them on his mess bill to ensure his masculinity wasn’t threatened), or even a dance when we happened to turn up at the same celebrations (and we did so quite often, because I did my research).

I had decided that tonight was the night; I had dressed myself in a flimsy confection of lace and gauze that Athena had lent me, even though it was scarcely suitable for a party hosted by deck crew in one of the empty hangars.  After all, a warrior should use any weapons at her disposal, and it wasn’t fair for Apollo to turn up in a open-necked white shirt tucked into well-fitting black pants, and not to expect me to deploy my own armament.  He certainly liked what he saw, judging by the direction of his eyes when we were dancing. 

So it was particularly annoying that when we left the dance floor, his arm warmly around my waist, the light pressure of his hand on my hip promising so much, Starbuck should wave him down. 

“Apollo, I just need a few microns,” he said. 

Apollo glanced at me, but I could see his mind was already made up.

I decided to lose the battle in order to win the war.  I nodded at him, letting him know it was all right, that I understood.  “I’ll see you later,” I said, with a smile that let him know just how much I was looking forward to doing so. 

“Thanks, Sheba,” he said.  “Look, there’s Bojay – I know he’ll want to have a dance with you.”

Because a woman is only fit to be passed around from man to man like a commodity, of course.  I kept the smile, through practice and determination.  “I’d rather dance with you,” I said.  “I’ll wait.”

I saw the response in his eyes, before he turned and left with Starbuck.  My smile became more genuine as I got myself a drink, and proceeded to evade the various attempts for my attention from pathetic hopeless idiots who would be lucky to mate with a boray.   I definitely had him in the tractor beam.  Now all I had to do was pull him in.

But even the glow caused by that thought faded as time went on and Apollo didn’t reappear.

The party carried on around me, the idiots got more drunk, and louder, and predictably stupid.  I was bored.

Very bored.

Apollo still hadn’t come back, and I knew it was Starbuck’s fault.  He would be demanding Apollo’s attention as usual, and Apollo, also as usual, would be too polite to be firm enough.  Starbuck always had to be the centre of attention, and Apollo needed to be stricter with him.

So I went looking.  I was pretty sure I knew where they’d gone.  There wasn’t exactly anywhere else to go in this part of a Battlestar and, even when partying, what Viper pilot didn’t somehow get drawn back just to check over her ship?  The lighting on the deck was dim emergency lighting only; no Cylons had been sighted for sectares, and Adama had put the deck crew and pilots on a half-centare readiness status.  Father would have had him court-martialled for such laxness and complacency.  As a result, though, the huge deck was quiet, one corner of it filled with the looming shadows of those Vipers that had been liberated from the launch tubes for long enough to have a thorough, much overdue, service.  My footsteps sounded overly loud as I walked along the sides of the ships, my fingers tracing their battle-scarred hulls, until I reached my own Viper.  I loved her.  She looked after me, did everything I could ever ask and more, and was utterly dependable.  We spent a few moments in silent communion before I patted her gratefully and moved on, between the dark shadows the other ships cast in the dim light, looking for Apollo’s or Starbuck’s.

It was Apollo’s I saw first, and I was certain he would be close.  I was right.  I rounded the nose of his fighter, and found him pressing Starbuck hard against its hull.  Even the sight of their bodies plastered together was not as shockingly intimate as the little sighs and moans escaping their mouths as they moved against one another.

I retreated.

 

I didn’t return to the party that night, so I have no way of knowing whether or not Apollo did.  But even had he done so, I wasn’t prepared to take Starbuck’s leavings.  What I needed to know was whether or not Starbuck was a serious contender, or just a distraction.  Perhaps Apollo had been so turned on by dancing with me that, with his old-fashioned respect for the weaker sex, he’d sought fulfilment elsewhere.

