Ta-dah!!

Here we are with chapter 1 of part three!!

I strongly suggest that you read the first two parts in this which are Bad Blood and Growing Pains. Then this will make a whole lot more sense.

Uh, this may have shades of Star Trek over it because I'm watching Next Gen right now and have been while writing this whole chapter.

But I just bought the first four seasons of BSG and I'm working up to a marathon of the whole lot. I suspect I will be very tired afterwards.

Read and enjoy, reviews are love.

Chapter 1: Damage Control

"Status report!"

Appearing to be twenty years younger or not, Bill Adama, Admiral of the Fleet and patriarch to the remnants of humanity, commanded respect. He strode into the CIC, tugging briefly at his uniform jacket to straighten it as he came to the command deck.

The President followed him in, not a half step behind. While everyone's attention remained on their appointed tasks, they all found it impossible to ignore their leaders. She took her place at his side and looked up at the dradis screen. Dee was ready at her console, two fingers supporting her ear piece.

"A base ship just jumped in, sir. They're loosing fliers. We haven't got much time, they're close."

"How close, lieutenant?" Adama couldn't exact the distances between green and red spots on the dradis screen. That took a level of expertise that only Dee had.

"Damn, close sir. They're practically at our door." Dee was multitasking furiously as she answered her superior.

"Somebody raise Edric Adama. I want him out and in that frakked up flier of his as of ten minutes ago!" Bill was already running this battle through in his head. Playing out the chess pieces, working out where he could hit hard and fast. Calculating how to save as many as possible and lose as few. He was too battle weary to think he could get out of this completely unscathed.

"He's already on the flight deck. Suiting up now." Somebody answered him, he didn't know who and didn't care. In situations like this, it was sometimes better to have individuality take a second seat to the betterment of the whole.

Good Gods, was that a Cylon thought? Had he ever thought that before? What the hells was he…?

"Bill?" Laura's hand touched his arm, electricity sang along his nerve endings and he was yanked back into the here and now like he'd never left.

"Where's Colton? We could use some of her crazy ideas right now."

"She hasn't reported in with the other one?" Saul growled with half a mind on the conversation, he was a little busy saving the collective hides of the Fleet while the President and the Old Man got all touchy feely.

"No one has heard from Colton, sir." Dee brought in.

"What about that gizmo of hers? The sonic shocker. Knocked the frakkers out before. Could do it again." Saul offered.

"Colton was working on it in the guest quarters. It's still there." Laura offered. She hated this. She wasn't military. She had nothing to do here. She couldn't stand to be useless while her people were out there dying.

"Vipers are in the air, sir. Commander Adama and the Betty leading formation." Dee reported.

"We need that sonic shock." Bill growled. "Who's closest?"

"Old Man, I've seen that woman's work space, that thing could be anywhere." Saul glanced away from ordering his underlings about. "We don't have the time for a search mission for the damn thing."

"I know what it looks like. I know where it is." Laura leant over the lit up console giving her face a greenish cast. "I can get it."

"That thing weighs a tonne. You'll never lift it and lug it here in time." Saul frowned around his eye patch.

"Colonel Tigh, I can sprint at sixty kilometres an hour and bend tempered steel. Of course I can get it." Laura snapped.

Bill looked between them and weighed his options. He looked at Laura, he couldn't go. He couldn't leave the CIC when organising a Fleet-wide FTL jump. He was needed here and she wasn't. She could do it, she was more than capable. Why was he hesitating?

"Do it." Bill ordered her and then turned back to dradis.

Laura reached down to her brand new skirt, seized it in both hands and pulled. The skirt split to mid thigh revealing her new garters. She did the same to the other side and looked up to see Saul staring at her. She kicked off her heels and shrugged off her jacket to reveal a very brief camisole underneath.

"Hold this." She tossed the jacket over Saul's head, she caught Bill's smirk as she did so, but she was out the door before Saul could pull the blazer down off his face.

Laura had never run so fast in her life. Part of her thrilled in this, she hadn't had the chance to cut loose yet. To realise her full potential in this amazing new body of hers. People yelled and dived out of her way. Her stride was long and her feet were whisper quiet as she sprinted along the shadowed steel corridors. She saw a knot of people in the bend of the corridor up ahead. No time to go around. What she did next happened on instinct rather than on thought.

Hitching her stride and gathering herself, she leapt.

Right up and over the crewmen's heads. She kicked off the bulkhead wall, grabbed hold of the support beam over her head and swung off it around the bend to control her landing. She landed without missing a step and sprinted along the next bend without losing one step of speed.

