Chapter 10

Lee sat in his father's office waiting for the commander to return from Colonial One. He was grateful for the time to catch his breath. These were just about the first quiet moments he had had since the arrival of Pegasus; a first chance to reflect on all that had happened since that first contact had been made. He wondered whether it was possible for anyone to have a more frakked up day than the last twenty four hours had been for him. It was difficult to compare anything to the nightmare day when the Cylons had destroyed their worlds, or the day on which Kara had jumped to Caprica and his father had been shot, but this one was certainly making a very strong play to take third spot in his opinion. His emotions had gone through one hell of a rollercoaster ride from the euphoria of seeing Kara alive to the depths of despair at being told of the loss of their child. Things had not improved after he had reluctantly left her on Pegasus. To his dismay he found that he had to share the raptor back over to Galactica with Captain Taylor. He had just wanted to brood on his own over Kara's devastating news and their enforced separation, but instead he had to contend with his new CO. He couldn't hide the contempt in his face as he stared at the man. Stinger obviously did not like the scrutiny.

"Captain Adama, I hope your attitude is going to improve or you'll loose your rank as well as your position."

"At least I'd loose it with a clear conscience," Lee replied, belligerently.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Taylor demanded.

"You know what I'm talking about," Lee spat out, unable to contain his fury. "I've just seen my wife. I don't know how you people can live with yourselves." The contempt in his voice was obvious.

"Lieutenant Thrace has nothing to complain about. She's been a royal pain in the ass ever since she came on board Pegasus. She's lucky she didn't get worse."

"Worse? What could be worse than having your baby taken from you?" Lee shouted, oblivious to the sudden startled interest of Racetrack and her ECO to their argument.

"What baby? What are you talking about? You're frakked in the head. She hasn't got a baby."

"She hasn't now, but Kara was pregnant when she went aboard Pegasus. She should be over five months gone by now. Does she look that pregnant to you?"

"I…I…" The new Galactica CAG was lost for words.

"Oh don't give me that innocent crap. You can't tell me that as CAG you didn't know that the admiral ordered an abortion to be performed on one of your pilots, without her consent."

"Apollo, I swear that I didn't know. I would never……frak…..that can't be true."

"Just ask your medical staff on Pegasus. Seems they have no inhibitions about carrying out the admiral's orders even if they are against the laws," said Lee, bitterly.

"Shit, man….I'm sorry….I really didn't know and she never said anything. Gods, no wonder she was such a bitch to work with." A wry smile ghosted across Lee's face as he calmed somewhat in the face of Taylor's obvious confusion.

"No, she's pretty much like that all the time. You really didn't know?"

"I swear it." The man looked genuine in his denial. "Look, Cain's a good commander. She's very single minded and I learnt long ago not to question her decisions and to turn a blind eye to some things that go on, but if I'd known about an order like that I would have questioned it. As much as I think that any viper pilot should be kept in the air there are limits. The admiral's been different since the XO died; he used to be the one to keep her grounded. Fisk is OK but he's just a yes man in comparison, so she's pretty much been flying solo. I admit that I don't always agree with some of her methods but the fact that we're still here at all is down to her."

"That doesn't make it any easier for me to understand why no one did anything to help my wife and child."

"No, I'm sure it doesn't, but that's just the way it is. Look, we're gonna have to work together. I don't expect you to agree with all my methods either, but I expect you to comply and support me with the pilots. I'm not insensitive to your situation. I'll do what I can to give you and Starbuck some time together. I'll schedule you for courier runs to Pegasus whenever I can." Lee nodded in recognition of the effort the other man was obviously making.

"Thanks. That would be good. And I'll do what I can to smooth the transition with the Galactica air group, especially as I think we're gonna see some action. Rumour mill has it that now the admiral has two battlestars she wants to take on the Cylon fleet."

"Yeah. There's to be a recon mission to get a closer look at one of the Cylon ships as a prelude to an all out attack on their fleet." Lee's interest was caught by an opportunity to show what Galactica's people could do.

