ONE

The sky was pricked with distant stars, and though they were hidden from the planet by a cover of clouds, all there knew that the stars were present – knew they always would be. As predictable as life itself. Continuous darts of light, making them guess what would be out there, what the next thing had in store for them. And those on the planet felt safe in that knowledge. Suddenly, the tranquillity of it all was disturbed by a bright flash of light. And the knowledge was lost forever.

The Galactica completed the FTL jump without problems and Commander Adama sighed with exhausted satisfaction. He could see the planet ahead of them – hopefully this one would provide a good source of supplies. It hung listlessly in its own orbit, clouds covering most of the surface. A sudden rending roar shook through the CIC, and Adama looked up sharply. The radios burst into crackling life with rapid voices and the sounds of combat.

"Apollo?" he asked into a headset.

"Not me," Captain Apollo replied. "Them. Look." Ahead of their fleet was a battle, raging in full blazoned colour. "Looks like Raiders, but what they've caught beats me." The Vipers and Raptors hovered close to the fleet, like some strange swarm of flies, as their pilots observed the scene. Small, iron-black fighter-ships were diving and twisting amongst the Raiders with unerring speed and skill. They were flat and arrow-head shaped, their sharp noses tipped with silver, and long stripes of colour – red, green, blue or yellow – ran down the middle of their underneath, and their wings dove back in long, straight lines, the cockpit seemed to be seamlessly smoothed into the arrow shape. "What are they?"

"I don't know. Dualla! Get that radio jargon understandable." Dualla nodded and worked on the radio waves until a distinctively clear, though distant, voice could be heard. The CIC went silent.

"Red Two, Red Two, this is Red One, pull out now… y'hear me Red Two? RED TWO – get out!" the sharp overtones of a clipped, female voice even made Adama raise an eyebrow. "This is Red One, Red Two: pull out!"

"No can-do boss, I've got that bastard in my sights," replied a male.

"You've got them all around you, pull out!"

"I'm cool boss, I can manage it."

"Don't defy my orders Red Two. I'll soon as ground you as look at you if you don't pull out now." A streaking formation of green-emblazoned fighters made a wide arc around the main battle zone and dove straight through the fray, the voices and commands of those pilots muffling the ongoing argument.

"Who died and made you Queen, Red One?"

"Red Two, she ain't kidding. Pull out," another voice added.

"I can handle it. I'm the best goddamn Starfighter on the squadron."

"Don't piss me off, Red Two," the woman warned. "BLUE SIX! They're on your tail! Yellow squadron, break formation or you're dead. And GODDAMMIT Red Two! Obey my orders!"

"Right now I'm sticking my finger up at you, boss," the male responded good-naturedly. "Don't worry, I've got him."

"Sounds like Starbuck," Gaeta grinned under his breath. The sounds and blasts of combat filled the waves for a moment, and all conversation was drowned out. The CIC watched as two Raiders honed in on one of the arrow-like ships, with a red streak down its underbelly.

"They're gonna nuke him," Adama hissed, gripping the rail in front of him until his knuckles turned white. Sure enough, a blinding flash and delayed boom confirmed it.

"CCHHAARRLLIIEE!" screamed the woman on the radio. With knee-jerk speed, another red-striped fighter swung round and tore after the two Raiders.

"Frak," Adama cursed as the Raiders and fighter spiralled towards the planet, the Cylon ships turning with frightening ease and pursuing the fighter which had now isolated itself from the group. "Apollo, they haven't noticed us yet, see if you can't give them a hand down there."

