Word Count: 26,881
Date: 10/29/04
Series: Mini
Rating: T
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: Tyrol, Sharon
Warnings:
Summary:
Spoilers/Disclaimers:
Chapter 1
"It won’t work," Tyrol said swiftly. "The Raptor isn’t designed for offensive operations. It has a few things aboard to save your butt, but you can’t take it into a fight."
"Vipers won’t jump," Lee put in. "We’d have to use a Raptor."
"A Raptor can’t take out the launching tunnels," the Chief replied, shaking his head. "It might be able to provide defensive cover, but that’s the best you could expect. And even then it wouldn’t be enough for a tanker to get off the ground."
William Adama watched the rapid-fire conversation between his Chief Pilot and Crew Chief with concern. Their points were both valid, but they had to make this work. The fleet was out of fuel — effectively dead in space — able to support life but little more. Soon even that capability would bleed dry. They couldn’t function without fuel to keep out the icy chill of space, and there were no other options that he was aware of.
"Can we send Vipers ahead?" Tigh asked. "What’s the final range?"
Lee shook his head. "We could send them, but it would be advertising how close we are to the planet," he explained. "As of now, the Cylons have no way of knowing what direction we jumped. Vipers would tell them within a few hundred clicks. They know the capabilities of our ships."
"We don’t have to stay," Adama finally said, his quiet authority silencing the voices that were coming back to argue with his Executive Officer. "Once we have the tanker, we could refuel and jump."
"What will that do to our finding earth?" Tigh asked.
"At the most, delay it. The possibility is eliminated if we don’t have fuel to run the life support systems on the ships."
Lee walked angrily to the door of his father’s quarters, then turned back. The look on his face made it clear that he didn’t like what he was about to suggest. "What if we send in Vipers, then leave them? The pilots could jump back with either the Raptor or tanker."
"That’ll cost us two Vipers," Tyrol explained.
"And possibly two pilots, if they don’t make the ships," Lee agreed.
"It’s two lives," Tigh put in. "Against more than fifty thousand."
"And two ships," Tyrol argued.
"Again, irrelevant if we have no fuel," the Commander said quietly.
"What about capture?" Lee asked. "The pilots wouldn’t be able to know the coordinates for the jumps, and the Viper computers would have to be purged."
"It could work," Adama said quietly. "But I don’t like it."
"I can’t think of another way," Tigh put in. "We don’t have time to keep hopping around and hoping that we’ll find a Tylium store. This is already processed, ready to go, and we need that fuel."
"It’s also on a planet that’s occupied by Cylons!" Lee shouted back. "We don’t have the resources to attack the Cylons and still protect the fleet. I don’t know what I was thinking; there has to be another way."
"What is it?" Tigh asked calmly. Lee didn’t have an answer. None of them did.
"Okay, here’s the drill," William finally said quietly. "Two Vipers launch, long range, to the planet. They go in, take out the launching area."
"That we know of," Lee muttered, anger still clear in his voice.
"That we know of," Adama agreed. "We jump in the tanker with a Raptor accompanying, load it as full as we can, and have the Raptor pick up our Viper pilots for the jump home. The Raptor can keep the tanker covered until the jump, then when they’re back the whole fleet jumps to an unknown location."
"There’s no way," Lee muttered. It had been his idea, but even he didn’t think it could work. "Do you know how many things can go wrong with that plan? What if we miss a launch site? What if they have a full compliment by the fuel depot? What if one of the pilots, or anyone else, is captured? It just can’t work."
William looked at his son calmly. "I’m open to other, more tactically acceptable, suggestions."
Lee was silent. They all were.
"Chief, I need two Vipers equipped with additional fuel tanks to get them to the planet. If we jettison those tanks when they’re empty, maybe the Cylons won’t have a clue how far out we are," Adama began in a decisive voice. "You don’t have much time. We’ll need to launch in the next twelve hours if we’re going to get them there. Strip all unnecessary computers from the Vipers; if we’re leaving them behind, we don’t want the Cylons to have anything to go from. They’ll need navigational and auto-pilot; it will take them forty-eight hours at best speed, and that’s putting us right on the line."
"Yes, Sir," Tyrol said briskly. He turned and left the quarters. He had a lot to get done.
"Colonel Tigh, if you’ll excuse us…" he began, but the XO was a step ahead of him.
"I’ll double-check those jump plots and check on the rest of the fleet. I’ll be in CIC."
Adama nodded, and Tigh left the quarters at a fast walk.
William Adama looked at his oldest son with a mixture of pride and fear. He knew what had to come next, and he didn’t like it. "I’ll need four good pilots," he said softly. "Really good. Two Viper, one tanker, and one Raptor. I’ll check with security to provide two men who can provide the tanker some ground-coverage while it fuels. I pray it’s enough."
Lee nodded, but didn’t turn to leave. He knew there was more coming.
"I would prefer the pilots be volunteer," he said gently. "But use your judgement. If this mission doesn’t succeed, the rest of us have only hours before we lose life support systems.
"I understand," Lee told him. "Anything else."
Adama wanted to add a lot of things. He wanted to beg Lee not to choose to go, because he would be so badly needed on the Galactica if they were to pull this off. He wanted to tell his son that he loved him, and that he was so damn sorry it had come to this. He wanted to tell him that he was sick of commanding, wanted to retire, and that perhaps it would be better if it all ended now in the cold darkness of space. But he said none of those things. He couldn’t. And with Lee, he really didn’t have to.
"Dismissed," Adama said simply.
Lee nodded, and left the room quickly, closing the hatch behind him. Then William Adama, Commander of the last surviving Battlestar, put his head in his hands and prayed.
Months earlier, he had at least been hopeful. They’d had enough food, fuel, and medical supplies to easily last them until they found more. Unfortunately, the path they had taken was between star systems. The theory had been good — by avoiding planets they also avoided the possibility of running across a Cylon occupied area. But the Raptor jumps that were to seek out additional fuel had come up empty. The hazard of being in uncharted space was that no one knew what was where. By the time they had realized just how much danger they were in, there wasn’t fuel for the fleet to jump back. They were effectively stuck on this coarse until they could refuel, and even if they found a planet now that was rich in Tylium, they didn’t have the time to process it. They needed it ready, and they needed it now.
The previous day, one of the Raptor jumps had revealed a Cylon planet. The pilot had initially just been scanning the new sector for Tylium, and when he found a rich source he had investigated. Thankfully, he had been able to pick up the Cylon communications before scanning, or being scanned. The Cylons most probably didn’t know they had been there, but it had at least given them a possibility. They had photographs of the planet, and a general idea of where the launch sites and depots were located. Adama supposed he should be grateful for that. The fleet had less than seventy-two hours to survive if they didn’t do something.
But he hated that it had come to this. Looking back, he didn’t know what he could have done differently, planned differently, to avert the crisis. But in his heart he knew there had to be something. They had come to the point of desperation, and it would take as much luck as skill to get them out of it. He just prayed they had enough of both.
Lee looked at the pilot sleeping on the bunk below his and sighed. He hated to do this, but he knew that if this mission was to work, he would need his best pilot to manage it.
"Starbuck," he called softly. "Wake up."
Buried in half a dozen blankets against the uncomfortable cold of the Galactica, she merely muttered and curled herself more tightly into a ball. She never had been a morning person, but the middle of the night was even worse.
"Starbuck, I need you awake," he said a little more loudly, reaching beneath the covers to firmly shake a shoulder. He didn’t want to wake half the squadron, but she wasn’t giving him a choice. "Kara, wake up!"
She came awake with a start, glaring at him as she did so. "I’m awake," she muttered. He knew she was only half-way there, but his next words would take care of that.
"Mission. Now. Get up and get dressed."
"I am dressed," she mumbled as she threw back covers.
He shook his head. "Flight suit," he corrected. "But leave your day uniform underneath. You’ll need the warmth."
Those words brought her alert. "What’s up?"
"I’ll tell you on the way," he said simply. "I need to get Micah up, too."
She grumbled again, nodded, and stood up. She rubbed her arms fiercely against the cold. The heaters had been one of the first things limited by the fuel shortage, and the temperature was dangerously cold if you weren’t moving around.
It took Apollo only a moment more to get Micah awake. Kohler was already waiting by the hatch, ready to go. He had debated making this a volunteer mission, as his father had suggested, because of the danger involved. But the bottom line was that there was no point. If the mission didn’t succeed, none of them would be alive in four days, so he might as well take his best men with him. They wouldn’t do him any good here.
The walk to the ready room was quick. Once there he filled the pilots in on what would be expected. "Micah, you’ve jumped tankers before, correct?"
"Yes, Sir," the young man answered. "I ran tankers before I joined the service."
"I thought I remembered that. Pick out a co-pilot — whoever you’re most comfortable with — and brief him. Colonel Tigh will have a fueling crew set up by the time you launch. We won’t have any communication between now and then, so you’re just going to have to trust that we’ll take out the launching sites."
Micah nodded as Lee moved his attention to Kohler. "Your team will be the only defense for the tanker once it’s fuelled," he reminded him. "That thing’s gonna be slower than belief when it gets off the ground, but we need it full. You need to pick us up, but if we don’t get to you by the time the tanker’s full, don’t wait. This is too important. Without that tanker, we’re dead in the air. You can’t wait on anyone."
Kohler nodded his understanding as well. Then Lee turned to Kara. "You need to eat. It’s the last food you’ll get for a while. Salik will set us up with some nutritional supplements on the flight, but two days is a damn long time. We’ll sleep in shifts, communicate only by short range, and when we get there we blow the hell out of everything except the depot. If we don’t get it done, the tanker doesn’t have a chance. Everyone here is gone. We clear?"
Kara nodded, her face somber. There was nothing to joke about here. "How will we make it that long for fuel?" she asked.
"Tyrol’s installing extra tanks. We’ll jettison them as they empty. Hopefully, the Cylons won’t find them floating and will think we’re closer than we are. If we can fool them into containing their search, we should have time to get the fleet fueled and out of here before they show up."
"Where will we jump to?" she asked. "A full fleet jump will take most of the fuel we get."
"True," he admitted. "But it will buy us time. We know of a couple of different planets with raw Tylium back towards the line, but we can’t get the fleet there without fuel, and we need a week or more to process it. We can do it, but not without some fuel to get there."
She nodded her understanding.
"Any questions?"
There were shaken heads all around the table. Apollo took one last deep breath, and concluded his briefing. "This is beyond top secret," he said quietly. "No one knows how close we are to the edge. If word got out, the panic would be unbelievable. You can’t say a word to anyone. If you’re questioned, we have a mission to acquire fuel. That is all. Understood?"
Again, there were nods from the crew. "We have to do this," he said simply. "There’s just no other way at this point." He paused for a moment, then released them. "Dismissed."
He wasn’t surprised when Kara stayed. When the room was empty of all but the two of them, she finally spoke. "What are our chances?"
He couldn’t lie to her. "Not good."
"I’d rather die doing something than sit here and freeze," she admitted. "Thanks for putting me on the team."
"It wasn’t favoritism. You’re the best pilot in the fleet."
"And you?"
He knew she wasn’t insulting him. He was a good pilot — very good — but no where near her caliber. She was simply asking why he hadn’t asked someone else. "I can’t send someone on a mission that I’m not willing to do," he admitted. "Besides, communication is going to be at a minimum, and we’ve worked together often enough to get by without it. We can’t read each other’s minds, but we’re damn close to knowing what one another is thinking."
She nodded her understanding. "And you knew I wouldn’t want to fly with anyone else?" she suggested.
He shrugged at that. "We’re a good team."
"God, I hope so," she said softly. "I can’t see how we’ll pull this off."
"I’m the book and you’re the instinct," he reasoned. "Between the two of us, we’ll get it done."
Kara did her best to force one more bite down her throat. She wasn’t hungry, but she knew that would change. Two days was a long time without food, whatever supplements their doc could come up with. Water would be an issue, too. They couldn’t allow themselves to dehydrate — they wouldn’t be able to function if they did — but the catheter bags had a limit. She winced as she thought of that. She really hated those damn things, and was grateful that they were reserved for only the very longest missions. This was the longest she’d ever been assigned.
Vipers, as a rule, were for speed and attack. Usually they let their ship take them to the zone, then they did the rest. But there wasn’t enough fuel to jump the Galactica, and no other ship in could launch them. They would have to get there on their own speed, which was formidable — but not at this range.
She put another mouthful in, chewed deliberately, and swallowed. Then she repeated the process. She would need it, she reminded herself once more. She would need the energy.
"Is it that bad," the Commander asked quietly.
Under other circumstances, she might have jumped to attention. Commander Adama had certainly earned that privilege, but she had neither the time nor the inclination. She had to get this plate of food down. They launched in less than an hour. "Just not hungry," she admitted, and took another bite.
He took a seat across from her. The ready room was vacant except for Kara and her plate, so she figured he’d come to talk about the mission.
"How are you holding up?" he asked, confirming her suspicion.
"We’ll get it done," she told him. It didn’t answer his question.
"I wasn’t surprised when Lee assigned you to the mission," he said softly. "You’re the best pilot I’ve ever seen. But you know that."
She shrugged one shoulder. She wouldn’t argue with a compliment. "I do what I have to."
"We all do," he said quietly. "But I never thought it would come to this. I need you and Lee to come back. The fleet needs you now, and if we get through this I’m very sure we’ll need you again."
"We’ll get it done," she reassured him with a confidence she really didn’t feel.
"And come back," he reiterated. "You won’t have a lot of time once you wipe out the Viper computers. You may be sluggish after being in there for a couple of days. The closer you can manage to land to the depot, the better off you’ll be."
"And the greater the risk that the Cylons will figure out what we’re doing and call in reinforcements," she reminded him.
"It’s a fine line," he agreed.
She didn’t have an answer for that. They both knew the odds.
"Come back, Starbuck," he told her firmly as he stood and patted her on the back.
"That’s the plan."
"And… " He trailed off for a moment before continuing. "Bring my son back, too."
She looked up and met his eyes. He seemed very old at that moment, and tired, and without hope. She knew what it must have cost him to make the request after she’d failed his youngest son so terribly. "I’ll do my best," she promised.
He nodded and left her to finish her meal, whether she wanted it or not. They had a mission to get through, and she had more responsibilities at the moment than she knew what to do with. Taking one more bite was the easiest thing she could manage to do.
Chapter 2
"Starbuck? You with me?"
Lee repeated the words for the third time. Finally he heard some crackle from the wireless. "Present," she mumbled. "And damn, I’m cold."
"We’ll be warm soon enough," he told her. "We’re coming up on the planet. About forty clicks. You have it on nav com?"
"Affirmative," she answered, less sluggishly. They had been sleeping in shifts for the last two days, and it was boring work. While one would sleep — relying on the auto-pilot to stay the course — the other would make sure that there was nothing in their path and that the ships were indeed flying true to their destination.
