'Thank you, gentlemen. I'm busy.'

Lee grimaced internally at the tone in the President's voice and glanced at his father. The elder Adama wore his customary impassive expression, but Lee wondered if he wasn't feeling… just a little discomfited, too.

He stopped as they passed through the curtains that divided the so-called presidential office from Colonial One's grille corridors, and his father looked at him.

'What is it?'

Lee set his jaw. 'I'm going back. There's something I need to talk to the President about.'

He thought he saw a glimmer of amusement in the older man's eyes. 'Good luck with that.'

'Yeah.'

'See you later, then.'

Lee nodded and watched his father leave before pivoting on his heel and walking back through the curtains. He paused there, thinking that perhaps he should alert the president to his reappearance, but she forestalled him, speaking without looking up.

'I thought I dismissed you, Captain Adama.'

Lee resisted the urge to scratch his forehead or fiddle with his sleeves. 'Yeah. …Uh, could I have a word with you, ma'am?'

'You already are,' she pointed out, lifting her head, and the overhead light glinted off her glasses.

There are times when Laura Roslin is all president, and times when she's all teacher. This is clearly one of the latter.

'It's about the black market,' Lee ventured, staying where he was, even though it meant he had to project his voice to be heard at the other end of the room.

Even from where he was standing, he could hear the President's gusty sigh. 'Fine. Spill it.' She put her pen down and leaned her chin on her hand. 'Well?' He blinked, and she tapped the fingers of her other hand on the table. 'Come on, Captain. I haven't got all day. And come closer while you're at it. I don't bite, as you should know by now.'

He obeyed, refusing to give in to the crazy impulse to remind her that she did have a way with airlocks, and that was just as dangerous.

'It's the kids,' he blurted out once he was standing at attention, only scant inches from the edge of her desk.

Her brow wrinkled. 'What kids?'

He glanced at the chair next to him, hopefully, and she rolled her eyes and gave a slight nod. 'Sit. Now,' she added as he did so, 'explain. What kids?'

'The kids on the Prometheus,' he said, feeling his stomach flip all over again. He'd been fighting recurrent nausea ever since he'd realised the fate that could have awaited the group of children herded into that little room. Some, including Paya, were no more than five or six years old.

'There are children on every ship, Lee,' the President reminded him with a touch of impatience. 'What have the children on the Prometheus got to do with the black market?'

Lee couldn't meet her eyes. 'The black market … wasn't just about material things,' he began slowly. 'It aimed to cater for all the fleet's wants. No matter … what … they might be.' He glanced up at her to see if she understood his meaning.

She gave a sharp gasp. 'Including …. sexual needs?'

'Yeah.' He sighed. 'The Prometheus is the centre of the fleet's prostitution industry.'

'Some industry,' she muttered.

'We can't shut it down,' Lee told her nervously. 'What do they say about it? It's the 'oldest profession'…. As long as there are men willing to pay, there'll be desperate women willing to … put out.'

He couldn't help the flood of colour that suffused his face. She was the president, but she was also old enough to be his mother, and - and she was so frakking demure. He knew that there was more to Laura Roslin than her deceptively gentle façade suggested, but that didn't prevent him from feeling … soiled at mentioning these things in her presence.

She surprised him.

'Not just desperate women, Captain.' Her lips twitched. 'For some women it's a deliberate career choice. However,' she continued and her face hardened, 'we need to ensure that this … industry … is not exploiting the most vulnerable.' She looked at him over her glasses. 'Are you saying that there's been trafficking in child prostitution over there?'

Unable to speak, he nodded.

'And you put a stop to it,' she said flatly, her eyes turning to gimlets behind their frame of glass and steel.

'It was a condition of them being allowed to keep the racket going,' he said. 'I know who they are and where they are, and they've been warned that if I hear even a hint of a whisper that they're – they're using kids, I'll shut the whole thing down permanently.' He studied his fingernails. 'I think they believed me.' He glanced up at the President again, meeting her eyes frankly. 'I shot their leader. It was the only way.'

'Yes,' she agreed without flinching. She sighed. 'That was the right thing to do, and' – she gave a wry smile – 'it was also the smart thing to do. Was that all you wanted to tell me?'

'No,' he said, and took a deep breath. 'Madam President, I saw them, those kids. They were holed up in this room, like a pile of unwanted animals. Some of them – some of them, they were only five or six, if that. They were so scared, but I'm not so worried about them. I don't think any of them were touched. But … others were. You could tell.'

He had to swallow again, force down the bile that rose as he remembered the quiet stillness of several of the girls, or the repeated rocking of others, clearly lost in a private hell that was not of their making.

'I told them to let the kids go,' Lee went on hoarsely, his eyes dropping from hers, 'but what will happen to them next? Where will they go? Who'll help them?'

'We'll find a way,' the President said. 'We will. Lee, look at me. Come on, look at me.'

Reluctantly, he did so, and was oddly reassured to see how her eyes shone with the same emotion he knew was in his own.

'I was a teacher before I was a politician or a president,' she reminded him, her voice roughened with unshed tears. 'At heart, I'm still a teacher … and there's such a thing as a duty of care.' She sighed. 'Now I'm somehow, absurdly, in charge of keeping nearly fifty thousand people alive, and it's easy to lose sight of the details. To be so busy seeing the forest that you miss the trees.'

She drew a shaky breath. 'I promise you, Captain Apollo, I will not let this drop. I know your father wants to do a raid on the Prometheus anyway; a black market is one thing, but holding vital equipment and materials hostage is quite another. You will contact your moles on that ship and tell them we're sending in a team to confiscate all medical and military items. We'll send medics too, just to assess the condition of all those involved in this… racket, and move on from there.'

'I'll go too,' Lee said, It was not a question.

She nodded. 'Good plan. They know you; they'll be more likely to co-operate if you're there. We'll rescue those kids, I promise you. Get them off Prometheus altogether. I understand there's a school and a counselling team on the Rising Star. It might be an idea to send them there.'

'Anything's gotta be better than the hell-hole they're in now,' Lee muttered.

'As soon as possible,' Roslin ordered. 'I don't want those kids suffering any longer than necessary. Today, if you can do it. I'll call your father and arrange it.'

Recognising that for the dismissal it was, Lee got to his feet. 'Thanks, ma'am.'

She paused, one hand reaching for the wireless. 'No, Captain Apollo. Thank you. You've done a good, good thing today.' She glanced at the curtained doorway and smiled for the first time. 'Time to go riding to the rescue, Captain.'

He snapped of a salute with a fervent 'Yes, ma'am,' and left her domain with new purpose in his steps.

They might be a ragtag fleet on the run, losing something vital almost everyday, but there was still some lines that could not, must not, be crossed. That was, after all, the reason he'd joined the Fleet. Not just because of the free tuition, or because on some level he wanted to emulate his father … but because he knew there were lines that must remain immutable for humanity to survive with any kind of soul, and he wanted to hold the line.

-End.