Battlestar Galactica: Scramble
Virtual Season 4, Episode 6
By Senmut and Lisa Zaza
July 22, 2016

Prologue

     Lords of Kobol, this is great, Starbuck told himself, as he leaned
back in his seat, and slowly stretched his legs out. A comfy chair under
him, a cool ambrosia at his elbow, a few friends, and a decent vid to
watch. He looked over at Captain Kevin Byrne, eyes intent on the screen.
The former Earth astronaut seemed absorbed in the video they were
watching, a drama from Earth's past, here in his cabin aboard the
Constellation. Next to him was Chameleon, who was finally getting to
spend some time with his son, and Byrne's daughter, Genesis. Tomorrow,
Starbuck was off, back to Baltar's BaseShip full of renegade Cylons, and
to his position as liaison officer between them and the Colonial Fleet.
Personally, he missed being in a Viper cockpit, and being out there,
doing what he had trained to do. Flying a fighter. Being stuck in a
tedious job, was, well, tedious. Not for him. He couldn't wait until this
duty was up, and some other lucky fellow got to take his place. 
     But for the moment, not so much as the hum of a Cylon was to be
heard.
     "Rotating airfoils?" asked Cassie, as the "movie" progressed.
     "Yes," said Byrne. "This was back before the advent of jet
propulsion, and the turbine, as it were, was external to the engine
itself."
     "Sounds...primitive," said Chameleon. "Really."
     "Well, it was all they had at the time. The airfoil was powered by
an arrangement of reciprocating pistons, in cylinders. But your people
went through the same stages, in your history."
     "I remember seeing something like that, as a kid," said Starbuck.
"An airshow, at a museon we were taken to. Armaments Day field trip. Old
aircraft, some of them from way before spaceflight." He pointed at the
screen. "Some of them looked kind of like those."
     "Have you ever flown one like that?" Chameleon asked their host.
     "Oh yes," said Byrne. "None like these are still in service, back
home, of course. But a few are in the hands of private collectors. I
have, or had, one of my own. And old American P-51 fighter. What we
called the Mustang. A real challenge to fly."
     "It looks it," said Starbuck, watching the ancient machines maneuver
and gyrate on screen. He wondered what it would be like to actually climb
into the cockpit of one of those old warbirds. "Not like a Viper."
     "Hardly looks safe," said Cassie.
     "No fighter craft is ever really safe," said Byrne. "But hey, it was
my calling. Like you, Starbuck. Fighter pilot, and we do the best, with
what we have."
     "Sure do," said Chameleon, and looked at his son with pride. He
turned back to the screen, and Starbuck did as well. He snuggled down
into his seat, seeking greater comfort, and took a sip of his ambrosia,
as he tried to absorb the subtitles on the screen. 
     Yeah, it must have been a real challenge, flying glorified boraton
tanks like those. Any moment, you could get blown to bits, provided the
rattletrap antique machines didn't fail of their own accord, and send you
plummeting to your death. Life or death in every move, the fate of
civilization hanging on the outcome of great battles. He yawned, and set
his drink down. Yeah, must have been a challenge. The kind Apollo would
have liked. Slow, bumpy, no thrusters, turning your brains into scrambled
ovons. Yawn. Scrambled. Sheesh! Scram...scramble....

  Chapter One

     "...scramble! It's a scramble, mate! Hop to it!"
     "Huh? What in Sagan's..." Starbuck leaped forward, almost falling
out of his bunk. Men were running all around him, and a klaxon was
sounding. He rubbed his eyes. "Where..."
     "Come on, Mister! Get up, for God's sake! Get to your plane!" said a
voice, and with moves born of long practice, he got up, and fell in line.
Any micron now, they'd...
     "What the Hades Hole?" he exclaimed, as he got to his feet. He was
standing on a...floor? He looked down, and by God, it was. A solid wooden
floor, with bunks on it. 
     Wood?
     He looked quickly about, and found himself in a long room, with
windows set into one downward curving wall, and a table in one corner. On
it sat a device he did not recognize; a black box, with no cover, and
some sort of trumpet or horn extending upwards. Music of some kind was
issuing from it, but he did not recognize it. In another corner, a
curious contraption, of iron it looked, stood, connected to the ceiling
by a pipe. It radiated heat, and a kettle or pot of some kind sat atop
it, steam issuing with a whistle.
     As the fog of sleep was replaced by more conscious confusion, he
realized he'd been hearing a loud noise the entire time, a slow mournful
wail, like a soul in torment. Dimly, some part of his mind realized what
it was.
     "An air raid siren?" he asked aloud. "How in Hades...?"
     "Come on, shake that butt, Mister!" came the voice again, He turned
and saw another man, dressed in beige pants, and wearing a flight jacket
of some sort. Looking down, he realized that he was attired similarly.
Like the other man, he wore a sidearm. He reflexively caught something
thrown at him. A leather headpiece with goggles.
     Goggles? What in Hades...
     "It's Dover again," said the man.    
     "Who?" asked Starbuck replied, thinking suddenly that he looked
familiar. 
     "Move it!"
     As if in a trance, he followed the other out the door of the
structure, and nearly froze again. There, scattered across a huge grassy
field, were aircraft. Propeller-driven aircraft! All of them were idling,
and many had pilots already in the cockpits, or ground crews hurriedly
finishing last-micron preparations for take-off. 
     "Lords of Ko...." Utter disbelief paralyzed him for a moment, but
then complete confusion abruptly transformed into a bizarre familiarity
that he couldn't ignore.  The location wasn't familiar, but the certainly
situation was.  "Uh, where's my bird?" he asked almost desperately.
     "Right where you left it, ding-bat!" said the other, slapping him on
the shoulder, and pointing. "Mix some water with it next time, okay,
Haggis? Now let's scoot!"
     Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, Starbuck broke into a run,
following the others, and headed for the indicated machine. The urgency
grew only greater, as he was helped up into the cockpit, and donned his
goggles...
     As if he knew what he was doing. With an ease seeming to come from
long practice (too easy, he thought), he sailed through his pre-flight,
and began to taxi. In moments, he was airborne. As his wheels left the
ground, he swore aloud.
     "Watch your language!" came a voice over the headphones in his
"helmet". Scratchy and a bit tinny, it was a far cry from the audio
quality in a Viper. "I won't have profanity in my squadron!" added the
voice. Officious, grating, and with a slight accent he did not recognize,
it set Starbuck's teeth on edge.
     As he looked about the cockpit, he was struck not only at how
primitive it all was, but how cramped. Even the rear seat of a training
Viper had more room, he told himself. Even so, as he scanned the
machinery, he found that he actually understood it, more than he would
have expected. Some things were, thankfully, universal. Shaking his head
and trying to fully concentrate on things to hand, he joined up, a bit
tardily, and soon his squadron joined up with another. From the chatter
over the speaker, it seemed the whole lot was headed for someplace called
"Dover", where the enemy was headed as well.
     Enemy, he mused. Enemy. As unreal as it sounded he was off to fight
the...
     Just who were they fighting?
     And where in Hades Hole was he, anyway?
     Pulling his gaze away from the green fields below (obviously a
settled and cultivated place, wherever it was. Lots of agro.), he
searched the inside of his flight jacket. There had to be something
in...ah! There was a wallet, a folder of some sort, and he pulled it out.

    "Lords of Kobol!" he muttered, as he opened it up. There, staring at
him from an identity card of some sort, was him! But how? He looked more
closely, and found that he could read the script on the document, though
the words made no sense. The card was issued, it said...
     1, May, 1940.
     Whatever in Kobol that meant!
     "What the fracking Hades is this?" he asked himself.
     "Jerry off the port wing!" said a voice over his phones, and
Starbuck snapped back to the here and now. "Wake up, everybody!"
     "Here we go!" said another voice, this one a bit rough, but Starbuck
recognized it as the one who had rolled him out of bed.  "Party time!"
     "Sounds like something..." he began, but suddenly there was a plane
in front of him. Not one of his. It was similar to his own, in basic
design, but had an emblem on the tail different from any he had seen so
far. It was like a broken window frame, with parts missing. Twisted and
turned to one side, it at once seemed ugly, somehow. 
     "Can't be Cylons," he whispered to himself, then almost without
thinking, he pressed the firing stud on his controls, and his plane began
to vibrate. What in...This ship doesn't use lasers, he told himself. No,
those old things in the museon, they used....
     Bullets!
     He fired again, and at once, part of the leading edge of the others'
left wing flew away, and the other ship rolled.
     "Felcercarb!" he hissed, and went after it. The other craft was not
doing so well, it's trim unsteady. Perhaps he had done it more harm than
he had realized. He stayed with it, and fired again. His first burst shot
away the upper tip of the tail, then with the second, smoke and sparks
began to belch from under the cowling. A final blast tore off the left
wing, and the other spun off in flames.
     Starbuck both felt and heard the explosion, and bits of the
disintegrating ship pelted his own. Before he could do anything however,
another voice, the one that had called him "haggis" told him he had an
unwelcome visitor, astern.
     He rolled left, then went into a climb. The controls of this crate
were slow and unresponsive, to put it mildly, compared to those of a
Viper, and he had to put more physical effort into making the ship
respond. That, and the lack of any sort of attack scanner, compounded his
frustration. But the famous "Starbuck luck" had never failed him, and
despite the crude machine at his disposal, he decided that desperate
measures were called for. 
     Wrenching the controls as hard as he could, he flipped his plane
over, and went into a dive. The ship shuddered and groaned, as if
threatening to come apart, but he was too focused to care. As the ship
pointed down, slugs from the other zipped past, one striking his right
wing. At once, Starbuck eased back on the power, and the other machine
screamed past. Starbuck fired, and the front of the enemy craft vomited
smoke, and the canopy flashed red. Then he climbed away, and was past it.
     "Good one, Haggis!" said the voice, as Starbuck leveled out. He
caught sight of the flaming ship plowing into the ground, then went after
another just like it. 
     "Iblis," said Starbuck, as he moved in on another ship, this one
larger, and with two engines. "Gotta be Count Iblis."
     "Never count 'em until afterwards," said the other, and laughed. He
looked to his left, and other plane like his was there, it's pilot
tossing him an insane grin. He made a curious hand-sign, thumb and
forefinger looped in an "O" shape, and a laugh rippled over the radio. "I
much prefer target practice. Come on, Haggis, let's go pretend deer speak
German and fly planes, huh?"
     "Uh, yeah. Thanks." 
     Whoever he was, Starbuck decided, he was either a complete lunatic,
or had an acute case of combat induced verbal diarrhea ...
     Maybe both. He had no time to pursue this thought any further, when
a slug zinged through his canopy, shaving a thin layer of skin off his
cheek bone. He snapped hard to starboard, came around, and felt an
explosion behind him. In his rear mirror, he caught sight of flames, and
saw another enemy craft break apart. 
     "Thanks, whoever that was!"
     "My pleasure," came a reply.
     Turning his attention ahead, he saw a larger aircraft, one of the
attack craft these people used. Almost without thinking, he fired. The
bomber was ponderously slow, by comparison to his own ship, and poorly
defended. He made a pass, guns firing, and saw part of the fuselage fly
off, then he was past it, none of the enemy gunner's shots even coming
close. 
     "Scratch one Heinkel!" said a voice, but he couldn't tell who as he
wiped away a trickle of blood.


     Following the rest back to base, when it was all over, and hoping he
didn't look like he didn't know where he was going, Starbuck discovered
that he was in someplace called "County Kent", and this base was
designated "RAF Manston", neither of which meant a thing to him. Landing
on anything other than a Battlestar's landing deck was a bit of a
challenge, but strangely fun, as he intuitively mastered the old bird,
and managed not to splatter himself all over the field, and was soon
heading across the field with the other pilots. Looking back, he noticed
that his plane was decorated with small emblems; seven of the strange,
twisted cross symbols, like those he had seen on the enemy craft.
Evidence of past kills, apparently. 
     Once the shock and exhilaration of combat began to fade, the full
realization of his situation came home to him. Somehow, and he couldn't
begin to understand it, he had come to be on Earth, during what he had
learned was known as "World War Two", and he was flying a fighter craft,
against "The Germans", fellow Humans who he would soon discover looked
conspicuously like members of the Eastern Alliance. Apparently, they were
the bad guys, around here. From what Byrne and the other Earthers had
told them though, this war was yahrens back, long before the Earthman's
time, the flying museons  around him being the biggest indication of that
fact.
     But how? Count Iblis? Apollo told him that the Count had been
destroyed during their most recent encounter, in some weird alternate
reality, if in truth one could actually "kill" a being such as he. But,
even if he had somehow come back, like a holovid vampiron, this didn't
seem his style. Not to show up, be visibly present, to taunt his prey or
to gloat. He tossed it around in his mind, but could think of no other
logical candidate. .. unless someone had slipped a hallucinogen into his
primaries and he was off on some drug induced adventure of his mind's own
making. 
     No, as surreal as it all seemed, he didn't think so. The dried blood
on his face from his narrow miss with death was undeniably real. It was
all real. The pain, and presumably, death also. After spending every
waking moment of his life since the Destruction of the Colonies
desperately trying to survive so they could bring the Fleet to Earth, he
was here ahead of them all. He could almost hear Boomer griping to
Apollo, "I don't know how he does it . . ."  And while he desperately
wanted to understand how he'd ended up here, of bigger concern was how in
Hades Hole he was going to get back. 
     Or, he slowly asked himself, could the rest of the Fleet somehow be
brought here the same way? Then again, Earth in this primitive state was
in no position to defend itself against the Cylon Empire. Scratch that
idea, Bucko.