They had ejected the second fuel tank over eight hours before, and Lee was not pleased to note that they would be making it in on fumes. It was part of the plan, of course. Everything so far had been completely by the book. That didn’t mean he was comfortable knowing there was no possible way to get his ship back home. Nor could he call for help. Such a call would undoubtedly be picked up as a long-range transmission, and lead the Cylons right to the fleet. It was a risk they couldn’t take. He could only hope and pray that they got the launch sites out of commission before the tanker materialized near the planet. Hell, they couldn’t even be sure the tanker was on the way. It was a mission of blind faith, and that wasn’t something Lee particularly trusted.
"How’s your fuel?" he asked her.
"Right where it should be," she answered. "But I don’t think I’ll be able to make more than two runs at the launch sites. It’s gonna be tight landing even with two passes."
"Same here," he agreed. "We’d better make them count."
They didn’t bother talking as they made an approach to the planet. It was possible that wireless transmissions would be detected. After all, that was how they had found the Cylons here in the first place.
Lee and Kara descended into the atmosphere of the planet, using what little cloud cover was present to hide their vapor trails. The terrain below was rocky, with hills and vegetation making it difficult to see a place where they could land. With the vertical thrusters, it wouldn’t take much room — perhaps twenty square feet for each of them — but even that much level ground looked pretty rare.
They had no way to know if they were being scanned, nor any way to scan for Cylons. It was strictly line-of-sight, without their usual electronic backup, and Lee didn’t know if that made it better or worse. He didn’t know for sure that they were in trouble, but he suspected that if they hadn’t been detected yet, it wouldn’t be long.
Almost at the instant the thought crossed his mind, he caught a flash of movement from the clouds above his cockpit. A quick glance confirmed that it was a Cylon fighter. This was where the fun began.
"Starbuck, you take the deck and I’ll take the fighter. Make two runs, then land. Copy?"
"You got it," she replied, her voice taking on the usual excitement of battle. He didn’t have to worry. She would do her job.
Knowing that, he was free to pull the Viper around and fire at the Cylon that was now doing its best to get him in its sights. He sent off a quick volley, and the fighter obligingly blew apart. That was one.
It didn’t take long before there were more. He was as low on fuel as Starbuck, but it was his job to keep them off her back so she could take out the launch site. She wouldn’t tell him when she was done, but would land at the site they had decided on before the mission began. So he dedicated himself to not staying on one course for more than a few seconds at a time. He flew vertically, turned quickly, and fired in short bursts that tore the Cylon craft apart. He had counted eight so far that had been in the air, but he might have missed some.
He swung around for another pass near the launch sites and saw smoke and debris filing the air. Kara had done her job all right. Nothing would be coming out of that mountain. He only hoped it was the only launch site in the area. There could be some on the other side of the planet, a more desert-like environment, but he certainly hoped not.
He managed one more sweep of the area before he was satisfied that he had cleared the air. He couldn’t radio Kara — it might give away her position — but he had to believe that she was already on the ground. His engine wasn’t sounding particularly steady, and landing was not going to be optional.
The terrain had a relatively bare area just behind the fuel depot, perhaps two miles away. It was going to be a hell of a hike, but it was the closest thing that was a possibility. He headed for the site, grateful to see that Kara was already down and out of her Viper, on her way to a hill that could provide some cover if any other fighters came overhead. It wouldn’t likely help with ground troops, but it was the best they had to work with.
His landing was a long way from graceful. Looking at his wrist, he saw that they were right on schedule. The tanker should jump into the area within minutes. It would come down quickly, hopefully before it could be spotted, and they would somehow manage the fueling. That was the next project. He and Kara needed to get to the depot before any Cylons came to check out the Vipers that had just landed in their back yard.
Lee popped his canopy as soon as his engines cut off. He tapped in a few keys to the computer, and watched as the sequence began to completely wipe out all navigational and flight information. The Viper would be useless if it was found. He wished they had the ability to destroy them, but they had neither the explosives nor the time.
He nearly tripped over the plastic container that contained his waste from the trip. Kara had been more than relieved when Salik had presented them with a vacuum assembly rather than the dreaded catheters. It wasn’t as neat, but it felt a hell of a lot better.
Lee took off for the nearby hills at a run. The atmosphere was a little thin, but not so thin that they needed breathers. That saved time, but it also meant they would tire easily and they still had a long way to go.
"Nice landing," Kara remarked as he jogged up next to her. "Were you completely dry?"
"Pretty much," he admitted. "You?"
"The same. Did you see any company on your way down."
Lee checked his side arm in a habitual manner. "Nope. Looks like you dusted them good. We should only have to deal with the depot, and whatever guards are there."
"Good," she remarked. "Ready to run."
"Ladies first," he said with a grin, and settled in to an easy jog beside her. It wasn’t the fastest they had ever run, but with the lower oxygen content in the air it was probably the best they could do. Blood sugar wasn’t an issue. Both he and Kara had been on Salik’s supplements and glucose solutions since they’d launched. It wasn’t appetizing, and it did nothing for the persistent hunger, but it kept them going.
As he stretched out his legs, Lee actually felt pretty good. Sitting in a Viper for two days was a long way from comfortable, and the pins and needles feeling that he’d had upon leaving the Viper was gradually diminishing. They had been running for nearly five minutes, and Kara was just getting into her stride. The vegetation and rocks kept them to a slower pace than he would have liked, but they were steady.
He saw the shadow before he heard the engines of the tanker as it descended from above, right on schedule. His father had put Colonel Tigh in charge of the tanker, and had even loaded an extra four warriors to the compliment. The Raptor would be just above, with another two warriors. He hoped it would be enough to take out whatever awaited them at the depot.
Kara did her best to keep her breath as they ran towards the depot. If she had thought the Viper was cold, it was nothing to the air around them. She didn’t know the elevation, but it must have been high. Even running, she was chilled.
Lee was right on her heels, as she had known he would be. She’d had a few nervous moments watching him land, but he was nearly as good as she was for flying dry. Smooth or not, he’d landed the Viper within a few feet of hers.
They were just coming in behind the depot when she heard the shots. Jerking around, she pulled her sidearm and aimed at the same time that Lee did. He was a hair faster, and had the machine in pieces before she could get off a shot. From the sound of it, though, there were more. She could hear repeated firing from the area of the depot. Approaching the hill that the depot was located within, nearly hidden if you didn’t have equipment to detect Tylium or a map to guide you, she veered to the left. They would have to come around the hill to the front of a bunker-like structure, and they had to manage it without getting shot by one of their own in addition to looking out for Cylons.
If that thing was indeed a Cylon. It didn’t look like the chrome toasters that the history books showed. It had been almost a fluid metal, its weaponry built right into what appeared to be an arm. Thankfully, it had flown apart quite nicely when Lee shot it.
"Take left," Lee called out from behind her. "I’ll go right. Take out anything metal."
She didn’t waste breath to acknowledge the order, but followed directions and continued on her current path. Thankfully there was a good deal of cover, and the Cylons didn’t appear to know how to use it. She kept herself behind trees and rocks as much as possible, taking out miscellaneous Cylons as she approached. Only when she saw the gray of a colonial uniform did she allow herself to relax. She was nearly face to face with the soldier by the time he saw her, and he must have jumped three feet.
"You made it," he remarked.
She didn’t know his name, but she knew he worked on the prison barge. She had met him once when they had been — ironically - delivering fuel. "How we looking?" she called out, taking her place beside him to cover the approach to the depot.
"Pretty clear," he told her. "It was dicey when we first landed. We must have taken out thirty of those things. They just kept coming. I think we’ve picked them off now, though, unless they’ve called in friends."
"Hopefully their friends are dust," she remarked.
"Looked like it from the air," he agreed.
They were silent then, listening for movement and watching for the flash of metal. It didn’t come. Time stretched, and Kara’s arms began to ache as she held her gun at shoulder height, prepared to shoot if necessary.
"We’re clear," she heard from the direction of the depot. "Let’s go."
Kara turned and followed the soldier towards the tanker. Tigh was standing at the bottom of the ramp to the tanker, overseeing and not doing much else. She had no clue why the Commander had insisted he come.
She had just placed one foot on the ramp, ready to board the tanker, when all hell broke loose behind her. She turned quickly to see not machinery, but what looked like people coming up from the bunker. They carried weapons, and they weren’t afraid to use them.
But that wasn’t what caught her eye. The people coming up were clearly Cylon. They appeared to be cloned or something, because most of them were identical. There were men and women both, dressed in various outfits, but all carrying guns at the ready. Tigh was already on the ramp, Callyng for everyone to get aboard. She couldn’t blame him. There were far too many to fight.
Then time stopped as she caught a glimpse of three women with long black hair emerging from the depot. Women who, remarkably, looked exactly like one of their Raptor pilots. The sight froze Kara in her tracks as her mind tried to wrap around the concept of a Cylon looking like Sharon.
She might have stood there until they shot her, but Tigh had other ideas. "Get the hell on board," he screamed as he pushed her up the ramp. "We have to get this thing in the air."
She could already hear the engine of the Raptor roaring to life. From the corner of her eye she saw it lift, ready to provide the cover they would need to get the tanker off the ground. Kara looked around the interior of the tanker and startled. "Where’s Apollo?" she yelled over the igniting engines of the tanker.
"Probably on the Raptor," one of the soldiers called out. "I saw him come around the bunker. He was on their side when it all came apart."
Kara nodded, but she felt uneasy. Lee was supposed to have headed for the tanker, because the Raptor was tighter on weight limitations. "Check," she told the pilot at the helm. "Micah, be sure Lee’s on the Raptor."
"I’m a little busy," he muttered as an explosion nearby rocked the tanker. She couldn’t argue with that. He needed all his concentration to just get them airborne as heavy as they were. She backed into a seat and strapped herself in for the jump. As soon as they cleared the atmosphere, the tanker would jump. Until then, they were riding on the biggest potential bomb she had ever known.
She held her breath as they moved up towards the jump point. She absolutely hated being a passenger, and would have been much more comfortable at the helm, even without experience with this particular craft. It didn’t help that Tigh was sitting across from her looking like he was angry at the world. Not that she cared what he was mad at, but her priority was just getting through the next few minutes.
When they finally jumped, she felt a burst of panic rather then the anticipated relief. She couldn’t reason out the feeling; they were in the clear. Jumps couldn’t be traced, and in a few hours they’d have the fleet refueled and be so far from here that the Cylons couldn’t find them. But the feeling didn’t pass — a cold dread unlike anything she’d felt since she had watched Zak’s plane careen into a hanger wall. She took a few deep breaths, trying to ease the pressure in her chest, but it didn’t help. Something was definitely very wrong. She could feel it. She just didn’t know what the hell it was.
Lee clutched his leg and stumbled again. Thankfully, whatever weapon the Cylons was using seemed to cauterize as it went, because there wasn’t much blood. That was good. He didn’t want to leave a trail. He was even grateful for the rocky ground, because he wasn’t leaving tracks for them to follow.
He could hear the tanker above him, its engine sound fading as it headed up into the atmosphere. He said a quick prayer that it would make it to the fleet as he got to his feet once more.
He didn’t really know what he planned to do. When the pain had hit his leg, he had followed instinct and hit the ground, staying there while the Cylons marched past towards the tanker. They didn’t bother to check him, probably assuming he was dead, and he didn’t make any noise to attract their attention.
Under the cover of brush, he had eased himself around until the Raptor had begun to rise, then used the sound to cover a dash into the wooded area behind the bunkers. His only thought then had been to get clear and avoid capture. Moments later, adrenaline finally falling, he had realized just how much pain he was going to be in. Still it hadn’t occurred to him that he was alone for another couple of minutes.
He was alone. He was cold. He was shot.
This was not going at all like he had planned. He stumbled once more and finally got disgusted with trying to run on the rocky terrain with a leg that was supporting him inconsistently at best. He needed cover, and he needed it quickly.
He wasn’t sure what sent him in the direction of the Vipers. Perhaps it was the cursory glance he’d had of the area as he and Kara had run through. Kara. Oh , God, this would make her crazy. He had seen her make the ramp, so he knew they had her aboard. At least she was safe.
He couldn’t go all the way to the Vipers. Obviously the Cylons would check them out, and that wasn’t where he wanted to be. Instead, he went about half-way and then ducked into a cave-like structure that had nearly tripped Kara when they’d made the run to the depot. It wasn’t deep, but it was solid rock on three sides and provided enough cover that he didn’t have to worry about detection. The last thing he needed was for them to get a hold of him. He knew things that would definitely compromise the well-being of the fleet, and it was vital that he not be captured.
If he’d still had his sidearm, he would have taken care of the possibility, but it had been dropped when he was shot. There were other ways to kill himself — which was probably the safest course of action — but at the moment he was far more concerned about keeping himself out of Cylon hands until he could make it happen. Truthfully, if he could stay away from them for a few hours, the problem would be academic. It wasn’t much above freezing, and once he stopped moving hypothermia wouldn’t take long to set in. They said it wasn’t a terrible way to die.
Tucked back into the rock, he did his best to get his breathing calm and under control. The thin air had him gasping, and was much too noisy. For that matter he’d made an awful lot of noise getting this far. He could only hope that the Cylons thought everyone was on board when the ships took off. Maybe they wouldn’t even look for him.
Huddled around himself, shivering in the cold and trying to ignore the pain in his leg, Lee stayed put. They might miss him, but luck had not been on his side today. He wasn’t going to take chances by moving around.
Silence descended into the forest as his breathing stilled. He locked his jaw tightly to keep his teeth from chattering and put his head on his knees. It seemed a little late, but he said a quick prayer anyway. The prayer was not for his safety, but for his family. He prayed that what had happened was worth it, and that the fleet would get away. He prayed his father could survive losing another child. And he prayed that Kara would be able to forgive herself this time.
Chapter 3
It seemed to take forever to get from the jump site back to the Galactica. Wireless silence was the rule, just in case the jump had been monitored. Kara was to the point of pacing by the time they reached the fleet, and was absolutely crazy by the time that they could establish a lock and get off the tanker.
The Galactica was to be refueled first, as it had the largest compliment. Then the other ships in sequence. Some were coming to the tanker, and then the tanker would be going to the rest. Kara was just glad this had been the first stop, because the pressure in her chest was getting unreasonable.
She pushed past Tigh in her urgency to get on board, and thankfully he had the good sense not to argue with her. She took the ramp at a jog, and pounced on the first person with any authority at all. The fact that he ranked lower than her didn’t even occur to her.
"Chief, have you heard from the Raptor?"
Tyrol turned to face her, surprised at the uncharacteristic panic in her voice. She knew she must sound insane, but she had to know.
"Came aboard twenty minutes ago," he said simply. "No problems."
"Was Lee on board?"
The blank look on his face was clearer than any answer. "He was supposed to come back on the tanker," Tyrol said clearly.