- - -

When the blips had appeared on the radar, Captain Dagger couldn't believe it. They had appeared from nowhere, and thrown off most of their power – communication back to Central and to the other posts had died. Without thinking, Alexandra Dagger issued the command for all Starfighters to go up. How she regretted that decision. Her Arrow soared towards the unidentified crafts, and she watched with disbelief and dismay as the accompanying Eagles, larger and by far the more powerful of their fleet, had simply lost all power and been obliterated in a matter of seconds. The following dogfight was fierce and dangerous. Sweat beaded her temples beneath her helmet and her fingers felt slick on the controls. When Charlie Harper had directed himself into the suicide mission, Alex had sworn and instantly instructed him to abort. The cocky, self-righteous son-of-a-bitch that he was, he refused. Alex tried to switch this way and that to shake her own pursuer, whilst trying to keep together what remained of her fleet.

"I've got him." His words rang in her ears, long after the blast had left her skull feeling shattered. She stared at the emptiness that had once been the best Starfighter on the squadron.

"CCHHAARRLLIIEE!" she screamed, trying to tear her lungs with the shout, hoping that it might, just might, bring him back. You disgusting bastards, was the only thought in her mind as she honed in on the two ships that had killed him.

In all her time in the military, as trainee through to captain, she had never lost her cool. And the one time that she decided to go with her guts, and use her emotions to drive, it cost her. Before Alex could blink, the ships had rounded on her and were taking aim. She swore again, banking away from the rapidly approaching planet atmosphere and tried to shake her attachments. She had to swerve hard to avoid the tumbling, fiery wreck of Green One – the last of the green squadron. As she righted herself from the weird angle she found herself flying the Arrow, she felt a judder ripple through the ship.

"Shit, I've been hit!" she called into the radio, as her right wing burst into flames, the thick, oily smoke pouring through the vents into her cockpit and obscuring her view. She coughed, and tried to veer away from anywhere dangerous. The Arrow began to spin, downwards towards the planet, tugged by the atmosphere's gravity. "I've been hit! I'm going down!" she yelled, but got nothing in return but static. For a heart-stopping moment, the smoke cleared, to reveal the ground approaching at sickening speed. Just for a moment, above the roar and rage of the crash, she swore she heard the faint crackle of a voice in her earpiece.

"We'll find you, Red One." Then the world went black.

-

There was nothing left to help with. As Red One hit the ground, the Raiders finished the remnants of the fighters, and the surprise appearance of Vipers and Raptors sped them on their way. Captain Lee Adama checked with the others, before flying in formation to the planet's surface. Landing was easy; the wide, open expanses gave easy purchase. He scanned for noxious gases, and, finding it safe, proceeded to leave the Viper. Starbuck joined him.

"What are we looking for?" she asked sceptically, staring at the charred wreck of Green One.

"Life," Lee replied. He wandered around, scanning the area, before pointing. "There. It looks mostly in one piece, though I wouldn't give it long by the looks of that smoke." They approached it carefully.

"Are you sure she'll still be alive?" A shot rang out, zipping past her ear. They both instinctively ducked and Lee chuckled.

"Yep," he answered, before calling out: "hold your fire! We're friends!" This was answered with another shot. They could vaguely see a shape in the cockpit, and tried to duck out of sight before creeping nearer.

Alex swore, yanking at her leg until she felt the warm trickle of blood where it was trapped beneath her controls. She heard voices, and saw two figures moving closer. Firing a warning shot, she yanked harder on her leg.

"C'mon, c'mon!" she hissed desperately. "Shit." One of the approaching figures called out, and Alex shot at them again. "C'mon!" Using the butt of her gun, she beat the controls, until it began to yield and dent. Smoke was filling the cockpit, and she could smell burning fuel. She didn't have long. With a cry of pain, she threw her weight into the controls, and felt them move slightly. She gritted her teeth and growled out curses as she heaved and pushed, her muscles straining her in arms and shoulders. She felt the weight loose from her leg and with tremendous effort, she pulled it free. It had deep cuts marking where the metal had sliced into her. She couldn't put any weight on it, that was for sure. "Shit."

Lee and Kara Thrace were close enough to see the shape take form – the woman was lithe and blonde, her flight suit torn and dirtied, blood and filth smudging her face. Her helmet was sitting a little way away from her, as if she had thrown it. A gun lay at her fingertips, and she seemed to be moving out of the craft.

