The sun that three worlds shared had long since dropped into the sea and even the last faint tinges of red vanished from the sky by the time a little group made its way down the age-dished marble steps of the columned temple, walked across the grassy courtyard, then up a long flight of stone stairs to the massive battlements of the fortress of Tiryns.
Miriam led the party, her baby daughter in her arms. Behind her came her mother, her half-sister (Miriam never thought of Dirce as being merely her half-sister, but that was technically their relationship), and, tagging along in last place was Miriam’s first daughter Amala, four yahrens old. No men were present; this was a women’s ceremony.
They were all of them, except of course for Amala and the baby, in uniform. Miriam’s black striker-crew uniform was still a little tight as she struggled to shed the inevitable excess weight of pregnancy. Her mother was a contrast, tall and slender and regal, and her blue command uniform with its gold Reserve Force collar pins set her off perfectly. Miriam had inherited her mother’s eyes, her mother’s slightly skeptical smile but not, to her everlasting regret, her height and lithe figure. Dirce, on the other hand, was their mother’s image, tall and dark, a little fierce, her uniform also striker black. Amala, holding her long tan dress up in one hand to keep from tripping over the hem on the way up the stairs, was tall for her age and quiet. She took after her father, Colonel Apollo, the recently promoted viper group commander of the Galactica. Miriam suspected that her new baby was going to be much like herself. She was a tiny thing, and the medtech who had been present at the delivery said she doubted she’d grow to be any taller than her mother. She had a pugnacious disposition, though, and a tendency to bite, as her father had quickly found out. Miriam didn’t blame her for taking a piece out of Aleksandros; it was something she would have liked to do herself. So much for thinking that our sealing could be patched up, she thought.
The battlement overlooked the bay of Tiryns. Far below, the lights of ships riding at anchor sparkled across the dark water. Space travel had long ago been perfected, but sometimes traditional ways were better and cheaper, though the ships faintly visible as clusters of deck lights were now powered by fuel cells rather than sails. More lights delineated the docks and warehouses lining the shore of the wide bay, and a faint glow in the middle distance marked the site of the modern city of Tiryns, a vast arcology entirely buried except for its entrances and skylights. Above it all were a few stars, the brightest being the sun that shone on two more of the Twelve Worlds, which shed enough light to cast faint shadows. Miriam looked up at the stars for a centon, watched them quickly vanishing behind oncoming clouds.
“Awfully close up here,” she heard Klymene comment to Dirce. It was humid and still.
“Going to rain,” Dirce agreed.
Miriam’s baby did not have a name yet, formally. Miriam knew what she planned to name her, but Sagitarans did not believe in using the name or so much as mentioning it aloud or committing it to writing before the child was formally presented to the gods. That was the reason they had gathered earlier in the temple, and now on the battlement.
Miriam unwrapped the baby, leaving her naked, and handed the blanket back to her mother, who folded it neatly into a compact square, treating it with the due reverence of a family artifact that had covered most recently Amala and previously Miriam, her father, and other forebears going back several centurons. It was warm enough that the baby was not discomforted; had she been born during the winter it would have been permissible to delay the ceremony until the seasons changed, but she’d been born in high summer. Miriam stroked her gently, admiring her smooth, marvelously soft pink skin; the baby smiled and cooed and wrapped her tiny fist around one of Miriam’s fingers. She was so perfect in every feature; it was hard for Miriam to believe that such perfection could have come from her.
They were awaiting a sign of some sort, something that would determine which deity of the Sagitaran pantheon the child ought to be dedicated to. Sometimes the signs were unambiguous, or they could be very subtle. Miriam had declared that her mother should choose in case of uncertainty.
It was so silent and still that it seemed unnatural, the air hot and muggy. Across the water came faint sounds of things being moved, and voices, a ship being readied to sail, perhaps. It is going to rain, Miriam thought. Which one is the rain-god, after all?
Suddenly the bay below them leapt into perfect visibility as a bolt of lightning slammed into the rocky peak that rose behind the fortress. It was so close that they heard the POP! of the discharge and almost instantly a crash of thunder that echoed deafeningly around them.
That sign was unambiguous. Hoping that they were not the next target, Miriam held the baby up to the sky. “Rhiannon Poliorcetes,” she said, and concluded, “The Storm God.”

...remember only the lessons to be learned from defeat—they are more than from victory
Field Marshal Sir William Slim

A generation had come to adulthood since the holocaust, but their elders made certain that those who had not lived it would nevertheless not forget.
Lieutenant Rhiannon Poliorcetes smiled cynically to herself as she finished doing up her black striker-crew flight suit. Through the partly-open locker room door she could hear the audio from a telescreen someone had carelessly left on in the ready room beyond; music, speeches, cheering. Every yahren we celebrate our elders’ shortsightedness, she thought, and only very incidentally the fact that the only reason we’re here to do so is because Adama had the courage to launch Galactica’s vipers on warning when President Adar of damned memory ordered him not to. That piece of personal initiative is the only thing worth commemorating. The rest of it...total felgercarb. A remembrance of stupidity miraculously redeemed by heroism laced with a healthy dose of superstition and nonsense. ‘We survived the Cylons!’ What a load of unadulterated garbage. Now Victory Day, on the other hand....
So, a tiny, highly irritating inner voice inquired maliciously, why did you volunteer for this flyover?