     Well, primitive Earth this might be, but, welcome relief, Starbuck
knew an officer's club when he saw one, and, instantly feeling a familiar
hankering for some adult beverages, soon he and several others were
bellying up to a bar. It seemed that, thanks to some prior arrangement,
it was Starbuck's turn to buy, and he reached into a pocket, as he'd seen
some of the others do. The coins he withdrew were unfamiliar to him;
round, of varying sizes, with a Human profile stamped into them, and
manifestly not minted of auric, like Colonial coinage. Well, at least the
Count, if it were he, had given him a generous stake before he plunked
him down in the middle of this unknown time and place. Unsure, and
nervous of being discovered, he splashed them onto the bar, and hoped for
the best. The barkeep looked at him oddly for a moment, but said nothing
as he raked them in with a grin while others around them good-naturedly
put "the generous tip" down to Starbuck's recent brush with death.
     This stuff wasn't half bad, he decided, after a couple of swigs of
his drink. A bit like Skorpian ale, but a tad warmer than he usually
liked his grog. Casting his eyes surreptitiously up and down the bar, it
seemed the rest were having it that way, too. 
      Better not bounce the shuttle, just yet, old boy. 
     The big guy that he'd first encountered upon awakening wormed in
next to him, and clinked flagons with him, and complimenting him on his
battle wound. He was tall, wiry of build, and damn....he was familiar.
Starbuck felt sure he'd seen him, or someone like him, somewhere. But
where?
     Just a coincidence, Bucko, he told himself. In a universe full of
Humanoid beings, similarities were surely a common occurrence. Even on
different planets, a star system apart. 
     "That was a great kill, Haggis!" said the other, after swallowing a
big gulp. "You just got right in there, and blew him into next week."
     "Uh, well, it is what we're here for," said Starbuck casually,
trying to act like the others. 
     "Well, I'd say we earned our pay for the week."
     Earned our...where have I heard that expression before? It was...
     He was interrupted in thought, by other pilots passing, and
congratulating him on his prowess today. He returned the compliments, and
then it was more drinks all around. He was beginning to feel the buzz
from the alcohol start to come on, when he heard the door open. A few
turned, then they all stood up, in a hurry, Starbuck acting likewise.
Though he didn't recognize all the uniform insignia, he instinctively
recognized a superior officer. They stood to attention.
     "Good show, men," said the other, a tall fellow with a swagger stick
and a ridiculous moustache. "All of you. Even you, Templeton," he added,
looking at Starbuck.
     "Uh, yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Starbuck replied, almost on
automatic, pondering that he obviously had a history with this man. He'd
have to ask someone about that later. He stood, rigid, as the man moved
down the row, congratulating this or that fellow, and then headed for the
bar, himself. Starbuck found himself relaxing, as the other moved away.
He looked around, and picked up what remained of his drink.
     "Odd to see him in here, isn't it?" said one pilot, to Starbuck's
companion.
     "Kind of," replied the other. "Don't see old Brass Butt in here, a
lot."
     "Better not let him catch you calling him that," said another pilot.
"He'll have you scrubbing the planes with a toothbrush, Byrne."
     Sssppppppppppppwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...............
     "Hey, you okay, Haggis?" said the other, slapping him on the back,
as the beer went flying out of his mouth.
     "Swal....swallowed the wrong way!" hacked Starbuck, trying to catch
a gulp of air.
     "I hate it when that happens," said Byrne. "Such a waste of good
booze."
     Byrne? Lords of Kobol!

Chapter Two

     It was late, well after lights out, but Starbuck couldn't sleep. He
just couldn't shut off his brain, which Boomer would no doubt find
hilarious in the extreme, probably ribbing him that turning it on was the
usual problem. What in Hades Hole had happened to him? The last thing he
remembered was...was what? His recent memory seemed fuzzy, in the
extreme. He'd had a date scheduled with Cassie, he was sure of that. He
remembered picking her up, when she logged off from the LifeStation
aboard the Galactica. They were going to join in the sectonly card night
aboard Constellation, with both Chameleon and a few others, and then, he
and Cassie would slip off for some quality time alone. He remembered
boarding a shuttle...and something else. But what? Images, like Warriors
in uniform? A mission briefing? Images...
     "Mong!" he muttered aloud, on his bunk. The man on the bunk next to
his stirred, but there was no other sound. Once more, he reached into the
inner pocket of his flight jacket, and withdrew the documents within. By
the light filtering in through the dirty window above his bunk, he could
just barely make them out. Lousy, so seeking better illumination, he got
up, and went into the nearest thing around here to a turboflush.
     He was, so his identity card declared, one Benedict Templeton
("Lords of Kobol! These Earth names!"), originally from somewhere called
Carrot Creek, Alberta, in the nation, or country, or whatever, of Canada.
Aged 25, orphaned, and unmarried, he had apparently been touring this
country-not that he remembered doing so-when war broke out between
England (or was it Britain? It seemed to have more than one name!) and
Germany. Seven days after war broke out, the rest of Canada had joined
the fight on England's behalf, but apparently "Ben Templeton" wasn't
exactly known for his patience. He had signed up as soon as war was
declared, joining the Royal Air Force at a recruiting office in
Liverpool. (He didn't want to think about the image that name brought to
mind!) The English, or whatever they were called, were, so it seemed,
hard-pressed for warriors, these Germans having brought massive air power
to bear in their war with the English/British. 
     All of this stirred another memory, somewhere, conveniently rising
to the surface of his mind like a helpful reference source. He recalled
Captain Byrne, the rescued Earth astronaut, tell of a war in Earth's
past, called "World War Two". "England" fought against an enemy called
"Germany". Fought using weapons and machinery that belonged in a museon,
somewhere, so he'd heard. Like the one he'd seen as a kid, back in the
orphanage. 
     Was he an orphan, here? He looked through the documents, but there
was nothing on him, beyond his place of birth, ...Yes, an orphanage
upbringing, and then his enlistment. Yet, it would seem that the rest
knew him, as if he'd been here for some considerable time. In this
reality, he had, from all appearances, managed to survive, which was
apparently rare. The average life of a fighter pilot in this war was six
to eight weeks, the local equivalent of a secton, and the average age was
a lot closer to twenty. Ben Templeton was a rare exception, which was why
he had risen through the ranks-most of those dead already-to become a
squadron leader.  . 
     And Byrne? The lanky fellow that had roused him from his bunk this
morning was named Byrne. James Charles Byrne was from the United States
of America, a country that hadn't joined the war against Germany, at
least at this point, if Starbuck's memory served.  Not one to "sit on his
duff" while the "Limeys bought the farm", Byrne had come over to England
to fight. It had to be more than just some weird cosmic coincidence,
Starbuck told himself. This man not only had the same last name, but in
general appearance, resembled the Captain Byrne he knew. Even some of his
mannerisms, Starbuck reflected. The way he walked, laughed, or held his
head. Even the way he flicked ashes off of his fumerette. All looked too
much like those of the Byrne he knew to be just wild chance. 
     But what crazy chance had brought him here? To this place, this
time? This person? From the way he spoke, it seemed that Byrne knew him
well, even to the use of that bizarre nickname "Haggis" What in Hades
Hole was that? Of course, he couldn't ask. That might give the game away.
     Game? Was this all some sort of weird game? Was someone, or
something, playing, toying, with him? Whatever it was, he damn well
didn't like it, and would rather have done with it right this micron.
Yet, that didn't seem likely, just as likely as his understanding the
language, and how to fly one of these relics. 
     He also understood the lettering on the coins used here. He looked
closely at one of the few left to him. It had a profile of a man. Around
the edge were letters that, despite the improbability of it, he could
read. 
     GEORGIVS VI D G BR OMNI REX F D IND IMP He could pronounce the
symbols, and even realized that he partly understood them. But how? It
was...crazy.
     He turned it over. There was the image of a small bird.
     Farthing. And a numerical sequence; 1-9-3-9. The other coin had a
similar inscription, but was larger, with a different emblem on the back.
    This is insane!
     He looked at himself in the small, dirty mirror, over the sink. He
didn't look any different, save for the medium moustache he now sported.
Otherwise, he was clean-shaven, as always, and with much shorter hair. He
touched the bandage on his cheek. It hurt, yeah, but it had hurt a lot
more when they had cleaned it with some caustic liquid meant to kill
bacteria while "testing a man's mettle". Back on the Galactica, Doctor
Salik would have had this taken care of in a micron. Obviously, the level
of medicine here was as primitive as the military technology. He hoped he
didn't suffer any serious injuries, before this was all over. He didn't
fancy ending up like some of those old-time Warriors he'd seen in his
history scans, as a kid. Crippled, burned, maimed for life, and a hundred
other horrors, before the advent of modern medical technology.
     But I still look like me. I'm Starbuck, son of Chameleon, Lieutenant
of the Colonial Military, stationed aboard the Battlestar Galactica. My
Squadron is Blue, my CO is Captain Apollo, our Commander is Adama,
Apollo's father. This is not my place, nor time. I do not belong here! I
belong back in the Fleet...in bed with Cassie! Not...
     But you are here, Bucko. It is your one reality. Get used to it. You
are here, on primitive Earth, stuck in the middle of one of their
old-style wars. And like it or not, somehow, this Byrne is mixed up with
it all. Your fate, his fate...Fate can get mixed up, sometimes.
     Huh. That maxim sounded a tad familiar. Where had he heard it... 
     His head went up, at the sound of a squeaky spring, somewhere.
Despite being in a small chamber, he had the feeling of being watched all
of a sudden. He snapped off the light, and opened the door, to scan the
darkness, but found himself looking into the eyes of another. 
     Hades Hole! Byrne, again? 
     "Too much beer, I think," said Byrne, somewhat wobbly, passing in,
as Starbuck slipped out. Still feeling uneasy, he went to one of the
dingy windows. Outside, he could barely make out the guards, changing
positions, the only light being that of earth's one large Moon.
     "What in Hades Hole is going on?" he muttered to himself. "How did I
get into this mess?"
     But the darkness gave him no answers.

Chapter Three

     The next few days brought much the same, for Starbuck. Scrambles,
intercepts, near-misses in the air. More than a few of his fellow pilots
didn't come back, something he was all-too familiar with from a different
reality. On more than one occasion, he came close to joining them, when
his own craft took respectable damage from enemy fire. It was only, he
told himself, his long experience and superior training that allowed him
to escape more than once. In return, using the sun and altitude to ambush
the enemy, he downed two more Nazi fighters, shot the portside engine off
of a bomber, and walked away from a landing with no actual landing gear.
     "Boomer would be turning colors, if he could see me now," he
muttered to himself, as he stood on the steps of the barracks, watching
the latest group of cadets file by. The newbies had that familiar look of
excitement, determination, pride and nervousness all wrapped up in a
crisp and snazzy new uniform.
     Kind of like a certain young pilot he'd known, once.
     "Whatcha got there?" asked a fellow pilot.
     "Huh? Oh, just some books," he replied, looking at the volumes. 
     "Books?  Whatcha going to do with them?  Press flowers?" the pilot
ribbed him. 
     "Nah, he's gonna throw 'em at Jerry!" teased another.
      "Level out my bunk," Starbuck replied, pausing as the others
laughed and wandered past. He sauntered over to where something like a
lounge chair sat empty, and seated himself. The Commandant's office had a
small number of books, he had discovered, and since he could, with some
effort, read this weird script, he decided that he would do some
seriously needed catching up. Where, when, what, and whom. All were
questions still lacking complete answers.
     Or any, for that matter.
     He tucked into the "newspaper" first, to get an idea of the most
current events. Little of it made real sense to him, except for the broad
outlines. The "Prime Minister" would be on the "wireless" tonight, and
German losses in engagements just past seemed to be greater than their
own. He wondered how much truth there was in that. After all, back home,
the Colonial Office of War Information had not infrequently played artful
games with the facts, in an effort to keep up morale. He suspected that
the Humans here were little different. 
     Okay, he told himself, as he cracked a book. "England", also called
"Great Britain", or the "United Kingdom" ("Can't they decide?"), but only
if a place called "Northern Ireland" was additionally included, was a
large island group in Earth's second largest Ocean, called the
"Atlantic", in her Northern Hemisphere. Close by was a huge continental
landmass, called "Europe", which was, at present, mostly dominated by the
political entity titled "Germany". This Germany was ruled by a military
dictator named Hitler (He stopped a moment. He remembered Byrne
mentioning that name once or twice.), who seemed determined to pursue a
path of global conquest, regardless of the cost. At present, only Britain
appeared to be putting up any serious resistance to him.  
     He read on, digesting facts about Britain, the "Empire", and recent
history. "The United States", also referred to as "America", a large,
democratically organized nation-state, was situated on another continent,
across the Atlantic. She was, despite cultural and language ties to
Britain, at present "neutral" in the war with Germany. Canada, where
"Benjamin Templeton" was supposedly from, was just north of the United
States, and on the other hand had joined the war on the tail of England
declaring it. It was apparently a "Commonwealth" country, unlike the
United States, and politically tied to Britain in some fashion he hadn't
figured out, yet.
     "Then why in Hades Hole are some countries over here and others
not?" he asked himself, quietly. He shook his head, making a mental note
to ask Byrne or some other of the "Yanks" why they had come over on their
own, when he had an opportunity, and went on. He reached into a pocket,
and withdrew the local equivalent of a fumerello. Hard to get and limited
for the average citizen, he had learned that servicemen didn't go
without. They weren't as good as what he was used to back home ("You
can't beat a Taurian Torpedo Number Five"), but he sure as Hades wasn't
going to complain, given they were the only choice.
     "Filthy habit," one of the other pilots had said, wrinkling his
nose. "Even if Winnie does indulge."
     "Reading?  Couldn't agree more," Starbuck returned." He shrugged,
making another mental note to find out exactly who this "Winnie" was.
Here on Earth smoking was a lot more common than back on the Galactica. 
In fact, they didn't even seem to be aware of the possible health
concerns that the medical officers had drilled into the Colonial ranks.
     As he read, a shadow fell across his book, and he looked up. He was
wanted in the CO's office. At first, he felt a wave of uneasiness. Had he
done something wrong?
     On the contrary, in this war you were either an Ace or a target, and
Ben Templeton's latest combat missions had proven him to be an Ace. 
Despite the fact that the British High Command didn't publicly celebrate
the individual successes of fighter pilots, as it might be considered
detrimental to the morale of equally brave Bomber Command and
reconnaissance aircrews, they still took notice.  Because of this
Starbuck was given the job of breaking in new men, assigned as
replacements, showing them the ropes. Guys this green rarely lasted long,
and given his experience, he had been selected to help prepare them for
combat. He yes-sir'd, saluted, and left the office, but inwardly cursed.
While he was no doubt good at it, training cadet squadrons had been among
his least favorite of duties, as a Viper pilot, with the possible
exception of the all-female class he and Apollo had been assigned shortly
after the Destruction. He was a patrol and combat man, not a glorified
school teacher, and he at once recalled Cadet Beau, and the rest, lost
over Arcta, to the Ravishol Pulsar. Then there was Cadet Jada...
     Cadets he had failed. He cringed inwardly, shaking off those
memories.
     Cadets. Weren't their seventeen "weeks" of primary training and
their ensuing fourteen of transitional and operational training supposed
to prepare them for combat?  What was he supposed to do?  Be their wet
nurse? Inspire them in a war that wasn't even his own? The truth of the
matter was that most of these kids were twenty Earth yahrens old or
younger, some of them probably lying about their age, just as eager to
die for their country as Apollo and Boomer had been when they'd signed up
too many yahrens ago to remember. One kid had looked as though he'd never
passed a razor over his baby face, but evidently had sworn he was
eighteen when he had enlisted.  
     Hades Hole!
     Starbuck pulled out another smoke, pausing to light it up and suck
deeply on the noxious fumes, and shook his head.  He closed his eyes,
wondering briefly why this war on this planet was getting to him so
quickly, when he had weathered an entire career light yahrens away
against another enemy.  Maybe that was it.  Maybe it was the idea of
Humans fighting Humans. Of young men killing other young men, rather than
some soulless alien enemy like the Tinheads, many fighting for reasons
they didn't really understand, preferring to believe the propaganda, not
even asking themselves how much of it was propaganda. 
     I wonder, did Zac...
     A hand clamped down firmly on his shoulder, and for a fleeting
moment he could almost believe it was Boomer or Apollo. He opened his
eyes, seeing Byrne standing there in front of him.
     "Illegitimatus non carborundum, Haggis."
     "Huh?"  
     "Don't let the bastards grind you down," Byrne said. 
     "Never," Starbuck replied with conviction, shaking off his mood. 
While the American lacked Apollo's eloquence, the effect was the same. 
After all, orders were orders. "Well, better get to it, huh?"
     "Words to warm the cockles of any CO's heart."
     Cockle? What in Hades is a cockle?