"We mean you no harm," Lee shouted, and saw her look up sharply. He opened his mouth to say more, but a boom announced the engine had blown up. Debris soared metres high, and the pair felt the ball of heat roll off the explosion. In the ringing silence that followed, they looked up, not daring to hope the woman had survived. Fire and smoke wreathed the crashed craft.

"Well, doesn't look like she made it," Kara shrugged. Lee glared at her, his heart sinking already. "Holy frak!" she yelped. Lee looked round to see the coughing, stumbling form of the woman emerging from the smoke. He leapt up and ran towards her, but froze as the woman pointed her gun in his direction.

"Stay back," she warned, already losing her balance and slipping to one knee, her useless leg stuck out at an angle. He stepped forward as she started to cough again. "Stay back!" she hissed, spitting blood from her split lip.

"We're friends. We've come to help."

"Help?" she laughed mockingly, falling further to the floor. "We're beyond help." She blinked, warding away the darkness that crept into the edge of her vision. Slowly, she wavered and began to topple, her gun falling from her grasp. Lee darted forward, catching her before she cracked her head on the ground. She frowned at him through peridot eyes, barely able to see beyond the spots that danced in front of her sight. "You can't help."

- - -

When Alex woke, she was lying in bed with her leg bandaged and stitched, and a drip in her arm. Groaning, she covered her eyes with a hand, trying to free her groggy head of the vice that was splitting her skull in two. Slowly, as the throbbing subsided, she looked up at the stark white ceiling. She could hear the faint rumble of human life and engines. Slowly sitting up, she took in her surroundings. It looked like a sickbay, but not the one from Central. Glancing round, nothing gave her a clue of where she was. It was empty, and the other beds showed no signs of life.

"Shit," she whispered. What if those… those things had got her? She had to get out. They'd taken her flight suit from her, but she was still in her tank top and trousers. Her boots were by her bed. Carefully, she removed the drip, wincing at the sting of the needle. Slipping her feet into the shoes, she was comforted by the feel of the blade she kept hidden in her left boot. Her gun was nowhere in sight, so Alex decided to risk it. Standing, she tested her weight on her bad leg. Not bad, but could do with a bit more rest, she guessed, but decided she couldn't waste time. She tried the door. Locked. She looked around. Nothing. "Shit," she repeated, slumping back onto her bed. "Well, Captain Dagger. What's your plan now, huh?" Grumpily, she fingered at a bandage around her upper arm. "Burns," she murmured with a frown, not remembering how she'd been burnt. She inspected her hands, riddled with slices from shards of glass and metal, and bruised across the knuckles. She checked her face in a tray that lay on a table nearby – a fat lip and bruised cheekbone seemed the only damage, as well as a stitched cut above her eye. It dipped from the inner corner of her right eyebrow, at an angle across her eyelid to just below the outer corner of her eye. "Wow," she gingerly touched it. "I could have been blinded."

"Sure you could, but we managed to salvage your eye," announced a 5ravely voice. Alex stood and spun, instantly aware of the pain shooting through her leg. "It should heal fairly quickly, and you may have a little scar, but nothing as bad as it looks now," the man smiled. He was a doctor, by his attire. He had a shock of white hair, with two grey eyebrows rather like large beetles, above a glinting pair of eyes. His voice was rough from too many years smoking.

"Who… who are you? Where am I?"

"Doctor Connell. You're aboard the Battlestar Galactica."

"Doctor, I –" a man appeared at the doorway, but stopped at the sight of Alex, who looked like a trapped animal, her eyes darting about the room and the tense tremble of her muscles visible. Doctor Connell turned to speak, and Alex took her chance. The man seemed a little stunned by her, and took his unguarded response as her escape route. She dived for him, forcefully shoving him against the doorway and knocking the wind from his chest. She ran down the corridor, her feet clanging against the metal gangway. She rounded a corner and nearly ran smack into another man. She managed a quick switch of feet around him – the stitches in her leg tearing – but cried out as his arm snaked about her waist. She struggled frantically, kicking out in every direction with fists and feet alike as the man physically restrained her, pushing her against the cold metal wall. She found herself face to face, his entire body pinning her down, his fingers tight about her wrists. She could feel blood seeping through the bandages and down into her boot.