Because I love flying strikers, not because I want to honor this useless holiday, she told herself firmly. Because I’ve been out of it for awhile and I have to begin getting back into things. Back into flying, back into life. She reached up and pushed her dark curls back from her forehead, accidentally brushing her fingertips over bare skin where a narrow strip had been shaven from her right temple back to the nape of her neck. She knew she’d have to begin letting it grow back out soon, having been in formal mourning almost an unseemly long time. It was time to start flying again and time to forget...no, not forget, never that, but to find a way of dealing with what had happened and moving on. Briseis, she suspected, would have been highly unimpressed. She had been ruthlessly practical.
Taking her dark gray helmet out of her locker, Rhiannon caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror fastened to the inside of the door; her mother’s face, minus the yahrens of age and strain, her aunt’s dangerous, dark brown eyes under the curls falling as rebelliously as ever over her forehead. She wasn’t sure who she prided herself more for taking after, her aunt who believed that what people needed most was to be offended and delighted in doing so, or her mother, quieter, equally intense in her own way, in the end possibly somewhat more effective simply because she pissed fewer people off. Perhaps it might be more interesting to simply be Rhiannon Poliorcetes, but she had not yet decided who that individual was supposed to be.
She closed the locker, the click of its latch disconcertingly loud in the empty room. Everyone else, she knew, was out partying away. Fine, let them; I’d rather fly. Sitting down on the bench that ran in front of the lockers she pulled on her right boot, then drew her foot up to lace it, glancing up from her task as the door opened all the way and someone came into the room.
The new arrival was a man, dressed as she was in a black flight suit, a bulging carryall negligently suspended by its strap from his left shoulder. “Lieutenant Rhiannon?” he asked.
“The same. You?”
“Lieutenant Ares. I’m your new weapons officer.”
She nodded, sizing him up. He looked Sagitaran to her. Like her, he had the dark eyes and hair and slightly olive skin. Ares struck her as being pretty rather than handsome, his features almost too smooth and regular. Not tall, he had only a few centimetrons over her, but striker crew tended to be short, since smaller people possessed higher G-resistance. Likely he was about her age, twenty-four yahrens or thereabouts. She was considerably more interested in his qualifications. “Where were you assigned before this?”
“The Galactica, Fifteenth Strike Squadron. Commander Apollo’s strike wing.”
The Fifteenth, she knew, was a predominantly Scorpian unit that had earned a good reputation in the closing stages of the Cylon War. And the Galactica...no battlestar in the fleet was more famed, even the Columbia. He can’t be all bad, she decided magnanimously, though I feel sorry for any Sagitaran posted to a Scorpian unit. She rose, offered her hand. After putting his bag down on the bench he gripped it firmly and asked, “What’s our assignment?”
She sat down to put her other boot on and said, “The squadron got back last month from a tour on Borallus. Next secton, we report aboard the Columbia.”
“After this flyover,” he said, taking his helmet and gloves from his bag.
“After this blasted flyover,” she agreed, unable to completely conceal her feelings.
Ares smiled. He had a nice smile. “Do I detect a note of cynicism about the sacred holocaust remembrance?”
“Do you ever.”
“Good.”
Rhiannon didn’t want to like him. After what had happened on Borallus she wanted to feel nothing for him at all, but she suspected she was going to like him in spite of herself. Hell! she thought. She smiled shortly, got to her feet, and said, “Let’s go flying. Oh, one thing.” At his questioning glance she directed a nod at his glossy tan and black helmet, painted to emulate the viper pilots’ helmets aboard the Galactica. “Get the helmet painted. Dark gray helmets in this squadron. A light helmet can be seen maxims farther than a dark gray striker, did you know that?”
Outside, the sun that blessed Caprica, Sagitara, and Virgon shone down, even early as it was raising ripples of heated air off the square maxims of grass and concrete that made up the spacedrome. Along the flightline a double line of strikers sat silent, covers pulled down over their canopies, intakes, and exhausts, festooned with bright reminder streamers waving languidly in the morning breeze, abandoned by flight crews and groundcrews alike on this holiday. Most of the aircraft were well worn, long rows of mission stripes on their tails, areas of mismatched paint showing where panels had been replaced or repaired, the nondescript gray camouflage itself faded and chalky from long exposure to the harsh sun of Borallus.
Only around the last striker in line was any activity apparent, as four or five not entirely enthusiastic groundcrew lethargically prepped it for flight. They’d finished fueling it and now were engaged in pulling off covers and removing safety pins, draping the colorful streamers they were attached to over their shoulders. Ares ran his eyes over the striker professionally, taking in the sleek lines that failed to conceal its size, its jutting fins and functional bumps and bulges that faired in its weapons and sensors. Like all of the other strikers along the flightline it was the stripped version flown on Borallus, its gravitic drive and other spaceflight adaptations removed to lighten it, improve its handling, and enable it to carry more ordnance. Unlike the squadron’s other craft, this particular striker was obviously brand new, its gray paint unfaded, with no dents, dings, or hashmarks on its tail. It was a thing almost of beauty, but it had no character, not yet, not even a name or a number.
“New,” he commented to Rhiannon, pleased.
“My last one was scrapped,” she replied tersely.
For the first time he seemed to really notice her, and took in the missing strip of hair now revealed as the breeze ruffled through her curls. “Borallus?”
“Yes.” Four months on Borallus...it came back to her all too clearly and easily. Four months trying to keep the nomen away from the tylium mines and mostly succeeding, four fairly decent months watching the mission stripes pile up on the tail and counting the days until we shipped out for home and rest, a nicely boring tour compared to the one before it...all leading up to that one instant with two days left when some nomen stitched us nose-to-tail and gods, the blood...you’d never have thought that one small woman had that much blood in her....
