Sheba paused, uncertain. Had she heard a moan? There, again, and unmistakable this time: a low moan, a sound of deep pleasure. She eased the door open manually, lest the hiss of the hydraulics disturb the apartment's occupants.

Silently, she slipped into the apartment, Apollo's private quarters, and froze in shock. She felt her jaw sag and her skin prickle.

She'd found Apollo, all right, and Starbuck as well. The rumors are true, she thought numbly. All too true. Part of her wanted to rush into the room and demand to know what Apollo thought he was doing.

The rest of her held still, shocked, but with a faint glimmer of comprehension shining through her initial reaction.

All her life she'd believed love was a lie. The excess of emotion that made people do crazy things—not real, never real. It existed in the minds of novelists and bad holovid writers. Love never motivated anyone to do anything. Rather, people sought advantages, ways to put others under obligation so one could call in favors at a later date, ways to manipulate people and events to serve oneself. Love? What a useless crock of felgercarb.

But this. Sheba could sense, at some deep level, a difference here. The way the two men held each other, the tender kisses Apollo placed so carefully on Starbuck's body, the raw emotion that supercharged the very air—not even Sheba could believe either man was just emotionally manipulating, or even blackmailing, the other. Sheba stood silently and watched Apollo caress his lover, coaxing forth more of those passionate moans, while something shifted inside her. Apollo loved Starbuck. She'd heard those words ever since she'd arrived on this battlestar, but of course never believed them. Love did not exist in her world. Perhaps the two shared some weird perverted desires, but love? Never.

And so she set herself to make the most advantageous match possible on this ship of lunatics, the commander's son. But now she saw—she believed—she knew with all her heart that Apollo belonged, heart and soul, to Starbuck.

Sheba eased back out of the room as silently as she'd come, rocked to the very core of her being by evidence of true love. Let them have each other. She would find another advantageous match somewhere.

And maybe, just maybe, she'd find a little love in her own life someday.