In the Whole World: Chapter 16, "A Cause"
Chapter16/?
Words: ~6,100
A/N: Courage! Tragedy! Revelation! A new mission! A return! All is being set up for the rest of the story. Sorry it's taken me a while; I've had a bit of a week. Got a long one here, though, so sink your teeth in when you've got a minute, y'all.
"Still no word from the admiral?" Galen Tyrol leaned back against a table in the CIC. He didn't sound it, but his heart was beating quadruple time. How long before the idiots outside find a machine that can cut a hole in the hull and overwhelm us?
"The old tiger's got a lot of cunning yet, Chief," Saul Tigh grunted, undoubtedly intending to sound comforting-a feat he hadn't yet managed, in the time since Starbuck had disappeared, Apollo had been arrested, and the admiral had gone missing. "He released Sarah Porter without being discovered. He'll find his way here."
Helo was unconvinced. "How? We're two hundred yards from Colonial One. The guns on the field mean it may as well be two hundred klicks. And they have anti-aircraft guns out there now." He drummed his fingers on the bench beside him. "The real question is, how are we gonna get Apollo out of hack so we can get the frak out of here?"
Tyrol nodded. "And where's Baltar?"
"Frak Gaius Baltar." The Chief winced, but even he didn't plead Caprica and Baltar's case. That pair had an uncanny talent for survival, and no talent at all for making friends.
Helo shook his head. "We've got a bigger problem. We have to ask ourselves." He leaned across the table. "Can we really leave here without either of the Adamas? What will that do to the new settlement's morale?" And to ours?
He didn't need to say the last part; they were all thinking it.
Saul scowled and kicked the heavy chest at Galen's feet to distract them. "What do you have in there that's so all-fired important, anyway, Chief?" Galen had refused to be parted from it even for seconds, since he'd made his way through Starbuck's tunnel to Galactica.
The Chief shrugged. "Starbuck's notebooks. She was writing down everything Sam said, you know. The contents of Apollo's safe-I ducked in when the natives out there got restless. And some research I've been doing about…" he let out a sharp breath, determinedly avoided Helo's eyes. "About the creation of Models Seven and Eight."
Helo's lifted his chin, scenting something in the air, as Saul's scowl grew improbably deeper. "Surely that's better left in the past."
"It's not past." Galen gave up his determination to hold it in, to spare Saul, and especially Ellen, the pain of it. "I saw him tonight, Saul. I swear I did. Up on top of the temple. With Apollo."
"You saw…" Saul swallowed, didn't let himself be led. "Who?"
"Daniel." The Chief rubbed his forearms briskly. "Or maybe it was Nathaniel, or Gabriel, or Uriel, or…"
"Who are you talking about?" Helo fought the urge to go find his wife, who was reuniting with Hera in their quarters after too long an absence. She'd be interested by this conversation, he suspected. "Does this have anything to do with the Petra Project?"
"How the frak do you know about Petra?" Saul demanded. "Has Sharon remembered something?"
"She's remembered that she forgot something."
The Chief's brows raised his buzz cut a quarter inch off his head. "I need to talk to her."
"Well. I don't get to choose whether she talks to you." Karl's tone reminded them that Sharon had made his non-vote in her decisions perfectly clear, of late. "But-is remembering Petra-whatever it is-a good idea? For her?"
The Chief and Saul exchanged a long glance, and even in these two men, Helo could read the fear in it. "Probably not," the Chief conceded.
Helo looked away, blinking rapidly. "She's with Hera."
The Chief didn't waste time with more words, just strode out of the room.
When Helo looked back at Saul, he was horrified to see that the obdurate old colonel had his head buried in his hands. When Tigh raised it, it was to snap at the guard at the door. "Get my wife. Now."
Even as he did, Hoshi came rushing in, a short-wave wireless connector in hand. "Encrypted message from Colonial One, sir. I confirmed it-it's the admiral!"
Saul wrested the radio from Hoshi's hands. "Bill, where the frak are you and what are you up to?"
As Helo, Hoshi and the colonel listened to the admiral's sitreport, their brief surge of optimism dissipated abruptly.
Lee knew, before he opened his eyes, that he was in a cell. It smelled like metal, it sounded like bureaucracy, it felt like death.
When he did open them, it was still a little shocking to see Olivia Valerii, condemned to die any day now, crouched beside him.