"Well," the man smiled; a flash of blue eyes, an angled jaw, "hello again." Alex frowned, a second of recognition.

"Ah, Captain Apollo," Doctor Connell smiled thankfully as he came across them. "You caught her." Lee looked around.

"You missing one, Doc?" Alex lashed out, the crown of her head connecting loudly with his chin. "Frak!" he yelped, letting go with one hand cover his mouth. Alex pushed with all her might, using her now free hand and slam a palm into his chest and cause him to lose his balance. She was off and running again, her lungs already burning with desperate exertion.

"No!" she screamed as she was tackled to the ground, opening new cuts on her elbows. She twisted in his grasp as Lee Adama once again pinned her down.

"Oh no you don't," he announced triumphantly as she tried to head butt him again, "not this time." She had split his lip – his mouth reddened from the blood. As he waited for the doctor to come, he tasted it with his tongue and gave a look of amused respect. "It's not often a female patient gets one up on me. Though you pack a hell of a punch." Alex replied with a feral grin.

"Let go of my hands and I'll show you what I really can do." He cocked an eyebrow.

"Maybe later, eh, Sparky?" Growling, she renewed her struggles.

"Get off, you filthy son-of-a-bitch murderer."

"Murderer!" he sounded genuinely surprised. "Hey, I'm the one that saved your ass, okay? Now, quit with the insulting and fighting and let us help you." She responded by narrowly missing him again with her head. "Frakking bitch," he muttered as Doctor Connell appeared with a couple of guys and a needle. Alex renewed her struggles at the sight of the injection, but this time Lee had help. As the world dimmed to forgiving blackness, Alex looked up at Lee.

"You can't help," she spat.

-

"Are the restraints really necessary?" President Roslin asked unsurely, observing their unconscious passenger. She lay in the sickbay, tight straps around her wrists and ankles, observed by the President and Commander Adama as well as Kara.

"I should say so," Lee announced, brushing away blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. "She nearly knocked me out." Kara hid her grin, but Lee spotted it and glared. "We should leave her," he added.

"No," Laura Roslin quickly stepped in. "We're here for as long as we can before the Cylons come, and then we leave. With everyone." She turned away from the woman. "She probably fought because she thought we were the enemy. Have we any way of detecting if she's a Cylon yet?"

"No, but Baltar is working on it, and I've instructed him to make her top priority," Adama said.

"Bet she is a toaster," Lee growled.

"But until we know for sure, she is to be treated as a human casualty." The woman in the bed moaned, her brows tightening in a frown and head rolling to one side. "Does anyone know her name?"

"I can think of a few."

"Captain Apollo, I think that's enough," Laura sharply reprimanded. "Doctor, call me when she wakes up."

"Yes, Madam President." Laura left, closely followed by Adama. Connell quietly went on his business about the sickbay, as Lee and Kara looked down at the patient. Her vanilla-coloured hair was in its plait, hanging to one side of her face. She had freckles across her nose, which before had barely been evident under the smudges of dirt. She had full, pink lips, slightly parted as she dreamt. Her muscles were lean and defined under her smooth skin. She didn't look tough enough to be a fighter pilot as she lay, vulnerable, in a drug-induced coma. The throb of Lee's lip reminded him of her deceptive strength, but there was something almost too… feminine about her.

"What you thinking?" Kara asked, nudging him.

"Her eyes are green," Lee replied quietly, distractedly.

"Huh?"

"Her eyes are green. Bright, bright green. Like a semi-precious stone green."

"So?"

"So… I'm probably one of two people that have actually seen them yet."