So I watched.  I saw things I had seen every day, but not understood.  Starbuck and Apollo were always together.  They laughed together, fought together, and played Triad together in a way that looked as though they read one another’s minds.  And they touched one another.  Casual touches - a hand on the shoulder, a pat on the back, and all of this with bodies way, way further into intimate space than was normal.  The crazy thing is that nobody else in the Fleet turned an eyelash.  The fact they were closer than two warriors had any right to be was no cause for comment.  The really crazy thing is that I too had watched all this, and never seen it.  It was just the way Starbuck and Apollo were.  The way, I now saw, they were undoubtedly fracking one another stupid every night if the long glances, the private jokes, and the way they left the OC together most evenings was anything to go by.

Know your enemy, Father had said.  Don’t settle for victory when you can achieve annihilation.  I did consider settling for victory, briefly.  I considered seducing Apollo away from him, until he made those breathy moans into my own mouth as his long body pressed against mine, surrendering to me.  But it wasn’t enough.  Starbuck had trespassed on what was mine, and he had to pay the price.

He was easy to know, his weaknesses manifold and obvious – except that, when I did my research, I found that one of them was a ploy.  He might – did – flirt with every female within sight, but he didn’t bed any of them any more.  Which went a long way to explaining why Athena was so crabby…

His other weaknesses were legion: gambling, smoking, drinking, the need to be liked, and the need to show off. 

The need to win.

The need to belong.

I was still considering my options when we stopped at another of those boring planets that Adama insisted we stop at for foodstuffs to feed the flabby mortal fleet the Galactica was towing along in her increasingly directionless wake

Apollo headed up the small group whose job it was to explore a suitable area before the farmers and hunters were flown in to harvest whatever they found of use.  He paired off Greenbean and Boomer, and me and Starbuck to go in on foot.  I could see Starbuck was about as pleased as I was at the pairings, but that’s the price of being in the military.  Even Starbuck occasionally had to obey orders.

We struck out across open country towards a line of wooded hills, leaving Boomer and Greenbean to explore the flat ground.  Experience told us that the woods were where we’d find most of our game, and sure enough, we found paths through the undergrowth which spoke of herd animals’ regular use.  Our job was to ensure as far as possible that there were no large predators who might view us as prey, so we walked in silence, pausing only to mark our path so we could find out way back.  I doubt Starbuck and I would have spoken even had we not been trying to avoid detection.  What do you say to the pretender who has stolen your place?  Especially to the pretender who is so ill-disciplined that he’s sauntering along, treating this as a gentle stroll in the country rather than a military operation.  I tried to get him to move more quickly, but all that achieved was making him slow down even more.

When we reached a small clearing he actually came to a halt, standing in the sunlight, all but basking in the warmth and, being Starbuck, probably fully aware of the flattering way his hair gleamed in the light of the suns.

“Starbuck,” I all but growled at him.  “Come on.”

“There’s no need to rush, Sheba,” he said to me.  “We spend enough time on the Galactica, breathing recycled air.  Why not enjoy this while it lasts?”

“Because it’s a diversion,” I snapped at him.  “We should be out there fighting, winning, not fracking around on some backwater planet.”
 

“I’m sure even Cain didn’t spend all of his time fighting Cylons,” he said.  Then he had the grace to flush slightly, and I knew he was thinking of that bitch Cassiopeia. 

I didn’t like the look he gave me, and as he reached out to touch my arm, I jerked away. 

“Look, can’t you just relax, and enjoy being alive?” he said.  “Otherwise we might as well be Cylons.”

Well, it’s no wonder he never made it past Lieutenant with that attitude.  I opened my mouth to tell him so, but a sudden sound stopped me.  Drawing my laser, I dropped into a crouch in the fern-like plants around us, straining my eyes and ears to locate the source of the noise.  It sounded like something big and heavy moving through undergrowth, and was coming from just over the ridge in front of us.

I met Starbuck’s eyes; he too was crouched, watchful.  I signalled to him and we warily started to move out of the clearing, using the trees on the slope as cover as we moved towards the top of the ridge.  When we were almost at the top, Starbuck gestured to me to stay put, that he would go and look.  I took cover behind a tree, every nerve screaming out its need for action as he scrambled up the last few metrons of the steep slope, keeping low, and as quiet as possible.