Taking a breath to steady herself, Rhiannon forcibly drew herself back to her present surroundings, helped as the morning stillness was shattered by a small in-system liner coming in to land at the civilian terminal across the field. So much for thinking I might be starting to figure out a way to deal with it. Maybe you never do. Maybe you never really learn to live with it, you just pretend to, you go around forcing a smile even when you’re bleeding out inside...and surely I’m too young to be thinking like this. “I never want to go back there,” she said aloud.
“I was there a yahren ago. It’s a morass.”
“It’s a stupid, futile war. Worse than the Cylons. Let’s preflight and get it off the ground.”
When they’d finished their external examination of the striker, they climbed up to the cockpit, Rhiannon on the left, Ares on the right, in ejection seats since this version lacked an escape capsule. Once the crewchief indicated his readiness, they ran down the starting checklist. Rhiannon wrote off the faint tension she detected underlying Ares’ responses to preflight nerves. She always found the routine bracing and now, after a month out of the cockpit, she felt a surge of anticipation. She loved flying as so far she loved nothing else in her life. She did find his presence in the other side of the cockpit odd, though. It was no reflection on him; he seemed efficient enough, he was just...different.
“Ready on both,” Ares concluded. “APU is running, number one is turning.”
“Starting number one,” Rhiannon replied, reaching down to the console on her left, flicking the red safety cover back and pressing the button. Fuel sprayed back into the already slowly rotating turbine and the igniters fired it. She eased the left-hand throttle forward to idle. When that engine was running smoothly she repeated the procedure for the second engine.
Listening attentively to the low rumble behind them, Ares said, “Sweet. There’s something about a new striker...no weird little noises that make you wonder if you’re going to drop an engine.”
“True. But don’t get used to it. We’ll be getting spaceflight-equipped strikers when we transfer to Columbia and someone else will get our virgin here.”
Systems checked and clearance granted, they began the long taxi out to the spaceport’s runway. Lack of gravitic drive meant taking off and landing the old-fashioned way. As the striker rolled along, tires rumbling across expansion joints, porpoising a little on its struts, canopies open to let the pleasant morning air into the cockpit, Rhiannon asked, in her native language, “You do speak Sagitaran?”
In Sagitaran, without her aristocratic accent but instead with the flatness of a native Standard Caprican speaker, he replied, “Not real well, but I understand perfectly.”
Startled, she reverted back to Standard. “You’re not Sagitaran?”
“My mother is. My father is Caprican.”
“Oh. You must take after her; you look Sagitaran. Where is she from?”
“Tiryns.”
“So am I. Obviously your mother is a person of refinement.”
Ares smiled. “I’ve always thought so.”
They turned onto the runway, wings sweeping out into takeoff configuration, and they finished fastening their helmets and breather masks. Final clearance received, Rhiannon said, “Canopies coming down.”
“Clear,” Ares replied, assuring her he wasn’t doing anything inane like hanging an arm out over the side. The canopies came down and locked securely.
“Power coming up.” She eased the throttles forward, and the rumble of the engines behind them rapidly escalated to a scream, audible even through their helmets and the closed canopies. “Brakes off,” she concluded, and the striker leapt forward as if eager to fling itself into its native environment. Empty except for fuel it accelerated far faster than Rhiannon was used to. The nose gear had hardly lifted clear of the runway when the mains followed, she briefly taking her hand off the throttles to select Gear up. The landing gear retracted with an interesting-sounding series of whirrs and clunks and the striker climbed out steeply, turning fuel into glorious noise, ignored by those on the ground who didn’t know what they were missing.
“Three up and locked. Wings configured for climb,” Ares reported. “Coordinates for the rendezvous are seven-seven-five, three thousand metrons in fourteen centons...mark.”
“Got it.” After a few centons Rhiannon thought she noticed Ares relax a little. She asked, “How’d you get to be a weapons officer?”
“The usual way. I washed out of pilot training,” he admitted readily.
Judging from his tone he’d accepted it without qualm, which was good. Very briefly she’d been paired with a second-seater who had also been a washout and had resented it, and her status as a pilot, intensely. She’d gotten him thrown out of the military, the one time she’d used whatever small influence she had.
Shortly they made rendezvous with the other strikers set for the flyover and had to concentrate on the job at hand, flying tight formation in a grouping of six mismatched strikers, four of them the heavy, spaceflight-capable model, two of them stripped and hence with dramatically different handling qualities. At first there were a few mildly hair-raising centons, but by the time they turned in to make their pass the formation was as tight as anyone could have wished. Fixed to the left wingtip of the formation leader, they had no time to sightsee as they swept in low over the sunken plaza that fronted the Presidium. Had they been able to, they would have caught a glimpse of streets filled with crowds in turn happy or solemn and noticed fewer gaps in the skyline as new buildings continued rising to replace those devastated in the Cylon surprise attack, almost thirty yahrens before.
“Thank the Lords that’s done,” Rhiannon said as they broke formation afterwards and turned for home. “Are you doing anything after this?”
“I’m expected at a party.”
He struck her as sounding reluctant. “If you don’t want to go, skip it. The squadron is having a get-together; I thought you’d want to meet everyone.”
“I would...but it’s my father’s party.”
“Skip it anyway.”
“You don’t know my father.”
Slightly irritated by his dismal evasiveness, she inquired, “Who in hades is he?”
“Commander Starbuck.”
Oh. Living legend time, Rhiannon thought, unimpressed, and all the nameless horrors of being Someone’s child. I can play this game any day. Silly man! “The commander of the battlecruiser Triumph,” she observed. “He’s supposed to be quite good.”
“I suppose he is,” Ares muttered.