"He came around the other side of the bunker," she told him quickly. "Check with Kohler. Find out if he was on the Raptor."
There was a sadness beginning on the Chief’s face that Kara refused to acknowledge. "I don’t have to check," he said simply. "I did the post-flight myself. Apollo wasn’t there."
Kara closed her eyes as the impact of those words sunk in. Lee wasn’t on the Raptor. He wasn’t on the tanker. That only left one option.
They had left him behind.
"We have to go back," she whispered desperately.
"Kara, that’s not possible," the Chief told her, coming forward to put a hand on her arm. She felt wobbly enough that the contact was welcome, and that alone let her know how far gone she was. "Kohler said you were under full asPault when you left the planet. You’d be going back into a trap."
She shook her head at that, unaware for the moment that Colonel Tigh had walked up behind her. "We have to," she reiterated. "We can’t leave him there. He’s the CAG."
"Chief?" Tigh’s voice was clear and demanding. He didn’t have to voice the question.
"Captain Adama didn’t return from the mission," Tyrol said softly.
"We’re going back," Kara said firmly. "We aren’t leaving him. We can’t just leave him."
She turned to Tigh, and the mere fact that she was willing to speak with him must have had some impact, because he wasn’t as brusque as he normally was. His expression looked almost hurt. "He knew the risks of the mission," he said simply, his voice oddly gentle, as though she might break.
"Risk," she said, fury replacing her panic. "You left him there. That’s not risk, it’s desertion."
"Lieutenant, I know you’re upset," he began, but she didn’t let him finish.
"I’m way beyond upset, you drunken bastard! I told you to check, and you wouldn’t listen! You can’t just leave your team behind. Maybe you can be a heartless son-of-a-bitch, but some of us care about our teams!"
Tyrol’s hand on her arm had gone from soothing to restraining as she moved towards Tigh. He backed up a few steps, probably knowing she had a hell of a right hook, and let the Chief get between them.
"I need to see the Commander," Tigh said to Tyrol. "You can keep her here, or take her to the brig. I really don’t care which."
She started for him as soon as he turned his back, but the Chief was on her before she could get off a swing. He held her right arm, Evans stepped forward to take her left, and she found herself effectively restrained. "He left him," she said again, as though they hadn’t heard. As though half of the hanger hadn’t heard.
"Kara, you need to calm down," the Chief told her quietly. "You can’t do a damn thing from the brig, and you’re headed there in a hurry if you don’t keep it together."
"I’m together," she muttered, jerking her arms away from both of them. She wasn’t sure if she was that strong at the moment, or if they had let her go. She didn’t care. Tigh was out of sight, and with him her target for wrath. "How long will it take to get a Raptor ready to go back?"
Tyrol took a deep breath. She wanted to hit him, but the look on his face was so understanding that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. "We can’t go back," he told her quietly. "Even if we did, the chances that he’s still alive are next to nothing. Kohler said there were Cylons everywhere."
She finally ground to a halt, energy draining as the words registered. Lee could be dead. She had felt it before, but then he had been two years absent from her life. Now he was a direct part of it, and she didn’t know quite how to manage without him.
"I’ll walk you to your quarters," he said softly. "Just let me tell Cally where I’m going."
She stood in shock until he returned a moment later. They walked together the length of the ship, to the hatch leading to Blue Squadron’s living quarters. Tigh opened the hatch, and escorted her to her bunk. She wondered vaguely how he knew which one was hers, but she was too numb to ask. At eye level was Lee’s bunk, directly above hers.
"You need to rest," he told her softly. "You’ve been on the go for days. You can’t have slept much on the mission. You’ll feel better after you get some rest."
She nodded dumbly, taking a seat at the edge of her bunk, eyes glazed and mind at a halt. Lee couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be. She didn’t see Tyrol back away and speak to the pilot in the bunk by the door. She didn’t see the hatch close behind the Chief. She didn’t hear the quiet murmur of those around her as the word was gently passed from man to man: their CAG was gone.
It never occurred to her that she was now the senior pilot.
Paul Tigh took a deep breath as he walked towards CIC. If there were anything else he could do in the world, he would have done it. But someone had to tell the Commander what had happened, and he didn’t want it made worse by his putting Thrace in the brig. He had a right — she was insubordinate at the least — but she was also hurting. Even he could see that.
Adama turned towards him as he walked into the room. The question was on his face as well as in his words. "We were successful?"
Tigh gave a brief nod, then requested, "I’d like to see you in your quarters."
The look on the Commander’s face was confused, but twenty years of friendship told Tigh that he wouldn’t be questioned. If he had something to say that couldn’t be announced in CIC, he had his reasons.
The Commander spoke to his Lieutenant, then followed Tigh towards his quarters. Once inside, with the door closed, he turned to face him. "What is it."
"We have a couple of problems," Tigh admitted. "Big ones."
"Spit it out."
That was Bill. Straight to the point. "We lost a man," he said softly.
The Commander met his eyes, and Paul could see the wheels turning. He didn’t have to spell it out. "Lee or Kara?" he asked. His voice was low, but it didn’t break.
"Lee," he confirmed. It didn’t surprise him that the Commander had figured it out on his own. If he had called him into privacy to deliver the news, it had to be someone close to him.
William’s eyes closed, and Tigh watched the older man take a slow, deliberate breath. "There’s more," he added, trying to get it all in while the shock was still fresh. Better one blow than two, he decided. Then it might all blend together into one trauma, more easily recoverable. God, he wanted a drink. "We got a good look at some of the Cylons. We have one on board."
Adama didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was low and gravelly. "You’re sure?"
"Kohler had the good sense to hit the recon camera," he answered. "You can look for yourself."
"Who?" he asked, his voice becoming stronger. Tigh was relieved — he didn’t know how many times his friend could be beaten down and still get back up.
"Lieutenant Valerii," he said gently. "She’s a pilot."
"One of our best," Adama said carefully. "I presented that cluster myself. She risked her life a dozen times over to get this fleet to safety."
"The picture’s clear," Tigh told him. "It’s not a chance we can take."
William sat on the edge of his desk, looking old and tired and ready to quit. Paul wasn’t surprised. He would likely feel the same way. He didn’t feel all that good being the bearer of the news, but he knew that someone had to do it. Better a friend than a kid, or a report.
"We’ll need to get Salik up here," Adama thought out loud. "He was working with some of the studies that Baltar started."
"Baltar was crazy," Tigh reminded him.
"Not always. At one point he was a brilliant scientist, and part of what he was doing was based on our own research aboard the Galactica. I don’t remember it all, but something about the brain tissue after it was cremated. Maybe Salik can devise something to confirm what she is before we do anything."
"That’s a big ‘maybe’," Tigh muttered. "And if the option is having her brain fried she might prefer to be left behind."
"She’s a member of this crew until we prove otherwise," Adama said firmly. "And I want this kept under wraps until we have our answers. If word of this gets out it’ll be chaos. We’ve talked about the paranoia before."
"Can I at least recommend some caution," Tigh said in frustration. "She should be locked up until we know for sure."
"She’s married," the Commander said. "That won’t go over well."
"It may very well be a machine," Tigh clarified. "It may not even know what it is."
"You don’t know what it is," he said in a tired voice. "And there’s no point in arguing about speculation. Get Salik down here, and we’ll find out what we can do."
"I’m not going to argue," Tigh said softly. "But I do want you to think about this. Try to think of this as though you didn’t know her. If it was someone off the prison barge, you wouldn’t think twice about maintaining security."
"But it’s not."
"It doesn’t matter," Tigh said. "The procedure should be the same. We were cautious with Doral, and we need to be cautious with Valerii."
Adama closed his eyes and was silent for a long moment. Tigh wanted to press while he appeared to have the advantage, but he knew better. Bill would come to this on his own, or not at all.
"Confine her to the brig," he finally said. "Post a guard, but keep it within reason. I don’t want anyone pointing weapons at her or making accusations. We just don’t know yet."
Tigh nodded, knowing that it was as close as he could get to what he believed was necessary. The Commander didn’t push worth a damn, and Paul wouldn’t have done it anyway. There was a look in his eye that told him that his Commander was as near the edge as he’d ever been. A man could only take so much at one time.
"I’ll take care of it," he said. "Do you need me to cover CIC?"
"It’s my responsibility," Adama said simply.
"Take your time," Tigh offered. "I’ll be there until you’re ready."
William nodded, but said no more. Paul left him there, sitting on his desk and looking for all the world like a lost little boy.
William was still sitting there when he heard the knock he had half expected. He didn’t call out, as he usually would, but instead walked silently to his hatch and opened it.
Kara was standing there, looking just about the way he felt. Her eyes were dry, but he could see the emotion there. "Come in," he told her softly. His voice was breaking, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
"I want permission to go back to the planet," she said without preamble. "Jump, get Lee, and come back."
"Denied."
The look on her face would have been funny under other circumstances. Now it just hurt. "But, Sir…"
"The mission was a success," Adama told her with more conviction than he felt. "Against all odds, we have the fuel we need to jump. We will not risk that success by going back."
Her face had gone from surprise to pure fury. "I can’t leave him there!" she told him, her voice rising.
"We have no choice," he told her simply. Then, he told her what he’d been telling himself for the last twenty minutes. "He knew the risks, Kara. That’s why he insisted on going. He didn’t want one of his men in that position."
"Tigh left him," she began, only to be cut off again.
"Sending a Raptor back would be suicide for the fleet," he said. "They’ll be in the sky trying to trace the jump. With Vipers on the ground, they’ll think we’re closer than we are, and that’s our only hope. Sending back a Raptor with a jump computer would be sending them an invitation. Even if he’s alive — which is highly unlikely given the planet climate and occupation — you’d never find him in time to get back for the jump. I won’t sacrifice another ship, and possibly the entire fleet. Not even for my son."
"They won’t be in the sky," she argued. "I took out the launching area. They can’t get anything off the ground."
"That you know of," he corrected.
"They won’t expect us to come back! We got what we went for. They’re machines — they don’t know what loyalty is, or what human life means to us."
"You can’t know that. We don’t know what they know about us after forty years. Given what they’ve done to us, I’d say they know a great deal more than you’re giving them credit for."
He could see the anger coming off Kara in waves. It was a fury that lost none of its strength for its impotence. "He’s your son," she finally said, bitterness in every word. "Don’t you care?"
He didn’t really have to answer that. For just a moment, he was grateful for the numbness that was surrounding him. He could be logical without feeling for the moment. He hurt too much to feel. "You know I do," he told her gently.
He kept waiting for the storm of tears, but it didn’t come. Instead, it was as though he was watching a wall drop between them. As she had when Zak had been killed, Kara was holding everything in. A part of him was grateful — he didn’t know if he could handle her grief as well as his own — but another part was worried. This reaction had almost destroyed her last time.
"He’s alive," she finally said, her voice a deadly calm.
"What?"
"I feel it," she said, some slight emotion creeping back into her voice.
"Kara…"
"When Zak died, I knew the exact instant," she insisted. "They couldn’t get into the plane, but I knew. It was like — I don’t know — a certainty. I just knew. Even when they got him out and spent an hour trying to get him back, I knew there was no use. If Lee was dead, I would feel it. All I feel the need to go back and get him. He has to be alive."
"I pray you’re wrong," he told her. At the look on her face, he stepped forward and took her hands in his. "Kara, you know the climate on that planet. He wouldn’t last for long, even if he could evade capture. And if I know my son, he wouldn’t take the risk. He knows how vital he is to this ship — the information he has — and he wouldn’t let them take him alive. He knew the mission, and he knew this could happen. He knows we can’t come back."
"He shouldn’t have been left," Kara whispered, and the tears were finally coming. "Tigh…"
"Did exactly as he was ordered," Adama finished, taking the woman into his arms and holding on tight. "I would have had to do the same thing."
"You wouldn’t have left him," she whispered, her face buried in his chest.
"Then we would have lost the tanker, and fifty-thousand people would have frozen to death in space. Could you have let that happen?"
She didn’t have an answer for him any more than he had comfort for her. Nothing they could do would turn back time, or get Lee home. The gamble was over, and while the fleet had won, the two of them had lost everything.
He held her for a few more minutes, and then she pulled away. Brushing her hands over her face, she removed the trails of tears and managed to look remarkably composed. The mask he had seen earlier fell back into place — her shield against the world. "I’m sorry, Sir."
"So am I," he answered.
With nothing left to say, Kara turned and went back out the hatch. He stood there for a moment more, wishing he could cry himself. He certainly couldn’t feel any worse. But he had a ship to run, and they had a jump to prep for. They had calculated four hours to disperse the fuel, and it had nearly been one now. There was a lot to do, and very little time. Adama took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly.
Feeling at least partially in control of himself, he left his quarters and began the short walk to CIC.
Chapter 4
"You can’t do this!" Tyrol yelled as the guard locked the door behind Sharon.
"We have no choice," he explained. "This came from command. Lieutenant Sharon Valerii, to the brig, no explanation. I’m following orders."
"Who’s orders?" the Chief asked.
"Colonel Tigh’s," he said simply. "And right now he speaks for the Commander."
Tyrol looked over at his wife, who had sat down on the bed with a look of utter confusion on her face. "She hasn’t done anything wrong," he said for at least the tenth time since the guard had appeared on the flight deck to arrest her. Or contain her. Or whatever the hell they were Callyng locking her up for no reason.
"Colonel Tigh would like you to meet him up in the CIC. Maybe he’ll explain things then."
Tyrol’s glance to Sharon, back to the guard, and then finally resting on Sharon again said more than words could.
"She’ll be fine," the guard told her. "I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to hurt Boomer."
Tyrol took a deep breath before addressing his wife. "I’ll find out what’s going on," he told her. "I promise."
She nodded but didn’t speak, and he knew how scared she was. Thank the Lords they had at least done this at work. If they’d taken her in front of Boxey, he would have had to have done something. As it was, he hadn’t realized what was going on until they were nearly off the flight deck.
Now he reached through the bars to grab her hand and give a squeeze before he left her. Her grip was so tight it hurt. Heads were going to roll for this.
The walk to CIC was quick. He didn’t have any patience for any of it. Once there, Tigh gestured for him to wait, spoke to a Lieutenant — Geita, the Chief thought — then walked towards him.
"We’ll be meeting the Commander in his office."
"What the hell is going on?" he asked fiercely. Rank be damned — they had his wife in prison.
"I won’t go into it here," Tigh said with finality. Tyrol resisted the urge to hit the man then and there. He had never liked him — not even before he’d sentenced the majority of his deck crew to death — but the feelings he had now were very close to hatred. Still, he couldn’t do a damn thing for Sharon if he was sitting in that cell beside her.
Tigh led the way towards Adama’s quarters, which also served as his office. Tyrol was escorted inside, where the Commander was at his desk and their Chief Physician, Doctor Salik, was sitting on the foot of Adama’s bed.
