A bit of a belated update, but here we go!

Their captor's camp looked like a ramshackle arrangement of dark red tents. Each had a flame shaped, jet-black emblem etched into at least one side. At the camp's center, a great fire roared beneath a cauldron, containing some sort of yellow, frothy substance. If Helo hadn't been afraid for their lives, he would have thought it actually smelled pretty good. Karl was brought into one of the smaller tents by a pair of large, armored men, who proceeded to chain him to a heavy metal chair. In front of him was a simple, wooden table, but there was a little else in the dimly lit structure. He hadn't seen where Sharon and Nelson had been taken, but he could assume they were in the same camp. The Colonial officer didn't have to wait more than a few short minutes before someone new let themselves into the tent.

The fit, middle-aged man's facial hair was perfectly trimmed, and his hair was pulled up into a small bun. His armor, black and red like the other soldiers, featured an extra set of blades that jutted out from the shoulders. Helo could guess they may have implied rank, or status. The man sat down on the other side of the table, and eyed the Raptor crewman with utter fascination. He ran a hand across his chin, as if trying to figure out what to make of Helo.

"Captain Karl Agathon." The officer volunteered after a few moments. He could have given his serial number, that was protocol in the event of capture, but what would be the point? A few more moments passed. "Look, I think we have some kind of misunderstanding."

The man retracted his hand. "I have to agree with you." He replied to Helo's surprise. "So why don't we just talk, man to man, and see if we can't sort this out." He looked up to the man on Helo's right. "Guard, uncuff the prisoner. And get him something to drink, please." The man's eyes returned to Helo. "My name is Colonel Eiko. My deepest apologies for my men's attack on your people. They just get a little over eager, you know?" Helo squinted. The man sounded genuine, but he wasn't too eager to trust his captors. Not after hearing Sharon scream in pain.

"You make a habit out of attacking random travelers?" Helo sniped against his better judgement.

"Can you blame them?" The colonel replied with pride. "I'm sure you know, the Earth Kingdom was driven out of this land not even a week ago. We actually expected them to put up more of a fight. They still smell blood. They want to fight. I'm sorry they involved you."

Agathon's ear twitched at the word Earth. Just throw that question onto the pile with the rest. "Apology accepted." Karl feigned. "You don't mind if we head out now, do you?"

"I would love to let you go, I really would." Colonel Eiko said in a conciliatory tone. "But I'm sure you understand, we have no idea who you are. My men said they watched your airship fly down, into our territory, after a deafening boom roared across the sky. They also said it seemed to stop in midair before slowly descending to the ground. You can understand why we might want to know a bit about who you are."

Eiko smiled again. "Let's talk for a bit, get to know each other, then I promise you can be on your way."

Karl stretched out his free hand, still sore from the cuffs. A man set a small cup below him, heat simmering onto his face. It actually smelled like, like… "Tea?"

"We don't have the best out here, but I hope you'll find it to your liking."

Karl grabbed the beverage, bringing it to his nose, and inhaled. It had a faint, pleasant aroma. He hadn't had anything other than plain water or sludge coffee in months. Still, he didn't feel comfortable drinking it just yet. No telling if they put something in it. "Thank you." He said cooly. Regardless of whether Agathon trusted this man or not, his best chance of escape, at least for now, was cooperation. "Okay, let's talk. Where do you want to start?"

"How about who you are and where you're from?" Eiko asked, as if it was just a simple, straightforward question.

"That's, that's uh…" Helo started, trying to figure out where to even begin to answer. "That might take a bit of explaining, actually."

The man raised a palm. "Don't worry, I have time."

"Okay." Helo took a breath. Hopefully a half-truth would be believable enough, he had a feeling the full truth would be too hard to swallow. "Okay, my name is Captain Agathon. Me, the people I was with, we come from… from a land very, very far from here. We needed food, water, supplies. So we stopped to gather some."

"How far from here?" Eiko pushed.