     The training flight went better than he had expected, with pupils
who actually seemed to be paying attention to whatever Starbuck said. He
kicked himself mentally, when he found himself referring to one Cadet as
"Beau", more than once. He shook his head, and briefly wondered what the
late Beau would have thought of his error, especially since the fellow's
name was actually the impossible mouthful of 'Postlethwaite'. 
     Earth names! 
     They all managed to land without demolishing their machines, much to
Starbuck's relief, but no sooner had he slid his cockpit open, then the
scramble sounded. He watched, as ground crews madly worked to refuel and
prep the ships for the real thing. 
     "All I've got is a bunch of green guys," he said into his mic. "Most
of them don't know which end the las...guns point!"
     "No time, Red Leader. Prepare to intercept," came the reply.
     "Received and understood," he said. He counted down the minutes on
his "watch", and the crews scurried about them. He just hoped, given the
slow, lumbering nature of the enemy ships, they'd actually be able to get
off the ground in time. Lords, these kids...
     "Sir?" asked one.
     "I said skip all checks. Once you're fueled, get up. Repeat, get
into the air."
     Soon, mercifully sooner than he had expected, he lifted off himself.
Since he lacked the familiar technology of the Viper, most glaringly the
absence of a scanner, he had to wait to be vectored to the IP, from the
ground. While it might seem fast to these folks, it was maddeningly slow,
to him.
     "Save me one or two, okay Haggis?" said a voice, and he couldn't
help but smile. Byrne had made it up, as well, it seemed. 
     "I'm sure there'll be plenty for all," replied Starbuck, pouring on
the power, gaining height. He looked off his port wing, and saw one of
his students moving towards him. He ordered his pilots to form up, and
not for the last time, wished for a Viper under him.
      They found the enemy fairly quickly, but the Luftwaffe wasn't
exactly flatfooted. Even as they closed in on the bomber formation, Nazi
fighters screamed in, and combat was joined. Starbuck heard a loud noise,
as a bullet left a hole in one wing, and he rolled. Without even trying,
he found one bomber right in front of him, and fired. Then he was past,
and looked about for another target. He found it, but so had another
Spitfire. He held his fire a moment...
     "I got him!" said a voice over his headset. 
     "Take the shot," said Starbuck, Even as he spoke, he saw a
Messerschmitt move in on the other. "Bandit on your tail, kid. Forget the
bomber. Bandit..."
     "I have him!" said the other.
     "No, kid! I..."
     But even as he spoke, Starbuck saw smoke burst from one wing on the
kid's plane, then fire from under the cowling. In a blur, and certain of
where the lethal shots had come from, Starbuck twisted his machine over,
and nearly collided with the German fighter. He rolled, and came down,
firing, burying at least a dozen shots in the bomber's left wing, then he
was past.
     He saw the kid, plane trailing smoke, as it spiraled downwards,
heard his crying for help, and felt helpless. He circled over towards it,
but was soon distracted by the Messerschmitt. He tried to focus entirely
on the German, controlling his anger, as it fired. Slugs screamed
terrifyingly close, and he maneuvered his ancient crate in a deadly dance
with the other, writhing for advantage. 
     This guy was good, he had to admit. Every move he made, every twist
he put his plane through, it seemed the other matched him almost
effortlessly. Lords, one would almost think there were Centurions inside
that ship! Starbuck banked tightly, but the other was tenacious, sticking
to him like mushies to the felix. He saw a piece of his right wing fly
off, and turned his craft violently right, hearing it groan as the
stresses built up. He doubted these buckets had been designed for this
much acrobatics, but he'd find out. 
     One way or the other.
     He tried to gain height, and found that Fritz was still on his tail.
And still firing. One round clipped the top of his canopy, sending pieces
flying, barely missing his head. Now either the Messerschmitt was the
better machine, technically, or this was just one damned good pilot
flying her. Despite his professional curiosity, this was hardly the time
or place for dispassionate comparisons. He needed something, and needed
it quickly. 
     But would this...eolith of an aircraft really give him what he
needed? Could it? He remembered what his old flight instructor had told
him, especially the part about one of your ships being the one you die
in, and with a deep breath, went for it. He slammed the engine to it's
maximum, and from what the gauges were telling him, and the way it
sounded, he suspected that "maximum" was somewhere behind him. He went
into a climb, as hard and as fast as the Spitfire would give it to him.
Sure enough, the other was on him, doing everything he could to match the
British plane move for move. Starbuck wove and banked and tried
desperately to stay in one piece, until, after one nasty burst from the
German had clipped his tail...
     He cut power, and wrenched the control stick, flipping his machine
over, and pointing her nose downwards. The entire craft groaned, and he
could feel the very frame vibrate dangerously. But he didn't care. He
wanted that German. He wanted that damned fracking German more than he'd
wanted most of the Cylons he'd gone after, through the yahrens. He
screamed downwards, closing the distance between himself and the other,
obviously caught off guard for a critical moment, and now beginning a
bank...
     But Starbuck had no intention of giving him that chance. He thumbed
his firing stud, even as he drew closer. He watched as slugs screamed by
the other, then ripped into it's engine, wing, and cockpit. The entire
front of the Messerschmitt vanished in a boiling cloud of smoke and
sparks, and Starbuck almost collided with it, as he screamed past. 
     "Die, bastard. Die!" he snarled, as he watched the other machine
begin to come apart. It rolled upside down, then screamed towards Earth
till it slammed into the ground in a ball of fire, and he smiled. He
actually found himself hating the German he'd just erased. Hated him for
killing the kid whose name he couldn't even remember now. Hated him for
trying to slaughter fellow Humans. Hated him for making him hate him.
Hated...
     Hated the sounds his ship was making. The maneuvers he'd put it
through had been, it seemed, too much. Even as he watched, another piece
of his right wing peeled off, and the control surfaces wouldn't respond.
His engine was sputtering, smoke beginning to spew from under the
cowling. Lights were blinking all over the place, and he decided that it
was time to go.  

Chapter Four

     "Well?" asked Byrne, later, back at the base. Starbuck was just
coming out of the C.O.'s office.
     "Debriefing. Just debriefing," said Starbuck, looking glum, and
wishing he were elsewhere. Anywhere.
     Like back home.
     "I mean Postlethwaite. What..."
     "He didn't make it," said Starbuck, curtly, and Byrne could clearly
hear the anger in the other's voice. "Didn't even get his fracking canopy
open."
     "Damn Krauts," said Byrne. "But, hell's bells, it's war, Haggis. It
could have been any of us..."
     "But it wasn't!" snapped Starbuck, more loudly than he had intended,
as the emotion inside boiled up. "He was just a kid. Hardly out of
school. Didn't even know which end of a razor to use, and it was my job
to keep him alive. My job to..." he dropped his voice, and headed
outside. Byrne, much to his annoyance followed him.
     "You can't blame..."
     "It was my job to keep them alive!" Starbuck shouted, rounding on
the other, and for the moment not caring about the people turning to
look. "Hades Hole, I blew it! That kid was depending on me. On me! And I
fracked it up, just like all the rest! Just like..." He stopped,
realizing he had almost slipped, in his outburst. "Aw, forget it," he
growled, and walked away. 
     "Look, you can't win the war all by yourself, and quit trying to
carry the weight of the world on your shoulders!" said Byrne. "You're not
God, you know. Not even close, so quit behaving as if you could solve
everything!"
     Starbuck glared at him, for a moment rage boiling up inside. How
dare this...primitive excuse for a...
     Let it drop, a voice seemed to say, in his head. He took a deep
breath, and glared at Byrne again.
     "You know, I'm glad you're a pilot, Byrne. You'd make a lousy
psychiatrist."
     "Well, thanks," said the Yank. "That's the nicest insult I've had
all day.
     "You're still a total pain in the ast...ass, you know. You totally
piss me off."
     "I know, I do. I really do. But hey, it's an art form, Haggis. If I
didn't keep on you, I'd go through withdrawals."
     "Go swallow your fuel line," grumbled Starbuck, but the edge was off
his temper.
     "Know what you need?" asked Byrne.
     Beside a nice tankard of something, and a hot woman? What do I
need?" He started to walk away.
     "What you need, Haggis, is some diversion," said Byrne, still on his
tail. "Something to take your mind off of it."
     "Take my mind...yeah, sure," he shot back, looking out across the
airfield. What I need is for this nightmare to end, and to wake up next
to Cassie. Or in my cockpit, and find out my breather gear loused up, and
I'm just spacehappy. Either way, I'm not telling Tarnia. "Mind? I'm
wondering if I still have one of those. I'm sure it was around here,
somewhere."
     "Ever been to London, Haggis?"
     "London?" This nation's capital city. Right. "Yeah, sure. Why?"

     Starbuck wasn't sure just how, and didn't enquire too deeply, but
Byrne seemed to know the right folks. Either that, or he was just plain
lucky. Late the next afternoon, after a debriefing following another
scramble, the American announced that he had some furlough time, and he
was headed into London. Oh, and Starbuck was coming with him. For his
part, Starbuck didn't really want to go anywhere. He was still too
uncertain about this whole thing to risk heading out into something even
more unknown. That, and he would have preferred, had anyone bothered to
have asked, to just lay on his bunk, and wallow in misery. Or maybe sit
up drinking, and wallow. In the past he'd found that wallowing was
versatile, that way, if one took the time to really find out. The night
before, he'd dreamed about the downed cadet, the kid's face seeming to
blur, becoming Cree, or Beau, or Jada, or all the others he'd failed.
Failed. Right now, he just felt like a fracking worthless failure, and
would prefer to be left to wallow in, to immerse himself . . .  to stew
in . . . to languish in . . . no, no, no, he'd immure himself in his own
personal patented Starbuck brand of intoxicating, encompassing,
completely egomaniacal self-pity, thank you very much.
     But Byrne wasn't asking. He also wasn't taking no for an answer.
That, and the fact the CO, looking directly at him, suddenly announced
"you lads need to be off" sealed it. 
     "I wanna go home," he muttered to himself, as they climbed into
someone's ride. 
     "So do we all, sir," one of the other pilots replied. "We all have
better things to do than be stuck in a bloody war." It could have been
any one of them. They all felt the same.