“It can be difficult, having a parent who’s in the command structure,” she offered. “The expectations can be a killer...and people tend to believe you were handed everything until you prove you weren’t.”
“True,” he agreed glumly, “but how would you know?”
“My mother is commander of the Victory.”
His head snapped around. “Your mother is...then your grandfather would be....”
“The President of the Council, yes. Not to mention who my aunt is. And I got here because I’m good, not because my family name is Poliorcetes.” Which in Sagitaran meant sacker of cities, and was a fair description of her ancestors. “I expect you did the same,” she added.
“I must have; like I said, I washed out of viper school. You like them?” he ventured.
“Who, my family? Of course I do,” she replied, startled by the question. “You have problems with yours?”
“With my father,” he admitted.
“Why?”
He shrugged, the gesture not particularly visible, wedged as he was into his ejection seat. “It’s just...things.”
Rhiannon was silent for a centon, then she asked, “Are you taking anyone to this party?”
“No. Um, would you like to go?”
“I would indeed.” If I’m going to be flying with him, I’d better understand him...and his weaknesses.

Commander Hector of the battlestar Bellerophon gazed out into a future he must have dreamed of—one devoid of Cylons. The holoportrait hung on a bulkhead in the commander’s day cabin aboard the battlecruiser Victory showed a tall, darkly handsome man, lips faintly curved in an unmilitary smile contrasting with his immaculate dark blue dress uniform. The portrait captured him well. Hector had been a brilliant warrior, perhaps the best, but he had never made the mistake of taking himself too seriously.
Commander Apollo turned from his examination of the likeness as the door opened and Miriam came in. “Sorry it took so long...the usual half-dozen things only I could deal with, you know,” she apologized, removing her dress uniform cape and laying it over the back of the couch that was set under the room’s single port. “You look dehydrated. Can I get you something?”
It had been unseasonably warm in the plaza before the Presidium, standing under the autumn sun listening to his father as Commander of the Fleet and hers, Diomedes, President of the Council of Twelve, give their Holocaust Day speeches. Thirty yahrens ago it had been cool, he remembered. There had been traces of frost on the ground in the dark, early morning when he and his father had returned to the ruins of their home.... “Water, lots of ice,” he said, pushing the memory back. “I was admiring that portrait,” he added.
Miriam smiled. “My favorite brother-in-law. He was quite a man,” she remarked as she ordered the water. “Normally I approve of our policy of not naming things after people, but when they talked about naming one of the new battlestars after him, I admit I was tempted.”
Shortly the door snapped open and a crewman entered, carrying a plain plastic tray on which reposed two glasses and a water-filled carafe, its contents glistening invitingly with ice triangles. After the crewman had placed the tray on the desk and gone, Miriam filled a glass and offered it to Apollo. He accepted it and raised it in salute, not entirely facetiously. They had been occasional lovers once and were still friends, but she was, by virtue of having graduated first in their class at the Command Academy, his superior officer. Taking the other glass she raised it in turn and said, “Confusion to our enemies. In particular the nomen and certain members of the Council of Twelve.”
“Amen,” Apollo concurred, and drank. He drained the glass and Miriam was quick to refill it. “So,” he said, coming up for air once he’d drunk most of the second, “what can you tell me about this mission we’re supposedly being sent on?”
Miriam perched with one hip on the corner of her desk as he seated himself on the couch and, folding her arms, said, “As you’re well aware, there are elements within the Council and among the general public who believe that since the Cylon War has concluded to our advantage we can now declare that the day of jubilee has arrived and get rid of the military.”
It was impossible to be unaware of the controversial movement to slash the Fleet. So far it had not gained too much popular support and Apollo knew that Adama and Diomedes had carefully crafted the Holocaust Day remembrance to emphasize the importance of maintaining a strong standing military, but it was the kind of illogical notion that could prove contagious.
“So,” Miriam continued, “someone had the clever idea that the Fleet might be usefully employed for peaceful purposes. Hence we are being sent to search for the planet Kobol.”
Apollo had heard some fairly wild rumors about their mission, but a search for Kobol, the semi-legendary planet from which Colonial culture had sprung, hadn’t been among them. “You’re serious, of course?”
“Would I make something like that up?”
Her vehemence made him smile. “No, you wouldn’t. Does anyone know where Kobol is?”
“Obviously not, but the whereabouts of Kobol is a problem that’s evidently interested your father for some time. He believes it lies out beyond the Carillon sector somewhere, between there and the Delphian Empire. We’ll have to scout out the warp points, but it’s well within our reach. Possibly less than a month’s travel.”
“You sound kind of interested.”
“I am interested,” Miriam agreed. “But it’s a waste of two battlestars and two battlecruisers. There are civilian ships that could do the job far more efficiently. It isn’t for the military to justify its existence in such a way.”
“I agree, but it might quiet the critics long enough for reason to prevail.”
“I believe reason will prevail in any case, but you may be right. Aeneas will be in overall command, Columbia the flagship, with Galactica, Victory, and Triumph. Supposedly the battlestars will get most of the civilian specialists; not much extra room on a battlecruiser, of course. I’m fairly certain your father will find his way on board as well.”
“I think you can count on that.”
“And our daughter, no doubt.”
“I think you can count on that too.” They were both proud of their scholarly daughter.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Ask away.”
“Not that this mission is likely to lead to anything, but...the commander of Triumph has a reputation. I want to know if he can be relied on.”
“You’ve never met Starbuck?”
“Only very briefly. I’ve never worked with him, and I’ve never had the chance to sit down and talk to him at any length.”
“He’s the best. He can be difficult, but he’s brilliant.”