Helo raised a hand, pointing up at the roof of the tent. "Our people are up there, that's where our airship came from. Our people are up there, and if you don't let us go, they're going to come looking for us."

Eiko looked increasingly incredulous. "Another airship? Where was it built? By who?"

Helo nodded. "Yeah, that airship you found us in, it's just a short range recon craft. We didn't want to fight you or anybody else." His face hunched closer to Eiko. "To be honest, we landed here because we thought nobody was around. We had no idea you were here."

"How could you not know?" Eiko accused. "I don't think you're being fully honest with me, Captain. Was your airship built by the Northern Air Temple?"

"It wasn't."

"So where, exactly, was it built?"

Karl shook his head. "I don't think you're going to understand."

"You're dodging the question." Eiko alleged, his voice losing much of its initial softness.

Karl Agathon licked his lips. He could try a higher dose of the truth, but Eiko might just take that as another lie. He couldn't stall for time, and he didn't know the first thing about this world to even pretend to make up a story. "The ship wasn't built on this world." He said slowly, praying to the Lords of Kobol this would work out in his favor. "It was built on another world, and we came a very long way to get here. Honestly, we did come here to gather supplies and nothing else."

There was an aching pause. Then, the colonel's incredulous look finally started to fade away. "Ah, finally, we're starting to get somewhere."

"Glad you see it that way."

"You carry impressive weapons for someone who didn't intend on fighting anyone." Eiko opened a satchel he'd brought in, and produced a familiar metal object. One of their firearms. Helo felt himself tense up. He considered making a break for the weapon, but in the end, he didn't like his chances enough to go through with it. Eiko toyed with the weapon in his hands, holding its grip and rubbing a finger across the barrel.

"Don't!" Karl pleaded. Eiko tensed up this time, pulling the weapon further away from Helo. "Just, be careful with that, please. Honestly I'd feel better if nobody was touching it at all."

Eiko smiled, and resumed examining the gun. "Would you like to know why I believe you?" he asked.

Karl feigned a smile in return. "Yeah, I do."

The colonel probed the front of the weapon's barrel, running his fingers across the opening. "If you were talking to an Earth Kingdom soldier, or a Water Tribe fisherman, they would think you were magic," he chuckled. "And of course they would, they have no other point of reference. We're a little more civilized than that."

Eiko delicately held the device in both hands, seeming to admire the craftsmanship. The grizzled man slowly ran a finger across the weapon's shaft. "This is metal. It feels refined. More finely than anything else I've ever seen" He said with authority. "My father was a blacksmith, and since I was barely old enough to walk, I was by his side. He taught me everything there is to know. There's nothing supernatural about this weapon. It was forged, just like our swords and ships." Eiko replaced the weapon in his satchel. "There are no people on this planet better at forging metal than the Fire Nation. So, it follows that you're not from this planet."

Helo nodded in agreement with the Colonel. These people might have been assholes to them, but they were smarter than their technology initially led him to believe. "You're right, we're not magic. We're just visitors. And if you let us go, you're not going to see us again."

The colonel gave a disappointed sigh. He grabbed his satchel, and looked to the guard. "Restrain him again, please." He said almost clinically.

Helo stood up in protest before being slammed down by the guard. "What happened to talking?" He snapped out while the guard grabbed his hands and resumed binding him to the chair.

"I really wish I could, but I'm afraid I can't let you. The general wants to know everything about that airship. How it works, what makes it tick. You're going to tell us everything there is to know about it."

"Hey, hey!" Helo cried out, still hoping to be able to reason with the colonel. "We do not need to be enemies. We can work this out."

"I have a dozen men waiting to be buried who would disagree with that." Eiko retorted. He grabbed his satchel, and made his way to the tent's entrance."Enjoy your

tea, we'll talk again." Helo yelled out for the man to no avail, with the emotionless guard walking out behind him, taking his station at the small structure's entrance.