Well. That meant he was in the large holding cell on Colonial One, where they'd moved her several days before to await last rites. So. Galactica hadn't been captured, or else they undoubtedly would have thrown him in its brig with a few dozen other rebels.
That was something. If his shoulder and soul hadn't taken such a beating, it might even feel that way.
"You OK, Apollo?" Olivia asked quietly.
There were guards, past two walls of glass, and not facing their direction. He remained on his back to avoid attracting their attention before he had to. Think fast, Apollo. Helo's team had been out on that open field; they weren't here, so they might have escaped. And Saul Tigh must still be aboard Galactica; if Lee knew the colonel, he wouldn't leave without Bill Adama. So where was his father? And Kara…
Kara.
He cut himself off, forcing his thoughts to regain in motion what she'd lately cost him in faith.
"Have you heard any chatter about the Hitei Kan or the Greenleaf?"
If she was surprised that these were his first conscious words, her tone didn't say so. "Both captured by rebel forces last night. The guards who dragged you in here said your rebels are winning the standoff because the government doesn't have access to anything that can fly." She shrugged. "Cylons and rebels have been evacuating up to the ships in Raptors, with cover from Vipers, for the last hour. I think they shot down a Viper or two, though. I heard some cheering."
Frak. Nothing ever came easy, he reminded himself. Still, if they had access to Galactica, Hitei Kan and the Greenleaf, they controlled nearly all of the tylium left on Earth. There were few greater advantages. Anyway, Lee could hardly bring himself to care about the dangers ahead. He was in a mood to get shot at.
But one thing was important, here, before he did what he had to.
"Did you kill Sharon Valerii, Olivia?"
She met his gaze without a hint of evasiveness.
"No. When she was shot, in that control room… I couldn't have saved her."
Lee believed that she believed that, and he saw the sorrow behind the calm conviction in her eyes. "Then would you like to help me break out of this place?"
He recognized the expression that sprang to her face from the halls of the battlestar, from the pillow beside him after he'd married, from his own mirror: hope made of ice, cold and transparent and fragile.
"Where… where would we go?" she asked cautiously.
"To the Hitei Kan." He hadn't sat up yet, but he was on autopilot. He felt what he always felt: Kara Thrace tugging him one way, the rest of the world, another. His training would get him through it. He responded as he always had. "We'll resettle with the evacuees across the sea. They'll need all the help they can get."
When Lee closed his eyes, this time, it wasn't to fool the guards into thinking he was still unconscious. He was thinking about starting all over again with a fraction of the resources. About whether they'd be pursued, whether this war would last forever. About how many of these people were evacuating out of loyalty to his father's name. To his godsdamned name. About how hard a time the old man would have, torn away even from Laura's grave.
He was built differently than the old man, in that respect. Lee was deeply relieved to think he'd never have to look at that house Kara had built, ever again. That was the feeling, wasn't it, that odd, knotted heat and lightness clutching his chest-relief?
Feel it later, Captain. All those evacuees believed they needed him. That need had no bottom, would never have a bottom. He concentrated on them.
His shift of focus was, for him, an ancient gesture. You can count on me, he heard his own voice telling the new President Laura Roslin a thousand years before, struggling for conviction to match the words. Of course I can. You're Captain Apollo.
Captain Apollo's obligations didn't end just because his last glass hopes had broken.
"I'm with you," Olivia Valerii whispered.
He opened his eyes.
Caprica was a vision of calm. She was the essence of serenity. She was the very soul of composure.
She was dying inside, but her husband wouldn't have been able to bear it, so she buried it deep beneath several strata of tranquility.
"Nine weeks early. It's too soon." Gaius kept his back to her, facing Bill Adama's fireplace, as he erupted with this observation for the third time.
"Hera was five weeks early. It might just be that the pregnancies are shorter-"
"Hera was born in a hospital-a second-rate military hospital floating in uncharted space, but still a frakking hospital, with medics, and incubators-"
"We don't have those things here."
"No frakking kidding!" He paced back and forth across Bill Adama's living room. "There's a civil war outside, and if those Vipers falling out of the sky are any indication, it isn't going particularly well, and we're trapped here without any access to the rest of the universe. The number of things we don't have here is approximately infinite. In fact-"
"Another contraction is starting, Gaius." She leaned back against the couch, projecting herself to a clean, sanitary medical chamber. And she kept her tone perfectly mild, even though she wanted to scream, more from frustration than pain. She gritted her teeth. "Would you mind thinking about disinfectants? Maybe the admiral has a bottle of wine around here."