     London was actually a surprise to Starbuck, though he hadn't been
sure just what awaited him. The city was huge, which he hadn't really
expected, for Earth. Somehow, to him, "primitive" always equaled
"smaller". Oh well, he'd adapt. He always did, somehow, he reminded
himself, as their driver wove through the sometimes-messy streets,
heading for...where?
     Their first stop was a huge building with a dome, that reminded
Starbuck at once of the main legislature building, on Caprica. One of the
pilots called it a "cathedral", and the Viper pilot could not help but be
amazed. He hadn't considered that Earth, so "primitive" to his notions,
could have buildings like this. Soaring arches and vast internal spaces.
It was almost like a landing bay, he told himself. He felt his estimation
of Earth going up a notch or two. Even more so, when he learned that the
building was almost three-hundred Earth yahrens old.
     Commander Adama would love this place.
     From the roof, they could look out upon the battered city. Yes,
London was enormous, covering an area actually larger than Caprica City,
from what he could see. A wide river, the Thames, cut it in half, and was
filled with traffic, and funny-looking things, called barrage balloons,
floated above the battered city. Despite all the disruptions of war,
these people just picked themselves up, and carried on.
     Just like we did. Going on, whatever the Cylons threw at us.
    As he pondered this, he noted the enormous damage that was in
evidence all around him. Whole blocks of buildings had been reduced to
shattered skeletons, some heaps of rubble still smoldering as vehicles
drove past. Obviously, these Germans were really giving it to London.
Unwanted, unlooked for, memories of his own interrupted childhood came to
mind, wandering aimlessly in the Caprican Thorn Forest, after the Cylon
raid on Umbra. He wondered how many people, children especially, were now
aimless and homeless, parentless, even lifeless, thanks to the wanton
destruction being rained down from the sky. It probably looked much the
same in the cities of Germany; after all, these Earthmen weren't battling
machines, they were fighting other Humans. Maybe that had something to do
with the depression bent on dragging him to the depths of despair. Lords,
parts of this city looked uninhabitable, unsafe, gutted. People looked
shell-shocked, battered, beaten.
     After a good view of the city, and short conversations with some
other gawkers, they toured the building, apparently both a house of
worship, and the burial place of people important in Earth history. Then,
they were off again, Starbuck holding on tight as Byrne tore around a
corner, obviously just as anxious as himself to leave unsettling images
behind. Though not a native, the American  seemed to know his way around
fairly well, and one of the Brits with them was a Londoner. After
contacting some friends here, his companions led him to a "pub", whatever
that meant, though its purpose was in no doubt. Soon, he had a drink in
his fist, and a fumerello in his mouth. That, and the lovely young thing
that soon was occupying his lap almost, make that almost, made him forget
about things, and how rotten he felt, inside. After a few, he actually
began to feel almost himself again.
     Well Buckers, you'll bounce back. You always bounce back. You can't
languish in the past. Gotta look ahead, kid.
     "No, you can't languish in the past," he heard a voice say, behind
him. He quickly swallowed his mouthful of ale, and turned around. All he
saw were other customers, most with drinks in their hands, and tobacco in
their mouths. Men and women both, most wearing some sort of uniform, and
of varying ages. He scanned the place, but could not find the "guilty
party". He shook his head. Must be his imagination, he decided, when one
of his companions put a hand to his shoulder, turned him back around, and
got his full attention. Or at least tried. Even Colonial Warriors could
only talk so much shop, in the O Club. 
     "Uh, no," he found himself saying, in reply to a question from a
fellow pilot. "My...father was an agr... farmer. You know. Lots of dirt."
     "Really? I say, so was mine, old thing. Nothing like getting down
into the soil is there, eh?"
     "No, nothing like it at all," replied Starbuck, who hated to so much
as have dirt under his fingernails, let alone be covered in it, and
sending up a quick prayer of gratitude, as the cute young thing from his
lap made a reappearance. Yes, she'd like a drink, and no, she wouldn't
insult him by saying no. They slipped away to a suddenly free corner, and
commiserated for a while. Starbuck was by now feeling considerably more
his old self, as the girl seemed to hang on his every word. Oh, he was
under no illusions about her, but it felt good to be doing something
normal, illusions or not. At least for him. 
     "Mind if I cut in?" said a voice", and he looked up. It was Byrne.
Actually, Starbuck did, since he and the girl....well. Starbuck looked
up. Actually, he did mind, especially since a pretty girl wrapped up in
an attractive haze of alcohol had a way of making a fellow forget all his
troubles and woes. But the girl decided it was time to "powder her nose",
and slipped out of his lap. Starbuck was torn by annoyance, and wondering
why one would need to convert a nose to powder. Sounded horrible. Then,
Byrne sat down, and within moments, he found a plate of food in front of
him.
     "Come on, chow down," said Byrne, "before you fall down." Starbuck
looked at the proffered repast.
     "W..hat is it?" he asked, cautiously.
     "Oh come on," laughed Byrne. "Don't tell me you don't recognize
haggis, Haggis."
     "R...right," sighed Starbuck. 


     Despite spoiling a budding romance, Byrne still seemed determined
that Starbuck was going to have fun. Even if he had to force it on him.
Inwardly shrugging, and hiding his still warm annoyance at losing his
opportunity with the pub-crawling pretty, Starbuck was drug along to
something called a "music hall". It seemed to be a popular landing zone
for people of all sorts, in or out of uniforms, and was a form of
entertainment unfamiliar to him. He could not recall any of the Colonies
having anything exactly like it. Of course, he reminded himself, the
Colonies had consisted of countless sub-cultures, as well as long-extinct
art forms, from the centi-yahrens past. Perhaps, way back when...
     He couldn't help laugh, when the actor on stage did a mocking
impersonation of the German dictator Hitler, along with a fat man dressed
in similar uniform, and the two launched into a song ribald enough for
the Colonial Military Academy. At least these folks had, in spite of all
the horror and death all about them, kept their sense of humor. In spite
of this whole crazy situation, Starbuck actually found himself liking the
show.
     But movies, as they existed here, were a different matter. After the
music hall, he found himself in an establishment called a "cinema".
Unlike the forms of video entertainment that he was familiar with, there
were no data crystals, disks or memory tapes to be seen. Apparently ("you
gotta be kidding me!"), the images were projected by a beam of light,
onto a white wall, from a long flexible strip of something called "film",
which was wound onto metal reels, and through some kind of geared
contraption. He remembered now, Jolly telling him something about such
ancient technology, once upon a time. 
     And, the lack of color was a bit jarring, as well. The images on
screen were well-photographed, which impressed him a bit, but were
completely without color. Just the gradations of light and dark. The
titles and plots were a bit confusing, too, at first, but he shrugged
that off as part of the cultural differences between two branches of the
Kobolian family, long-sundered. One, titled Enemy Agent, seemed to have
something to do with espionage and Britain's previous war with the
Germans, of a generation earlier. The second feature's title, Another
Thin Man, made no sense to Starbuck at all, since no one in it seemed
overly obese, but he found himself joining in a few laughs, as it
progressed. Finally, his faith in Humanity was restored, when something
called a cartoon came up, in full color, followed by a travelling log, or
some such. 
     "Go to the movies much, in Carrot Creek?" asked Byrne, as the film
progressed. 
     "We get our share," Starbuck replied, hoping it covered things. 
     "Yeah, I used to hang out at the movie house as a kid," said Byrne.
"Nothing like it. Actually thought about being an actor, once. Ah, the
dreams of childhood."
     "We tend to lose those, awful quick, don't we?" Starbuck replied.
     "Yeah. Yeah, we do."
     It was getting dark, as they made it back outside, and Starbuck was
trying to make sense of the day's experiences. How did any of this fit
in, if it did, with his being in this bizarre situation? Archaic
entertainments? Traipsing around a damaged city? He thought back, to that
voice in the bar. It still seemed so...
     His musings were broken by a long, slow wailing sound. The air raid
siren! It seemed that the Germans were paying London one of their nightly
visits. 
     "Damn!" said Byrne. "We'd better get to the shelter!"
     "Right,' said Starbuck, realizing that he had no idea where the
shelter was. Someone in a funny helmet pointed towards something called a
'tube", and soon they were caught in a flow of Humanity, heading down a
flight of stairs, and into a transit station, or so it looked. Those he
remembered from home had looked at least basically similar, though wheels
that actually rested on metal rails, instead of using magnetic or
anti-grav repulsor suspension, were unexpected.
     "I'm living in a museum," he said, unaware he'd said it aloud. 
     "A museum?" said Byrne, as they tried to find a place to settle. The
whole facility was crammed with people, many of them elderly, and quite a
few in uniform, like themselves, and some obviously not in the best of
health. At last they settled in, between a family with a crying baby, and
an old man with a cough. 
     "Cheery," said Starbuck, recalling air raid drills as a kid in the
orphanage. He'd hated them then (except for the times he'd used them as
cover to sneak out, with Matron's credit ducat), and this one was pegging
his dislike meter to the maximum. Still, there was little choice, he told
himself, as the first rumble of an explosion shook the place. More
followed, and dust rained down from the ceiling. The lights flickered a
moment. He looked up, and shook his head. Just archaic illuminators,
hanging from the ceiling. "No force field emitters," he muttered. "A bomb
could..."
     "Huh?" said Byrne. "A force what?"
     Damn! Did it...
     But Starbuck was interrupted by a loud explosion, and a blast of
hot, acrid air, followed by the lights going out, and God knew what
raining down on the lot of them. 

Chapter Five

     "But damn it, we've got to help," said Starbuck as they looked at
the pile of still-smoking debris across from the tube entrance, after the
dawn "all clear" had sounded. After the lights had gone out below, debris
from a near-hit had blown down into the shelter, covering everyone with
the fallout. The path up had been partly blocked, but several men in
uniform had joined in and cleared the entrance by the light of hand-held
illuminators, or "torches", as they'd called them. Now outside, Starbuck
could see how close they had come. A bomb, a big one, had impacted not
ten metrons from the entrance, blowing out a huge crater. Another had
landed close by, catching the front of the building across the street,
reducing the whole structure to a pile of rubble. Fires were still
burning, and an impromptu aid station had been set up close by.
     "But..."said Byrne, but Starbuck wasn't listening. He crossed the
street, and at once began to help clearing the wreckage. Within minutes,
he was rewarded by the rescue of a victim, fortunately still breathing.
The next one was not so fortunate, but Starbuck kept on, feeling his
anger building. Long-suppressed flashes of his own past, the wandering
amidst the wreckage of Umbra as a child, the Thorn Forest, came back full
force. The searching through the flaming rubble of Aurora's apartment
building, and finding only charred corpses. Apollo's description of the
Adama home, after the attack. It was all so hopeless...
     Yet, what moral right did he have to just walk away because he'd
escaped relatively unscathed from the same raid? As long as he could
stand and move, he owed the folks buried under this catastrophe every bit
of help he could muster, just as if he were up there, in his
Vip...Spitfire.
     "Here...yeah!" he shouted to someone in a policeman's uniform. "Got
another one! Over here, fast!"
 
 
     "I hate them," said Starbuck, later, sitting at an aid station, and
sipping what passed on Earth for java, and getting a cut on one hand
bandaged. Actually, all things considered, it wasn't really all that bad.
He took another sip. Yeah. The hot liquid going down felt good. Felt good
after all that dust and smoke he'd been inhaling.
     "Huh?" said Byrne, next to him.
     "These...Germans," said Starbuck. "These fracking galmonging
Germans! Battle is one thing. Warriors in combat. But to slaughter
helpless civilians like this..." He gestured at the smoldering rubble
around them, and the row of bodies, all discreetly covered by sheets.
Soaked in red. "Human beings don't do this to each other!"
     "Since when?" said Byrne. "Hell's Bells, we've been doing it for
just about forever. Out of the Ark. It's what we do best, sadly." He
signaled for a refill. "Face it, Haggis. Noah's kids don't get along
well, and that ain't gonna change, any time soon." He took another sip.
"Could use some cream."
     "Yeah," said Starbuck, realizing he'd slipped a little. In his part
of the galaxy, Humans didn't do this to each other. Hadn't for ages. The
Cylons had happily taken over the job, and had been doing it with great
verve and vigor for a millennium. "Guess I got a bit carried away, for a
moment."
     "We all do, at times," said a voice. "It's a part of being Human."
Starbuck turned, but didn't recognize anyone. He did, however, recognize
the voice. The same one he'd heard in that pub, last night. Now, if that
wasn't weird...
     "Did you hear that voice?" he asked, more of himself than anyone
else.
     "Huh?" said Byrne.
     "Someone..."
     "Another coffee, sirs?" asked a voice, and this time Starbuck found
the owner. Behind a tray covered in cups of the local java, was a woman.
Of apparent middle-age, she had thick, unruly, white hair, a kind face,
and wore what Starbuck had come to recognize as a MedTech's uniform.
Uhh...nurse, or "sister", as they seem to be called here. It was all very
confusing, these damned Earthisms.
     "Ah....you..."
     "Here," she said, smiling, and handed him a fresh cup. After a
moment, he raised it to his lips. His eyes widened in near-shock. The
stuff in the cup was...
     "Lords of Kobol! This is fabulous. You...Ama? I have to be
hallucinating. What are you doing here?"
     "Here, there, it's really all the same, Starbuck," said the old
woman, and to his surprise, she spoke in heavily accented Colonial
Standard.
     Starbuck looked hard at her. He had met her a few times, back in the
Fleet. A group of Humans, the last survivors of an offshoot called the
Empyreans, had been found, and rescued from their dying planet, just
ahead of the pursuing Cylons. Among them had been this middle-aged woman,
Ama, who was, simply, what some people at one time, might have called a
witch, or necromancer. A woman who knew many weird and arcane things of
her people's ancient lore, she was also reputed to have powers that
defied all "rational" explanation. Starbuck had spoken with her a few
times, at various functions, recalling particularly how she had seemed to
hover, when he'd found (feeble) excuses to get near one of the young
Empyrean women, during a short spat with Cassie. What was her name...?
Lu...something.
     "Luana," she said, with a smile.
     "You..." He looked around, but didn't see Byrne. "What in Hades Hole
are you doing here? Come to think of it, what am I doing here?"
     "You are fighting in one of Earth's intertribal wars, Dear Heart.
Surely you noticed?"
     "But I..." he looked about, and dropped his voice. "I was back in
the Fleet. Cassie and I were watching some video of Captain Byrne's.
Suddenly, I'm here. What the frack is going on, Ama?"
     "Patience is part of acquiring wisdom, Son Starbuck," she said, with
a smile. Just as he recalled, she had gaps in her teeth, and reminded him
of an illustration of a wild, ancient prophetess he'd seen in an old copy
of the Book of the Word, as a kid. All she needed was a billowing robe,
and a crooked staff. Maybe some lightning, flashing behind her. "In time,
you will understand."
     "I'd like to understand now, Ama! I'm not a part of this war. Hades
Hole, I don't belong here."
     "Indeed?"
     "I belong back in the Fleet. I have a job there!"
     "You have many, Starbuck. Many jobs, a looming destiny. You need to
see the wider realities about us, son of Chameleon."
     "You... you know my father's name?"
     "Doesn't everyone?  He's a bit of a dish, if you ask me," she
replied, with a wry grin. "And that boy can dance! But, things are not
always quite as narrow as you comfortably suppose, Starbuck. Be prepared
for what may come to you."
     "What the Hades Hole does that mean?" he asked. Then, something
bumped him from behind, and he turned. It was one of the rescue workers.
He bit back a rude retort, then turned...
     But the mysterious Ama was gone.   