"What the hells was that?" Jean La Forge stared after the disappearing back of the president of the twelve colonies and turned to his camera man. "Come on!" They bolted after Roslin.

Laura heard all of this in a vague kind of way but she was too busy to be worrying about the Press. They wouldn't be able to keep up with her anyway. She saw the stairwell between decks and bypassed the steel steps altogether. She leaped over them and dropped the twelve feet between decks. Rolling with the impact and coming back to her feet with a bounce. She was nearly where she wanted to be. Two more corners, another set of stairs and the third door along.

Careening off walls, dropping down another stairwell and she was at the door. She spooled the lock with a flick of her wrist and bounded inside. Now, where was it?

She tossed the workspace in a matter of seconds. Cloth weaver, food synthesising chemicals, doohickey, what's-it and a thingy-ma-jig but no sonic shocker.

Frak.

Where? Where would Colton put it?

She'd been working on it just yesterday, after the blueprints of her lab.

The ship bucked under impact. She could hear the individual creaks of the hull. Rivets turning a fraction of a centimetre in their holes. The groaning of the great battlestar around her as it limped through the sky. She was tired after her overlong career.

Laura didn't have much time…there!

"Under the bed, of course, where else would it be?" Laura flipped one of the bunks over and dragged the ugly machine out from under it. Laura looked it over. Of course, Colton had been making it smaller. It was now about the size of a shoebox and of a much sleaker design. Cables and plugs hung off one end looking like it was ready to be directly interfaced with the com system.

Whatever, Laura didn't know how it worked, she didn't care, that was for Dee and co to figure out. She just had to get it there.

Laura tucked the thing under her arm and bolted for the door again. She was beginning to get winded. It was a long way between GQ and the CIC and she had been throwing it full throttle all the way here. She threw open the door again and nearly ploughed into the men on the other side.

"What the…?!"

"President Roslin, we've just recorded your amazing sprint from the CIC to here," the reporter shoved a microphone in her face, breathing hard. "Along with these physical," he glanced down her body and Laura stiffened at his audacity, "enhancements, is there anything else that the Cylon 'inspired' technology has done to you?"

"Yeah, they've made me realise that I don't have to answer your stupid questions if you can't keep up with me." She grinned at him and then she was off.

La Forge could do nothing but watch her retreating back and then the soles of her feet disappearing up the stairwell as she flew up in a single bound.

"Did you get that?" He asked his cameraman.

"Yeah."

"Good, because we just proved the President of the Twelve Colonies isn't human anymore."

$inister $cribe

"Alright, who's dead?" Laura picked up a newly synthesised red cheese cheeseburger and bit into it with a gleeful kind of relish.

"We lost three Vipers, the Cullan lost hull integrity and half her crew before managing to repair and jump away. All in all, twenty six." Billy read off the manifest.

"Shit." Laura abruptly lost her appetite and set her meal down. It had tasted fantastic mere minutes ago and now it tasted like nothing but ash.

"I hate to say it…"

"But it could have been a lot worse." Laura nodded and finally gave into her body's demands for more food. She munched on her cheeseburger once more.

"Without Colton's sonic shock and you hightailing it across the ship, we'd have been beaten to within an inch of our lives…or worse." Bill sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"What about Edric's flier? Are the Cylons still blind to it?"

"Heh, we're still blind to it. The damn thing's impossible to track."

"Well, as long as he's on our side I don't care."

Laura and Bill both turned to look at Billy. He cleared his throat and turned intense scrutiny towards his paperwork. Laura smirked. She really did love Billy sometimes.

"Yeah, the thing about that sonic shocker, it didn't work for as long this time. The Cylons recovered more quickly, they're beginning to adapt." Saul spoke with his usual optimism.

"Can Colton augment it, you think?" Laura offered up. "She did it before, she could do it again."

"We'd have to find her first." Bill grumbled. "Nobody's seen her since she pitched her last fit."

"Oh, is Edric…?"

"Driving everybody nuts looking for her."

"Uh…found her." Billy looked up from his papers. "She was on a transport when the Cylons jumped in, it had to divert to the closest ship big enough to take it on."

Laura raised her brows in a 'well?' expression when Billy faltered.

"It was the Cullen. Manifest says she was in the hanger deck when it blew."

"What?!"

Everybody spun in their chairs to see a battle weary Edric in the doorway. His eyes were wide and all the air had rushed from his lungs. His metal hand tightened on the doorway so hard that it warped the frame.

"She's not…she can't be…" His breath hitched and his colour dropped about seven shades. He doubled over, catching his hands on his knees. "Oh Gods…" He looked up at them with eyes that shone a little too brightly.

"She's dead isn't she?"