"This is what I'm talking about. It's pure fiction, and I'd expect you, of all people, to know it, the idea that you can disinfect actual wounds with table alcohol-"
"Have you ever assisted in a live birth, Gaius?"
"What, do you think I moonlighted as an obstetrician while I was reinventing modern communications technology? Of course I haven't-"
"On the farm. With your father."
"With my-" He bit off his own words. "Well, of course. Cows, sheep, the odd donkey. You don't seriously-well, but you're quite right, of course, on some level it isn't all that different, not that you have much in common with a sheep, mind you, but-"
"And what would you need if I were a sheep? Think, Gaius, there isn't much time."
He finally met her eyes, and she let him see the fear buried there. "I believe you are about to be the only Cylon left in this settlement, my dear, because if the wireless is right, even the Twos have evacuated, now," he said at a whisper. "And I have no idea how we're going to escape this situation alive."
"One of one and a half, Gaius," she rubbed a hand roughly over her abdomen. "A problem at a time, if you don't mind."
The doctor shook his head, cleared it. "Right. One and a half. Two. All three of us. Sheep. Right." And Gaius, finally, set about preparing to welcome his son into the world, as his wife began, cool pacificity all but radiating from her, to pray to their God.
"How do you know you didn't just kill that guard?" Olivia hissed at Lee as they crouched in a lodging recess four hallways portside of the holding cell.
"I don't."
"Then how did you get off being so worked up about whether I let Sharon die?"
"That guard was an enemy."
"And enemy lives are worth less than ours."
She sounded like he had, in War College. "No. But you take stock of them at a different time. And that time is not now." A decade later, Lee could hear his own father in his tone, and grimaced at it.
But the old man's problem had been choosing targets, not accuracy when shooting, after all. Agreeing with the admiral doesn't always mean you're wrong. You don't think that anymore.
He still needed the reminder. Her eyes glaring remonstrative holes into his face weren't helping.
"How did you pull off impersonating Athena for so long?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're not a lot alike, is all." Boomer would have concealed her skepticism at a moment like this, and Athena would have spoken it. Olivia's anger was in a contained, but honest, middle ground. She softened a bit at that, though.
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"The president's quarters. My father had the Chief install an escape pod right off of the presidential head-oh, around the time Baltar was exonerated. A safety precaution, for Laura." He blew out a breath, wishing that just once during his own tenure as president, he'd checked on that pod. At least something had stopped him from removing the tylium from it. "Just past the latrine, there's a false wall. We just have to hope Sarah Porter's team hasn't found it yet, and that it's L-4 functional."
"L-4?"
"Atmospheric flight." They were getting to the Hitei Kanone way or another. "Coming up on the hard part, now. We need to get past the guards at the entrance to the presidential suite without alerting the whole crew. And hopefully," he shot her a quelling glance, "without killing anybody."
But as they swung around the corner, leading with their guns, it was to find that the corridor was deserted, the presidential suite unguarded.
Lee frowned. "I wasn't even living here and I left guards up. The sensitive papers that come through here alone-"
Olivia broke her crouch and trotted gingerly to the door. "Well, we're in luck, then."
A tic pulsed through his jaw as he punched in his ID number. "Gods, they haven't even changed the damned codes yet," he breathed as the hatch popped ajar. He gave the door a hard look, then clicked the safety off his gun. "Cover me," he muttered.
They burst into the room to be confronted by a second surprise. Sitting calmly at a table across from President Sarah Porter was his father. There was a chess board in between the two of them. Judging by the pieces at the side of the table, his father was winning handily, though both of his priestesses were in danger and he'd already lost a senator.
"It took you longer than I expected, Lee," his father said mildly.
"There was a little matter of returning to consciousness."
His father grunted. "You escaped from your cell-before I could get to you-over an hour ago." His eyes flicked to Olivia. "I see you brought company."
"You know me. Sucker for victims of the state."
Now Sarah Porter scoffed. "She wasn't part of our deal, Bill. You for your son. That was the agreement. I can't let an unrepentant Cylon-and a murderer, on top of it!-escape justice. I won't."
"I didn't realize that you were the final arbiter of contrition, Madame President. In any case, your negotiating position hasn't improved since we made that deal-just the opposite." The admiral tilted his head toward Lee and Olivia's steady hands on their sidearms. "As before, the only thing you have on your side is my respect for democracy, such as it is."