Chapter Six

     The remainder of Starbuck's furlon in London was reasonably
pleasant, in spite of dodging yet another air raid. Or as pleasant as a
city under constant threat of attack could be. Despite the inevitable
exigencies of war, alcohol seemed to be ever plentiful, in the extreme,
and he and his squadron mates took full advantage of the proffered
abundance. 
     But he also took advantage of other opportunities, as well. Though
never a deeply spiritual man (Hades Hole, he held the all-time Academy
record for skipping worship services by a cadet!), Starbuck's recent
bizarre encounter with Ama had gotten him to thinking. ("Better be
careful Buckers. This could become a dangerous habit!") While he knew
little for certain about the mysterious Ama, or her people's ways, he had
come to believe that this wasn't just a weird dream. That she, for
whatever reason she was involved, was right. He was here for a reason,
and a purpose higher than he could at present make sense of. He had to
admit that made him damned uncomfortable, for if there was one thing
Starbuck hated, it was being ignorant of what the Hades Hole was going on
around him. He recalled, as a child, the anger he had often felt, having
others decide "what was best" for him, at the orphanage, often talking in
front of him as if he weren't even there, yet never bothering to fill him
in on the finer details, until afterwards. This had carried over into
adulthood, even in the service, and had never left him.
     Yet, if the mysterious Empyrean Wise Woman said it, she must know
something. Maybe she had sent him here? Maybe the Beings from the Ship of
Lights? Maybe, even...
     He didn't quite want to think that high. Just yet. It made him
uncomfortable. So, in keeping with the only course of action seemingly
open to him, he resumed his search for knowledge about Earth. A bit to
Byrne's amusement, and some degree of bewilderment, Starbuck decided,
whenever possible, to visit libraries, museums, and even places of
worship, called "churches". He read, as much as his expanding
understanding of the written language permitted, and asked endless
questions, ever careful to avoid slipping into the use of Colonial
expressions. 
     One thing he was certain of, now. Unless it was kept hidden, known
only to some secretive, privileged few, the people of Earth retained no
conscious cultural memory of Kobol, or the Thirteenth Tribe, the Exodus
to Earth, or the existence of other Humans, elsewhere in the universe. As
he read up on ancient legends, religious maxims, and current scientific
orthodoxies, barely a whisper of the history he knew could be discerned,
unless a few bizarre legends, with familiar-sounding names laced
throughout, like Apollo, Athena, Kronus, or even a possible variant of
Baltar, stemmed from that long-ago time. 
     Yet, the cultural, religious, and even linguistic similarities were
too many to just pass off as mere coincidence. It was all, or long ago
had been, real. So, why in Hades Hole was he here? To fill them in?
Inform them of their mutual past? 
     No, can't be, he decided. From what he'd learned from the rescued
Byrne and Allen, Earth culture still knew naught of Kobol, even a couple
of generations in Earth's future. And Starbuck was not, in any way shape
or form, a missionary. He was a pilot, a Warrior, a soldier, not a
preacher, bringing The Book of the Word to the backwards Earthers.
Soul-saving wasn't his game.
     Liason? No, that's the other side of the same cubit. By the time of
Byrne's doomed spaceflight, Earth science and culture was well able to
grasp both the vastness of the universe, and basic spacecraft
engineering. Given the separation, technologically, between them and the
Colonials, the rescued Earthers, including the survivors from the Risik
prison planet, seemed to be adapting well, with scant indications of any
serious culture shock. 
     He shook his head, as he looked up at some gorgeous artwork, in one
of the church buildings. Lords, Pelias would love it, here. Despite all
the stuff he was learning, he was still at a loss. The underlying purpose
of his "visit" here still eluded him, and Starbuck hated his situational
awareness being incomplete. He looked up again, at the painting on the
wall. It was of a man, seemingly brutalized and beaten, fastened to a
cruciform frame, and obviously dying. Dying horribly. Somewhere, he
seemed to recall that this had been  used, in ancient times, on several
of the Colonial worlds, as an horrific form of punishment, usually
reserved for the worst of criminals. Why would something like that be
given pride of place, even celebrated, here? It seemed counter-intuitive,
at best. Maybe Ama understood...
     And there she was, again. Ama, this time looking down at him, from a
painting on a wall. Starbuck blinked, almost exclaiming aloud, as the
Empyrean woman seemed to smile, her gap-toothed visage focused directly
on him.
     "Yes, I understand, Son Starbuck," she seemed to say, in his head.
"And soon you shall understand much, also. Do not falter!"
     He shook his head, he was about to ask the custodial individual
here, a man dressed in an odd black robe, about the artwork, when Byrne
caught up with him. Furlon-furlough, as they called it here-was up, and
they would be late returning to base, if they didn't take off now. And
their CO, like most COs, didn't like late. He nodded, reluctantly, and
turned to go, then gave the painting one final look. 
     Ama was gone.
     Starbuck's investigations, it seemed, would have to wait.


     Back at the base, it was once more business as usual. Intercepting
enemy attack craft, and, for both Starbuck and Byrne, more training
flights. As much as his gut wanted to heave at the thought, Starbuck kept
it in, kept his face bland, and saluted the CO with lots of "Yes, sir!"s.

     This crew of green kids, like the previous one, was eager, scared,
and seemed to think that Starbuck had all the answers. And, as he put
them through their paces, he tried desperately to live up to that.
However, the fact remained that these guys, rather than being British,
were what the CO had called "Free Polish". Whatever that meant. Grabbing
a quick look at one of the books he'd found, Starbuck learned that
"Poland" was one of the places overrun, and savagely brutalized, by the
Germans, at the beginning of this war. Many of the natives had escaped,
however, and those who could, had made their way here, to volunteer to
fight against Hitler, in whatever way they could. Although he could not
understand a word of "Polish", fortunately, several of them had a
passable command of English. He smiled. He had to admire their grit,
their unswerving determination, to one day see their homeland free.
     Like the Colonies, he told himself.
     This time, there was no repeat of his previous "failure", as an
instructor. His students were attentive, adept, but seemed able to temper
their eagerness with sobriety. Perhaps, Byrne offered between flights, it
came from having seen the horrors of war, and losing everything, up close
and personal. Starbuck had to agree, momentarily recalling his experience
at Umbra, and the first sight of Caprica, after the Cylon final assault.
Things like that had a way of making one grow up, fast.
     His students soon proved themselves, when during a training flight,
they found themselves in the way of the incoming enemy. Despite orders to
leave it to the incoming operational squadron, the Poles peeled off, and
ripped directly into the bombers. Within microns, the first Heinkel was
going down, and others were spewing smoke and flame. 
     "Would it help if I said 'stand down' in Polish?' Starbuck growled
into his mic. 
     "Not even if we knew how to say it, Haggis!" came Byrne's reply.
"You don't, do you?"
     "Nope," said Starbuck.
     "Didn't think so."

     "And so, depite everything," said the officer, in the ward room at
the base, trying not to let the tongue in his cheek be too obvious, as he
scanned the pilots assembled before him, "I hereby declare this squadron
operational, as of this moment."
     The Polish pilots erupted in cheers, and one grabbed Starbuck in a
bear hug, kissing him on both cheeks. The Colonial muttered something
about hardly knowing the fellow, when they laughed aloud, and then a
bottle appeared. Then another, and soon, it was dancing, drinking, and
smashing of small glasses afterwards. 
     "What is all this?" he asked Byrne.
     "Something Slavic, I guess," said Byrne, who decided that if there
was a drink, he'd not insult the others by saying no. One of the
newly-minted pilots hugged him again, and loudly praised "Canadian who
makes us good fighters of Germans!", and poured another libation.
Something called "Polish vodka."
     "Ah, what the Hades Hole," sighed Starbuck, and tossed back
the..."Holy Saganized Frack! Somebody lock down the tylium leak!"
     "Huh?" said Byrne. "What about tiles?"
     "Uhh...yeah. Tiles. Any more of this, and that's what I'll be face
down on!" croaked Starbuck, then his arms were grabbed, and entwined
between two of the Poles, found himself dancing vigorously.
     Starbuck, of course, couldn't dance. And before long, he didn't need
to.


     "Ja?" said the small man in the black uniform, behind the desk. He
looked up, through rimless glasses, at the underling who had disturbed
him.
     "The files you requested, Herr Reichfuhrer," said the underling,
handing him a thick folder. 
     "Danke, Mueller," said the seated man. He waved the other away, and
opened the folder, studying he documents before him. "Possibly,
possibly," he muttered to himself, as some details caught his eye. "Ja,
possibly." He picked up the telephone. "Get me Reichmarshall Goering." 

Chapter Seven

     Between repeated scrambles, and grabbing what sleep he could,
Starbuck continued to immerse himself in Earth history, and customs. A
few days after his adventure (and hangover) with the Polish squadron, he
found himself bailing out of a disintegrating Spitfire, after some
nastily accurate fire from a German escort fighter ripped his left wing
and tail apart. Cursing these primitive machines, he ended up crashing
through a small, glass-sided building, and coming to rest almost buried
in various plant forms.
     "I am never going to the Agro Ships, ever again!" he snorted,
pulling something green and yellow out of his face, as he tried to get
up, and take stock. Rows of shelves with small pots were everywhere, and
his chute was tangled in the shattered roof. Fortunately, within moments,
someone appeared, a middle-aged man, dressed, like the one in the London
church had been, in a weird black robe or gown. Rather limply
apologizing, Starbuck divested himself of his harness, and was led
outside by the fellow. It seemed Starbuck had crashed into a
"greenhouse", behind the man's church, in some country village whose name
he wasn't even aware of. The man, who identified himself as "Father
Theodore", took him inside his domicile, the vicarage, and after
determining that he was uninjured, sat him down, and offered him a small
libation. 
     "Thanks," said Starbuck, raising the glass to his lips. He tasted,
eyes going wide. This was no past it's use-by date Viper fuel! This,
whatever it was, was like a top-quality ambrosia, fifty yahrens old or
better. His rescuer, now accompanied by an older lady, told him it was
called Napoleon Brandy. Starbuck decided that he could clean up, back in
the Fleet, with a few bottles of this stuff!
     The Father, or Vicar, or whatever he was called, informed him that
the military authorities had been called, and notified of his survival
and location. Since it would be a while before they came for him, he
seemed content to chat with his young guest. For his part, Starbuck found
the conversation pleasant, despite the occasional glaring gaps in his
information, and used it to round out his knowledge of Earth. 
     "I was in the last one, you know," the Vicar told Starbuck. "End all
wars? Ha! Knew the Hun would be back, one day."
     "Were you a pilot?" Starbuck asked his host.
     "Yes, sir, I was. Flight Lieutenant Theodore Bell, Royal Flying
Corps, at your service." He saluted, and Starbuck returned it. The two
fell to discussing flying, about which he seemed remarkably knowledgeable
(several well-worn periodicals on aviation, on a side table, were in
evidence), then the Vicar took Starbuck on a tour of his church. The
parish, ("Did someone die?"), called Saint Hilda's he was told, had been
founded many Earth centuries ago, in the Earth year 1105, by a local
knight, on his return from "The First Crusade." This knight, a
social/military rank roughly equivalent to the Colonial "Squire", had
been named Robert...something, and was buried in the building itself.
Starbuck nodded, as Father Theodore showed him the knight's tomb. It had
a carved effigy of a man, wearing some sort of protective armor, and
holding a sword, on the lid. Starbuck was struck at how the portrait of
the late Sir Robert resembled a Cylon Centurion, except for the feet
crossed over the effigy of, of all things, a daggit. He shook his head.
Back home, it was not uncommon, or had been more so once, for personages
of distinction to be buried in houses of worship, or other important
buildings, especially if they had founded or benefited them, in some way.