"Attacked?" Lee Adama repeated to the command staff gathered around the dimly lit CIC of Pegasus. The ship's nerve center was smaller than Galactica's, despite the ship itself clocking in at nearly twice the size. The closer quarters only amplified Lee's voice. "How the hell was our recon team attacked? Attacked by who? Where?"

"Sharon called in a pretty hectic distress call over her wireless before she cut out. We haven't been able to reach the Raptor since." Louis Hoshi, Pegasus's communications officer, explained. "That was just a few minutes ago."

"I guess first contact with the locals didn't go very well." Lee said, stating the obvious. He examined a topographical map of the recon team's landing site, sprawled out over CIC' central command console. "I thought all recon teams were instructed to keep their distance from the natives?"

"They landed in a pretty heavily forested area. Decent chance if somebody was there, they could have missed them." Dualla hypothesized.

"And now we have three missing crewmen at their mercy."

Dee pulled up a series of high-altitude images transmitted by the Raptor on its first flyover. Lee examined them from over her shoulder as she spoke. "That's a big forest, if we don't find them soon, it's going to be next to impossible to cover all that ground."

Dualla was right, Lee thought. Time would be of the essence. "I want a squadron of Raptors loaded with marines on the launchpad in fifteen minutes." He demanded. Dualla uttered a quick acknowledgement before grabbing a phone to relay the order. "Hoshi, I want all recon teams off the surface immediately." The commander looked up at the DRADIS display mounted above the central command console. Its soft hum had become pleasant white noise, but even that small comfort felt perverted here. Normally, it would be giving a clear view for thousands of kilometers. In the electromagnetic muck of the nebula, they could barely make out their own orbit.

"So much for shore leave." Lee muttered to himself.

"We have a problem." was Adama's blunt opening statement.

Roslin hadn't always seen eye to eye with the admiral, but she appreciated how forthright the man was. "Yes, we do." Laura agreed. "Baltar has caused quite the mess for us to deal with."

"Colonel Tigh was telling me over half the wireless traffic through the fleet is about that damned planet." Adama complained, pouring himself a cup of water and joining Roslin on the couch pushed up against the passenger cabin. "People are demanding to know when we're jumping the fleet into orbit."

"We don't even know for sure the Cylons are unaware of the planet." Roslin pointed out. "We could be walking right into their trap."

"We should make a statement, together." Adama suggested before taking a sip of his drink. "Tell them we'll jump the fleet into orbit when we're one hundred percent satisfied it's safe to do so, and not one moment sooner."

"I was going to suggest a joint statement myself." Roslin said, smiling. More and more often, the two seemed to be seeing things eye to eye. "I wanted to wait until we hear back from Pegasus, so we have more information to make public."

"Lee should be reporting back tomorrow morning." Adama disclosed. "And not a moment too soon. Speculation is running wild. If we don't get a handle on it soon, Baltar is going to find another way to take advantage of the situation."

"Let's plan for tomorrow afternoon then. Around, say, 1700." She stood up, and paced to that favorite window of hers, the one overlooking the fleet. She crossed her arms. "Bill, when do we start addressing the elephant in the room?"

Adama stayed seated. Laura guessed he was taking advantage of the chance to let his body rest. He didn't have to keep up appearances on Colonial One, not when her staff was gone and they had some privacy . Sometimes, she felt like the old man was finally starting to let his guard down around her. It made her feel honored, and a little touched. William let out a long sigh, and set his empty glass down on the stand beside him. "If you're talking about the possibility of permanent settlement, it's still way too early to be giving it serious thought."

"Yeah, tell that to the civilian fleet." Roslin said flippantly. "A beautiful, new world. Hidden from the Cylons. Is it an act of mercy from the Gods, or is there something here we're not seeing?" In the distance, something caught the President's attention. For a moment, something seemed to flicker just outside of her peripheral vision. Laura squinted her eyes, trying to find the source. It seemed to be coming from one of the civilian ships, the Botanical liner. She pressed her face almost against the window, as if the extra few inches would make the difference.