"Thank you for coming," the Commander said. He looked tired, the Chief noted, and worn. For just a moment he felt a deep sympathy for the man who had lost his son only an hour before, but his fear for Sharon was foremost in his mind.
"I didn’t have a lot of choice," Tyrol remarked.
The Commander didn’t comment on his rudeness, but instead introduced their doctor to him. Tyrol shook his hand, but his heart wasn’t in it. Formalities be damned, he wanted to know what the hell was going on.
"The Commander has asked me here because I’m the closest thing we have to an expert on Cylon physiology," Salik told him.
"Why Cylon?" he asked, confused.
Adama stood to face him. "We have evidence that Sharon Valerii may be a Cylon plant."
Tyrol just stared. They were all frakking insane. "A Cylon?" It would have been a great joke, except that no one was smiling and his wife was in the brig.
Tigh stepped forward then with a photograph. It was slightly grainy, a gray background with a number of people carrying weapons. "This was taken on the planet we just returned from. They aren’t human. These are Cylons. See how some of them have identical features?"
Tyrol had noticed that. He had also noticed that two of the women towards the back of the picture bore a striking resemblance to his wife. "This is impossible," he murmured, more thinking than talking.
"I was there," Tigh said simply. "I saw them. And the weapons are real. They did their best to take the tanker out before we could get it off the ground."
"This isn’t Sharon," he said simply. "Sharon wasn’t even on the mission."
"We know that," the Commander added. "We know that Cylons have a limited number of bodies. I remember the Cylon on Ragnar telling me that his consciousness would be transferred to an identical one. I suppose they’re like clones, for lack of a better word."
"What does that have to do with Sharon?" he asked, but he was very afraid he knew where this was going.
"Until we can prove that she is — or is not — a Cylon, we have to suspect that she is," Adama answered.
"She’s not a Cylon!" he yelled once more.
"That’s what I’m here to find out," Salik said calmly.
"How?" Tyrol had no patience for guessing games.
"When we cremated the Cylon, we found chemical compounds that were synthetic in nature. They weren’t organic. We need to see if your wife has those same synthetic compounds."
"How?" Tyrol said again. An aircraft he could take apart and put back together blindfolded, but biology and chemistry were out of his league.
"We take a biopsy, we burn it, and we analyze it," he answered simply.
The Chief relaxed a bit. "So we can prove this is crazy," he said. "Fine. Do it."
"It’s not quite that easy," Tigh put in.
Salik nodded his agreement. "The only tissue that appears to show the compounds is neural."
"Neural?"
"Brain tissue," the doctor clarified.
Tyrol decided that the discussion had gone from insane to surreal. They wanted to take a chunk of his wife’s brain out to prove she wasn’t human? He had to be misunderstanding.
"You can’t mean this," he said softly.
"I’m afraid we do," Adama told him. He took a breath, let it out slowly, and explained. "There is simply too much risk to the fleet to allow even the threat of a Cylon plant to go uninvestigated."
"She’s not a Cylon," he told them again. "Dammit, can Cylons get pregnant?"
Salik raised his eyebrows. "Pregnant?"
Tyrol nodded. It wasn’t his place to tell them — Sharon didn’t want to lose her flight status — but he didn’t see an option. "A couple of months. She didn’t want to say anything because Apollo would ground her."
At the mention of the Captain’s name, Adama flinched visibly. A stab of sympathy hit again, but he pushed it away. "So she can’t be a Cylon."
"We don’t know how they reproduce," Salik said carefully. "I’ll run a test, of course, but it won’t prove anything either way."
"So you’re going to take my wife — my pregnant wife — and cut into her brain to find out what I’m already telling you?"
"The biopsy will be conducted as carefully as possible," Salik mentioned. "If the testing proves negative, then she’ll be released. Correct?" He turned to Adama for confirmation. The Commander nodded.
Tyrol had no clue what to say, or what to do. They were wrong. They had to be wrong, but the only way to prove it was to take out part of his wife’s brain. Suddenly, freezing to death in space didn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.
Kara met Chief Tyrol as he was walking back to the brig. "I need your help," she said without preamble.
"I’m busy," he told her simply, and kept walking.
"I’m not kidding," she told him, keeping pace with him and grabbing him by the arm. "Command has gone insane, and we have to do something."
That stopped him. She had known it would. "Do you know about Sharon?" he asked softly.
She looked at the ground. "I was on the planet," she told him. "If Tigh saw what I did, then I can imagine."
"They took pictures," he ground out. "To prove she’s…"
"Help me," she said desperately. She looked around quickly, then grabbed his arm to head towards family quarters. Once in the room that he shared with Sharon, she closed the door and met him eye to eye. "At least hear me out."
She could see the irritation in him — the impatience — but he gave a brief nod for her to continue.
"Get me a Raptor so I can go back to the planet."
Tyrol closed his eyes and sighed. "Kara, he’s gone."
She glared at him for a moment. "Would you let them leave Sharon behind?"
"She might be better off there at the moment," he told her bitterly. The remark was pure frustration with no truth behind it, but Kara grabbed it like a lifeline.
"You get me a Raptor, and I’ll get Sharon out of here."
He looked at her for a moment, the surprise clear on his face. "You’re as insane as they are."
She reached out a hand to keep him from walking out on her. "Listen," she hissed, wanting to yell but not wanting to be overheard. "You know what they did to Doral. They’ll do it to her, too. Tigh is running this show, and he doesn’t are about anyone or anything except himself. He won’t listen, he won’t compromise, and we can not let him get away with it."
The Chief didn’t answer, but he stopped tugging against her grip. She took that as a good sign.
"Look, they might go easier on her if she helps me get Lee back," Kara wheedled. She wasn’t used to this. Normally she didn’t cajole; she either did it herself or did without. But the bottom line was that she hadn’t jumped Raptors since flight school — flown them, yes, but not jumped them. Sharon would increase her chances of getting there and back without incident. She would also be another set of eyes, another gun, and another pair of legs when they hit the planet. The more she considered it, the more she liked it. "He’s the Commander’s son," she added. "Sharon saves him, and Adama will back her against Tigh. I’m sure of it."
"You’re talking like it could work," he said tiredly. "There is no way you can get down to that planet undetected, find him — if he’s even alive, and then get out without being captured or killed. They probably called in a Base Star after the attack. They’d need it for fuel, anyway."
"We didn’t drain the fuel," she corrected. "There must have been a billion gallons in that depot. We took maybe a few million. And it wouldn’t have time to get there."
"Base Star’s can jump, and their ships have fuel," he reminded her. "That makes this better?"
"I can do this. I’ll bring Sharon back, I promise.
"You can’t make that promise," he corrected. "You didn’t even bring Apollo back." He looked at her for a moment and sighed. The guilt must have shown, because he reached forward to take her hand. "I didn’t mean that," he corrected. "But that’s just how uncertain this is. They left him because there were too many guns to avoid, and you’re talking about flying right back into the middle of it. It just can’t work."
"We won’t land by the bunker," she corrected. "There isn’t room anyway. We’ll go in where we ditched the Vipers. Lee would have headed back that way. He knew the terrain, because we ran it on the way in."
"You don’t even know if he’s alive," Tyrol told her in a quiet voice.
"He is," she said fiercely. "Chief, I just have to get to him."
He shook his head, but at least he was staying, and considering. "It’s a moot point," he finally said. "Sharon is locked in the brig."
That took Kara aback, but she didn’t know why. They had chained Doral up and posted a guard, but she didn’t think they’d work that quickly with one of their own. It would take more planning. It would take more time…
"So it can’t work," Tyrol said quietly. "Even if we could get a Raptor out, and get Sharon to it, you only have two and a half hours to the jump. You wouldn’t make it back. And taking in a Raptor would be sending them directions. If you were captured, they’d be here in a heartbeat and we wouldn’t be able to get away.
"What do you think they’ll do to Sharon?" Kara asked, taking the conversation into another, more productive direction.
"They said they’re going to cut into her brain," he told her quietly. "To prove she’s a Cylon. If she is, they’ll kill her, or leave her, which amounts to the same thing."
Kara took a deep breath, thinking quickly and trying to put it all together in her mind. "We’ll have to get Sharon out," she thought aloud. "Shouldn’t be hard. I’m on a first-name basis with most of the brig guards. Then get her to the Raptor. What about help? Would Callye get it ready?"
"She might, but I can’t be sure."
Her head snapped up and she was smiling. "Kohler would," she said quickly. "He was as pissed that they left him as I was. He’d help us."
"Who else," the Chief asked. This was good. He was thinking with her. "I can trust Hawk," she said softly. "And Evans, too. They like Lee. They would help."
"Cathy has a crush on him," he said with inspiration. "I could talk her into getting a Raptor ready; tell her it’s for a mission. It’s all so secret now that she wouldn’t question it."
"Cathy? She’s a kid."
"She’s also a damn fine mechanic," he corrected. "And less likely to question it than Cally."
"Okay, that leaves Sharon," Kara said softly. "Will she do it?"
Tyrol thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I can ask," he finally said.
"Then let’s go," she prompted. "We’re wasting time, and there isn’t much of it."
Sharon Valerii sat on the bed with her legs crossed before her, her elbows on her knees, and her face in her hands. She would not cry. She would not do this. They would straighten it all out. They had to. It was just a mistake. Someone probably hacked into one of the Raptor computers and they thought it was her. Or maybe something was missing from the flight deck; theft was always a problem in open areas. They would figure this out. She just had to hold herself together until they did.
She looked up when she heard her husband’s voice. He was talking to her guard, and he didn’t sound upset. Maybe they had it straightened out already. God she hoped so! This was going to scare Boxey to death. He’d lost so much already. He couldn’t lose her too.
"Hi, Sweetie," he said as he walked towards the bars of the cell. The guard hadn’t followed him.
"What’s going on?" she asked quickly.
"Come here," he coaxed. "Let me hold you."
Her eyebrows raised at that. Not like him at all, but the situation wasn’t normal. She stood and walked over to him, putting arms through the bars to encircle his waist. He did the same, leaning down with his face close to hers. Oh great, now she was going to cry.
"Listen to me," he whispered softly. "Don’t say a word; just listen. They think you’re a Cylon." She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast. "Wait," he whispered quietly. "Listen to me. They took pictures of Cylons on the planet, and one looked like you, so they’re going nuts. They want to… Well, it doesn’t matter what they want. They can’t do it. Starbuck has a plan to get Lee off the planet, and if you help it might get the Commander on our side. At least I hope it will."
"What kind of plan?" she whispered, still feeling as though she were in shock.
"She wants to jump down to the planet, bring him back, and then jump with the fleet. It’s a long shot, but she said if she can’t find him in time she’ll come back in time."
"She doesn’t jump Raptors," Sharon said quietly.
"I know," he responded. "You do."
She looked at him carefully, meeting his eyes with a searching gaze. He wanted her to jump to a Cylon planet, look around, then try to get back before the fleet jumped. He was suggesting this. He — the man that had screamed at her for two days when she refused to go to a doctor because she didn’t want to get pulled of duty — was suggesting this. "Does it look that bad?" she asked softly.
At least he didn’t pretend not to understand. "Yeah," he said simply. "We have help," he clarified. "But we’re doing this against command directives. I guess you could get into a little trouble."
She gestured briefly to the cell with a nod of her head. "Right."
She didn’t really have to think about it. Tigh and Cylons didn’t mix, and he was too close to the Commander to think that they might get him overruled. They thought she was a Cylon? The situation was unreal. Somehow, knowing they suspected that seemed more dangerous than jumping to a Cylon planet.
"How do you plan to get me out of here?"
He took a deep breath, leaning towards the bars to kiss her gently on the lips. "You ready?" he asked softly. At her nod, he kissed her quickly once more. "I love you."
"You too," she replied.
Then all hell broke loose. He screamed for help, the guard stood up to come towards them, and Sharon watched as two men tackled him from behind. Kara came in behind them, grabbing the key-card from the guard’s pocket, and sliding it along the release. The cell door came open with a resounding click, and Sharon stepped out.
She didn’t see exactly what they had done, but the guard was unconscious. One of the guys — Evan — placed a strip of tape across the guard’s mouth and then the two of them dragged him into the cell. As they moved towards the brig door, Sharon caught Kara giving Kohler a brief hug and her thanks, and then they were all walking quickly towards the hanger.
They didn’t have time to talk, even if they could have said anything about what they were doing. When they walked into the launching bay, Cathy met them with a nod towards her Raptor. "I’ll be in Control," she said quickly, and took off at a jog.
Tyrol stepped up behind her then, taking her into a quick hug and kissing her on the cheek. "Come back," he told her firmly.
"I love you," she countered.
He kissed her again, then pushed her towards the Raptor hatch. Once inside, she found Kara already at the back panels firing up engines and warming up the jump drive. They really were going to do this. As the hatch rose up to close them in, she spared a thought that this looked pretty guilty. They were thinking she was a Cylon, and she was stealing a spacecraft to go to a Cylon planet. She just prayed that Starbuck’s luck would get them through this. She didn’t have much else to rely on.
Dualla frowned at her control panel. "Colonel, we have an unauthorized Raptor launch from the port bay," she said quickly. "It won’t identify."
Tigh raised his eyebrows and walked over to stand behind her. "Hail it again," he said swiftly.
She did so, but still no response. She shook her head, and watched as Tigh quickly walked to the nearest phone and picked it up. The line went directly to the Commander’s quarters. She didn’t hear what was said, but she did see his body tense as he turned back towards her.
"Shoot it down," he said quickly.
Gaeta picked up the overhead link to call Action Stations, but they never got the chance. As Dualla watched, the Raptor jumped, it’s blip disappearing from her screen with no warning. "It jumped, Colonel."
Tigh closed his eyes with a sigh. "Frak!"
Then, the printer to her right began clicking, and she looked to the wireless transmission that was heavily encoded. It had come from the Raptor before it jumped. "We got a transmission," she said softly.
She read the few words as she handed it to Tigh, and watched him explode into a rage. She wasn’t sure just what had set him off. The words had been pretty simple, and definitely nonthreatening.
"I’ll bring him back."
Chapter 5
Kara held on tightly as they emerged from the jump. "Status?"
Sharon looked over the panel before answering. "Lower than I planned," she grumbled. "Definitely in the atmosphere. I’m setting down."
Kara took a deep breath and tried to keep herself under control. She couldn’t think about the fact that she hadn’t really slept in days. She couldn’t think that she was defying the Commander and committing treason. The only thing she had room for was finding Lee. She had to think like him. She had to find him. Where would he go? She couldn’t consider that he’d been captured — there was no way they’d get into and out of the complex in time — so she had to believe that he was out there somewhere. Waiting.
