Zak enjoyed spending time in Colonial One pilot’s cockpit. Despite the initial clash about the greatness of Captain Apollo, he soon became friends with the crew, Brad the pilot and Tania the comms officer becoming his closest buddies.

After the meeting with the President a couple of days after he’d been released from sickbay, Zak opened the door to the front of the ship and heard his friends’ rised voices.

“So you’re not even going to give it a shot?” Tania’s tone was accusatory.

“I think I’m more needed here,” Brad sounded offended.

“Oh, please! Colonial One has two other pilots and they could probably train someone who could replace you! Hi, Zak.” She noticed the new person in the room. And then she looked at him again, her brows risen. “Zak!” She smiled. “Have you ever flown anything? Your brother is the CAG, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Zak replied cautiously. “And I have flown something. Why?”

Tania looked back at Brad, with victorious smirk. “We could train him to fill in for you! That might even be fun.” She winked at Zak, and turned back to her friend. “And you might go, and join in.”

But Brad wasn’t listening to her any more. Instead he stared at Zak.

“What have you flown exactly?”

“Well . . .” Zak felt his stomach squirm. “A viper.”

Eventually it was Zak, not Brad, who “went and joined in”, after both his friends, outshouting one another, explained to him that there had been an accident on the flight deck; that no, neither Apollo nor Starbuck had been hurt; and yes, the Galactica’s viper squadron needed new pilots.

---

Kara Thrace stood before her Commander, wondering what he wanted.

“You were a flight instructor back on Picon?” Adama asked finally, taking his glasses off, and rubbing his eyes tiredly. He looked as if he hadn’t slept last night, and Kara felt for him--she’d had hard time sleeping herself, couldn’t stop thinking about Flattop, his thousandth landing, the teasing she’d been giving him over the last couple of days. And all that fun she and Lee had right before. And how lucky they had been, not having arrived at the flight deck sooner. “Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” she snapped. “Yes, I was a flight instructor at the Flight School. Basic flight, sir.”

“I need you to train new nuggets.”

“Sir?”

He looked up at her surprised. Was she questioning orders? Kara bowed, embarrassed.

“I was a flight instructor, but I was kicked out eventually,” she explained.

“And why was that?”

“Um. Because I was being a bad example to my students?” she tried. But the Commander wasn’t talking any of this.

“Starbuck,” he announced firmly. “The only influence I’m interested in, is that you show them how to fly and shot the cylons from the sky. Other than that you may drink, smoke and play cards. Dismissed!”

---

“LongLeaf and BeeHive should be back in cockpit in two days,” CAG Captain Adama reported to his Commander the next day. “With others it will take a little longer, but Cottle can’t tell precisely when. Starbuck is starting her classes at eleven hundred hours, the nuggets should be on their way already. I didn’t get yesterdays’ batch of candidates, I guess Dee sent them straight to Starbuck?”

He looked up, and saw his father smile lightly. Blinked, thinking that was rather his eyes playing tricks on him.

“She gave it to me actually,” Adama responded and looked up. “I forwarded it to Starbuck.” The smile was there, it was unmistakable.

“What is it?” Lee asked cautiously, and Bill Adama’s eyes sparkled.

“Zak joined.” The pride that emanated from the Commander was so overwhelming, that for a brief moment Lee smiled happily too. But then he remembered--Zak did not belong in the cockpit--and his smile faded.

“You’re not serious,” he spat icily. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing yet,” the Commander didn’t seem to notice his son’s simmering anger. “But I’ll make sure he knows I’m proud of him.”

“No,” Lee corrected. “I asked what did you tell him, to make him join?”

Now Bill noticed something odd about the Captain’s tone. He watched him more closely.

“I didn’t tell him anything. I didn’t think he’d want to be a pilot, I didn’t see the point trying.” His brow furrowed at the unpleasant memories. “You know we didn’t really talk about it back then. He’d never even explained why he resigned. Everything was going so well--” Adama’s voice grew quiet.

“Maybe because you never asked!” Lee forgot for a moment all about the protocol, or even a simple respect for his father. He breathed a couple of times, trying to regain control over his temper.

But it was too late. Now William Adama was angry too.

“What do you think?” he drawled out. His son was once again accusing him of something! “I never forced him to go to the Flight School in the first place--”

“Yeah, and you never resented him for resigning.” The words were once again out of Lee’s mouth before he could think better of it. “You never pretended he did not exist for two frakking years!”

“Watch your tongue, young man,” the Commander said softly. But his eyes burned, and Lee gritted his teeth so hard his jaw started hurting. “You both played part in our resenments. You yourself are not without guilt.” Bill still rememberred how betrayed he’d felt learning about Carolanne’s death. How shocked, when he heard from Zak that it had been Lee who hadn’t wanted their father informed. But he said nothing. He still wasn’t ready to confront Lee about this particlar matter, perhaps he never would be.

So Lee had to fill in that comment with memories of his own, and they made him even more bitter and determined.

“I won’t let him fly,” he whispered. “He’s not cut out to be a pilot, and he will not fly.” Looked directly into his father’s eyes.