"Well if you need to get really up close and personal with the Cylon fleet I should go in the Blackbird." He suggested. Taylor looked sceptical, obviously having seen the ship that they had recently constructed on Galactica. Lee smiled slightly knowing that the ship was a pretty strange looking beast. "No, believe me it really does work: I've flown it. And, hey, what have you got to loose? If I get myself killed everyone will just assume that Galactica's home made tin can really was crap, and if I come back with good recon pictures you get all the glory for having ordered me to go." He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the older man.

"You'd really fly that thing right in to the Cylon fleet?" Stinger asked incredulously.

"Yeah. What have I got to loose? I've lost my job, I'm being kept apart from my wife and my baby's dead," Lee replied with a cynical twist of his lips.

"Just don't do anything stupid."

"Flying a bucket of second hand nuts and bolts into the heart of enemy territory? What could possibly be stupid about that?"

So Lee had taken out the Blackbird and taken some pretty pictures of the big Cylon ship, which even the admiral had been impressed with. Apparently Dr Baltar had found out from the Cylon prisoner aboard Pegasus that the ship was really important to the Cylon fleet so Cain was determined to destroy it. The planning for an all out attack was now underway, but tensions were running high between the two crews. Thanks to his somewhat indiscrete outburst to Stinger, the rumours about what had happened to Starbuck on Pegasus were circulating Galactica like wildfire. Lee dearly wished that he had ordered Racetrack and Jingles to keep silent about anything that they had overheard in that raptor. Right now this was no one's business but his and Kara's and he did not want anyone on Galactica to use rumour and speculation to start a fight with the flag ship. No one had had the guts to ask him outright if the rumours were true, but that was probably because Helo, the person most likely to do it, was currently languishing in Pegasus' brig after an incident with his toaster girlfriend. Even that had degenerated relations between the crews still further: she may have been a toaster, but she was their toaster and they didn't take too kindly to members of Pegasus crew attacking her. It was taking all of Lee's strength to carry on as if nothing had happened and play dutiful second fiddle to Taylor. The air group were being close to openly hostile towards Stinger and only Lee's apparent acceptance of the situation was stopping them from being all out insubordinate.

At last his father came through the hatch. He looked tired and even more stern than usual. The two men looked at each other for a moment then shared the briefest of tight hugs without having uttered a word; a silent acknowledgement that, despite past differences, in times of trouble there was nothing more important than family. His father pulled back and smiled slightly, obviously wanting to try and lighten the mood a little.

"How's Kara? Is she getting on OK over there? I bet she's showing by now."

All of a sudden Lee was overwhelmed with emotion. He had to bring a hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying out. He had kept a tight lid on his feelings since he had left Kara, but those few simple words from his father had broken through his defences. He knew that he was going to break down in front of the one man from whom he had hidden his emotions his entire life. Yet in this moment it no longer felt like failure. His father was the one person who would understand what he was feeling at the moment. He loved Kara like a daughter and he too knew the pain of loosing a child. Lee choked on a sob and tasted bile in his throat and he had to swallow hard to stop himself from vomiting. "Oh Gods," he cried in pain as the tears he could no longer hold back spilled down his cheeks.

"Lee! What is it? What have they done to our girl?"

"Dad…Oh Gods, Dad," he gasped out. "I can't even bring myself to say it."

"The baby?" His father guessed and Lee nodded, his face anguished.

"I was worried something like that may have happened." He dropped a hand on to his son's shoulder and squeezed it in sympathy. Despite his misgivings as a commander, on a more personal level he had been looking forward to becoming a grandfather. "There'll be other chances for children, son," he said gruffly. It was obvious to Lee that his father had jumped to the same conclusion that he had: any decent person would.

"She didn't loose it naturally, dad. The admiral order Kara's pregnancy to be terminated."

"What?"

"It's true, Dad. She was drugged and the baby aborted against her will. Just so she could go back to flying vipers." The bitterness in Lee's voice convinced him of the veracity of his words and Adama felt an overwhelming fury against the woman who had hurt his children in such a despicably callous way.