“The best?” Miriam inquired doubtfully.
Apollo relented a little. “All right, maybe Dirce is the best...but he’s good.”
“I am told that he takes after Cain.” The name emerged sounding like an epithet. Two yahrens before the false Cylon peace offer, Cain had been sent to relieve Molecay. He and the entire Fifth Fleet, the battlestars Pegasus, Rycon, and Bellerophon, had been lost and Molecay and its vast fuel reserves ceded to the Cylons, a victory that must have encouraged the enemy in their plans for the holocaust and only made the Colonies the more desperate for peace. Cain was not remembered kindly by Sagitarans, who blamed him for the loss of Hector and his predominantly Sagitaran crew.
“Starbuck’s impulsive,” Apollo said, “but I think he’s better tactically than Cain was. I’ve seen him in situations you’d think no one could possibly get out of, but he always does.” Apollo smiled and concluded, “Starbuck hates to lose.” It summed up his old friend well.
“Can he follow orders?”
“If he believes in them.”
“If he believes in them,” Miriam repeated incredulously. “If he believes in them...I may have a talk with Aeneas about this.”
“He’s worked with Dirce.”
“And she told me he needs a good swift kick regularly to keep him moving in the right direction,” Miriam shot back. “She described him to me as being a combination of a great officer and an absolute baby. I do not put up with the things she does—and if anything happens to Aeneas, I am in command.”
“I’ll admit there’s always been some controversy as to whether he’s brilliant or a disaster waiting to happen,” said Apollo. “Maybe you’d better talk to him.”
“If I get the chance, I will. Elsewise...you can tell him if you see him that I don’t go for grandstanding and insubordination, and neither does Aeneas.”
Apollo laughed. “Dear Miriam, no one tells Starbuck anything.”

Ares was coming out of the male officer’s quarters when Rhiannon arrived to fetch him. Any doubts he might have had about her identity did not survive his first, obviously impressed glimpse of her personal flyer. Private vehicles had become quite rare in the austere, post-Destruction Colonies. Only the privileged or those who could demonstrate need could own them. Hers was a late model SagitAir P-3000, its sleek, delta-shaped bodywork finished with multiple coats of red ultragloss painstakingly cleaned and polished. Ares climbed down into the two-seat cockpit beside her—it was much like a striker cockpit in size but far more luxurious—and said, “Very nice.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she replied unselfconsciously. Like him, she was wearing full dress uniform, in striker crew black with silver trim. “Where are we going?” she asked.
He gave her the address and she lifted the flyer off the ground, retracting the road wheels and setting off in the correct direction. On the way they were silent; Rhiannon had never developed a talent for small talk and evidently neither had Ares. He sat quietly, watching out the canopy, scratching at his right hand now and then. Once when he reached out to adjust a ventilation louver she noticed that a mild rash had broken out on the back of his hand. Fairly certain it had not been present that morning, she wondered if it might be an unconscious manifestation of the tension that apparently existed between Ares and his father. Strange, she thought. Thank the Lords my family isn’t like that. My parents may have had their seal broken but they’re civil enough and they love me. My sister too, I love her—in spite of herself sometimes—my aunt, my grandparents...what would it be like not to have that, how awful. Friends come and go, but your family.... To Sagitarans the family was the center of life and their religion considered it sacred. Evidence that it wasn’t always so shocked Rhiannon. It struck her as being unhealthy.
Commander Starbuck was holding his party in one of the finest hotels in Caprica City, one in particular vogue because it had survived the holocaust intact and so was opulently decorated compared to the plain styles currently common. Rhiannon parked her flyer on the roof of the truncated pyramidal building next to several other private ships and a small chartered skybus.
“Is this going to be very formal?” she asked, straightening her uniform after they had climbed out of the flyer.
Ares smiled slightly. “My father, formal? No, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
The upper floors of the hotel were comprised of a series of rooms that could be thrown together into vast suites if necessary by the retraction and rearrangement of partition walls. Most of one floor had thus been configured into a large party area for Starbuck’s guests. Rhiannon ran her eyes over the crowd as they entered, immediately noticing that the large majority of guests were in uniform, more in warrior beige than command blue, a few in Ground Forces dark green. She and Ares appeared to be the only ones in attendance wearing striker black. Those civilians present seemed mostly to be friends or spouses of the military personnel. A depressingly one-note gathering, Rhiannon thought, but out of politeness said nothing. Commander Starbuck could keep what company he wished.
Ambrosa was flowing literally like water from a flamboyant crystal fountain in the center of the room they’d just entered. Carefully placed lamps picked glittering highlights off of the glass and bubbling amber fluid. Tables spotted around it overflowed with intriguing delicacies from all of the Twelve Worlds and beyond. The music was modern, quiet enough so people could converse comfortably over it.
Eyeing the ambrosa fountain longingly, Ares asked, “Are we flying tomorrow?”
“We are.”
“Hades!” Reluctantly he selected a glass of fruit drink instead, sipped it, made an unhappy face, and asked, “Do you see anyone you know?”
Rhiannon did not, and did not expect to. “No, I don’t.”
Ares looked around, then asked hopefully, “Is there a short version of that name of yours?”
“No,” Rhiannon replied hotly. You’d think he’d try a more original line. She peered around further, then brightened. “I do see someone I know,” she said, surprised and pleased, and began to work her way through the crowd, a curious Ares in pursuit.