     Another thing we have in common.
     Except the daggit bit.
     Starbuck discovered that he liked the company of this warrior turned
cleric, and found himself, much to his surprise, falling into discussing
matters spiritual with him. The windows, made of shards of colored glass,
and also many centuries old, conveyed stories, he was informed, from a
sacred tome that seemed to resemble the Colonial Book Of The Word, in
many ways, or from history. Many of the stories and concepts were
bizarrely similar, and Starbuck wondered if, from this work, called
Bible, some indications or references to their mutual origins might be
gleaned.
     He asked, as subtily as he could, questions about the metaphysical,
and learned that the good Vicar was quite open to the idea of life,
intelligent or otherwise, existing elsewhere in the universe. Starbuck
decided that this was good. If someone of the Vicar's age was open to the
idea, in a period so backwards, by his standards, then hopefully when
they did finally reach Earth, the shock to Earth's lager society would be
short-lived, and minimal. 
     " 'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy?' " said the old man. "Of course."
     "Excuse me?" said Starbuck, who had been busy trying to make sense
of some of the vitreous imagery. As in the London church, images of the
horribly executed man were in evidence. In fact, it seemed to be the
dominant symbol, here. For a moment, he looked about, as if
half-expecting to see Ama, once more.
     But the Empyrean mystic was nowhere in evidence.
     "Just quoting Job," said the Vicar. "About the beginning of things.
Yes, I am sure the heavens are teeming with life, my boy. How could they
not be?"
     "Yeah," said Starbuck. "I often have asked myself that, a time or
two."
     It was growing late, and the Vicar was just offering his guest a
spot of supper, when a military vehicle arrived, to return Starbuck to
base. He found that he was oddly reluctant to leave, having enjoyed his
short sojourn here far more than he had expected to. He hoped, though he
did not vocalize it, that he might have the opportunity to return, and
talk more with the former fighter pilot. 
     "Well, goodbye, Lieutenant," said Bell, saluting him once more.
Starbuck noted, for the thousandth time, the odd pronunciation, by
everyone but the Americans, rendering the word as "Lef-tenant", but said
nothing. 
     "You too, sir,' replied Starbuck. "Oh, and I'm sorry about your
agr...uh, greenhouse. I should have offered to clean up my mess."
     "Oh well, don't worry about it, my boy," said Bell. "We all have to
sacrifice for the war effort."
      "Isn't that the truth," replied Starbuck.


     Back at base, checked out by the flight surgeon and declared as fit
for duty, Starbuck was given a new plane, and soon was back in the sky.
But even as he scanned the vault for the enemy, part of his mind kept
going back to his unintended visit to the Vicar, and his church. He was
now certain, beyond all doubt, that his being here had a deeper purpose,
beyond merely learning about their Earth brethren. While he could not yet
say what, he knew that something was in store, some...
     "Ah, Hades Hole, Buckers," he muttered to himself, "quit trying so
hard to figure it all out. You'll turn into a philosopher if you keep
this up."
     No sooner was the thought out of his cortex, then they got word; a
massive formation of enemy craft were headed their way. As so often of
late, their target was London, and almost before he could reply, he saw
them. The enemy formation was big, reminding him of the Cylon force they
had blasted through at Gamoray. But, being Starbuck, he looked at it as
having more to shoot at, and went to work.
     Within microns, he had his first German, as an escort fighter fell
victim to his guns. He couldn't help but smile some, despite the fact
that he was not facing a robotic enemy. He rolled, fired at another
German craft, and saw the nose of the bomber splashed with red, then he
was past. 
     The thud of an impact on one wing caught his attention, and he
rolled hard over, nearly colliding with another Spitfire. The German
behind him was good, no question. But Starbuck was better. Despite the
dangers, he flipped his craft around as violently as he could manage, and
found himself facing the Messerschmitt. He fired, and saw part of the
other's propeller fly away. 
     "Good shot, Haggis!" came Byrne's voice over the circuit, and
Starbuck gritted his teeth. Good? He'd make it better. He came around,
and found the German he'd just hit, trying to stay stable and in the
fight. Starbuck, however, didn't share the other's goals, and took a
bead...
     Only to find that he had competition. No sooner had he fired, than
rounds from another Spitfire tore into the worried 109, and the German
began to die. Smoke and sparks belched from under the cowling, and part
of the tail was ripped away. Losing control, the enemy plane wobbled,
then part of one wing peeled back, disappearing into the maelstrom.
Starbuck fired again, and the fighter began to roll, the pilot shoving
open his canopy. He was about to bail, when the ship broke in half, and
he was lost to sight.
     But the craft he left behind was not, it seemed, done just yet. As
Starbuck watched, the burning engine and cockpit tumbled uncontrollably
into one of the German bombers, ripping it almost in two. As the bomber
exploded, it careened out of control, into another of the closely-packed
ships. It likewise heaved over, to catch an unlucky fighter between
itself, and yet a third Heinkel. With an enormously satisfying eruption
of light and debris, the whole horrid mess began to rain down, to scatter
itself across the Earth below.
     "Hades Hole! What..."
     But the sentence died in his throat. There was a call for help over
the circuit. Byrne was in trouble.


     "What? No flowers, Haggis?" said Byrne, bandaged and a-bed, in
hospital. He looked, Starbuck decided, pretty fracking awful. Left arm
fully swathed in bandages, save for four fingers, face-half-hidden, he
looked like, to someone who had more than once crashed their plane, like
someone who had, well, crashed their plane. Actually, he hadn't, quite.
Debris from the disintegrating German craft had slammed into his ship,
nearly laying open his cockpit. That, and a few lucky slugs from a German
defensive gun, had spelled doom for his fighter. Byrne had gone down, his
ship afire, and he'd managed to get out mere seconds before it exploded. 
     "Sorry, the staff won't let me raid their flower bed anymore,"
replied Starbuck. He looked at Byrne, and his mind raced. After the man
had bailed out, one of the enemy planes had, so it appeared, taken a bead
on him, intending to shoot him while he hung helpless in his chute.
Starbuck had followed his friend down, and managed to scare the German
off, though, sadly to his mind, did not finish him off. Even so, he made
sure Byrne was safely on the ground, before returning to the fray. 
     "Just don't get caught," said Byrne. 
     "Sound tactical advice," replied Starbuck. As he spoke, one of the
"sisters" came in, to check on the patient. Or, rather, patients. In the
next bed, as fate would have it, was a German, the survivor of the
fighter Starbuck and Byrne had plastered. Also bandaged and looking
terrible, Luftwaffe Sergeant Helmut Burghardt was nonetheless being
afforded decent treatment, before being recovered sufficiently to no
doubt be shipped off to a POW camp. 
     "You are vun hell of a pilot!" said the other, in passable English.
"I never zaw anyzing like it!"
     "Well, thanks. I guess," said Starbuck, flatly. He wasn't used to
praise from an opponent. Except maybe in Triad.
     "Mit skill like zat, ach, vut ve could do mit you in ze Luftwaffe!
You are ze Devil's own tailgunner!" 
     Starbuck felt a brief surge of anger, but quickly realized that it
was misplaced. The enemy was acknowledging him as a worthy foe. Something
no Cylon would ever do, he reminded himself. After a moment, he nodded in
receipt of the praise. 
     "You weren't so bad, yourself, Sergeant," he replied. "Hard to
kill."
     "Danke," replied Burghardt, with a half-smile. "But you ver better."
Before either man could say another word, the sister/nurse shooed him
out. 
     "But..."
     "No buts, either of you!" she shot back, as she checked Byrne.
"Visiting hours are posted, and right now is not visiting hours!" She
glared at him.
     "Okay, okay. I get it." He looked at Byrne. "You get better, okay?"
     "Oh he will," said the nurse. 
     "I have to," said Byrne, putting his good arm around the nurse's
waist. "After all, Liz is going..."
     "Ah ah ah!" said the nurse, batting his hand away. "You pilots!" She
turned back to Starbuck. "Go!" Acknowledging defeat, he slipped out,
noticing that even the German was laughing, to...
     "Ama?" he said, shocked, as he nearly collided with the Empyrean
woman, now, somehow not surprisingly, dressed as a nurse, and carrying a
fully loaded tray in front of her.
     "You did good up there, Son Starbuck," she said, smiling her crazy
smile. Her wild hair was, for the moment, neatly done up, under her
nurse's cap, and she looked as clean and crisp as they come. Albeit a bit
older. 
     "You know...of course you do. Can you tell me more? Come on, Ama. I
really need..."
     "You are doing fine, Son Starbuck. Just fine." She patted him on the
cheek. "You are moving in the right direction." She looked at him, eyes
boring into him, and smiled. "You hardly need my help, really."
     "Huh? Help? What do you..."
     "Oh, Matron," said a voice, and Ama turned around. "I need those
bandages."
     "Coming, Doctor," she replied, and moved to follow the man. She
turned around once more, and smiled at Starbuck. Then she was around a
corner, and gone. 

Chapter Eight

     Despite his injuries, Byrne was soon out of hospital, and back in
the barracks. Although itching to get back into the air, he was, for the
moment at least, going to be flying a desk. Or at least several piles of
paperwork, while one of the clerks was enjoying a weekend pass. Starbuck
tried not to tease him too much, especially when a certain nurse came
around.
     "Well, you didn't waste any time, I see," he poked, as he surprised
Byrne, laying a heavy-duty lip lock on the lady, in the office. He at
once recognized her, as the nurse who had shooed him out of the ward,
before. Dark-haired, tall, and curvaceous, she reminded him a little of
Athena.
     "Don't you folks believe in knocking, in Carrot Creek?" asked Byrne,
with a deep sigh.
     "Knocking? Hey, give us a break, okay? After all, we only just
discovered the door, you know. Backwards place."
     "That explains it," said the nurse. "Well, Jim? Shall we go?"
     "Let's, Liz. Let's," replied the American, and he led her out, to
where a car sat, waiting. With a wink and a wave, the two were off,
leaving Starbuck wondering. 
     A lot.


     "You are sure?" asked the fat, bemedalled man, in a white uniform,
of the smaller fellow, dressed in black. "There is no doubt?"
     "None. Our agents have confirmed that he will be visiting the base,
as part of a tour through the region. Someone is getting a medal, or some
such nonsense."
     "And the operatives?"
     "Being briefed, at this very moment. Everything is in readiness. The
Fuhrer himself has approved the operation."
     "Excellent, excellent."
     "Danke, Herr Reichmarshall." 


     As he continued with his duties, Starbuck, for the present, saw no
more of Ama. Yet, somehow, even when he was airborne, in the thick of
combat, he could not shake the sensation of her presence, somewhere near.
From what he knew of her, and what he had seen for himself, he felt sure
that, wherever she was in actuality at this moment, she was, nonetheless,
watching everything he did. He doubted that even his innermost thoughts
were unknown to her.
     Scary.
     "Hey, Haggis," said Byrne, finishing up the last few scraps of
paperwork, after being certified to return to flight status. "Have you
heard?"
     "Heard what?"
     "There's a rumor going around." He leaned close, almost
conspiratorially. "We're getting a visitor," he said, lowering his voice.

     "Who? I mean, I've spent so much time up there, winning the war
single-handedly, with you relaxing down here in the arms of the Fair Liz,
I never even hear mess call."
     "God," sighed Byrne, shaking his head. "You the last to know. Why am
I not surprised? You know what they say about Canadians." He grinned.
"Anyway, he is coming for a visit."
     "He." Starbuck thought hard for a moment, knowing neither whom Byrne
meant, nor what "they" said about Canadians. "As in?"
     


     Weird, Starbuck thought, as he checked out his plane, after landing.
This Winnie is coming for a visit. Here. Kind of an unimportant spot, for
someone so important. But, maybe Prime Ministers do that sort of thing,
on Earth. Can't imagine President Adar would ever have bothered to visit
a base. Any base. Old fool, he shook his head, recalling the late
Colonial President. At least I didn't vote for him.
     But, of course, he would say nothing, for the present. As the rumor
began to spread, the men had been strictly been ordered by the CO, under
penalty of Court Martial, to say nothing whatsoever. To Starbuck's mind,
that conformed the rumors to be true. Nothing like closing the barn door,
after the equs is gone.


     In the darkest part of the night, off the Kentish coast, the U-Boat
slowly rose above the surface of the water. Had there been any there to
see, a small boat became visible, as a group of men left the sub, and
made for shore. The U-Boat sank back into the sea, and the four men in
the small rubber craft made it undetected to land. Heading inland, they
came upon the road, and clung to the shadows, until, in the distance,
headlights became visible.
     A few minutes later, it's original occupants dead, their bodies
concealed in the undergrowth, the milk float continued on down the lane
towards RAF Manston, now in the service of the Third Reich.  



     "Well cut off my legs and call me a Boray," muttered Starbuck, as he
saw the big black ground transport enter the base. Followed by others, it
was definitely a big shot coming to visit. He stepped inside the
Officer's Club, crossing over to Byrne, seated at the bar with his
new-found lady friend, a bare few seconds before a some beefy security
types followed suit. Then, as non-challantly if he were crossing his own
living room, The Honorable Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, entered the
room. After a surprised moment, everyone stood to attention, most
saluting. The balding, rotund man smiled around his cigar, and he raised
a hand.
     "As you were, men," he waved, with a smile. "You act as if someone
important just walked in." 
     Definitely not like Adar.