"I don't believe in divine intervention." Adama said, rebuking the suggestion. "We have a lot of ground to cover on this planet. I think that's a discussion worth having, but we need to take this one step at a time. Do you want me to bring Lee for our statement? He'll know more about the planet than either of us." Adama asked, trying to change the topic.

A few moments passed without reply. "Laura?" He turned to face her. Roslin was absolutely transfixed on that window. Her arms were practically glued to her chest. "Laura, what's wrong?"

"Bill, come here please." Roslin implored. She felt him come up behind her.

Way off in the distance, the two could make out the long, green shape of the Botanical cruiser. The ship was essentially a large cylinder with a dozen biomes plastered across her hull. The ship had been a long term cruise liner before the attack, serving rich vacationers. Since then, it'd been converted to grow most of the refugee fleet's food. Roslin always shuddered when she saw that ship up close. She'd given the order to leave behind an identical looking ship during the initial attack on the Colonies. If she hadn't made the call, all of them would have died back there. It didn't make the decision easier in retrospect.

One of the ship's biodomes had ruptured, and she was belching smoke off her main fuselage. A bright, orange explosion originating from the cylinder briefly illuminated the duo's window, sending the spaceship careening out of formation, its maneuvering thrusters fighting in vain to compensate for the explosion's inertia jerking them wildly off course. Another set of biodomes ruptured, igniting the air and sending water and soil flooding into the vacuum of space.

"Oh my Gods." Laura let out with disbelief.

"I need to go." Adama said flatly, as if it were any other sentence. He didn't bother with another word, or even shutting the door behind him. Laura took a moment to collect herself before grabbing her phone, and trying to reach Tory over the wireless.

Karl Agathon ran through his options for the thousandth time. He'd given up on breaking free of his metal bindings. Maybe Sharon would have better luck, she was the strongest of the three. Another option was to wait until the guards transferred him, but even if he could overpower one or two, he had no idea how many more were in this encampment. He wasn't even sure he'd be able get far enough to find out. The officer couldn't pretend to understand how, but these people seemed able to summon fire at will. Helo kept running back the image of the man bringing an open flame above the palm of his hand, back at the Raptor. Or being cut off from Nelson when they tried to make a break for it. Or, worst of all, Sharon's horrific scream when the armored soldiers seared her sidearm out of her hands.

Finally, after some consideration, Karl had his escape plan. He would wait until he was uncuffed and taken out of the tent. He would get a headcount of how many there were. If he could, he'd try to get eyes on Nelson and Sharon. If they took him back to this tent, he'd be ready to make his escape the next time. If they tried to take him out of this camp, he'd claim he had something more to say to Eiko, and take a chance that-

Captain Agathon's strategizing was interrupted by a series of immensely loud, crashing thuds outside. There were a couple of blood-curdling screams mixed with intermittent, confused chatter. One of them, the voice of the man from back at the Raptor, sounded like he was trying to yell out a warning to his fellow men.

That man came crashing into his tent, propelled by a small boulder that looked like it'd been shot out of a cannonball and into his chest. The soldier slammed into the ground feet away from Agathon. He coughed out blood, weakly trying to pull himself up before collapsing.

Agathon blinked hard, staring dumbfounded at the crippled man

His eyes moved up to the broken entrance of the tent, then back the soldier. The boulder had left a sizable impression in his armor.

Though his brain hadn't quite registered it yet, the fighting outside had stopped. Another man, this one dressed totally different from anyone else Helo had met, stepped into the tent. He wore light tan armor, made of a heavy cloth instead of metal. Brilliant green stretched from his shoulder blades halfway down his arm. He wore a thin, round helmet twice the width of his head, complete with a tiny, silver centered on top. The stranger swiped his hands together with a look of smug satisfaction. "Thought you could use a hand."

Agathon tilted his head, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly.

"Let's get you out of here before more of them show up." He threw a fist down, and with one swift motion, threw it back up. A small chunk of the ground came up with it. The man squeezed his fist, and the chunk compressed into small, dense rock. The man threw his arm forward, sending the rock crashing square into the middle of Helo's cuffs, freeing him.