A tall woman wearing a dark blue uniform smiled when she caught sight of Rhiannon, drew away from the people she’d been listening to more than talking with, and hugged her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m with that,” Rhiannon replied, indicating Ares, who was hovering behind her staring, a depressingly common male reaction to Noday. “My second-seater, Lieutenant Ares. Ares, this is Colonel Noday. She is..,” Rhiannon hesitated, then concluded, “my mother’s aide.” She elected to leave it there for the centon; until she knew Ares more thoroughly she thought it best not to introduce Noday as her mother’s pairmate. Some people, non-Sagitarans, did not react particularly well to that.
Ares was still staring when Noday smiled pleasantly, reached out, and shook his hand. Rhiannon could understand his reaction even if she did not necessarily approve of his open display of it. Noday was possibly the most beautiful woman Rhiannon had ever seen. The oncoming signs of age graced rather than marred her; faint lines and graying hair only served to emphasize the perfection of the whole. Ares managed to collect himself and said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Colonel.”
“The same. I know your father,” she added. “In fact, I knew him when he was the infamous Lieutenant, not the famous Commander.”
“Why are you here?” Rhiannon asked.
Glancing around covertly, like a spy, Noday confided, “I’m scoping things out for your mother. She wants to know what the talk planet-side is like. And she wants to know more about Commander Starbuck. He and I served aboard the Galactica before the Destruction and just....” There was a long pause, during which Noday seemed to have lost her train of thought and Rhiannon waited patiently, then Noday continued, “...afterwards. He is an interesting man. He has his centons. One or two at a time, occasionally.”
“How’d you know him?” Ares asked.
Noday smiled faintly. “We were friends.”
Rhiannon saw him flush, embarrassed, then he said, “I guess what I’m really asking is...well, what was he like? I mean, I’ve heard so much felgercarb....”
Noday considered his question for a centon, then she said, “I imagine....” There was another of those awkward pauses, then she went on, “...that you have, Lieutenant. You must remember that people reacted to him in different ways, and still do. Some people think he’s a genius, others think he’s a pain. Myself, I thought he was charming, in a....rather horrible way. Commitment was certainly not his style, though.”
“It still isn’t,” Ares said sharply.
“You have to understand some things about him. And I’m....not making any excuses for him, either. Your father has reasons for the things he does, psychological reasons. He had a very difficult childhood, and he has never gotten over it.”
“Has he tried?”
“I don’t know,” Noday replied. “I will tell you this about your father, Lieutenant. He was more endearing then, before the holocaust, but he was also a loser. He’s more....ruthless now. Driven. He had to work very hard to get where he is; it’s very....difficult to achieve anything in the Fleet if you’re not of the proper social class. But thank the Lords he did, because he helped win the war against the Cylons, and no one else could have played his part.”
Ares’ jaw was set. “You don’t know what it’s like....”
“Indeed I do not,” Noday agreed. “My parents died when I was ten, and were dead to me before that. At least you have yours, young man, whether you approve of your father or not.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I....” He shook his head and turned away.
Rhiannon watched him go, then she asked Noday, “What was that about?”
“Starbuck is a compulsive womanizer. Was then, still is, so far as I know. Like I....said, it’s psychological. Insecurity. The young man obviously doesn’t take it very well. Not that I blame him, but he could....try to show some understanding. He’s young, though. I suppose understanding comes with age. Sometimes. It did with me.” She added, “But what a nice young man. He takes after his mother, I am told.” She smiled at Rhiannon.
“Don’t go matching me up with him Noday; I am not interested.”
“I can see that.” Noday studied her briefly, then asked, “Are you....all right?”
“Tired,” Rhiannon admitted.
Noday was visibly concerned but confined herself to, “Take care of yourself. And go follow him, dear. I think he needs someone to watch over him.”
“That he does.”
Rhiannon found Ares near the ambrosa fountain, morosely picking through a tray of desserts. He offered her one and said, “I don’t want to pry or anything, but...what’s wrong with her?”
“She was a master navigator.”
That answered his question immediately. Some navigators were implanted with a brain augmentor that enabled them to do the necessary complex multidimensional mathematics in their heads. When they reached forty yahrens or so they could no longer stand the strain and the augmentor had to be removed. Almost all suffered temporary psychological problems; a few went incurably insane. Others were left with physical brain damage. And some of them died.
“She’s a brilliant officer; she would have gone far if it hadn’t been for that.”
“I guess I sort of made an idiot of myself in front of her.”
“No, not at all.” Rhiannon rather thought he had, but chose not to say so.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
As if I hadn’t noticed it! "She certainly is," Rhiannon agreed. She felt a little possessive of Noday. “She’s one of the best people I know.”
“I’ll behave next time. Hey, there’s my mother.” He waved at her over the crowd, she came to him, and they embraced.
Aurora was a dark, handsome woman attired in a conservative orange gown that complimented her coloring. “I was hoping you’d come,” she told Ares, “and so was your father.” Directing a smile at Rhiannon, she asked, “And who is this?”
Ares introduced them, adding, “My mother is a pilot too. Chief of shuttle training for TransStellar Spacelines.”
“Not quite as fancy as being a strike fighter pilot,” Aurora said pleasantly. Rhiannon had the distinct impression that Aurora was sizing her up. I feel like I’m in a meat market. Should I make some sort of announcement? No, not here....
After swapping pleasantries for a few centons, Aurora told her son firmly, “Now go see your father,” adding, with a tolerant smile, “he’s in the gaming room.”
“What a surprise,” Ares muttered.
Pretending not to hear him, Aurora told Rhiannon, “Keep him out of trouble, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll do my best.” Their eyes met and it occurred to Rhiannon that Aurora was also asking her to keep her son alive. A cloud came over her as she was reminded of Briseis. She’d failed at that before. She’d written Briseis’ mother a letter after she’d been killed, and had never heard back from her. In her emotional state Rhiannon was unable to reason that the silence could possibly be the result of grief, not hatred.