Sarah Porter was sputtering an objection, but Lee's veins had gone to ice. "What deal did you make, Dad?"
"The one I had to, son." Bill gave one regretful look at the chess board, and got to his feet. "You-and Olivia-are going to get into that escape pod. You're going to use the coordinates already entered in nav panel. And you're going to get the frak out of Sarah Porter's godsforsaken colony."
Lee closed his eyes, at that. But Olivia's were grave and steady on his father. "And you, sir?"
"I'll release the president-in reality, this time. She'll place me under arrest and hold me on trial, for treason, in place of all of the evacuees, who will escape safely and will not be pursued."
Lee knew it was futile, but had to try. "Dad. We have the upper hand, here. She has no guards, no weapons-why don't we all get in the pod and evacuate to the Hitei Kan? We could even spare all these people the hassle of living in a theocracy and take her with us."
"These people elected her. She's their president." The admiral held up a hand. "Where's Starbuck, son?"
"She's…" Lee let the night wash over him again, and a tremor went through the arm holding his gun. "Something happened. A man came with the-with the frakking Horn of Cronus, and he blew it, and she just… she just disappeared. Like she said she would." He swallowed hard. "She's gone."
Lee had never believed it, when he read in stories, that people 'aged ten years all in one moment.' But his father did, just then. The last of his robust middle age was gone in that instant. His eyes sank inward, devastated, and then he turned his hollow sockets on his son.
"You need to go, Lee. Help build the new colony. This is your cause. Remember what I said."
Find a cause. "I remember. I will. I swear it."
"Admiral. This doesn't make any sense." It was Olivia who objected. "There's nothing to hold you here. And she'll have you executed, if you keep this bargain. Even you, sir. Maybe especially you, just to prove that she's in charge, now."
His father didn't react. "C'mere, son."
Lee felt his father's arms crush around him like a blanket falling over his full body and briefly blocking out the ambient light. For a moment, there was only the two of them-no old grievances, no defensive distance, no wary hostility.
He expected, reflexively, that his father would salute him, would say something that reminded them both that they were men of mission-"at ease, Major," his dad would say, and he would salute and nod and call him admiral and in sharing their sense of duty, they would show their love as they always had.
But this new world resisted it-it had demilitarized, and he and his father had simply become men, now, as much as they were soldiers, without noticing.
So all his father said was, "Sooner or later, son, the day comes when you can't…"
"I know it does. I know it."
"You'll do the right thing, Lee. I believe in you."
"I'll try my best. I'm sorry-I think I-I think sometimes I tried too hard-"
"You grew up the hard way. Not your fault. I love you, son. Always have, always will." Lee heard the respect, as well as the finality, in his father's words. And then there was that feeling again, a knot of heat and light. He gripped his weapon tightly.
Bill Adama sank back into his chair. "Shall we finish this game, Sarah?"
Lee shook his head ruefully. His father was five moves from winning, and he wanted to make them. If that wasn't just typical. His throat tightened almost past bearing.
"I love you, too, Dad." He jerked his head at Olivia. "Now or never."
"We can't just-you're not seriously going to let him-"
"Come on."
His father had already opened the wall to the escape pod, and there she was-the "Lark," as the Chief had christened her, because he'd built this one on the admiral's dare.
Now all that was left was to suit up, start it-she started without a hitch, Lee was relieved to see-and open up the airlock to the sky, just about to lighten from black to the darkest blue part of dawn.
Olivia settled into the ECO position of the oblong ship. "Why the frak are you letting him do this?"
Lee was swiftly refreshing himself on all the odd controls. They were designed for a layperson; he'd personally trained Laura Roslin on the use of its navigation controls. She'd struggled. Let's hope that when I run, you run, Major, she'd said with that hint of mischief that had seldom faded entirely from her eyes.
And now he was running.
"I know my father well enough to know when not to argue with him." Lee hung his head just a moment, and then adjusted the controls to roll the ship onto the forward end of the flight pod.
"But-we don't have to argue. He's out of his mind. We need to go back-to… to kidnap him-"
"He doesn't want to leave her, Olivia!" Lee's grief finally spilled out. "He won't leave the place where he buried Laura. And he thinks… at least this way, he gets to… to atone." The rhetoric of religion still felt foreign on his tongue, but there was no better word to describe the outcome of the old man's amassed weight of guilt and grief.
Lee was a man who knew that staying, and surrendering, could be a form of love. So he understood his father, finally, though he couldn't articulate it. "We launch in five." His voice was thick. "Ready the ECM."