“I’m afraid you’re not the one to decide,” the father responded.

---

Zak sat in the front row in the pilots briefing room and watched the boards before him, the stand, even the walls, with a mixture of excitement, terror and pride. President Roslin’s “Well, in that case, I wish you luck” rung in his ears. She’d been quite shocked, and he had to forgive her, given that she’d been informed about his departure on a rather short notice. She didn’t have to consent, she could have said “you have a job in here”, but she hadn’t. She’d let him go and had given her blessing, and for that he was eternally grateful. Billy had been full of contempt though. Zak thought he kind of contempted himself too. After all, during the last few weeks, he’d had three jobs already. So much for consistancy, but his mother often told him he had trouble finishing what he sarted.

This time it was going to be different though. This time he knew where he belonged. He’d made his first mistake when he’d requested to be released from duty at the Flight School, after he’d passed basic flight. He had passed, but he had still felt insecure enough to . . . He wasn’t making that mistake twice!

When Starbuck entered, screaming her “Attention on deck!” Zak experienced a strange sense of déjŕ vu. Been there, done that. And even though his body almost instinctively wanted to rise and stand at attention, his brain didn’t quite catch up yet, and he only made some incoherent move with his hands and legs. Nobody else got up either.

She stood at the stand and shot fireballs from her eyes. “That means get on your feet, nuggets!” she yelled and now everyone obeyed. Quicker or slower. She gazed them over left to right and back. “You are joining the Colonial Fleet, boys and girls, not some after-school club. Seats.”

A soft shuffling of feet and even softer murmur of a few comments accompanied their sitting.

Kara stood at the head of the room, and Zak remembered the first time he saw her like this. It was all clouded by later memories, but he knew exacly why he fell in love with her.

“Pilots call me Starbuck,” she said, “but you may refer to me as God.” Zak couldn’t help, but chuckle. That was why.

“Something you want to say, Grouse?” she asked and his good mood vanished like a soap-bubble.

“Ough,” he groaned. “I thought we could--you know--figure out some other--”

“No, we couldn’t Grouse. Now shut up!”

Zak obediently shut up. And “God” turned back to her class, explaining how they’d never flown anything even remotelly resembling a Viper Mark II before, and that there were no flight simulators, and that they’d all end up as a mashed potatoes by the end of the day.

“She's laying it on a little thick,” murmured a guy next to Zak, and Zak could not disagree. Starbuck wasn’t pleased though.

“Costanza, right?” she approached the guy.

“Yes, God, sir.”

“Not anymore. From now on, your name is Hot Dog.” Oh, that was even worse than Grouse. “And when God speaks, Hot Dog, you listen. Maybe if you had learned that at the Academy, you wouldn't have washed out.”

Zak looked to the side with increased interest. So he wasn’t the only wash-out? He wondered what had been that guy’s call-sign back in the better days, and if he considered himself lucky or misfortunate having it changed.

On their way to the hangar deck Hot Dog, and a red haired girl who introduced herself as Louanne Katraine (and Zak immediatelly wanted to give her a call-sign Tonguebreaker, but wouldn’t dare jump ahead of the orchestra--meaning God herself--so said nothing) joined Zak. The twosome must have made friends on their way to Galactica, and now were curious about another nugget.

“So,” Luanne started. “It’s Gross as in ugly, or something?”

“Or Grousy as in . . . whiny?” added Hot Dog also known as Brendan Constanza.

Zak closed his eyes briefly. “No,” his response was tightlipped. “It’s Grouse as in Not-An-Eagle.” It was really as simple as that.

Zak remembered how after his first sims exercise, all excited, he’d jumped up on the table in the nuggets’ bunkroom, yelling “I’m a bird!” And how he’d fallen from that table, spraining his ankle. He had to be glad he hadn’t been gifted Hen.

He had to tell his new crewmates this story and of course they laughed.

That is until the mighty CAG stood in their way. Laughter died away even though the two didn’t know yet, who the short man, with fierce blue eyes, was. But Zak did. He stood at attention and saluted, and Constanza and Katraine followed his example immediately.

“You two are dismissed,” Lee didn’t even spare them a glance. “You stay!” he said directly to his brother, and Zak had all the worst feelings about this. “We have something to talk about.”

Right, they had. Zak had been expecting that conversation, even though he hadn’t spared it a single thought in the last few hours. But it was bound to happen.

“What the frak do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m in a hurry for the starting and landing exercise. If I’m late the flight instructor--”

“The flight instructor has no say in that. You’re not flying. You failed basic flight at Flight School, what makes you think your skills have changed?”

“I passed basic flight, Lee!”

“Right. And we both know where you passed it!”

Zak’s blood boiled. Lee was accusing him of getting into the cockpit through his flight instructor’s bed. But this time Zak was going to stand up to him. “No, actually, we don’t,” he seethed. “This was just your view of things.”

“Was it? Ask her.”

“No. You ask her. Now, I have to go!”

---
t.b.c.

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