“Your father gambles?” she asked Ares as they went in search of Starbuck.
“It’s his life. It’s all one big game to him,” Ares said tersely.
“He seems to win a lot.”
“Sure, and he makes everyone around him miserable. He uses people as pieces.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“A sister, two yahrens younger than me.”
“And what does she think of your father?”
“She takes after him.”
I’d like to meet her, Rhiannon thought.
A small room at one corner of the floor had been set aside for gaming. The floor-to-ceiling glassine walls revealed a stupendous vista of the lights of Caprica City spread out below and beyond them the distant sea with two of Caprica’s tiny moons, each an identical narrow crescent, setting orangely over it, but none of the room’s denizens deigned to take notice of the beauty of the evening, absorbed as they were in the activity around the gaming tables. Rhiannon was taken aback at the amount of cubits furiously changing hands. Gambling was not a popular Sagitaran vice. Ares touched her sleeve and nodded at a table in the far corner, set near the joining of the two window walls. “My father,” he said.
Commander Starbuck of the battlecruiser Triumph was seated with his back to the view, closely studying his pyramid hand, not seeming to notice that the fumarello in his mouth had gone out from neglect. Dressed neatly in blues, which suited him well, he was an attractive man rather in the Scorpian fashion, blond and blue-eyed. Rhiannon could see that although Ares had inherited his coloring from his mother, he had definitely taken his looks from his handsome father. At Starbuck’s right hand was seated a black man, also in blues; to his left was a tall, chunky man with a mustache, in beige and brown. A short man, also in beige, had his back to them.
Indicating his father’s companions in turn, Ares said, “Colonel Boomer, my father’s exec—keeps him honest. Captain Jolly is his viper squadron commander. Captain Giles is a squadron commander aboard the Galactica.”
Starbuck looked up from his cards as they approached and, not much to Rhiannon’s surprise, his eyes lit with obvious pleasure and he laid down his cards, discarded his defunct fumarello, and came to grip his son’s arm firmly in the Caprican way and then hugged him, which attentions Ares tolerated rather than welcomed.
“It’s good to see you, son, how have you been?” Starbuck asked warmly.
Ares simulated a smile. “Well enough, Father. You?”
“Well, I have my centons.”
One or two at a time, Rhiannon could not help thinking, trying to suppress a smile.
“I hear you’re going aboard the Columbia. A good ship, but you have to watch out for those Sagitarans.” Starbuck smiled at Rhiannon and said, “But I suppose you’ve already warned him, Lieutenant.”
“This is Lieutenant Rhiannon, my pilot,” Ares told his father.
“Mm. Your reputation precedes you, Lieutenant. Noday was in here earlier singing your praises. And Commander Akamas tells me he has only two or three striker pilots worth a frack, and you’re one of them. Not to mention what Dirce says about you. How many missions on Borallus?”
“One hundred twelve, sir.”
“And you were in on the Battle of the Blue Drift,” he went on, naming one of the final actions of the Cylon War. “Your squadron cut out that base ship we destroyed. You landed the Star Cluster for that one, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ares turned to look at her, surprised. He had not known. In the Colonial Fleet, the Star Cluster wasn’t a good medal, it was the medal.
“That was bravely done, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Give my regards to your aunt. She’s the best—and I hear you take after her.”
“I am proud to take after her, sir.”
Later, on the way back to base, Rhiannon broke the silence by announcing, “I rather like your father.”
“You don’t know him. Yeah, he’s real charming. He has that effect on people. Especially women.”
Rhiannon tapped her fingers on the controls for a centon, then she said dryly, “I am not particularly susceptible to that form of charm.” Ares grunted noncommittally in reply, clearly unconvinced. “So he’s not entirely faithful to your mother. She doesn’t seem to mind much.”
“She loves him.” Ares clearly could not understand why.
“And he loves you.”
“Look, you don’t know what it’s like to know....”
Rhiannon subsided a little. Maybe she didn’t. She wondered how she’d feel if her mother was conspicuously unfaithful to Noday or Noday did the same. If they were, she didn’t know about it, and didn’t want to know. Sagitarans tended to consider emotional fidelity more important than the strict physical kind, but she still didn’t want to know. What she did know was how much they loved one another, and how much they loved her. What a muddle! she thought. “You’re right, I don’t know. I hope I never find out what it’s like. And I won’t bother you about it. It’s your business...so long as it doesn’t affect your job. Then it becomes my business, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
She dropped the flyer to the ground outside his quarters and popped the canopy. Ares clambered out, looked back at her. “Thanks for coming.”
“I had a very nice time. I will see you in the morning.” He nodded and she watched him walk into the building, slouched unhappily. What a strange, interesting young man.

The next morning found them flying out in company with another striker, flown by Captain Aglaia, their squadron commander, for air-to-air live fire practice. Ares was glum and taciturn, his attention firmly fixed to his displays. The beauty of the day, brilliant sunshine, a few wispy high clouds, and the glowing colors of approaching autumn in the foliage below clearly failed to reach him.
“Still unhappy?” Rhiannon asked.
“Yeah.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
She let it go at that. She’d hoped he’d be a little more cheerful, if only to improve her own mood. Just before awakening she’d dreamed of Briseis, for the first time since her death. The dream, in the illogical way of such, seemingly had nothing to do with that last flight, but it had been ugly and vivid and Rhiannon could work out the connections for herself.