"Come on!" the newcomer yelled out, before turning and starting to run out of the tent. When Helo didn't immediately follow, he turned back around.

"What are you waiting for!" he yelled out in frustration.

Finally, Helo gathered himself and made a break for the door. Outside, Another dozen of the red-and-black soldiers laid dead or dying. The few of them who were still alive and kicking were being bound themselves by a pair of men in identical tan-green outfits.

"Captain!" Sharon called out. She and Nelson had also been freed by their saviors, to Helo's relief. She was crouched down, her hands in the process of being bandaged by one of their rescuers. Helo sprinted over to her.

"Hey, are you alright? Did they hurt you?"

"No, they hadn't even bothered talking to me yet." Sharon said to Helo's relief. "Actually, they seemed confused about what a woman was doing out fighting with a pair of men."

"My name is Sergeant Rokkon." Helo's rescuer, a grizzled man who looked to be in his late 30's, explained. His facial hair was a frazzled mess, and he had a thick bandage on his left arm, coated with dried blood. He didn't bother acknowledging Sharon. "Acting head of the 17th Battalion. What's left of it, anyway."

There weren't more than a couple dozen of the tan-green soldiers around the camp. Most of them look pretty beat up, too. "Thank you… Sergeant." Helo replied with a slight nod, hesitating on the last word.

"We saw that Fire Nation patrol taking you back to their encampment." Rokkon explained. "We've actually been trying to find where their patrols are based out of, so thank you. The least we could do was return the favor."

Rokkon knelt down in front one of the surviving Fire Nation soldiers. The defeated man had been forced onto his knees, his wrists bound just as Helo's had been not too long ago. "I had family in Boshan." The sergeant explained to the man. "A lot of my men did, Before you turned it to cinders." Rokkon spat in the man's face. He stood up, and turned to Helo. "This isn't the first time they've underestimated the Earth Kingdom, it won't be the last. I'm sorry, what did you say your name was?"

"Cap-" Helo stopped himself. He decided it would be easier for all involved if he just omitted his rank. "Karl Agathon."

"Well, Mister Agathon, the Fire Nation asked at least one good question. Do you usually bring women along with you to the front lines?"

I really, really do not have time for this . Helo thought to himself. "We're not really from around here." he replied simply.

"I could have guessed." Rokkon admonished. "Your clothes, I've never seen anything like them. The markings on your shoulders, I'm not familiar with those either."

Helo touched the squadron patch on his flight suit. "We're from far away." He replied, vaguely. The officer had mixed feelings. On one hand, this was a golden opportunity to learn more about the natives. More importantly, it could be a chance to figure out what the actual frak happened back at the Raptor, and in the tent. People shooting fire. Then throwing boulders like they were thin air. What the hell was happening on this planet? On the other hand, bombarding this random person with questions may not have been the most advisable idea.

"Your men pulled a chunk of solid rock out of the ground and threw it fifty feet!" Sharon spat out, finally vocalizing the insanity Helo had been witnessed back in the tent and solving his conundrum for him. "How are you doing that?" she finished.

"Excuse me?" Rokkon asked incredulously. "How am I doing that?" he repeated. The sergeant turned to Helo, his eyes slowly running down his flight suit. "I'm sorry, where exactly did you say you're from?"

Helo was trying to figure out how to reply when a series of sudden, loud bursts screamed out from the skies above them. The Earth Kingdom men ducked down. One threw a literal wall of rock in front of them, giving themselves cover.

"Hypersonic booms." Helo noted, not even flinching at the noise. He locked eyes with Sharon "Pegasus is coming for us."

A dozen miles above, a half-dozen Raptors screamed through the thickening atmosphere at a thousand miles an hour. Compressed, superheated air engulfed the squadron in an envelope of fire, until a combination of the planet's atmosphere and the ship's own propulsion systems arrested enough velocity. As the view cleared, their pilots finally got their first real, close-up look at the gem that, until just now, they'd only seen from the stratosphere up.