"We have to get her out of there, dad. I don't know how much longer she can survive. They've really screwed her up. She's putting on her best brave 'Starbuck' face but underneath she's a mess. I've never seen her so fragile. You know how she gets when she's like that. She's gonna do something crazy and Cain's just looking for any excuse to hurt her further and get at you."

Adama clamped down on his fury; he needed to think clearly at this moment so that he could use his and Lee's anger in the right way. He grabbed Lee to him, just wanting to comfort his obviously distraught boy and hating that he could not ease his son's distress any further.

"Don't worry, son. We'll get her home as soon as we can." Lee pulled back and wiped his face, trying to recover himself.

"What's gone wrong, dad?" he said in a voice of infinite tiredness. "When did we become our own enemy?"

"I don't know, Lee. I honestly don't know. If we're not careful we'll do the Cylons' job for them and finish off the human race by ourselves. I've just come from a discussion with the president. It seems that her sources have confirmed Zarek's theories about what happened to Pegasus' civilian fleet. She was urging me to arrange for the admiral to be assassinated. She seemed to think that Cain was too dangerous to be allowed to continue in command and that she would also be organising the same fate for me. What you've just told me has added further weight to the President's arguments and I'm inclined to agree that the admiral needs to be removed. She's obviously unstable and that instability is likely to carve the fleet apart."

"Can't you just assume command? I'm sure that there will be plenty of people who would back up any charges."

"And have Cain plotting insurrection and mutiny from the brig? No, there are too many people on Pegasus loyal to her. She has to be taken out of the equation permanently." Lee nodded in agreement.

"You're right and I agree completely. It's got to be done and I want to be the one to do it, Dad. You just tell me where and when and I'll do it." Lee said with conviction.

"Are you sure that you can be rational about this, Captain? This mission will require steady thought and a clear, focused mind."

"Yeah and it also needs someone who's committed to the task."

"We're not talking about some long range assault here, but assassinating the ranking officer in the fleet in cold blood."

"Don't you trust me to do this, Dad?"

"Of course I do, son; there's no one I'd trust more, but I know you and your morality. I know how you struggled to come to terms with what you had to do to the Olympic Carrier. I just want to make sure that you won't back out of this when the time comes."

"That was completely different. Anyone still alive on the Olympic Carrier would have been an innocent victim. We're talking about eliminating a woman who has destroyed the lives of countless civilians and who has committed a capital crime against an innocent child. She deserves to die for her crimes."

"People could say that she should be brought to trial for them; that she should face a judge and a jury of her peers as colonial law dictates."

"Do you really think that we have time for the niceties of colonial law? Cain certainly hasn't bothered with them. Did she give Helo a fair trial? Did she give Kara a chance to plead the case for our son? No. Kara and I have more right than anyone to be her judge and jury. And the president's right: Cain won't think twice about having you killed if she thinks you're a danger to her command. We need to act before she has a chance." His father stared at him intently for a few more moments.

"I had to make sure," he said quietly.

"I know, sir," Lee replied in kind.

"OK, this is how I want it done. We can't do anything until after the attack on the Cylon fleet: that's too important to jeopardise because of internal politics, but after the attack on the Cylons I will send you to Pegasus with my report and dispatches, with orders to hand them directly to the admiral and no one else. She will probably have gone back to her quarters by then, which will be better than doing it in CIC. Take Kara with you as back up. As soon as it's done put in a call to Galactica and give the code word "hell fire". I'll have Tigh standing by with a team of marines to secure Pegasus CIC. And as soon as you've made that call you get the hell out of there and you bring our girl home. I want to see you both standing safe in this office, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good hunting, son, but be careful: Cain's not worth dieing over."

"I'll do my best, Dad, but I know that neither Kara nor I will have any peace unless it's done."

"I know, son, I know." Adama replied gruffly. He held out his hand to his son and Lee grabbed it and shook it firmly, both men for once completely in accord with each other.