Kacey had woken up just a few minutes too late. By the time the alert was going out to the fleet for everyone to spin up their FTLs, the Cylons were already jumping in. Alert fighters had been called for, but they weren't going to make it out of the tubes in time. The CAP fighters would be on their own for a few dangerous minutes.
Kara momentarily looked away from the Raider she was targeting when she saw a minor explosion out of the corner of her eye. The sound of an alarm filled her cockpit. "Frak!" she muttered, holding down the trigger for a few more moments in order to take out the enemy fighter that had tagged her. "Galactica, Starbuck; I've been hit! Port engine is out, electronics are on the fritz."
"Roger, Starbuck. Can you make it home?"
Kara glanced out the canopy again; most of her port wing was missing, and she had no idea how long she was still going to have power. A slight smirk crossed her face. "Don't really have much of a choice, do I?"
"You're cleared for an emergency landing."
"Copy that. Heading home."
Kacey sat on the couch in Lee's quarters, watching as he spoke on the phone with someone in CIC. She knew that she hadn't been in time, that the Cylons were out there, and that if she didn't do something, her mother was going to die.
x x x x x
"Starbuck, Hotdog; one just pulled into your kill slot!" Kara pulled a quick turn, trying to get the Cylon behind her off her tail for just long enough to get a look at how screwed she was. The answer was 'pretty damn.'
"I'm trying to shake him…Anyone else not got their hands full at the moment?" The silence she received was a resounding no.
x x x x x
Kacey closed her eyes, concentrating hard. All she had to do was think, and maybe she could help. It had worked before on New Caprica, she'd been able to control the Centurion that had found her. But that was before Sharon closed her connection. She had to open it again – just for an instant – and she could save Kara.
x x x x x
Kara swung her fighter around fast enough to make her vision gray out momentarily, but it wasn't enough. The Cylon was still on her tail, although its ammunition had yet to hit its mark. "Come on, you little bastard…"
And then she witnessed something she hadn't ever seen before. The Raider behind her suddenly went extreme nose-up, steering directly into the path of an explosive packet that the basestar had launched at Galactica. All of the other pursuing enemy fighters made similar erratic flight paths, ending in their destruction.
In Galactica's CIC, Helo watched all of the Raider's signals disappear at once on Dradis. "What the…"
Adama had been looking at the same image on the center console. "Get our fighters home, now," he ordered.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that something extremely weird had happened out there. Once Kara had finished talking with Tyrol – her Viper was scrap metal, and he once again had no idea how she'd survived long enough to land – and had spoken with Adama, she went to get Kacey. The extremely enthusiastic greeting she received was her first hint that something was amiss.
"Hey, hey, I'm all right," she told Kacey, surprised by the strength at which the little girl's arms were wrapped around her neck. "Mommy always comes home."
Lee really wished she wouldn't make promises like that. "She had a dream that you didn't," he spoke up. "Scared her pretty bad."
"A dream?" she asked, looking to Kacey. She solemnly nodded.
"I couldn't let them hurt you; I promised I wouldn't."
An image flashed into Kara's mind, of the Raider that had been tailing her flying off to its death. That hadn't been an accident. "What did you do, Kacey?" she asked. The little girl looked down.
The Cylons were coming to a similar conclusion aboard the basestar that had attacked the fleet. They'd also seen their fighters suddenly get destroyed by friendly fire and were not amused. Kacey's reconnection had been brief but powerful and the ripples had been felt far and wide.
"They've turned her against you," one of the Threes told Leoben. "They've gotten her to kill for them." He shook his head.
"No, she's doing what I'd expected all along. She wasn't trying to destroy us; she was trying to protect her mother. Her love is something powerful, something to be respected."
"Her power is in someone else's hands," Six argued.
"We need to bring Kacey and her mother back to us," Leoben proposed.
Three scoffed. "Don't tell me you still think you're going to get her to fall in love with you, do you? Wake up! You received the same knowledge from your daughter that the rest of us did. Kara Thrace does not and will not love you; there's someone else already in her heart. She won't ever understand, won't ever accept you."
"She's accepted Kacey."
Three smiled. "That's because that girl is special. And we have to get her back…or destroy her, before she becomes even more of a threat."
"Destroying her is not an option," he asserted. "We'll get her back."
TBC...