The jolt as they hit the ground was startling. She stood immediately, checked her sidearm, and then went to the hatch. Her watch said they had ninety-two minutes before the jump. They didn’t have time to play around. "Any life signs?"
"Lots," Sharon told her. "But not close. There’s something faint to our South, but it can’t be a person. Maybe an animal?"
The words gave Kara hope. The hatch descended to reveal moderate darkness. They would need lights if this took more than a few minutes. What really hit Kara though was the cold. It had to be below freezing. She could feel the wind cutting through her flight suit, and it was designed to manage temperatures from flaming to freezing. They had to find him fast.
"Stay or go?" Sharon asked.
Kara thought for a split second. It would be safer if Sharon stayed — they could keep the Raptor ready and take off in a blink — but she needed help looking in the darkness. She wished that she’d thought to grab some cold-weather gear, but it hadn’t occurred to her that the temperature would drop so much once the sun set. "Go," she finally said. "I may need you."
Sharon nodded and quickly shut down the most vital systems. Leaving the Raptor was a hell of a risk — if the Cylons found it before they could get back, they were done — but she couldn’t think of any other way to manage.
The two of them hit the ground at the same moment, Sharon leaving the hatch down on the Raptor. At Kara’s look, she told her that it would be faster. Kara couldn’t argue. "South?" Kara asked, gesturing the way that she and Lee had run to the depot.
Sharon nodded as she checked her wrist. "That’s south," she confirmed.
Kara took off at a jog. She had to slow a bit so that Sharon could keep up with her, and the rocks gave her some difficulty in the dim light. "How far?" she asked briefly, needing all her breath to keep moving.
"Nearly a mile," Sharon reported, her breathing more difficult than Kara’s. "But that can’t be him. It’s too faint."
"Not if he’s half-frozen," Kara corrected.
Sharon didn’t say any more, and Kara was glad. She just wanted to get to Lee. She didn’t want to talk about it.
When Kara estimated that they had gone about a mile — give or take — they began to search the area. It was slow going. They couldn’t get a fix without the equipment on the Raptor, and they couldn’t bring that with them. Sharon was going from memory, and Kara was moving on pure instinct. Where would he go? And if it was Lee, why hadn’t the Cylons tracked him down the same way?
They had been looking for more than thirty minutes when Sharon slipped and went down on her knees. Glancing over at her, Kara noted that she had fallen in the same place when they’d run to the depot. The memory sparked a thought, and she ran over next to Sharon to start searching.
"I’m okay," Sharon announced as Kara shoved her out of the way and began moving around on her hands and knees. The light was nearly gone, but she didn’t have an extra hand to pull out her lamp.
"It was here," Kara muttered. "Like a hole. I saw it when I…" She felt around a moment more, and her hands found nothing but brush. Beyond that, she found only air. "It’s here," she announced triumphantly. "Please be here!"
Kara reached back through the brush, only to close her eyes in grateful relief. She’d know the feel of a flight suit anywhere. "Lee, we’re here. Come on, wake up."
"He’s here?" Sharon said in surprise, coming over next to Kara as though she hadn’t thought it was possible.
"God, wake up, Lee," she whispered desperately. She could get her hands around an arm, but it was awfully cold. She ignored the brush cutting into her face as she shoved through, trying to get a better grip. He had his arms locked around his legs, and he wasn’t helping her. He wasn’t moving. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. "I can’t do this alone," she whispered tightly. "Give me some help, here."
Sharon moved forward to help tug away some of the brush. Kara made it as far into the tiny cave as she could, but it was too tight to do anything once she was there. She moved back out and looked around in desperation. He was tucked in tight. It explained the low life signs. Part of it might have been the rock around him, but most of it was that he was well and truly out.
She reached back into the cave, following his arm up to his face and patting lightly. "Lee," she said into the hole, as loud as she dared. "Lee, get up!"
He didn’t really move, but she felt a shiver travel through his body. It was a start. She continued patting and continued Callyng for him until his grip loosened from around his legs and she could yank one arm free. "Sharon, help me."
Moving aside, she handed one arm to Sharon and grabbed the other herself. It was like trying to move a stone. He was dead weight. Together, the two of them managed to get him out through the brush and onto the ground, face down. Kara was shivering, too. They had been relatively still for too long, and the cold was getting to her.
"Get under that arm," Sharon suggested. "If we can get him up, it might help him wake up."
Sharon slid her fingers around his cold neck, feeling for a pulse. She knew he was alive — she knew it — but she needed the confirmation of the slow, faint movement of his blood. Too slow.
"Okay, ready?" She asked Sharon, tugging one of Lee’s arms around her neck.
"Ready," Sharon echoed, doing the same.
She was grateful for a daily routine of weight training as she held tightly to Lee and used her legs to lift. Once he was up, it was easier than she had hoped, but to get this far, so time had to be getting tight. She wanted to stop long enough to see how badly he might be hurt, but there wasn’t time. They had to get back to the ship, and they had to get him warm.
Weights or not, Lee was getting heavy. They weren’t more than half-way back to the Raptor, and Kara was ready to drop. She was breathing hard, and getting clumsy. Lee had moved a bit, but not enough to help. Sharon wasn’t doing as well as she was. By mutual consent, they stopped and knelt down to catch their breath.
They didn’t wait long — maybe a minute or two — because it was just too damn cold. When they stopped moving they began to shake. What little light they had started with was fading, and Kara really needed to get the lamp out, but she couldn’t figure out how she would carry both Lee and the lamp. It was hard enough negotiating the uneven terrain three-across.
The next twenty minutes were painful. It got to the point where she and Sharon didn’t speak, and didn’t stop. It was too hard to get him back up when they did. Kara’s back was burning with exertion, and her arms were rubbery. Her hands had been numb for quite a while, but now they were beginning to hurt. By the time they saw the Raptor, Kara was a long way beyond miserable. Lee had stopped shivering and she couldn’t hear his breathing, but she had to believe it was still happening. They couldn’t have made it this far only to lose him now.
It took what little strength they had to make it up the ramp and into the Raptor’s cockpit. Sharon immediately closed the hatch, and began warming up systems for takeoff. Kara knelt on the floor of the spacecraft to try to get Lee awake. The light around her revealed that he was completely white, his lips a frightening blue. "Come on, Lee," she muttered, as close to crying as she had ever been. "Open your eyes. Do something. Anything."
"I need help," Sharon called over her shoulder. "Get in the back."
It was all Kara could do to leave him laying there, but she managed it. She went to the back panel of the Raptor and began mechanically flipping switches in preparation for takeoff. As before, just as soon as they were clear of the ground, Sharon jumped. Kara held her breath, hating the sensation, but grateful just the same. When the world around her righted itself again, she looked at her instruments to confirm that they were where they were supposed to be. They had jumped from within an atmosphere, which was never a good idea, but they appeared to have managed it. It wasn’t as dangerous as jumping into an atmosphere — which they had also done to avoid scanner detection — but it was definitely unsafe.
Kara gave a sigh of relief, then dropped back down onto her knees to work with Lee. She was in the process of checking for a pulse — and this time not finding it — when Sharon called back. "We have a major problem," she announced.
Kara looked up, already overwhelmed, and saw the problem immediately. There were four Vipers surrounding them. "Use the wireless," Kara yelled.
"I have. They want you."
Scrambling forward, she grabbed the headset from Sharon. "Raptor four to Galactica," she said quickly. "This is Starbuck. Sending colonial codes now. Do not attack. Repeat, do not attack."
There was a long and painful pause before Adama’s voice came over the headset. "What do you hear, Starbuck."
She gave a sigh of relief. "Nothing but the rain, Sir," she answered in time. It was an old sign — one they had used for years — and she knew it was his way of finding out if it was really her, and if they were really okay.
But the pause that followed was still too long. "Request permission to land," she finally prompted them. "We have a medical emergency. Commander, I have Apollo."
She still heard only silence. "Repeat," she said clearly. "We have a medical emergency. Permission to land!"
Dualla’s voice was clear and decisive. "Permission granted, landing bay two. Welcome back, Starbuck."
The relief Kara felt was draining, but she wasn’t home yet. She handed the wireless back to Sharon and dropped herself onto the Raptor floor. "Lee," she told him firmly. "Stay with me. We’re almost there."
"I need you in back," Sharon told her again. With a sigh of frustration, she left Lee again and went to the back seat of the Raptor. She made a couple of adjustments, keeping one eye on Lee, to line Sharon up for the landing. It wasn’t as smooth as it could have been — she was still out of practice — but it was smoother than the landing they’d made on the planet.
"Lee, we’re home," she told him as she knelt next to him again. Again her hand went to his neck, and again she was unable to feel any movement, however faint. "Please," she whispered. "Please stay with me."
She was unprepared for the reception as the hatch lowered. She had expected a medical crew, and what she saw was a line of guards with weapons drawn. She couldn’t blame them, really. They had no way beyond the Commander’s word that it was really them. But the guns didn’t drop when they got a look inside the Raptor. Instead, they changed direction, pointing directly over Kara’s left shoulder. They were pointed at Sharon.
"On your knees, Valerii," one of the guards called out. "Cross your ankles, and keep your hands behind your head."
Sharon didn’t argue. She dropped to her knees, placed both hands behind her head, and then crossed her ankles. Kara caught the glint of tears on her cheek, but before she could be sure Sharon was crying there were four guards surrounding them, taking Sharon’s weapon, and dragging her bodily from the Raptor.
"I need a doctor up here," Kara called out. "Now."
Once Sharon was out of the area, the medical crew came in. She was quickly shoved out of the way as the doctor and his medics began their job. She leaned back against the pilot seat, trying to catch her breath and process what had happened. She had done all she could in any case. The consequences were something she just had to live with.
She heard a lot of medical blabbering, but the only words that really registered were "hypothermia", "shock", and "shot". Shot. She looked around one medic to see, but she couldn’t get a look and she didn’t want to be in their way. So she sat where she was, listening and worrying, and praying with all her heart.
It was several minutes before they put Lee on a stretcher to take him out of the Raptor. She caught a glimpse of his leg then, where they had cut off his uniform leg, and the red of his blood was stark against his pale skin. She couldn’t tell if his lips were blue because his mouth was covered with a breathing unit. She could only hope that he would be okay, because the doctor hadn’t answered her any of the ten times she had asked. She was being effectively ignored.
Kara stood up mechanically to follow the medical team, but was stopped as she left the ramp from the Raptor. Tigh was the last person she wanted to deal with, but she figured she had broken enough rules for the moment. There were two guards standing behind him, and she just didn’t have the strength to try to go through them.
"Yes, Sir?" she said, more out of habit than respect. He had never earned that.
"You really did it," he said, his voice carrying a tone of wonder.
"I had to," she answered.
"You put the entire fleet in danger for one man," he said simply.
She didn’t respond to that. She couldn’t argue it, so there was no point.
"Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in," he said softly, his voice almost sounding concerned. At least it didn’t carry the note of threat or condescension that it normally did.
"I have a pretty good idea," she admitted.
"This was treason," he said, that same note of wonder in his voice. "Your career is through. You won’t fly again."
She looked him in the eye, but she couldn’t even summon anger. She had known it when she planned it, but she just couldn’t care. "Lee was alive," she said simply. She didn’t need to say more.
"Take her to the brig," he said quietly to the guard beside him.
At the very least, they weren’t pointing weapons at her. They had marched her about twelve feet when she turned to call back to Tigh. "Can I find out how Lee is first?"
He shook his head, and a guard prodded her with one hand. She jerked away from him, but she didn’t resist the command. This wasn’t the time or the place. Besides, she told herself. They were right. She had committed treason. If the Cylons had bugged the Raptor, she had brought it right to the fleet. "Colonel Tigh," she called out just as they reached the door that led out of the hanger.
He turned to face her, but didn’t speak. "Have them check the Raptor," she called out. He got a slight look of confusion, but he walked towards her. When he was close enough that she didn’t have to yell, she began talking. "We had to leave the Raptor to search," she explained. "If it’s bugged…"
Tigh nodded. "I’ll take care of it," he told her.
She released a breath and nodded. It was all she could ask, and all she could do to fix what she had done. If there was a tracer, they wouldn’t have time to jump. They would all be dead. The consequences that had seemed irrelevant when she had stolen the Raptor suddenly seemed significant. The entire fleet would be in danger until they jumped. She hoped it was soon.
They marched her the length of the ship and into the brig. She spared an absent thought that Sharon was not there, but didn’t ask. She just didn’t have the energy. She stepped into the cell, listened to the door close behind her, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. They left her there.
In the quiet of the cell, Kara lay down on the bed, but she didn’t sleep. Only now, when it was essentially done and over, did she realize just how stupid she had been. She had put everyone on the line for one man. As Tigh had said, she’d committed treason and effectively ended her military career. She would never fly a Viper again. She would likely spend the rest of her life on the prison barge. Although they were at war, so they could easily demand her death if they desired.
All this was only if the Cylons didn’t know where they were. It seemed damn unlikely given the length of time they had left the Raptor alone. For that matter, they might have even put a tracer on Lee; they had obviously gotten close enough to shoot him.
Then there was the Chief, and all the other people she had involved in Sharon’s liberation and the theft of the Raptor. What would the consequences be for them? Assuming they all lived, what punishment would they face for being friends, being loyal, and being willing to help?
Where was Sharon? The guards had taken her, but they hadn’t brought her here. Was she being transferred to the prison barge? Were they going to forgo any testing and just kill her outright? At least before the escape, she had been given some benefit of the doubt. Had Kara sentenced one of her best friends to death?
What would her Commander say? He was the closest thing to a father that she had ever known, and she had defied his orders. Could he forgive her for leaving Lee in the first place? Could he understand why she went back? Would he be grateful enough that he would override Tigh for Sharon, or her?
And would Lee even live? He had been on a breather, so that wasn’t good. She had seen the blood, and had no clue how much he had lost. He might never wake up, and if he did there was no telling what damage the cold had done, much less the gun. Maybe he would have been better off dying in a hole in a rock.
Kara didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. As the weight of her decision settled onto her, she curled herself into a tight ball and wept. All the things that had made so much sense before seemed meaningless now. Everything that had seemed so clear was now murky and frightening.
And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it now.
Chapter 6
Sharon looked around the gray room with its silver equipment and tried to stay calm. They had brought her here directly from the landing bay, and she hadn’t seen anyone except guards with guns since she’d been placed here. She had done nothing but pace the small room since her arrival. She was scared, and cold, and she would have done anything to turn back the clock to a time before they suspected her of something unspeakable.
Sharon had thought that they might give her some credit if she helped rescue Lee. She had been wrong. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have tried to help anyway — Lee was a pretty good guy once you got to know him a little bit — but deep inside she had been grasping at straws to try to find a way out of this.
When the hatch finally swung open, she saw more guards with more guns, but a short man dressed in hospital clothing was allowed through them. He stepped into the room, and they closed the door behind him.