"What's your point?"

"They don't look like Cylon eyes."

"How do you know what Cylon eyes look like? They all look the same as us." Lee just shrugged – he couldn't explain that it was the look in her eyes. "Frak, Lee, you fancy her!" Kara grinned.

"Frak off. That little bitch nearly knocked my front teeth out."

"Hey, maybe you like it like that. Bit of dominatrix violence." Lee replied with a sharp thump on her upper arm and stalking out. Kara glanced down to the patient and grinned widely. "Boy, is he gonna be mad when you don't like him back," she told the unconscious woman. She left, leaving Alex to live her dreams; tied up in the bed she was so desperate to be free of.

- - - - - -

The metal-tipped pin heels of a pair of red shoes rapped a staccato on the pavement as the woman wound her way in and out of the pedestrian traffic. She wore a pair of black trousers, white shirt and red vest top, her pale blonde hair pinned back in a chignon by a red pencil. Over her shoulder she carried a red leather handbag with gold buckles She was heatedly arguing into a mobile phone.

"Look, Charlie, I can handle Frasier on my own, okay? I'm a grown woman."

"I know Al, but Frasier can be really brutal –" came the answer down the phone.

"I'll be brutal back."

"That's what I'm afraid of!" Charlie laughed.

"Look, I'd better go, I'm here."

"Okay. Play nice."

"I don't promise anything," she grinned. Alex hung up and entered the tall glass building and approached the front desk. "Lieutenant Dagger to see General Frasier?"

"One moment, Lieutenant Dagger," replied the receptionist. She phoned through to Frasier's office and spoke in quiet undertones. Hanging up, she smiled at Alex and announced: "General Frasier's ready to see you. Office four-one-two. Elevator to the fourth floor, hang a left and it's on your right."

"Thanks," Alex took the elevator up, the gold-mirrored walls reflecting her grim face. The doors pinged open and an office clerk stepped aside to let her through. She managed a tense smile before following the receptionist's directions and knocking on the thick oak door of office 412.

"Enter," answered a thick voice. General Jack Frasier was cantankerous old man with a penchant for Shakespeare, sushi and Cuban cigars. Heavily set – both in frame and in his ways – he struck a posing figure with a shock of white hair (in military buzz-cut) and pale blue eyes beneath a grave brow. His badge glinted under the light, and his uniform was starched to regimented perfection. "Ah, Miss Dagger. Take a seat." He indicated a worn chair opposite his wide desk. She obediently sat, her beg tucked by her feet. "I hope you know why I've called you here."

"I do, sir, and if I may do so, I'd like to first say that the whole thing was completely my idea. The blame rests firmly on my shoulders sir." Frasier settled his bulk into a sagging leather chair and regarded her with vague interest.

"Good, that's what I like to hear," he paused. "A lieutenant taking responsibility." Alex waited tensely, knowing what was to come. "The whole damn thing was a fiasco, Miss Dagger, no doubt about it."

"Now, sir, it was not an entire fiasco. The mission in itself was a success, it was just the execution of –" He cut her off by raising a hand.

"Ah, 'the lady doth protest too much'!" Alex gritted her teeth.

"If there is to be a court marshal, sir, I fully intend to take it wholly by myself and argue my case to the judge as I deem my decision right in those circumstances and –" Frasier once again cut her off, an amused glint in his eye as he slowly rested his hand back on the table. He observed her in silence for a moment.

"Bit of a sparky one, ain't we, Miss Dagger?" She blushed. "I think you've got it entirely wrong however. I did not call you here for a court marshal. I called you here for a promotion." By the time Alex had gotten control of her senses again, Frasier was shaking her hand and congratulating her. "Well done, Captain Dagger. You are now in charge of the red squadron."

"I… uh… excuse me sir, but red squadron of what?" Frasier cracked the biggest grin he could manage.

"Well, Captain, you are about to be one of the first people to experience the outer quadrants of Earth."