It was only for a micron that he hesitated at the top, and then I saw him straighten, and his laser find its way back into his holster.  Obviously whatever we had heard was not a threat.  Which meant it was very probably going to be dinner.  That was one thing I had to say for Adama’s frequent stops – the fresh meat was always welcome.  He turned and signalled the all clear, smiling, before turning back and looking out over whatever view the slope afforded him. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part.  It was the intuition of a natural warrior, recognising an unforeseen opportunity, in the form of the broad target of his back.  Father had always taught me to seize the moment.  So I did.

I shot him. 

It was, in the end, the only way for a warrior to deal with another warrior.  And despite his many faults, Starbuck was a warrior.  Of sorts.  He wouldn’t have lasted long aboard the Pegasus, but he was one of the better ones on the Galactica.  If only he hadn’t set his sights so high, I could have quite liked him.  But he wanted to take what is mine, and I couldn’t have that.

He crumpled as the blast took him, and I was sure he was dead before he hit the ground, which is why I couldn’t understand the cry of pain I heard.  I didn’t understand it even when something heavy hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground.  I tried to roll, to bring my laser up to bear, but there was a boot on my wrist, crushing my bones together with such force that I could hear them crack as a wave of nausea hit me.  I could no longer hold onto the pistol, which was kicked from my nerveless hand.  The instant the pressure on my wrist eased, I lunged after the pistol, but then there was a weight on top of me, what felt like a knee in my back, and my hands were wrenched behind me.  I lay on my front in the dirt, and all I could see was Apollo, running toward Starbuck, running up the steep slope as though it wasn’t there.  At the top, on his knees in the dirt, he reached out towards Starbuck’s lifeless body as though afraid to touch for an instant, before turning him over and gathering him into his arms.

I don’t remember very clearly what happened after that.  Maybe that’s because of the drugs they’re giving me.  I do know somebody hauled me to my feet, keeping my arms behind my back.  And I remember talking to Apollo, explaining how Starbuck was just holding him back, was a pretender who didn’t understand about power, responsibility, or leadership. 

I remember that Apollo hit me.  I remember the shock in Greenbean’s face when he saw that.  I remember the taste of blood in my mouth as I was dragged away from Apollo. 

I also remember the urgency to get off that planet, because Boomer and Greenbean had picked up signs of the tinheads that hadn’t been read by the Galactica’s sensors, and they’d come after us themselves rather than break radio silence.

That was unfortunate but it was something that nobody, not even Father, could have foreseen.  There had been no flaw in my plan.  Things would probably have been easier if Apollo hadn’t been there, if he’d done what any officer worth his salt would have done and co-ordinated the mission to retrieve us, rather than going along himself.  It’s just another example of his lack of discipline. 

So Apollo still has faults he needs help with.  I can do that, but it will be easier once I’m out of this place and given the promotion I deserve.  My promotion to Strike Captain is the first step on the way, but it won’t be long before Apollo will take the leadership role that’s his by right and become Commander, and I will be his Colonel.  At first, anyway.  We’ll see what sort of Commander he makes before I make my ultimate decision.  It’s not that he’s not capable, but, as Father said, he may turn out to be a promising warrior irretrievably flawed by his father’s brainwashing. 

Starbuck has weakened him, as well, with his laxness and his scapegrace attitudes.  That good-for-nothing pretender somehow managed to fight back from the hole in his side, and even now comes to visit me sometimes.  Apollo is never with him: he’s embarrassed for me to see him with Starbuck.  He doesn’t come to see me at all, but he’s just waiting for the right moment.  He knows his destiny is to be with me. 

At first Starbuck asked me questions, but I didn’t bother answering: somebody like him wouldn’t understand the answers.  Now, he just comes and watches, until the nurse leads him away from the observation panel in the door.

One day soon, Apollo will walk through that door. 

One day soon.

End