"I’m Doctor Salik," he said quietly. Professionally.
She didn’t say anything.
"They’ve told you why you’re here?"
She nodded. Her throat was too tight to say anything.
"Your husband says that you’re pregnant," the doctor continued. "Is that true."
She nodded. It seemed to be a good catch-all response.
"I will confirm that before the surgery," he told her. "How far along?"
"Two," she croaked, and then cleared her throat. "I’ve missed two cycles."
"The medications I’ll use won’t put the baby at risk. Actually, pregnancy would be a very good sign. I doubt that synthetic organisms could reproduce. They wouldn’t be able to manage the cellular adjustments necessary. At least I wouldn’t think so." He nodded and moved towards her. She couldn’t help but jump. "I need to explain the procedure," he said simply, and walked past her to take a chair next to a small desk in the corner. He turned the chair towards her before he continued speaking. "We will be taking a small biopsy," he told her. "We drill a small hole in the skull, insert a plastic tube, and take out a small bit of tissue. Then we patch the skull, sew you up, and you’ll wake up a few minutes later feeling pretty lousy.
"What will it do to me? Will I forget anything?"
He smiled at that. "I won’t be taking any tissue from vital areas. There are a number of parts of the brain that are really not very active. There shouldn’t be any permanent side-effects."
She rubbed her arms with her hands, trying to get warm. She wondered if they would ever restore heat to the Galactica, or if they’d just use fuel for transport. It seemed a pointless thought, but it was easier to concentrate on being cold than on being a monster.
"I’m not a Cylon," she said softly. "I can’t be. I remember growing up, and my parents, and school. It was real. I’m still friends with the people I grew up with, or I was until they were killed in the war."
"I hope you’re right," the doctor told her.
"How sure will you be?"
The doctor reached into a desk and took out a large photograph. He handed it to her without any explanation. She took the picture, blinking a few times to focus through the tears that just wouldn’t seem to go away, but wouldn’t spill over either.
In the picture there were many people. There were blond women who looked identical to one another, balding men that likewise matched, and towards the back of the group two women who could have been her. It wasn’t a mistake. The people were all carrying weapons, marching towards the camera with guns pointed and some firing. These were Cylons. She didn’t have to be told. And two of them looked exactly like her.
"Oh, God," she said softly. "It can’t be true."
"We’ll know in a few hours," he told her simply. Reaching into the pocket of his clothing, he withdrew a syringe that contained a clear liquid. "Do I need to have security here?" he asked her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at him. "I have a little boy," she told him softly. "I found him on Caprica, and he’s stayed with me or my husband since then."
He looked at her, but seemed to be waiting for her to finish. She tried to find the words to explain. "If I was a Cylon, would I love him? Would I love my husband?"
"I don’t know what they’re capable of," he said. "But I can’t believe a race of creatures that would wipe out all of humanity would care about little boys."
She closed her eyes again, tears finally streaming from them. If this was true — if she was the enemy and didn’t even know it — then she was a danger to her family. She was a danger to her friends. She was a danger to humanity itself.
"How long will it take to find out?"
"We remove the tissue, incinerate it, and then examine it. It won’t take more than an hour to know for sure. The surgery will take longer than the analysis."
"If I am," she swallowed as her voice broke, then tried again. "If I’m one of them, can you be sure I don’t wake up?"
The doctor looked at her with an almost kind expression. She got the feeling that he didn’t like this any more than she did. "I’ll take care of it," he promised.
"Good," she whispered. "I’d rather not know."
William Adama looked at his son with mixed emotions.
He looked horrible. He was off the life support equipment now, and that gave the Commander hope. His skin was reddened from exposure to the cold air of the planet, and his lips still had a bluish tinge, although that might be the oxygen mask they had on him.
But he was alive. The entire fleet had been put at risk for this, and Kara’s life was essentially ruined, but his son was alive. He didn’t know how to feel about it.
Lee shivered beneath the warming blankets they had put over him, his hands clutching convulsively on the sides of the bed. It was as though he couldn’t rest, even in sleep.
The doctors were worried about skin damage, extremity damage, and lung damage from the long exposure to the cold. He had also been shot, and while the blood loss hadn’t been significant, there was infection to consider.
Lee hadn’t awoken yet. The doctors had said not to worry about it, that it would take time, but he would have very much liked to seen those eyes open before he had to leave for the jump. He didn’t have a choice, though. Colonel Tigh was dealing with the Cylon threat — overseeing the surgery two rooms over — and his responsibility was to be in CIC to manage the jump. They were to leave within the hour, and Gaeta was already making calculations and plotting.
They would not know exactly the coordinates until moments before the jump. That was necessary to preserve the security of the trip, but he still didn’t like doing things so quickly. They were simply waiting on a report that the last ship had been fueled, and then they would go. He wouldn’t relax until that happened, and at the same time he was dreading it.
Truthfully, he was so emotionally wrecked at the moment that he wasn’t even sure of his competence. If it hadn’t all been falling apart at once, he would have left Tigh to it, gone to his office, and gone to bed. He probably deserved that after three days of worry regarding the mission, losing his son, finding out they might have a Cylon plant right there among his pilots, losing both Kara and a potential Cylon to a mutiny, and then recovering all of it with essentially no effort on his part. He was still reeling.
He couldn’t even feel a proper level of relief, because much of it wasn’t over. They still didn’t know if Valerii was a Cylon. He still didn’t know if his son was okay, and didn’t know if he would be able to keep Kara out of jail. All this, and they still weren’t safe. They wouldn’t be until the jump, which was potentially dangerous in its own right due to the distance and unfamiliarity with the system.
He leaned over and touched his son’s forehead; it was the only part of him that he could reach between the warming covers and the mask. Perhaps it was easier with him asleep after all. He didn’t look forward to breaking the news about Kara. Lee would feel responsible of course; he wouldn’t be able to prevent that. Whether for getting shot or being so close to Kara that she couldn’t leave him, Adama didn’t know. But he knew his son would take responsibility. That would be another battle.
With a final glance at his boy, he turned and left the sick bay and headed for CIC. They had a jump to complete, and then they needed to start looking for more fuel. There were some complaints about the temperature of the ships, and he couldn’t do a thing about it while they were still rationing every drop of Tylium.
He couldn’t do anything about most of the situations that were on his mind, but he could definitely ensure that this jump went off without a hitch. That was all he could do, but he would do it and he would do it well. And then he’d take the rest of it as he had to.
Kara stared at the ceiling of the brig and sighed. She’d been here for hours. The fleet had jumped, and still they hadn’t sent for her or let her know what was going on. She knew she couldn’t expect them to — she was only a prisoner after all — but she still hated being out of the loop.
She supposed it shouldn’t matter. They had made the jump, so they were safe from any damage she might have caused by her rash behavior. Knowing this made it a lot easier to live with the decision. She still needed to know that Lee was okay, but at least the gnawing guilt that had submersed her when she’d been placed here had receded to a bearable level. She hadn’t destroyed all of them. Maybe, if she could manage it, she would only have destroyed herself. That she could live with.
She didn’t get much warning when Adama and Tigh walked into the brig. She stood quickly, as much from agitation as from respect or tradition. If she had ever been afraid, it was now.
"Lieutenant Thrace," the Commander said softly.
"Yes, Sir."
He sighed softly. "Kara, I don’t know whether to court martial you or thank you, and it’s a hell of a feeling."
"I’m sorry, Sir." It seemed inadequate, but it was all she had.
"Are you really?"
She looked at him, and found she couldn’t lie. "I’m sorry that I placed the fleet in danger," she admitted. "And I’m sorry that I got others in trouble for helping me. I’m also sorry I made this worse on Sharon, because she hasn’t done anything wrong." She paused a moment, then finished. "I can’t be sorry I went back. I couldn’t leave him. I’ll stand by that decision."
"This isn’t just hitting someone," he said almost gently. "This isn’t something I can talk around or hide. You committed an act of treason in wartime. And you did it in front of the whole crew. Everyone on the bridge knows that Lee was gone, you took the Raptor, and now Lee’s back. Hell, if you’d been any slower jumping we would have shot you out of the sky. I can’t make this go away."
"No, Sir," she said softly. "I don’t expect you to."
He stood looking at her a moment, then took his glasses off to rub at his eyes. He looked absolutely exhausted. There were dark circles beneath his bloodshot eyes, and his body had a distinctive slump. She could tell what this was doing to him, and added another regret to an ever-growing list.
"Commander?" Tigh said suddenly.
"Yes," he said on a sigh, not even looking sideways at his XO.
"If Lieutenant Thrace had orders to return to the planet, would it make a difference?"
"She didn’t," he said simply.
"She might have," he suggested.
Adama looked sideways at him, but said nothing.
"You were very upset," Tigh continued. "And I did have CIC until you got back. I… may have given an order to retrieve a lost man."
The Commander looked thoughtful. Kara was purely shocked.
"You wouldn’t have ordered her to break a prisoner out of the brig," he said.
"No," Tigh offered. "But given the number of people it takes to set up a Raptor flight, it’s unlikely that it could happen without orders. There’s the mechanic, the flight controller, a pilot. And for a one-way mission — or likely that — I could see retaining our more experienced Raptor pilots. A prisoner would be more expendable."
Adama finally turned to face Tigh and put his glasses back on. "At this point, I have half a dozen men in various confinement," he said clearly. "My best pilot is in the brig, my crew chief is under house arrest, and three of my finest Viper pilots are confined to quarters. Are you telling me that they had permission for that behavior?"
"They might have," the XO said vaguely.
"Commander Adama," Kara began.
"Shut up, Starbuck," he said quickly, not taking his eyes off Tigh. "I know you wouldn’t make this up, because you don’t even like Lieutenant Thrace."
"No reason to make it up, Bill. Maybe I just… forgot. You weren’t really in any condition to be giving orders, after all. You didn’t even stay in CIC for more than a few minutes before you went back to your quarters. Makes sense that someone else might order her to clean up the mission. Maybe… the man who was in charge of that mission."
"Are you willing to put that in a report?" Adama asked carefully.
"I’d be happy to. Been a little busy for a while. I haven’t logged anything just yet."
"See that you do, Colonel," Adama said with a wink. "And you," he said as he turned back to a very stunned Kara. "I want you to report to the life center. You’ve been on two missions to a hostile environment and still haven’t been checked by the docs. And while you’re there…" His voice got a little thick, but he managed to continue. "While you’re there, I want you to check on my son. An old man can’t keep running to the other end of the ship just to see if his son’s awake."
Kara stood in stunned silence as the guard was called in and the cell door unlocked. She continued to stand there while the Commander walked away, leaving her standing there with Tigh. She didn’t think she could have said anything if her life depended on it, and that was probably a first for her. She was rarely at a loss for words.
"I believe you were given an order," he said mildly. "You do follow them when they suit you, don’t you?"
She swallowed twice, tried to speak, and had to swallow again. "Why?"
"I assume you’d follow them to keep out of trouble," he said, deliberately ignoring her question.
She didn’t let it slide. She had never liked Tigh, never trusted him. She gave him a minimum of respect only because he was close to Adama and appeared to genuinely care about him. She had never given him any reason to go out on a limb for her, and she had given him many reasons not to. "Why?" she repeated.
"You can’t just…" he began, but she cut him off.
"Why?"
He looked at her for a moment, then let out a compressed breath. "He’s been through enough," he said simply. "He doesn’t need this."
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she could say. This didn’t take away the last three years of him being an asshole. She wished that it did. In essence, it only confirmed a very selfish nature. He didn’t want his friend to suffer.
But she hadn’t seen him take a drink in over a year. He carried his weight on the bridge, and sometimes the Commander’s as well. He’d been good to Lee, and so far as she knew he hadn’t thrown over any tables or thrown any of her friends in the brig for quite some time. She knew that she had changed since the beginning of the war, so it seemed reasonable that he might have changed as well. Maybe. Or maybe he had his own motives. Either way, Adama had told her once to give him a break, and maybe it was time to do that.
Whatever his reasons, he’d just given her both gift and curse. He’d saved her ass, and her career, and those of many of her friends. His motives might be anything, but whether for or against her she was now indebted to him. She really hated that. She didn’t like to owe anyone, for anything, but especially not him. And yet it was a gift she could not afford to refuse.
"Thank you," she said softly, hoping it sounded more genuine than it felt.
He nodded, then advised her, "Go check on Lee, then let his dad know how he’s doing."
She gave a quick nod, then stepped from the cell. She was careful to avoid him as she walked from the brig, and kept herself to a walk on the way to the life station. She couldn’t wait to talk to Lee. He was never going to believe this.
Chapter 7
Chief Tyrol sat in a chair beside his wife’s bed. She still wasn’t awake, but that wasn’t what bothered him. The whole stupid situation; that was what bothered him. All the fuss and worry for nothing.
Sharon was fine. The doctor had assured him that she was as human as the rest of them. He didn’t have an explanation for the Cylon duplicates, but stranger coincidences had happened. They could all sit back, relax, and wait for the arrival of a new baby in six-and-a-half months.
But it didn’t take away the last few days. It didn’t take away the fear that he had seen in her eyes, and it didn’t take away the desperation she’d shown. It didn’t take away the way she’d been treated — guards and guns and prison cells. It didn’t take away his remaining under house arrest, either. That had been a tough one to explain to Boxey. And it didn’t take that away — the fear in his little boy’s eyes when he thought he would lose another mother. They hadn’t even told him the worst of it, only that she was suspected of doing something wrong that she really hadn’t done, but he had been frightened all the same.
The only thing that made any of it better was the secrecy with which it had been done. At the very least, rumors weren’t flying around the Galactica about their suspicions. Tigh himself had called in all the men who had been down on the planet and set them straight about Boomer’s humanity. They had been instructed in no uncertain terms that no one was to spread any information to the contrary. Tigh had even apologized to both him and Boxey, saying he had made a mistake and he was sorry it had worried them. A part of him could even understand why it had happened. Not forgive, but understand.
But it wasn’t the part that was a husband. The husband part just wished it had never happened. He wished he could just take her home and take her to bed, which wouldn’t really solve anything but would make him feel a hell of a lot better. Instead, he was stuck here, in a sterile room, waiting for her to wake up. Okay, so maybe it did bother him.
He sat there another hour before Sharon finally started stirring. He felt it first when she squeezed the hand that was holding hers, and then her eyes opened and she faced him. He watched the awareness come into her eyes slowly, and then he saw her smile.
"Good morning," he whispered.
"I’m okay?" she asked. "I’m not…"
"You’re my wife," he answered simply. "And you’re as human as I am, although I’m not sure that’s saying much."
Her smile widened. "You’re sure?" she asked, and he hated the uncertainty in her voice that was warring with the pleasure on her face.
"They can’t explain the planet," he told her gently. "But it doesn’t matter. It’s a long way from here, now. You’re gonna be fine. They even moved the guards out when they were sure."