"Alright, you all have your coordinates." Crackled a feminine voice over the wireless. The pilot, callsign 'Racetrack,' was taking point on the search & rescue operations planetside. "Keep to your grid, don't go wandering off. Whoever finds our missing Raptor crew gets bragging rights for rescuing the Cylon girl, that's all the motivation you need."

They'd set up a simple grid over the forest, centered on the Raptor's last known position. Each bird was assigned its own grid. The small spacecraft had an astonishing amount of tech crammed into them, allowing them to look for their pilots with a dizzying array of sensors and instruments. And if their team so much as blinked at a wireless, they'd pick it up a thousand miles away.

"I've got eyes on our wayward Raptor. Tough Guy, take your bird down there and secure the site. See if you can find anything." Racetrack ordered. Her Raptor hovered fifty meters over the tree line. She peered out her windows, counting on the ECO in the ship's aft to do the heavy lifting of working every thermal and optical sensor their ship had. She just had to keep Raptor pointed straight, which was pretty easy to do when there wasn't an army of DRADIS-tracking surface-to-air missiles trying to swat her out of the sky.

Although, those sensors didn't do them quite as much good here. Mark-1 eyeball might actually have more luck finding their people.

Racetrack had only just finished surveying the first set of grid coordinates when one of her pilots hailed them over the wireless. "Racetrack, Thumper. I have something here. Some sort of small camp at my position. I'm going in for a closer look."

"Roger, Thumper." Racetrack replied. "Signal again if you find something. Try not to scare the locals too much, okay?"

The Earth Kingdom soldiers had gathered into a tight formation as the thunderous sounds echoing around them multiplied. Helo was doing what he could to deescalate the situation, but the warriors seemed to be ignoring him.

"Fire Nation war machines." The sergeant declared. "A whole division of them, maybe more. We can't hope to outrun them. We'll make our stand here."

"Nobody is here to fight anybody!" Helo declared for the fifth time, yelling to make himself heard over the roars of the Raptor's engines echoing through the sky. "Listen, I know those people. They aren't- they aren't the Fire Nation."

Rokkon only glared at him.

Above the canopy, Helo finally got a visual on the small orange craft that was his ride home. It came to a stop near the middle of the encampment, hovering in place about a hundred feet up. The captain started flailing his arms in its general direction.

"What unholy-" Rokkon began. The soldier maintained his stance, fists clenched. "They have airships?"

The man braced himself, and threw an open palm down to the ground. Helo watched the sergeant clench his fist, and pull a massive, car-sized boulder out of the ground.

"No!" T he Colonial yelled out, sprinting over to the Earth Kingdom soldier. "No no no-"

Agathon remained unacknowledged by Rokkon who, in one swift motion, sent the boulder soaring towards the spaceship at breakneck speed.

"Confirmed, Racetrack. I have eyes on Helo, Sharon, and our marine. I've also got two dozen other contacts, Probably the people who attacked them."

"Roger that, Thumper. Good work." Racetrack replied. "All Raptors, converge on-"

"What the Frak!" Thumper yelled out, cutting Racetrack off mid sentence. I just- they started throwing crap at us."

"Throwing crap at you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah they missed. Just took my bird up another five hundred feet. Looked like a bunch of big-ass rocks. I don't know where the hell it came from. They- My ECO has optics on them. He's telling me they're just pulling things out of the frakking ground."

"What? Thumper, repeat your last?"

"I said they're pulling boulders out of the frakking ground!"

Racetrack looked back at her own ECO. He stared back at her, both trying to make sense of their comrade's statements.

"Frak it, we'll figure it out later. They took our people. I'm weapons free."

Praying that one of those boulders wouldn't catch him, Helo charged in front of the Earth Kingdom soldier. He threw his arms up, yelling out at the Raptor as if they'd be able to hear him from an air-tight cockpit hundreds of feet in the air.