     The guard at the gate looked up from his book, and saw the milk
float approaching. He checked his watch. Finally, on time for once!
Wonder of wonders! He checked the driver's identification, and his fellow
sentry gave the cargo, milk bottles and several crates of comestibles, a
rather cursory once-over, then passed them on in. That done, he was soon
back in his seat, and back to his book.


     "This is good," said Churchill, knocking back a glass of something.
A large one. "Only the best, for our boys!" He ordered another round, on
him, dropping a handful of coins on the bar.
     "For the which may the Lord make us truly thankful!" said a pilot on
Starbuck's left.  Churchill laughed, and soon had another drink in his
fist. Starbuck found the man to be unlike almost every politician he'd
ever had the misfortune to meet. While, from all he'd heard, a great
leader in this crisis, the man seemed nonetheless fully able to unwind,
and have fun with his people, a trait Starbuck prized highly. 
     At least the fun part. 
     It seemed that, along with an inspection of several military
installations in this general area, the Prime Minister was here to award
some medals. "Benedict Templeton" 's recent exploits in the air, had, so
it seemed, reached all the way to both Buckingham Palace, and Number 10
Downing Street, and Churchill had decided, in concert with other things
on his agenda, that some medals were in order, and he would personally be
awarding them, shortly. 


     "Ready?" asked one, in the float. They had offloaded the float's
cargo at the mess hall, and then concealed the float behind a small brick
building, so far without being unduly noticed. Peering from cover, they
watched the assembling personnel, out on the tarmac. From here, they
would have a clear shot, and strike a blow for the Fatherland! Perfect!
     "Ja." 


     "We are ready..." began the base CO, stepping in, stopping as he
took in the sight. Churchill, in a most un-Prime Ministerly fashion, with
something black under his nose, was goose-stepping, arm-in-arm, with
several of the pilots, a few free hands raised in mock Nazi salutes.
Singing (badly) mostly uncouth phrases, the PM and the rest were doing a
rollicking send-up of the enemy, and even Starbuck couldn't help but
laugh, before Churchill grabbed him by one hand, and pulled him into the
line. 
     "In good voice, I hope," said the PM, elbow in his ribs, as they
belted out a few more ribald stanzas, mostly regarding Hitler's
parentage, his relationships with the fairer sex, and a bizarre song
called Der Fuhrer's Face, before Churchill's security people got things
back under control. 
     They were led outside, and several of the men were lined up,
Starbuck among them, and, totally collected and proper, now, Churchill
began pinning medals on uniforms. For his part, Starbuck got a
"Distinguished Flying Cross", whatever that meant, and couldn't help but
compare this moment to the night on Carillon, when he had been awarded
the Gold Cluster, after helping Apollo and Boomer get the Fleet safely
through the Madagon Passage. 
     Well, almost been awarded, as the evening had ended rather badly. 


     "Hey! You there! You're not supposed to be..." said the man in
uniform, suddenly coming on the concealed float. He reached for his belt,
but never made it. One of the enemy operatives shot him down, and he fell
wordlessly to the ground.
     "Schweinhundt!" said another, backhanding the shooter across the
face. "Now we are..."
     "Sir!" said another, pointing. Other British personnel were now
heading this way. Armed.
     "Split up! Go!" ordered the leader, viciously shoving the shooter
towards the tarmac. "Fool!" So said, he crouched down, and took aim at
one of the sentries.


     "We need heroes, young man," said Churchill, looking him directly in
the eye. "We need men like yourselves, Lieutenant, more than ever before
in our history. Men who embody what it is that we're fighting for."
     "My pleasure, sir," replied Starbuck, not sure if that was the
proper address for a Prime Minister. "When war calls, we all have to do
our part."
     "That's the spirit, lads," smiled Churchill, shaking his hand
vigorously. "That's the spirit! Jerry doesn't stand a chance." Starbuck
saluted him, actually feeling a brief surge of pride, to be "serving"
under someone like this. Hades Hole, if the Colonies had had leaders like
this...
     Commander Adama would love this guy.
     Churchill moved on, pinning a medal on Byrne's uniform as well.
Starbuck didn't hear all of the words they exchanged, but Byrne's smile
as he saluted spoke volumes. Then, as the Prime Minister moved on to the
next recipient, the turbosludge hit the impellers. 

Chapter Nine

     Crack!
     "DOWN!" someone shouted close by, and there was the crack of a
weapon firing, followed by more shots. Starbuck felt something cut into
his left leg, and instinctively reached for the Prime Minister. He
grabbed Churchill hard, and pulled him to the ground. The PM oofed as the
wind was knocked from him, and he looked up at Starbuck, his face a mass
of puzzlement.
     "Stay down, sir!" Starbuck said, and as if response, several of
Churchill's own people soon were all over him, surrounding him, and
dragging him away.
     There were more shots, from several weapons it sounded like, and
Starbuck heard someone close by cry out as a bullet slammed home. He
wasn't certain whom. But from where were... 
     One of the security people jerked, then fell, as a slug ripped into
him, falling across Starbuck as he tried to rise. Making a quick check,
he saw that the man was dead, shot right through the forehead, turning
his uniform into a mass of red, and almost without thinking, Starbuck
grabbed up his weapon.
     "Haggis?" came a familiar voice.
     "Byrne? Yeah, here. What the Hades Hole..."
     "Assassins. After Winnie. Gotta be."
     "There!" said Starbuck, catching sight of some muzzle flashes, and
hearing the crack crack of weapon's fire. Across the tarmac, inside one
of the maintenance hangars. "Come on."
     "What? We're..."
     But Starbuck wasn't waiting. Part of his mind flashing back to his
training, and to countless missions, he knew exactly what he had to do.
In a flash, it was as if he knew, knew, exactly why he was here. Getting
up, and narrowly missing a burst from one of the Nazis, he weaved his way
to cover, letting off a few shots of his own. The enemy shooter pulled
back inside, and, despite the pain in his leg, he moved closer.
     But his single-shot pistol was no match for the firepower of the
machine guns which the would-be assassins wielded. From what he could
tell, there were two of them in the hangar, both armed with the primitive
repeating weapons. Primitive, but pretty damned effective. Lords, what he
wouldn't give for a Colonial assault rifle, right now. How to...
     He looked back, and saw at least four bodies, lying still on the
ground, in pools of spreading red. Several others were moving, fleetingly
giving him a measure of hope. He furiously tried to work out his next
move, when more gunfire erupted from back towards the O Club. While he
could not see much, it appeared that somehow, some of the enemy had
gotten around him, and reached the O Club, and a furious firefight was in
progress, there. 
     Makes sense. More than just two. How...
     He saw Byrne, red staining his left arm, running crouched and low,
towards another hangar. Then, there was a burst of fire, and the American
went down.
     "NO!" shouted Starbuck, feeling his anger rising. He looked from the
motionless Byrne, to where he had been...
     One of the enemy agents was peering from cover, and taking a bead on
the downed American. Starbuck felt only desperation, as he raised his
gun. Then, the German caught sight of him, and switched targets. Without
thought, Starbuck squeezed the trigger. He was either a crack shot with
ancient Earth weapons, or some Lord of Kobol was with him, just now. The
German cried out, as his round struck close to his face, and he pulled
back inside the hangar. 
     Thank the Lords! Now... He looked to his right. Of course!
     Using the last two rounds in his pistol to give himself some cover,
he ran, or rather limped as fast as he could, towards the other hangar.
There, tuned, repaired, and looking almost beautiful, ready for her next
sortie, was a Spitfire. Starbuck grinned, and dropping his now empty gun,
tried to heft himself up onto the cockpit. The blood on one hand, and his
increasingly painful leg, made it a challenge, but Hades Hole, if he
could survive a crash in the swamps of Atilla...
     Another burst of automatic fire sang out close by, chewing holes in
the concrete, and he cried out in pain once more. Louder this time. A
slug had clipped his leg, again, and another had buried itself in his
side. How deeply, he didn't know, as he hit the ground. Was the wound
even survivable?  No time for that now. With Starbuckian determination,
he forced himself to move, and throwing caution to the ion vapors, made
it both to his feet, and into the cockpit. Biting down on the pain, he
began to carry out his completely insane plan. 
    He just hoped to God there was some fuel in her tanks. 
     The engine coughed, spewed smoke, and finally turned over, and he
gave his instruments a quick scan. Pushing the throttle, he began to
mover her out of the hangar, and towards the enemy position. He could
almost hear Boomer exclaim something about certifiable insanity, when he
looked up, and with his vision beginning to waver, and actually uttering
a prayer that there was ammo in her magazines, pressed the firing stud
with his bloody thumb.
     The Spitfire's guns roared to life, lethal gobbets of flame belching
from her guns, ripping to shreds any and everything in their path.
Starbuck thought he heard a scream, before a huge explosion filled the
hangar, barrels of various fluids turning into balls of fire, and
equipment flying in all directions. He kept firing, till the whole
building was a near-solid mass of burning wreckage, then let go.
     He felt awful, acutely aware of the copious amounts of blood flowing
from him. The pain wasn't going away, and in fact only got worse, as he
slumped across the control stick. Then he felt hands upon him, or thought
he did. Several. Someone was reaching in, yes, more than one, pulling him
out, and he heard the Spitfire's engine die, amidst the smell of dirty,
greasy smoke, burning fuel, and charring flesh. He tried not to scream,
dimly hoping that the flesh being charred was not his own, but failed,
even as he was gently laid on the ground. He opened one eye, a bloody
strand of hair in his way, and thought he saw Byrne's girlfriend, Liz,
over him, and felt her wipe his face.
     "Hold still, Lieutenant," she said, but he hardly heard her.
"Please."
     "Byrne," he managed to croak, feeling his adrenaline starting to
ebb. "Did he..."
     "Quiet!" ordered Liz, her voice stern. "Do as you're told."
     "Prob..." he sputtered, feeling more and more confused, "probably
some sort of arial salute for the President while he signs the...the
Armistice."
     "Quiet!" ordered Liz, once more. Somewhere, he thought he was being
lifted up.
     "Sure...ruined a good card game. Zac's first patrol. Ready
to...launch. No time for training Athena. I'm in...real trouble.
Cassie..." he wheezed. "Cass..."
     Then, the world about him faded to black, and he mercifully knew no
more.


     "Ah, back among the living, are we?" Starbuck thought he heard a
voice say. He tried to concentrate, and soon he was aware of his
consciousness seeping back. He opened his eyes, and despite the sweet fog
of drugs he was partly submerged in still, he could make out a ceiling
above him. Light fixtures. When he turned his head, a window, sunlight
streaming through. Beautiful blue sky, beyond.
     "Hey, good to see you awake at last, Haggis,' said another voice,
and as his mind cleared, Starbuck recognized it as Byrne's. 
     "Jim?" he managed to croak. "You...you made it."
     "Yeah, thanks to you," replied the Yank. "From what they tell me, it
was a near thing. One of those Krauts had me dead to rights, after I went
down, except for you being Johnny on the spot."
     "It's all kind of foggy," said Starbuck, as his head slowly
continued to clear. He took a deep breath. "I heard gunfire, then I got
hit."
     "But not before you pulled me out of the line of fire," said the
first voice. Starbuck turned his head, and there was Prime Minister
Churchill, looking, aside from a slight bruise on one cheek, scant the
worse for wear. "You saved my life, young Templeton. I am in your debt."
     "Just doing my job, sir," replied Starbuck. He looked at the Prime
Minister. "The enemy agents?"
     "One survivor," replied Churchill. "We may get something out of him,
if he survives his injuries."
     "Hitler must really hate you," said Byrne. "Sir."
     "War is war, Lieutenant," said Churchill. "We're all targets."
     "Didn't think I was going to make it there, for a centon," said
Starbuck, not realizing he'd slipped. "I figured I was done for."
     "Well, you might well have been, had it not been for this lady,'
said Churchill, indicating one of the nurses. It was Elizabeth, Byrne's
love interest. 
     "Thanks," said Starbuck, trying to extend his hand. He found that he
couldn't, as his right arm was swathed in bandages, and his left was
numb. In fact, most of his body was numb.
     "Well, I didn't do it all, Lieutenant," she replied, smiling. "You
can blame the surgeon who saved your life, not to mention your own innate
toughness."
     "Well, whoever it was, thanks anyway," said Starbuck.
     "Whom, actually,' said Churchill. 
     "Huh?" grunted Starbuck, but Churchill just smiled.
     "And to help you heal up, Haggis, said Byrne, likewise wrapped in
white, "I have an announcement, absolutely guaranteed to make you
insanely jealous."
     "Jealous?"
     "Yup. Liz and I," he said, smiling at the nurse, and drawing her
close with his good arm, "are engaged." Starbuck just furrowed his brows.
"Well, don't everyone get all gushy at once, okay?"
     "Here, here!' said another patient, two beds over.
     "Mazeltov!" said a third.
     "See? Some people appreciate good news, Haggis."
     "And speaking of good news, lads," said Churchill, hands behind his
back, "when you are all ship-shape and Bristol fashion once more, you are
expected, at Buckingham Palace."
     "Buckingham Palace, sir?" asked Byrne, the surprise in his voice
evident.
     "Oh yes, gentlemen. Events here have reached very high ears. And,
when you are ready, His Majesty will be honored to personally award you,
Lieutenant Templeton, and yourself, Lieutenant Byrne, the Victoria
Cross."
     "I don't know what to say, sir," said Byrne, after a long moment. "I
mean, hey. The King."
     "How about 'thank you', perhaps?" said Liz. "It's been known to
work, in these situations."
     "Uh, okay. Thank you, Mister Prime Minister. Please tell His Majesty
that I'm honored."
     "Me too," said Starbuck. "Me, too."
     "Well," said Churchill, smiling, and reaching inside his jacket and
removing a huge fumerello, "all I can say is..."
     "No you don't!" said a voice. A familiar one. Starbuck turned. It
was Ama, as before crisply dressed as a senior nurse, standing at the
entrance to the ward, and looking as though she owned every centimetron
of it. Somehow, if she'd produced a title deed, he wouldn't have been
surprised.
     "But Matron," began Churchill, all innocence.
     "No buts!" she said, voice as crisp as her uniform. "Out!"
     "But it's only a fum...cigar," said Starbuck.
     "I don't care! Out, all of you!" They all, even Churchill, bowed to
her command. 
     "Yes, Ma'am, Sergeant Major, Ma'am!" said the Prime Minister. 
     Ama raised an arched eyebrow.  "Hardly worthy of a Prime Minister,
Winston," she determined.
     His face fell, uncharacteristically.  "My apologies, good lady."
     She nodded, satisfied, as they filed out.     
     "But..." 
     Ama just glared at him, and he went, followed by Liz, at whom she
also glowered. Then, she smiled, at both her and Byrne. Then, as Byrne
seemed about to drop off to sleep, it was just her.
     "Ama," Starbuck began to say, once they were alone, but she pressed
her fingers to his lips.
     Quiet, Son Starbuck, she seemed to say, in his mind. Sleep, now.
Sleep.
     "But...I need to know. What..."
     Sleep.
     And slowly, as he looked up at the Wise Woman from Empyrean,
Starbuck, his eyes suddenly heavy, felt his head hit the pillow, felt the
world dissolve, and finally himself with it.