Her eyes closed in grateful relief. He had to admit to feeling some himself. He hadn’t believed it for a moment — it absolutely couldn’t be true — but he was grateful for the proof of it. They wouldn’t suspect her again. They wouldn’t threaten her again. For that certainty, he supposed a little hole wasn’t too much to go through.
"How do you feel?" he asked her.
"Tired," she admitted. "My head hurts a little. Everything kind of hurts, to tell the truth. Mostly, I’m just tired."
He nodded. They had told him she might have a headache following the surgery. "I’ll have them get you something for pain," he told her. "It might make you sleep again."
She shook her head with a deliberate carefulness that he recognized. "It’s not that bad," she told him. "It was a lot worse when we were dragging Apollo through the woods."
"I bet."
"Is he okay?"
Tyrol took a deep breath before answering. "I’m not sure," he admitted. "I’ve pretty much been here. I haven’t heard one way or the other. But the Commander’s been by a couple of times, and he didn’t seem too upset, so I don’t think he’s too bad off."
"Then it was worth it," she concluded.
"Was it?"
"There’s nothing we can do to change it," she said softly. "So there’s no reason to whine about it."
"Maybe."
"How’s Boxey holding up?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "They won’t let kids in the Life Station, so he’s staying with friends. He was mad that they put you here without letting him see you first. I think he’ll be okay once you’re out, though. He’s a tough kid."
She squeezed the hand that was still holding hers. "He’s had to be," she reminded him.
"I wonder how he’s gonna feel about a little brother or sister?"
She smiled at that. "We were right?"
"Yeah. The doc even did a scan while he had you out. He said everything looks good. He even took pictures, if you want to see them later."
She shook her head carefully. "I’ve had enough of pictures for a while," she admitted. "I’ll take your word for it."
He just smiled at her. Then she let out a heavy sigh. "What?"
"I’m off flight status," she told him. "They won’t let me fly pregnant."
"It’s not a permanent condition," he reminded her. "But you may not want to go back after the baby’s born. We’ll wait and see."
Her smile was soft and warm. "The baby," she murmured quietly. "Our baby."
"Our baby," he agreed, and leaned forward to give her the kiss he had wanted to since he’d walked into the room.
Kara shifted painfully in the chair and glanced back at the bed. He was still out. They had told her it might be a day or more before he was really alert — if that soon — but she didn’t want to leave. He might wake up, and she didn’t want to miss it.
Her back was killing her. Her neck didn’t feel very good either. She supposed Sharon was probably feeling the same aches and pains. Lee might be lean, but he wasn’t light. It had taken pretty much all of their considerable strength to get him to the Raptor. She planned to tease him about that when she got the chance. Or maybe not. She didn’t want him to think she was complaining.
Shifting her weight again, trying to relieve the pressure to her back, she failed to find a comfortable position. She had thought about asking for something, but she was already tired and knew that anything would put her out. The doc had checked her over, and hadn’t found anything more than a bunch of scratches she had received in the brush and some mild fatigue and dehydration. She hadn’t been really worried about it, but it had been good to hear.
Much of Lee’s problem had been the same thing. He’d been dehydrated — probably from the flight, despite their best efforts — and from there had gone into shock when he was cold and in pain. The doc couldn’t tell her if he would have made it much longer or not, but he had been grateful they found him when they did. The bleeding from his leg had been caused as much by her and Sharon’s pulling him through the woods as the shot he’d taken. And while he had been cold, he hadn’t yet truly been hypothermic. The shock had been the worst of it. It had been why his body shut down.
But they had still almost lost him on the trip back. When the Raptor had landed, his breathing had been so shallow and his heart so slow that the cold was probably all that had saved him. She was grateful that the doctors were quick, and the technicians qualified. The doc had promised her that he would be fine. A little frostbite, a little dehydration, but he would be fine.
So why wasn’t he waking up?
They hadn’t been able to answer that question. The doc had just told her that they couldn’t predict when he would wake, and he would do it when he was ready. So here she sat. Waiting. Still.
"How you feeling?"
The gravelly voice came from behind her and she stood both quickly and painfully. She couldn’t hide the wince, but she answered with a clear, "I’m fine, Sir."
"Sit down, Starbuck," he told her gently. "We’re not in CIC."
She nodded, but still felt uncomfortable. That was a switch. She hadn’t felt uncomfortable around this man since she’d been about six years old. "Yes, Sir," she repeated, and gratefully sank back down to the chair.
"Still asleep?" he asked as he walked to the edge of the bed.
"Yeah."
"You should be doing the same thing," he told her with a sideways glance.
"I will," she assured him. "When I’m sure he’ll be okay."
Adama nodded, and reached out to pull the warming wrap up more firmly about Lee’s shoulders. He didn’t speak for a long time. He stood there, looking at his son, deep in thought. Kara didn’t interrupt. She kept looking over at Lee herself, just for the reassurance that he was here and he was alive. It was as though if she looked away, Lee would just be an illusion.
"I didn’t thank you," the Commander said softly, not looking at her. "I should have."
"I disobeyed orders," she reasoned. "You can’t exactly thank me for that."
"Maybe not, but you also brought him back. I thought I’d lost him," he murmured, then turned to face her. "Again."
She didn’t know what she should say to that, so she kept her silence.
"You were right," he finally told her. "He was alive. He wouldn’t have been much longer. And I suppose it should bother me more that you ignored regulations to do it. But I’m just glad to have him back."
She nodded. She felt the same way.
"It can’t happen again. My hands were tied. If Paul hadn’t stepped in…"
"I understand," she interrupted. "I thanked him."
"I’m glad, but that isn’t going to solve the problem. You cannot disregard orders. Not even when it’s personal. Sometimes there are things more important than anyone, even your family. Sometimes we have to look at the good of the people. It’s a hard lesson, but it’s one you have to learn. No one — not even Lee, as much as I love him — is worth risking the fleet for. Not you, not me, and not anybody else."
"Yes, Sir," she replied softly.
He turned back to Lee and smoothed the covers over him again. Then he turned to face her. "You need to get some sleep. He’ll be here when you wake up."
She took a deep breath before she spoke, knowing that she was taking a chance. "I would rather stay," she told him. "I’m off duty for the next two days — it’s regulation after a long patrol — so it really doesn’t matter if I wait a while to sleep. I’ll go if it’s an order, but if it’s not I want to stay."
"I won’t order you to leave," he said gently. "But as your Commander I recommend it."
"And as Lee’s dad?"
He gave her a careful smile. "Let me know when he wakes up. I am on duty in a few hours, and I should at least try to sleep between now and then."
"I will," she answered. She stood again as he left the room, not just because it was proper form and he was her Commander, but because she had more respect for him now than she ever had. He wasn’t letting her off the hook — not that she had expected he would — and the discussion was probably not over, but at the very least he sounded like he understood.
As it turned out, she did sleep a little — off and on — in the chair. It wasn’t comfortable, but she didn’t care. A few hours later, her wait was rewarded as Lee began to move around some. He shifted uncomfortably and shoved the blanket away. She stood up and went over to cover him back up. As she reached for the warming cloth, she felt his hand on hers.
"Hey," he croaked softly. He didn’t have much of a voice.
She found that her throat was too tight for words. This was what she had waited for, what she had threatened the fleet for, but now that it had happened it was all she could do to keep herself together.
"The fleet?" he asked.
"We’re fine. The jump went off without a hitch about twelve hours ago. Everyone’s refueled, and we’re on the way to a planet that’s rich in raw tylium. We’ll be set in a few weeks.
He nodded, relief clear on his features, then asked, "Are you okay?"
"That should be my question," she finally said as she turned her hand over to hold his tightly. "You gave us a pretty good scare."
His eyes closed and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to put the pieces together. She knew the moment coherence hit, because his eyes opened and he stared at her directly. "I’m alive," he stated unnecessarily.
"Looks that way," she agreed.
He turned his head slightly to take in his surroundings, his hand tightening on hers as he did so. She didn’t mind. She’d give him whatever time he needed. She’d give him whatever she could. "How?"
She closed her eyes, knowing she couldn’t face him for this. "We’ll talk about it when you’re better," she suggested hopefully. "It’s a long story."
He was silent for a long time. So long that she finally opened her eyes to look at him. When she made eye contact, he spoke. "I’m not going anywhere, so you may as well tell me now."
So much for getting out of this. "Sharon and I jumped back in the Raptor," she explained. "We checked the only spot with low life signs in the forest, and found you huddled in that rock. We brought you back."
She could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t buying it. He knew very well what the mission had been, and what it had not entailed. "You took a Raptor back to a Cylon base?"
"No," she answered. "We stayed clear of the base. We came in by the Vipers."
He closed his eyes again and she thought for a moment that he was going back to sleep. She thought about going to get the chair, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of his hand. So she stood there, with him resting and her heart beating entirely too fast. She had no clue why.
"That was a stupid thing to do," he finally said. His eyes opened slowly, but she couldn’t meet them.
"So I’ve been told," she admitted. "Repeatedly."
"And loudly, I’d imagine." At her nod he continued, "How much trouble are you in?"
"Enough," she said softly. "Don’t worry about it. I kept my wings, and there’s no court martial planned. I don’t think your father has decided what to do about it."
"That bad?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "It’s over. I’ll take the consequences."
"You always have," he said on a sigh. "You spend more time in the brig than in your bunk."
"Hey, I’ve been pretty good lately," she corrected
"But when you blow it, you blow it big."
She had known he would react this way. He had spent most of his youth getting her out of one jam or another, and as an adult had watched with either silence or humor as she made a mess of her career. But so long as she didn’t cross certain lines, he kept his mouth shut and his opinions to himself. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for speaking out this time. It had been his mission. He knew what was supposed to happen, what wasn’t, and how serious going back could be.
"I know," she said softly. "But I can’t tell you I’m sorry."
He squeezed her hand again and she closed her eyes to try to stop the tears that were starting. She didn’t have much success, so she used her free hand to brush them away quickly. She must be too tired, she reasoned. She didn’t cry. Well, she didn’t cry often. Lately she’d set some new records.
"I’ll tell you what I told your father," she said with a sniffle and another useless swipe at the tears on her face. "I’m sorry for putting the fleet in danger, but I won’t apologize for going back. I couldn’t leave you there. I…" She stopped before she could embarrass herself further.
Lee released her hand to reach up and brush a few of the tears away himself. He wasn’t anymore successful than she had been, but he didn’t take his hand away. He left it there, settled on her cheek with his fingers reaching up into her hair.
She could have pulled away. She could have turned around and walked out so that he didn’t see her this way. But this was Lee, and he’d seen her fall apart before. He’d held her when she lost herself over Zak, and he had never laughed at her or made it into a joke. He had simply held her, grieving with her, just as she had held him. He understood. He had always understood.
She hadn’t cried much as a child. She had been tough by necessity. But there were times when she would be so furious at cruel children, or so upset about not being able to do something she wanted to, that she just lost control. He had always been the one to dry her tears with his no-nonsense attitude and remind her that she was fine. Zak had teased her out of the low moods, so they often came back at the worst possible times, but Lee had just let them run their course, handed her a towel, and then asked if she was okay. He hadn’t judged, and hadn’t often lectured. He had just been there.
And that was exactly what he was doing now. He wasn’t talking, wasn’t yelling, and he wasn’t judging. He was just there. And this, she knew, was why she couldn’t leave him to die. This was why she had risked everything to keep him with her.
Gradually the tears did stop, and she sniffed a stuffy nose and rubbed dry her puffy eyes. She tried to give him a smile, and to let him know she was fine, but she didn’t have it in her. She didn’t know if she was fine. He must have known it to, because for the first time in memory he didn’t ask her if she was okay.
When the tears had run their course, and she could once again breathe through her stuffy nose, he ran a thumb over her cheekbone before lowering his hand. "You need to get some sleep," he told her softly.
She nodded, but she didn’t leave. She just reached down and took his hand back in both of hers and held on. "You need to sleep, too."
His mouth quirked at that. "I’m the one in a bed," he reminded her.
She shrugged one shoulder but still didn’t leave.
"At least sit down," he suggested.
She decided she could live with that. She reached back with one foot, wincing as she stretched her back and neck in just the wrong way, and pulled the chair over to sit on. She did so tentatively, never taking her hands off his.
He had the good sense not to try to run her out. He just let her hold his hand and closed his eyes to sleep. She sat there for a long time, watching his steady breathing and sleep softened expression. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave. She needed to call down to CIC and leave a message for his father that he was awake. She should probably let the doctor know as well, just in case there was anything they needed to do. Come to think of it, she probably needed to get her uniform changed because she was feeling more than a little itchy.
But what she did was scoot up close to the bed, tighten her grip on Lee’s hand, and lay her head down on her arms. In moments, she was sound asleep.
Chapter 8
His leg hurt, his hands were sore, and his back was stiff. But Lee Adama really didn’t care anything about that. He was alive, when he had no right to be. Complaining about the state of that life was not only pointless, but it was also ungrateful.
He shifted his body once more, finding balance on the awkward crutches, and wincing as they rubbed against the bare skin under his arms. He had managed to get his undershirt on, and the bottom part of his uniform, but the top was hanging down from where the buckle secured his pants at his waist. It wasn’t regulation, but he didn’t figure it was anything to be worried about.
But he did have things on his mind that worried him, and they would not be pushed onto the back burner much longer. Kara wasn’t doing very well. Physically, she was fine, but mentally she was on some kind of a down slope that had him very concerned. She hadn’t left his hospital room for more than a few minutes at any point since he’d awoken. She nibbled a few bites off the plates they brought him, but she refused to really eat. She laid her head down on her arms when he slept, but she never really went to sleep herself. For three days, she had been his shadow and while he loved the company, he didn’t know what had put her in this frame of mind. She wasn’t even reporting for duty, and while apparently that wasn’t an issue, neither was it like her.
Kara had been in trouble of one kind or another since he’d known her. She was always either mouthing off to a teacher, questioning a patrol officer, or hitting a kid that got on her nerves. She tended to strike first and think later, and it was part of that nature that made her so damn good in the cockpit. It was hell on a career though. She knew that. And he also knew that she had accepted that part of herself along with all the rest.
Kara simply wasn’t an average woman. She never would be. She wouldn’t dress up in high heels and fancy gowns, and she’d never paint her face or her fingernails. She didn’t have patience for that stuff, and as a young man he’d been very grateful not to have to put up with a "sister" that was like the ones he heard about all the time. Kara had been just like him and Zak — ready for action and ready to get things done.
Okay, perhaps he’d been irritated a time or two because she couldn’t follow a rule even when it held her hand. She would look at the book and then deliberately do the opposite just because she could. It didn’t matter that her way was often better, as a youth he’d been disgusted that she couldn’t just comply with what the rest of them did. In fact, he’d resented more than once that her unorthodox approach got her rewarded as much as it got her into trouble.