“The drones are coming in,” Ares said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Got ’em,” she said, a pleasant rush of anticipation supplanting her depression. “Red leader, we have the drones.”
“Confirmed,” Aglaia replied. “I’m on the leader; you take the trailer.”
“Confirmed. Master arm on,” she told Ares.
“Master arm on.”
She attributed the tension discernible in his voice to the upcoming combat and concentrated on the incoming drones, a pair of late-model Cylon raiders, two of the many thousands captured intact during the closing stages of the war. Fitted with flight computers that were nearly sentient, they made difficult targets, for raiders were incredibly maneuverable, even in atmosphere. Jinking hard to foil a possible laser-firing solution for the raider they’d been set to destroy, they passed belly-to-belly only metrons apart. Rhiannon snap-rolled the striker inverted and pulled back on the stick hard into a split-S as the raider attempted to turn and come around behind them. Her vision greyed around the edges, came down into a tunnel as the G forces rose, pulling the blood out of her brain. The effect was a little worse than usual; she hadn’t flown combat for a long time.
“Frack, I thought I had him,” she muttered as the raider evaded. The holographic cockpit displays painted it coming around for another firing pass and she pulled around tight to evade it.
“We’re losing a lot of energy,” Ares commented as the striker began to slow from all of the high-G maneuvering they’d been doing.
Refusing to be distracted either by Ares or her aching neck, the muscles unused to resisting the G forces after a month’s layoff, Rhiannon confined her attention to the drone. She had an opening coming up in a few microns and knew it; the patterns were all coming together nicely. To have a chance of firing at them, the drone had to be...right there.
She touched the trigger lightly and heard the familiar mechanical clatter of the feed mechanism rushing shells from the ammunition drum behind them to the gun installed under her side of the cockpit. A short stream of shells curved out ahead of them, their inbuilt guidance systems just able to correct their flight path enough to take them where Rhiannon wanted them to go. The raider exploded in a burst of blue and yellow flame.
That seemed to mellow Ares a bit. “Nice,” he said approvingly.
Checking her displays, she saw she’d fired thirty two shells out of the five hundred round drum. “Not bad,” she allowed. It always paid to be parsimonious about ammunition. “How’s our leader doing?” Craning around to look, she spotted another pall of wreckage fluttering downwards like spent leaves. “No problems there.” Not that she’d expected any; she thought of her squadron commander as a royal pain, but Aglaia was undoubtedly a good pilot.
They rejoined formation without incident and each crew looked the other’s striker over for any signs of damage. There did not seem to be any. That ritual complete, Aglaia suggested another. “OK, you wanna hassle?”
“Sure, let’s hassle,” Rhiannon replied enthusiastically. “Break on four?”
“On four.”
Out of the corner of her eye Rhiannon was almost certain she detected Ares shrinking back into his seat but she ignored him. This was purely and simply too much fun. She whooped excitedly as she got Aglaia into her gunsight.
“Best two out of three?” the squadron commander offered.
“Sure, why not?”
They were in a hard climb after the other striker when there was a muffled bang! and both engines quit. Snapping instantly out of dogfighting mentality, Rhiannon asked, “What was that?”
“Engines off, power off,” Ares replied tersely. The instrument panel and displays were dead. He found the switch for the emergency power, pressed it. Back along the fuselage a door opened and a small propeller dropped out into the airstream, to be spun and so generate electricity. Some of the instruments came back to life but it was clear that they did not have anything like even the usual amount of emergency power. As he checked the long rows of circuit breakers located seemingly at random around his side of the cockpit, seeing if any of them had popped, he said, “Something’s wrong with the emergency energizer. Bird strike, I think,” he added, offering his diagnosis of the cause of their current problem.
“Maybe.” The striker’s nose was already dropping. The wings were swept hard back and in that configuration with the power off and the speed coming down they didn’t generate much lift. Rhiannon tried the manual wing sweep, but there wasn’t enough power to motor them out again. In a spaceflight-capable craft they could have switched over to the gravitic drive and used it to return to base, but in this model they had to either get the engines restarted or eject. “Set up for restart.”
Ares had already done so. “Restart,” he said, and pressed the switch. Over the headphones in their helmets they could hear the click-click-click of interference as the electric igniters tried to fire the engines. “No start,” he reported.
“Again.”
He tried again. The exhaust temperature of one of the engines fluctuated briefly, suggesting it had partially ignited before dying again.
Trailing them at a respectful distance, Aglaia reminded them, “Watch your altitude.”
“One more,” said Rhiannon.
“Restart.” The left engine started, ran for several microns, then ground to a halt with sickening finality. “No start.” The tailpipe temperature of the other engine was fluctuating; was it going to start?
The fire light blinked on.
“We’re on fire,” Ares reported. “We’re losing the emergency power.” There was an odd reflection in the canopy in front of him; he looked back over his shoulder and saw the entire rear end of their striker enveloped in flames.
“Eject!” Aglaia exclaimed, obviously alarmed.
“Frack,” Rhiannon said. Everything went dead and the striker began to fall off to port. “Eject.” Ares already had both hands around the bright orange handle between his knees and he pulled it hard.
His seat fired first and he was up and out of the dying striker in a burst of broken glass. Opening almost immediately, his parachute yanked him out of his seat and he had only one pendulum-like swing before he hit the ground hard not far from the furiously blazing pyre their striker had created for itself.
In her peripheral vision Rhiannon saw the other seat go, then hers fired her directly through the canopy. Her parachute opened with a crack and an instant later she slammed into the ground. Lying there, eyes firmly closed, she thought, It really hurts. If it hurts, you’re still alive. It really hurts....