Olivia shot him another dark glance. "Ready."
"OK. Here we go."
Their lift in the air was turbulent as Lee adjusted to the unfamiliar controls. The whole craft was shaking, and it reminded him of… something? What?
Because he couldn't stop himself, he turned the Lark's small window slightly, in the direction of the house Kara Thrace had built him here, on a hillside only a few miles from where she'd landed Galactica and saved humankind, built for a future that she'd imagined for him as a way of apologizing for the past they'd squandered.
The window moved as they rose and revealed, in the darkness, the dim outline of his father's cabin, with Laura Roslin's small white gravestone and its heap of memory stones nestled there beside it. That heap was what the old man wouldn't leave, and Lee didn't blame him. Leaving this place was making him sick. He didn't dare risk a glance at the temple.
But Olivia saw it, out of the rear observation view, and her head fell involuntarily against the glass. Some 'temple of unity', she thought. Still, it tugged at her heart, to abandon that dream of a harmonious future, Cylons and humans, side-by-side. It felt ominous and momentous to leave it. It felt like they were cheating fate, somehow.
PshooowAAAA!
Thesound of an anti-aircraft gun opening fire shook them both out of the hold that this piece of Earth had for them, though it didn't come close. It was time to go. He diverted power to the thrusters. And the craft swung end over end, so suddenly he was staring back at the swiftly-receding Earth as they jolted through the fiery sky.
It was familiar. A comfort. Lee Adama looked back at Earth like he was looking for something-for someone. For Starbuck. And that was it, that was the problem of sitting and staring out from this shaky vessel. It was a thousand memories, jumbled and simultaneous: Escaping the algae planet without knowing where the frak she was. Pulling up and out of the maelstrom after he'd seen her Viper erupt in fire. Frantically scanning the red moon on which she'd had crashed, looking for any trace, any bare thread of a hope that she might be alive…
And what happened then, Apollo? Laura told you to leave her behind, and you agreed. You asked yourself why'd you'd waited at all.
His fingers clenched around the nav controls as they broke the atmosphere and all but fell into the void of space. He thought of Kara, of what she'd said last night. You left me a hundred times over. You left me. You left me. You left me.
He exhaled, and with just a breath, the same span as that soft breath in which she'd disappeared, came clarity.
You fought the wrong war, Lee.
It had taken him so much frakking courage to stay. To wait for her, knowing she was in his brother's bed-to hold the fleet, and himself, in one place while she was lost on that moon-to walk steady, when she'd flown off for the frakking Arrow-to maintain his watch, when she'd married Anders. He'd sat at home, on Galactica, on the Pegasus, in his damn Viper, and had waited each time for her to come back.
It had felt, to him, like a kind of fidelity. And yes, it had taken everything he'd had; he'd thought he was forcing himself to stay, when all his pride and logic screamed that he should walk away from her. He'd stayed, and cursed her because she couldn't hear what his staying was telling her…
But he'd been wrong. No wonder that to Kara, his staying had felt like abandonment. You let me go. He knew what she meant, now.
He hadn't been stopping himself from walking away. That wasn't what had been so frakking hard. It had taken everything he'd had because he'd been forcing himself to stand down, instead of fight. He hadn't gone to her-hadn't made demands-hadn't flown into the frakking maelstrom that was Kara Thrace, even once.
He looked up, and there they were, the Hitei Kan and the Greenleaf, floating in steady orbit. Waiting for him.
"New mission," he said, and suddenly everything was instinct and so everything was easy. "You know what I said earlier, about the Horn of Cronus-have you heard of it?"
Who was this Eight that her eyes seemed to stare at him from the bottom of a deep well that was always almost run dry? "I know the legend," she said. "The Horn disorders time. Cronus built it so he could confuse Diana, move around the pieces of her life so that she wouldn't know that he'd betrayed her until just before she died. So she would stay with him."
"And if I told you it was real?"
"I've seen from Athena's memories that the Arrow of Apollo is… is something else, something not quite right," she said, "So I think the Horn could be. And the others, too-the Ring of Orpheus, the Shield of Atlas…."
Lee adjusted the wireless frequency, spoke into his comm link. "Hitei Kan, Greenleaf, this is Apollo. Requesting permission to board the Greenleaf."
"Welcome home, Apollo. We thought you might say that. Landing Bay C is prepared for your entry. Bear five-one-three, carom nine-eight-three."