But he’d still been a friend, and brother, and even a partner in crime when she offered him the opportunity because there was something undeniably attractive about the attention she received. She had managed to get things done, and he’d admired that. She still did. And despite the danger she had placed the fleet in, and despite her own reaction to the crimes she’d committed, he couldn’t help but be grateful that she had thought enough of him to come back. If he could have changed it — changed the laws she’d broken or the guilt she was mired in — he would have. But the final outcome was something he felt he could live with. She would get over whatever was taking her apart, and when she did things would be back to normal.
That was all in the future, though. For the present, he was doing his best to get used to crutches in order to support the weight that his leg did not want to bear. The shot hadn’t really been deep, but it had been more than a flesh wound. It had burned through muscle and nerve tissue, and it would be a long time in healing. He couldn’t help being thankful that Kara had given him the time he needed to heal.
He had finally run her out of his room. There was no way he was going to manage a top bunk, and no bottom bunks available in quarters. She had offered to switch with him, so he had sent her ahead to get her junk moved up top, and bring his things down where he would be able to reach them. It had been a pretty trivial errand, but the only way he could think of to get her out from underfoot long enough for him to get clean clothes on. She had been like an extra appendage for the last couple of days — there, but not really necessary — and he was getting to the point that he needed some space. If he cared too much about her to tell her that outright, he tried not to read too much into it.
But he did care. He cared that she was the first face he’d seen when he woke up, and he cared that she’d been there when he’d needed something for pain or couldn’t reach something he wanted. She wasn’t an annoying person — she didn’t have any fussiness in her — but instead she was a quiet and comforting presence. She got him to smile, to laugh, and to be grateful despite his aching leg that he was here to gripe about it.
He hadn’t realized just how much her presence really meant until she’d left. He had been the one to send her out — not wanting her to watch his first fumbling efforts on the crutches or his bare backside as he changed clothes — but now he was missing her attention and humor. He had to admit that it was nice being the center of someone’s universe, even if it was only for a few days. Once she was back on her feet, she’d be running at top speed again. He was looking forward to the time that he could run with her.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t been running at all. He wasn’t sure why that one fact seemed so significant, but for some reason it was. She had been with him essentially every moment, so she couldn’t have been out running in the mornings. He hadn’t known her to miss a morning run since the war had begun — at least not unless she’d been very sick or ridiculously tired. She was no longer moving around like an old woman, grimacing at every shift in position, but neither was she bouncing around like the Kara he knew and loved
And loved.
Where the hell had that come from? It was a figure of speech of course, but for some reason the idle thought seemed to stick in his head and not budge. Did he love her? Well of course he did. He had for a very long time. He had resigned himself years ago to the idea that she would just always be a part of him, one way or another. Whether friend or sister or whatever she managed, he did love Kara.
But there was something else in the feelings he had for her of late. It wasn’t lust. He knew that feeling — although it had almost been long enough for him to forget it — and that wasn’t what he felt for Kara. Yes, she was good looking, and sweet, and she had a strength that he found to be a lot more appealing than the pretty princesses that he’d fallen in love with as a boy. He didn’t mind being near her, holding her, or touching her, but it wasn’t that same adolescent urge that he’d fought through flight school and slightly beyond. She wasn’t a body to him. At least, she wasn’t just a body.
But she wasn’t just a friend, either, and that was what had him going around in circles. She was more than that. Much more. And yes, he did love her, and he did rely on her, probably more than was good for him in a wartime situation. It was that feeling — that uncertain classification — that had helped him understand why she would put her entire career on the line and go back into enemy fire to save him. Quite simply, she felt the same way that he did. And it was impossible to reason it out because it wasn’t a feeling that was based on any kind of logic that he knew.
She was willing to do anything for him, just as he was willing to do anything for her. As they had been when they were children, they were dedicated to keeping one another out of trouble and into action. It was only the kind of action that had significantly changed.
Lee moved himself back to the bed following his third lap around the tiny Life Station alcove and seated himself tentatively. The pain wasn’t as bad as it had been when he’d first stood, but it wasn’t anything to grin about either. He laid the crutches on the bed beside him and reached for the overshirt to put atop the undershirt he was wearing. The temperature on the Galactica was back to normal — a rather uncomfortable chill — rather than freezing cold that had been necessary when fuel had been so low. Not that the warmth wasn’t welcome, but at the moment it wasn’t enough. After a couple of hours stuck in the rock, he doubted that he’d ever be warm again.
"You ready?"
His head popped up at the voice he had been half expecting to hear. She was back. What he couldn’t get past was the relief that washed over him when he heard it. He’d been the one to send her away. She had been gone only half an hour. There was absolutely no reason he should have missed her.
"Mostly," he answered.
"Need something warmer?" she asked simply.
He wondered when she had become a mind reader. When she handed him the long sleeved shirt that they usually put under their flight suits for cold duty assignments and Viper patrols, he decided that maybe she had always been one.
"I’m still not warm," she told him by way of explanation. "And I was moving the whole time I was down there. You must still feel like an icicle."
"Yeah, I do," he admitted. He tugged the shirt on over the ones he was already wearing, then carefully stood to pull the top up on his uniform. He had nearly hit the floor when Kara stepped forward and tugged a crutch from where he’d placed it on the bed and set it beneath his arm. He raised a brow, but gratefully used the extra support to maneuver his top on, and then switched it to the other side to get his other arm in. Zipping with one arm wrapped over the crutch was another matter.
"Oh, for Lord’s sake," she muttered as she stepped forward and zipped up his uniform for him. "If you don’t develop some balance, you’ll never be able to dress yourself."
He just grinned. "You can do it for me," he told her with a wink.
But she didn’t give him the sarcastic comeback he had learned to expect from her. In fact, the color on her cheeks could have either been a blush or fury, and he decided to change the subject as quickly as possible to prevent the remark from sparking a fight.
"You get the room switched?"
"Yeah, you’ve got bottom bunk. You’ll probably have a permanent bruise at the end of a week. How long before you can climb again?"
"Salik says no duty for a month," he grumbled. "He didn’t say anything about climbing ladders, but I’d say that’s probably about the same. I don’t see what the big deal is, though. It really doesn’t even hurt that much."
"Good drugs," she answered, and reached for the small tote bag that she’d brought him the day before. It held what he’d needed in the way of toiletries, the uniform he was wearing, and even a pair of boots that he hadn’t bothered to even try on. Bending just hurt his leg too much.
"Need help with the shoes?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I’m just gonna take them off when we get there, so there’s no reason to bother."
She nodded and made a final glance around the room. "Get everything?"
"I guess so."
She nodded and led the way from the alcove and into the Life Station. They passed without comment from there into the main Galactica corridor. Once in the primary ship walkway, Lee found himself stopped repeatedly by one person or another to welcome him back, ask how he was, or just give him a hard time in general. He considered it to be a good thing, as a few months before they likely wouldn’t have bothered to say a word if he’d broken every bone in his body. Kara had been instrumental in getting him accepted with the crew — as more than just the Commander’s son — and while he was grateful he rather wished that there weren’t so many of them around at the moment. The corridor wasn’t short, and his leg had gone from aching to true pain a few minutes before.
Kara must have recognized the look on his face, because she sent the current well-wisher on his way with a quirky comment, then gestured for Lee to follow. Gratefully, he did so.
Back in quarters, she helped him settle the crutches in an accessible location, then kicked off her boots and climbed up to his old bunk even as he sank down on hers. He noticed that she’d left his boots at the foot of the bed. "Thanks," he told her, and knew he didn’t have to specify the help, the company, or running interference with pilots in the hallway.
"No problem," she assured him. "Just get some sleep."
He nodded at that and lifted first his sore leg, and then the other, up onto the bed. She had turned back the covers before she’d come for him. He noticed that there was a small stack of blankets at the foot of the bed also.
"How about you?" he asked softly. He didn’t see anyone in the quarters, and it was often vacant this time of day, but he couldn’t be sure.
"I’m resting," she told him.
"Resting or sleeping?"
She let out a sigh that was more revealing than an answer would have been. "I don’t sleep much, Lee," she told him honestly. "It’s easier to just lay here and try not to think."
He looked up at the underside of her bed, his brow furrowed. "Nightmares."
"Not exactly," she explained. "Just not good thoughts. As long as I keep moving it doesn’t bother me."
"Need another blanket?" he asked, remembering how the cold had kept him awake so often in the life station.
"I have four here," she admitted.
"Still cold?"
She didn’t answer for a long moment. "I’m always cold," she whispered.
He knew what she meant. With another glance around the empty quarters, and a quick look at his watch, he made a decision.
"Come down here a minute."
She hung her head down, looking at him upside down. "What do you need?"
"Just get down here," he told her in exasperation. You couldn’t do a thing for the girl without answering an inquisition.
With a sigh the echoed his, she climbed down the ladder and sat on the edge of the bed. As soon as she was seated, he hooked one arm around her waist and tugged her back onto the bed and into his body, her back to his front.
"What are you doing?" she squealed.
"What does it look like," he countered, tugging one of the blankets up over the two of them.
"Looks like you’ve lost your mind," she grumbled, but he noticed that she wasn’t resisting. Instead, she had laid her head down on his arm and was settling comfortably against him.
"Nope," he argued. "Just getting warm."
"This isn’t a good idea," she told him, but there was little protest in her words.
"Probably not," he whispered in her ear. "But I’m tired, and I’m cold, and if I don’t get some sleep I’m gonna go nuts."
She gave a soft "Hhrumph", but no actual words.
"And if you don’t get some sleep," he continued softly. "I’m going to get worried. You haven’t had more than a nap in days. I know — I’ve been right with you. So put your head down, close your eyes, and humor me."
"What if someone comes in?"
He took a deep breath and let it out, her hair stirring in the process. "Then they see two fully clothed adults sleeping in the same bed," he admitted. "I honestly think the sleep will be worth any rumors that would start."
She made another frustrated sound, but she had stopped moving. His nearness was warming her up, just as it was warming him. He reached down and grabbed another of the blankets she had stacked, flipped it open, and spread it over the others that were covering them. Within moments, the tiny cocoon they had created was warm and comfortable.
"Nice?" he asked quietly.
She didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to. Her body was relaxed as it only was in sleep, her breathing regular and deep. He smiled to himself, liking the fact that he could do this for her, and liking even more than she would let him.
He made sure the blankets were snug around them, then on impulse he leaned up to peek down at her face. Her eyes were closed and features relaxed, and for the moment she looked very sweet. He couldn’t resist a smile at the peace he finally saw in her features. She deserved this. They both did. He leaned down and kissed her cheek gently, feeling soft, warm skin against his lips. He didn’t question how right it felt, just put his head down behind hers, tightened his hold around her waist, and closed his eyes to join her in sleep.
William Adama walked the length of the main Galactica passageway at a moderate pace. The tech in the life station had told him that Lee was discharged, and he’d been a little disappointed that his son hadn’t called him. No, he wasn’t a boy, but asking a family member to help you get back to your room wasn’t out of line when you were badly hurt. Or it shouldn’t have been.
Although his son was already in quarters, he decided that he could at least check in on him and see if he needed anything. Kara was likely around, as she had been for the past few days, but there were certain things a man wasn’t likely to as a woman for unless they were on far more intimate terms than he believed Kara and Lee were on. They were close, yes, but he didn’t think she was washing out his underwear just yet.
He knocked softly on the hatch to Blue Squadron’s quarters, but there was no reply. He normally didn’t just burst in on his pilots, not wanting to send them all flying to attention in what was really their only home, but he wanted to check on Lee, and Commander or not he felt that he had that right.
He eased the hatch open carefully, peeking into the darkened bay. There must not be anyone wandering around, because the motion sensors hadn’t brought the lights up to a regular level. This was one of the ways that the Galactica conserved energy — minimal lighting in unused areas — but it wasn’t one that he often considered informative.
Regardless of light levels, he stepped into the quarters and walked softly towards Lee’s bunk. As expected, the top was empty. Lee couldn’t have made it up that high with a bum leg. What he hadn’t expected was the sight that greeted him on the bed directly below.
Lee was there, buried under several blankets with his head poking out to rest on a pillow. In front of him — tightly, if he did say so himself — Lee’s arm was wrapped around Kara Thrace. She was snuggled back into his body as though she belonged there, her head resting on one of his arms, his cheek resting against her hair. While he watched, Kara murmured in her sleep restlessly. Without even waking, Lee lifted the arm from her waist, ran his fingers across her cheek to move her hair out of the way, and placed a gentle kiss just behind her ear before returning the arm to its careful imprisonment of her body. Kara took a breath, let it out on a sigh, and eased herself further back into his arms.
William Adama smiled gently as he backed out of Blue Squadron’s quarters and closed the door behind him. He wasn’t sure what to think about what he had just seen. Had it been anyone else, he just might be speculating about what was going on in the co-ed quarters. Had it been anyone else, he might have questioned the wisdom of keeping single warriors together with the opposite sex. Had it been anyone else, he might have wondered if relationships were such a good idea with a war so unpredictable and supplies so limited.
But it wasn’t anyone else. It was his son, and the closest thing to a daughter that he’d ever had. If fate had been kinder, she would have been his daughter three years ago, but it hadn’t happened. The irony was that as much as he had loved Zak, he had always thought that Kara really had more in common with his oldest son. She and Lee were both stubborn, both fighters, and both pilots to the marrow of their bones. They were also a good mental match, both bright and creative, each managing to fill the gaps in the other’s weaknesses. Ten years ago, if he had been looking for the perfect match for Lee, he would have picked Kara.
But five years ago, his youngest son had announced an engagement that had thrown his fatherly wondering into a spin that never really recovered. He had realized that it was Zak who was in love with Kara — not Lee — and that perhaps they saw something that a father had not. He had grieved for more than the loss of his son three years ago when Zak had been lost. He had lost not only his son, but also the possibility of a daughter and possibly grandchildren.
And this evening, the long lost possibility of Kara joining the family in fact as well as in heart had been rendered moot. She might not be related by blood or marriage, but Lee knew quite well what William had forgotten in the tradition of age. Love had nothing to do with marriage or blood.
It looked like his son was indeed in love. William didn’t know if he even knew it, but it was quite obvious in the way that — even in sleep — he held her, heard her, and comforted her. That wasn’t something that came from a simple friendship. He had known that Kara loved Lee for years, but until she had risked her career and the lives of fifty-thousand people, he really hadn’t understood the degree of that love.
Now he did. He didn’t know if that made things easier or harder as a commander. He didn’t know if it made things better or worse as a father. But he did know that for tonight, in Blue Squadron’s quarters, two warriors were there for each other in a way that could not be equaled. And William Adama decided that whatever that meant, it could not be a bad thing.
After all, wasn’t humanity what made them better then the ones they were fighting? And wasn’t love what made them human?
The end J