Chapter Ten

     "...sleep..sleep...sleeeeeeeeeeeeeee...."
     "...fall asleep there, or what?" said a voice. Starbuck jerked
awake, and looked around him. 
     "Huh?"
     "You nodded off at the best part, Sleepybuck," said the voice.
Starbuck looked up, his eyes clearing, and saw Captain Byrne, standing
over him. "See if I invite you to movie night again."
     "You snore, too," said Genesis.
     "I..." Starbuck looked around. Instead of a primitive LifeStation,
and himself bandaged and nearly immobile, he was in Captain Byrne's,
Captain Kevin Byrne's, cabin, aboard the Constellation, in the Colonial
Fleet. Next to Byrne was Cassiopeia, and his father, Chameleon. Genesis
was pulling the vid disk from the player.
     "Yeah, you dozed off, son," said the old man. "Are you getting
enough rest, over there?"
     "Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure." He got up out of his chair, and looked around
some more. The film was done, and they were ready to go. A dream. It must
have been a dream. Holy Lords of Kobol, what a crazy dream!But... 
     Genesis handed him his jacket, and he, Cassie, and Chameleon left
the Byrne's. 
     "You sure you're okay, Starbuck?" asked Cassie. "It's not like you
to fall asleep like that, out of cycle."
     "I dunno. I'm okay, Cassie. Nothing wrong with me."
     "Well, it was a great vid," said Chameleon, as they headed for the
shuttle bay. "It must have been a real challenge, back in those times.
Don't you think, son? Those primitive airships."
     "Uh...yeah. I'm sure it was."
     Later that night, after Cassie was sated and asleep, Starbuck was
finding slumber elusive. He'd fallen asleep, while watching a vid from
Earth, about aerial battles during that planet's "Second World War." He'd
dozed off, and had a dream. A dream of himself, flying ancient Earth air
machines. Intense, bizarrely vivid, but a dream, nonetheless. No other
explanation was possible. 
     "That's got to be it," he muttered to himself, in the dark. "Crazy,
crazy dream."
     But it couldn't be. The dream had been too vivid, far too intensely
real, to be just a dream. And it had gone on for so long. He had spent
sectars, months, or at least it felt like months, on Earth, in their year
1940, living the life of someone called Benedict Templeton. Eating,
sleeping, fighting, being severely wounded, and...
     Ama! That...whatever she was. She had been there, too. Been there at
many turns, turning up in the weirdest places, making it all somehow so
crazily real. And if it was real, or had been, then what had it all
meant? Something to amuse herself with? Using him as a sort of
metaphysical plaything? A diversion? Who knew, when it came to ...people
like that. Or had it all had some deeper purpose, some ultimate
justification, that for the present eluded him. He didn't know.
     Ask Byrne? Ask if he knew of an ancestor who had fought in the
Battle of Britain? Find out if there really had been a Lieutenant
Benedict Templeton, and if the events he'd experienced, saving Churchill,
saving Byrne's ancestor so there could be a Byrne here, were at all real.
If so, maybe that was it? Sent by powers far above himself, to intervene,
and direct the history of a world still so very far away?
     He wondered if, perhaps, he should tell Cassie of his "dream". He
looked down at her sleeping form, her golden hair splayed across the
pillow. After a moment, shook his head. No, she'd just say what he was
trying to convince himself of, now. That is was all just an extremely
vivid dream, and nothing more. And, knowing her, if he insisted, she'd
send him to Tarnia.
     Shudder
     No, it was just a dream. Period. Just a dream.
     And thus he lapsed into slumber.                                   


     Two sectons later, Starbuck stepped out of the turbowash aboard the
Galactica, after a particularly satisfying round of Triad. Warriors from
one of the Constellation's squadrons had faced off with the team drawn
from the Battlestar's pilots, and, narrowly, been bested by Starbuck's
team. It felt good to get back into Triad shape, he told himself. Felt
good to have something that helped to, however slowly, wean his mind away
from certain recent "events". 
     Several of the recently rescued Earthers, cheering in the stands,
didn't hurt, either.
     He walked across the locker room, toweling his hair, when the floor
under him gave way. Actually, it was only a wet patch he'd overlooked,
but it was enough to send him sailing into one of the lockers. It's door
swung open, it's contents spilling out onto the floor. 
     "What the fracking..." he began, but picked himself up, put his
towel back on, and looked down. 
     It was Byrne's locker he'd slammed into, and the Earth Captain's
effects were scattered on the floor in front of him. He stooped to pick
them up, when he noticed the Captain's wallet. Old, worn, and obviously
from home, it had spilled open, it's contents in a mess. Starbuck picked
it up, and began as best he could to put things back where they belonged.
A few pieces of worn currency notes, some identification ducats, a coin
of some sort, and a few photos. He arranged them, to slide them back in,
and then stopped. Stopped dead. He looked at one of the old images in his
hand. Ancient, worn, glossy and printed without color, it was...
     He heard Byrne coming, and quickly put everything back as near as he
could to where it had been. He ducked out, unnoticed, and quickly
dressed. As he fastened his gun belt back on, he felt something.
Something in the small, inner pocket, of his trousers. A pocket he rarely
used, but was sewn into the military-issue garments, as part of their
design. He put his fingers inside, and pulled out a small piece of metal.
Round. Raised edge. Stamped with a design. He looked at it, wondering how
in Hades Hole it had gotten in there. 
     Wondering how it could possibly be real.
     "My God, it wasn't...it wasn't a dream!" he said to himself, as he
looked down at the coin, actually sagging against his locker for a
moment, in shock. A British farthing piece, stamped with the numerals
1-9-3-9. He stared down at it for almost a full centon, trying to take it
all in. He looked up, at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes full of
shock and disbelief, and could find no voice. A face he knew so very
well, having seen himself countless times in this very mirror, yet had
also seen somewhere else, in another mirror, in a setting no less
military, on a planet the Lords knew how far away.
     And a face that had, a scant few centons ago, stared back at him,
from an old, worn, colorless photograph, of a group of men, in strange
uniforms, glasses and bottles in hand, drinking and cavorting, in the
Officer's Club at a place called RAF Manston, with the Right Honorable
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. 

Addendum
     "What am I doing here?" Starbuck wondered aloud as he stood
hesitantly in front of the entry panel to the Empyrean Wise Woman's
quarters on the Malocchio Freighter.  Although he didn't really know her,
other than as an acquaintance, some part of his apparently addled brain
figured that this Ama, in his here and now, would have the answers he
sought. There was no logical explanation of how he could have been on
Earth, especially seeming to live out three sectars in the time it took
to sleep through an Earth movie in Byrne's quarters. Yet the physical
evidence of the British coin and Byrne's old picture in which he had
somehow been recorded both insisted that this was indeed true.
     The panel slid open without him ever touching it, as if somehow the
occupant already knew he was there.  It was dark within, as if he was
entering a void, yet the moment he stepped inside candlelight twinkled
merrily at him from every direction.  The air was slightly perfumed, a
strange spice he couldn't place, mixed with something that just had to be
delicious, or so his stomach was insisting.  
     "Enter, Lieutenant, if you dare," her voice beckoned him.  It was
just as he remembered it on Earth, warm, throaty, yet today it was
slightly mocking, as if she sensed his uncertainty.  
     His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he briefly scanned the
austere room, noting a table off to the side that held rustic candelabra,
a crystalline orb and a carved wooden bowl.  Reclined on pillows on a
nearby long seat, Ama looked completely relaxed, her long, unruly white
hair framing a face with strong, yet not unappealing features.  There was
a table laden with food and drink, as though she had been expecting
company.  
     "Sit, Dear Heart," Ama told him, leaning forward to serve them both
a drink of some dark brown beverage.  
     Uncharacteristically quiet, Starbuck took a seat beside her,
watching her methodically tilt a glass as she poured.  He was on her
territory, and admittedly felt a little out of his depth, something new
for him.  He took the proffered glass, waiting until she served herself. 
She raised her glass to him.
     "To friends, old and new," she said, smiling a gap-toothed grin that
startled him, although he had seen her particular dental calamity before.
     "Which are we?" Starbuck asked, feeling a strange affinity for this
mysterious woman.
     She smiled enigmatically, before taking a swig of the brew.  "Mmm,"
she purred, nodding approvingly. "Tradition dictates that before business
comes pleasure."  She lifted her glass to him.  "Empyrean Ale, my young
friend.  Nectar of the Goddess."
     He took a sip, finding her assessment both fair and accurate. 
"Lords of Kobol," he murmured, taking a more generous gulp.  "Every last
one of them."
     She cackled in approval at his words, before offering him a tidbit
off a wooden platter.  Although he didn't recognize it, he didn't
hesitate to gobble it up.  The flavour was worthy of the delicious aroma,
and he eyed the bounty before him just like a man who had been eating in
the officer's mess for too long.
     They sat in companionable silence, enjoying the feast, before she
finally offered him a fumarello.  She studied him intently as he lit it,
and he gazed back at her through a haze of smoke.  Unlike most women of
her status, she wore no make-up.  Her skin was smooth and her many laugh
lines leant character to a face that was difficult to guess the age of.
     "Now?" he asked.
     She nodded patiently.
     Somehow he didn't feel the need for any preamble or explanation. 
She seemed to know he was coming and why he was there.  He found himself
fingering the Earth coin in his pocket, rolling it between his fingers,
before holding it up for her to see.  "Was I on Earth, Ama?" 
     "Do you believe you were on Earth?" she countered.
     He thought about it for a centon, finally nodding.  "Yes."
     "Then why question it, Starbuck?"
     "Because it's impossible," he replied with a shrug, slipping the
farthing back into his pocket.  
     "Never let your reality be limited by what you know to be true."
     He considered her words, wishing he'd brought his Languatron.  "My
reality?  Is there more than one?"
     "There is so much more to the universe than what is understood."  
     "At least, by me," Starbuck muttered, not feeling any more
enlightened than when he had entered her chambers.  "Why was I on Earth?"
     "Because you needed to be," she replied, as if he had asked why the
sky was blue on the Planet Azure.  
     "Why were you there?" he asked.
     She smiled at him patiently, relaxing back against the pillows and
letting him think some more until his brain hurt.
     "Because you needed to be," he answered his own question, and then
groaned aloud.   
     "There now, you have it all figured out. It's really very easy."  
     "I have nothing figured out," he replied, leaning forward and
holding his head in his hands. "What am I doing here?"
     "Broadening your horizons, Dear Heart," Ama replied.  "Life is very
simple. Only our perceptions make it difficult.  Truth is but a
perception of reality, any reality. Once you understand that, you begin
to allow for infinite possibilities."
     He took another large swig of his Empyrean Ale, draining the glass.
"I don't think my mind was meant for infinite possibilities, Ama. You
should have picked Apollo for this."
     "Why do you think that I chose you?"
     "You mean . . .?" His words abruptly broke off as he considered some
celestial plan paralleling the great stories of Kobollian lore, himself
as the hero.  Mirth erupted in him, as it seemed entirely too absurd to
be true.  He chuckled, his laughter abruptly dying, as he saw Ama
watching him, her features thoughtful and sober.  "You're serious?"
     "You are a good man, Lieutenant Starbuck.  You have the capacity to
be a great one," she replied, reaching for his empty glass and pouring
him another drink.  "Let's leave it at that for now, shall we?"
     "Probably a good idea," he replied.  "My current infinity has
reached its capacity."
     She cackled in glee at his wit.
     "Life's about to get a whole lot more interesting, isn't it?"
Starbuck asked.
     "Perhaps," she allowed.  "But where you're concerned, there's rarely
a dull moment."
     "Now that's a truth I can accept."


     Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica,
leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest. A shining planet,
known as Earth.