"Roger that."
Olivia raised a brow. "What's going on, Apollo? I thought we were joining the evacuees on the Hitei Kan."
Lee switched off his wireless headset. "The Horn's real. It's why Kara's lost. In space, maybe also in time. She might be dead. Have been dead for a while. Be about to die." He set the DRADIS coordinates on the nav panel almost mechanically. "I don't give a frak. The Hitei Kan will find a new settlement without me. I'm boarding the Greenleaf, assembling a team. And we're going after her."
She nodded. "You can't let her go."
"Guess it's a family thing." Find a cause, Lee. He aimed the Lark for the landing bay, and all conversation ceased as he brought it to its loud, sudden halt on the too-short deck. He leaned back in his chair, rolled his injured shoulder painfully as the airlock closed behind them, and readied the repressurization module. "You can still go with the evacuees. We'll put you on a Raptor-"
She shook her head. "You saved my life. I'm with you, Apollo."
It took Lee and Olivia a while to disembark, and help the deck crew (such as it was, on this civilian vessel) figure out how to move and stow the Lark. So they didn't make it to the captain's quarters, to meet the Chief, Helo, and, to Lee's surprise and Olivia's utter shock, Sharon Valerii. The Chief forestalled any large-scale rehashing of Olivia's violation of Sharon's family and identity.
"Let's cut to the chase. There's been a change of plans." The Chief clapped Lee on his good shoulder to draw him all the way into the room, shooting a warning look at Olivia. "We need to make a quick run across the universe. To C City. We were hoping you'd join us."
Lee raised a brow, decided to hear him out. "What's in C City?"
"Answers," Sharon said grimly. She, too, was peering troubledly at the other Eight.
"And old friends," the Chief said.
"Maybe enough of an uncontaminated tylium supply that the new settlement won't be doomed," Helo threw in.
The Chief reached onto the table behind him, and held up something Lee recognized all too well-the Arrow of Apollo, poised to swing on the end of a pole like a weather vane. The one that man who'd taken the Horn had tossed at him. "You gotta keep better track of this thing, Apollo." He gave the Arrow a spin, and it pointed directly over Lee's shoulder. He spun it again, and it stopped in the same place. The third time, it was precisely the same.
It was a reason to hope, even if that hope was glass. "'The Arrow, which directs them to Elysium,'" Lee quoted softly. That man had left it for him, the man who'd lifted the Horn and blown Kara away. Maybe it was the key. "It's pointing at something, isn't it?"
"Yep. It's pointing us the way we came, buddy. All the time, like it's its job." The Chief looked almost gleeful, and suddenly Lee was smiling, too.
There was a loud clanking in the hall. Lee and Olivia spun to find a legion of Centurions marching past, not in any kind of formation. Galen saw where he was looking. "Oh, yeah, that's the kicker. They're insisting on coming, too. Unfinished business." Olivia shuddered, at that, but the Chief was undaunted. "Whaddaya say, Apollo? One last dance?"
"I'm in," Lee said finally. Using the Arrow was the right place to start, in any case. He wasn't going to find answers, here on Earth. "But I have my own mission." He put a hand on Olivia's shoulder. "And she's with me."
The Chief shot her a dubious glance. "Great." His tone said he didn't mean it. "We'll fill each other in on the way. No time to lose."
"Wait." Sharon held up a hand. "Karl and I drew straws. I'm staying with Hera. It's too dangerous for her, on Caprica. They don't even make radiation suits small enough for her." Now it was Lee's turn to shudder. "But I need to talk to Olivia before I head to the Hitei Kan." The two women melted into the corner, and Lee saw Sharon grasp Olivia's hand-for projection, he assumed-and heard Olivia let out a small cry just after she did.
"The admiral, Apollo?" Helo asked quietly.
"He's… staying here."
Helo's eyes squeezed tightly, at that. "The colonel's staying behind. Gonna try to change your old man's mind."
Lee's jaw clenched against stating the obvious-that it wouldn't do any good.
"What about Starbuck?" The Chief's voice spilled grimly onto her name.
Lee didn't hesitate. "I'm gonna find her."
Karl grinned, at that, but the Chief just sighed.
"We have a lot to talk about on the way," the Chief said. "And for now, we've got jumps to plot."
Sharon rejoined them and grabbed Karl's shoulder to pull him aside for a private moment. "Hey."
"Hey. Guess this is another goodbye, sweetheart."
