THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

CHAPTER 3 PART 2

“An abandoned Cylon listening post,” Commander Akamas of the Columbia informed the other commanders assembled in his ship’s briefing room. “I have full scans ready for you. Otherwise the astralon proved of little interest and no landings there are currently planned. Unfortunately, our warp scout was unable to explore the other portal in the system, so Galactica’s scout is checking it out now.”
“What was the problem?” Starbuck asked.
“The navigator’s implant gave out on them.”
“That’s too bad,” Miriam remarked, noticing that Apollo appeared faintly pleased that his crew was getting to explore the next portal.
“The only other thing I have for today’s briefing is that Commander Aeneas has definitely decided that once our exploration teams are firmly established on Kobol, one battlestar and one or both battlecruisers will be detached to recce the Delphian Empire. That’s it for now,” Akamas concluded.
Ares was lurking outside the briefing room and launched himself in pursuit of Starbuck when he came out. “Uh, Father....”
“Hi, son, what is it?” Starbuck asked, turning to him with a smile.
“I need...can I talk to you?”
“Sure, I have a few centons. What about?”
Nothing I’d care to discuss in the corridor, Ares thought miserably. He wished he had someone, anyone else to talk to, but he doubted his old friends aboard the Galactica would be sympathetic—most of them would laugh, in fact—and anyone aboard the Columbia would stare in puzzled incomprehension, wondering what his hang-up was. “Can we go to the officer’s club?”
“Lead the way. I get lost aboard this thing.”
In mid-shift there were only a few off-duty personnel in the club, most of them congregated in one corner around a holographic battle game which was emitting occasional flashes and the sounds of electronic mayhem. Ares had never found that sort of thing particularly entrancing—it was too much like work. He got mugs of ale for his father and himself at the bar and set them down on a table as far away from everyone else as possible.
Starbuck took a drink, lowered his mug, and asked, “So, what’s up?”
Ares wasn’t sure how to start. Finally, he admitted, “It’s about a girl.”
Starbuck appeared amused. “So you came to me as some sort of expert?”
“Well....”
“OK, what’s the trouble?”
“I think...well, I like her, Father. I mean, I really like her. We’re kind of the same, you know?”
“Yes?” Starbuck prompted.
“I don’t really know if she...well....”
Hoo boy, Starbuck thought, paternally amused, I thought he was past this stage. “Ares, you ask her.”
Shifting uncomfortably, moving his mug in little circles around the tabletop, Ares said, “I don’t know.”
“You’ll never know unless you ask.”
“It’s not that easy....”
“Well, it’s never easy. Not supposed to be. Y’see....”
“Father,” Ares confessed dismally, “she’s sleeping with our navigator.”
If Ares had expected his father to look surprised or explode or something he was doomed to disappointment. Instead, Starbuck remarked, “I’ve always wondered how that stupid euphemism got started....”
“Father!”
“You’re talking about whatshername, Rhiannon, right? Sagitarans are mostly bisexual...and if she takes after her aunt as much as I hear she does, she’s probably pretty much exclusively interested in women. Dirce, y’know?”
“I’ve met her,” Ares said.
“Yeah. And just because she’s spending time with this navigator-type doesn’t necessarily mean she’s in love with her. You’ve got to ask her, son. You might be pleasantly surprised. And if not...well, you mark it up to �experience’ and go on. Right?”
“Well....”
“Come on, you’re starting to sound like me.  �Well, yeah, y’know....’“
“You’re right, Father. It’s just...like you said, difficult.”
“It’s embarrassing. Look at it like this, it probably won’t be too great for her, either. You guys can be embarrassed together. And I’ll tell you this, Ares: friends can be a lot harder to find and more important than lovers, so watch how you handle it. Besides the fact you’ve got to work with her. And the navigator. And who sleeps with who is vastly unimportant; it’s how they do their job,” he added.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that. And let me know how it turns out. Shuttle’s waiting; I’ve got to go.” Starbuck drained the last of his ale and rose. “You guys have been doing a terrific job scouting, thought I’d tell you that. You’re making Apollo’s bunch look like dunces.”
“That’s not what Commander Akamas tells us.”
Starbuck smiled. “He wouldn’t. And if I was your CO, I wouldn’t either.” He gripped his son’s arm firmly, suddenly serious. “Take care of yourself, son. I’ll see you later.”
“Take care, Father.” Ares watched him go, his feelings slightly less ambivalent than they usually were. Maybe Rhiannon and Noday were right. Perhaps he should give his less-than-saintly father more of a chance than he had. He certainly had his centons.
One or two at a time, occasionally.

Adama had been a battlestar commander long before Aeneas had been born. Even now, when their ranks were not far separated and Aeneas had nearly as many honorable exploits to his credit as the older man, he still felt very much the junior officer, much as he tried to repress it. He was trying to conceal it now, sitting in as casual a posture as he could manage in one of the chairs in Adama’s quarters, where he had come to ask, in as roundabout a manner as possible, for advice.
Aeneas said, “I can’t help but feel that we’re missing something.”
Adama, seated informally in a chair opposite him, looking as ever a little odd in civilian clothes, nodded in agreement. Galactica’s warp scout had checked the other portal in the system that contained the lost Cylon listening post and had come out in a dead-end system that consisted of a small, dull star, no planets, and only the one warp portal to its name. “I think that the area around the first system needs further exploration,” Adama said. “There may be more portals, further out, out of range of the scout’s scanners. In fact, I’d be very surprised if there weren’t, elsewise the Cylons would have had little reason to put an outpost there. If I were you, I’d take the Columbia into the system and use her scanners to check things out more thoroughly, launch some deep probes, generally take a good long look around. We must be in the right area. It just...feels right.”
Adama’s comments were suggestions but, backed as they were by his vast experience, Aeneas was more than willing to take them as orders.

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