"I'm not abandoning you, this time, Karl."
He raised a brow. "Really?"
"I'm trusting you. And trusting another Eight." She took a breath. "Trusting this Eight." Who, though she didn't say it aloud, had fooled him for months. She strove for humor. "I can't shoot 'em all, you know."
Karl winced. "Keep Hera safe. We'll be back before you know it."
"Karl."
"You can trust me. I'll prove it."
She nodded, but frowned. "Do you think you'll ever trust me, again?"
He looked away. "Maybe understanding where you're coming from'll help me out, on that one."
She pressed her lips together hard, at that, but held back her tears. "Yeah. Maybe."
"I've never loved anyone but you, you know. Just you-the parts of you that are in them-over and over…" He sighed. "I wish you could know what that's like."
"I…" She shook her head. "I can't even imagine." She reached for his hand, felt his ring there, stroked her thumb over it quickly. "Come back from Caprica without a scared, pregnant Cylon bride this time, OK?"
"One's plenty for me." He pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head, and then waited to shut her Raptor door behind her. "Stay safe," he mouthed.
He felt proud of himself when he didn't turn back to watch her go. It showed a kind of trust, he thought.
On the other side of the ship, in the Greenleaf's control room, the Chief entered their first jump's coordinates.
"What are you gonna do if you can't find her, Apollo?"
Lee was bent over the ship's manifest, open alongside its control manual. His shoulder was beginning to ache again, but he ignored it. He spared the Chief a brief glance. "Keep looking."
It wasn't only years of practice that kept Lee's face steady as they made their first jump back into the wide universe.
In the minutes just after dawn, Kara Thrace reappeared in the air over the Temple of Unity as suddenly as she'd disappeared a few hours before.
It felt damn good to set eyes on Galactica again. She never wanted to be more than a short flight or a few days' walk from it, for the rest of her life.
She scanned the ground beneath her warily. Ugh. Like Hephaestus Field after the pyramid championships. A godsdamned wreck. But no one was out, so the violence must be over, or at least at a lull. She winced to see the burned-out mess where the tent she'd shared with Lee had stood. And then she instinctively reached beneath her seat.
Frak, the care package is gone.
She knew what that meant: Lee had been right. She'd frakking skipped in time.
Kara set her wireless to an encrypted channel. Would anyone still be on Galactica? How much time had passed?
"Galactica, this is Starbuck. Do you read? I repeat, this is Starbuck." She entered her confirmation code swiftly.
"Starbuck." It was the Colonel's voice, and she breathed out a sigh of relief, though he sounded stricken. "Is that really you?"
"Yeah, it's me."
There was a long silence, and then: "Could you send that code again?"
"Wilco, Colonel." She scowled as she tapped her emergency ID numbers in one more time. "We've been around this block, Colonel-I leave for two months and when I come back, everybody thinks I'm a Cylon. Except this time we know that you already are one, so…"
"Alright, Starbuck, pipe down. Since you were only gone for…" She could almost hear him checking his watch. "…for about six hours, we didn't have time to develop any conspiracy theories-"
"Six hours?" Her heart pounded. Lee was right. "Of course I was. Frak." She let her eyes dart to the hills now. Frak, frak, frak. "Requesting permission to land, sir."
There was a crackle on the line, and then came Ellen's voice. "Come on home, Kara."
On the landing deck, they were waiting for her. They closed the bay manually behind her. She pulled off her helmet, shook out her hair, and sat in her closed Viper for a long moment before she steeled herself to face them. She hoisted herself out heavily and resisted Ellen's attempt to draw her into a hug.
"Kara. Where did you go?" the colonel demanded. "You just disappeared. Apollo went off, dead set on finding you. They jumped away not twenty minutes ago."
Twenty minutes. Six hours. Frak me. I was gone for two months!
She slumped back against her Viper. It was still warm. And Lee had brought it for her.
"What happened out there, Kara?" Ellen was gentle, like she was talking to an scared dog with bared teeth.
"Lee found me." She let the old colonel pull her into an awkward embrace, now, let him pull her in tight. And then came the tears, and the terror, and as regular as clockwork, the guilt. "I think I'm alive, Colonel," she forced through her dry lips.
That seemed important, since she couldn't do anything about all the people she'd left in another time, on another planet. About Daniel, or poor Leoben.
Or godsdamned Lee Adama, with his blue mandala eyes.
The colonel's arms tightened around her as she felt her knees start to go.
{ Next}