He turned back at the sergeant, their faces an inch apart. "Stop!" He cried out again. "Those are our people." He pleaded.

"What?" Rokkon spat out.

"Those are out people, and if you don't calm down you're going to end up in more pieces than those soldiers you just mowed down. Now listen to me and stop throwing shit at them."

"Your… people?" Rokkon repeated, incredulous. Finally, after a tense stare-off with Agathon, he grudgingly backed down. The man turned to his troops. "Cease fire!" He declared. Rokkon turned back to Helo. "I'm going to have to ask you one last time." Rokkon started, this time a tinge of fear mixed into his authoritative voice. "Where exactly are you from?"

Helo turned to the Raptor, motioning with his arm for the spacecraft to come down. He looked back at Rokkon. "Why don't we talk." was all he offered.

The mood in the fleet had gone from excitement and jubilation, to somber in the space of a day.

Laura Roslin licked her finger, and flipped her notebook to a fresh page.

Galactica's multipurpose wardroom never seemed to be the place where good news came from. The plain, rectangular room currently consisted of a single, long table stretching almost wall to wall. A single lonely chair was at the front of the room's front, almost against the wall. The room was usually used in formal ship or fleet-wide business.

At this moment, attendance included Admiral Adama, with President Roslin and her aid Tory seated to his right. On his left sat Colonel Saul Tigh, Galactica's XO, and Feelix Gaeta, tactical officer and trusted confidant.

Front and center, commanding the raptured attention of all present from that lonely, isolated chair was Chief Galen Tyrol. His orange jumpsuit was stained with black and soot.

"We've put out the last of the fires." Tyrol continued, not meeting any of the solemn faces questioning him in the eye. "The captain expects to have his FTL drive up and running again by the end of tomorrow."

"Do we have any idea how extensive the damage is?" Adama asked, not looking up from his notes.

"DC teams from the Botanical cruiser and Galactica are still trying to get a full catalogue." The chief replied. "The fires and resulting explosion punched a pretty big hole in the rear of the ship. Five of her biodomes were destroyed, and another three have microfissures all over their glass. I've recommended the captain vent those domes until we can fabricate replacements."

"What kind of timeline are we looking at for repairs?" Roslin asked softly. "I'm sure you know, the Botanical ship is responsible for more than half of our food production."

The chief cleared his throat. "Most of the structural damage to the fuselage can be repaired with the stuff we already have on hand. The biodomes on the other hand…" He paused, and took a breath. "They're made of a special glass that the machinery we have on hand just doesn't do a good job of replicating. Now, we can make a pretty decent facsimile, but the new biodomes are going to end up a lot more fragile than the original."

"Good thing we never run into any trouble around here." Tigh said, trying to cut the tension.

"I can't give a solid timeline, maybe two months, maybe longer." The Chief reported. "There is one more pretty significant issue, though."

"Just one?" The President looked up from her notebook, asking for Galen's eyes.

Tyrol looked up from the ground, finally returning Laura's gaze. "We can fix the ship itself up, but the organic stuff she was carrying onboard - soil, some chemical compounds, we don't have a way of synthesizing them."

"Those domes will never grow food again, not until we can replace those supplies planetside." Gaeta deduced, following Tyrol's logic.

"Exactly."

"Two months with most of our food production gone." Roslin thought out loud, twirling her pen between her fingers. She decided to change the topic. "Do we have any idea what caused the explosion in the first place?"

"Specifically." Adama interjected. "Is there any evidence at all this was sabotage?"

"Well, we aren't ruling anything out yet." Tyrol started. "But, to be perfectly honest, we've been pushing that ship pretty hard for a long time now. It was never designed for agricultural work on this scale, and I wouldn't be surprised if something decided to just give out."

"I see." Laura knew they'd been pushing that ship to do more than they probably should have, but what was the alternative? There was only so much space suitable for growing food in the fleet. "So once the investigation is over, we either get to tell the fleet it was a Cylon agent, or that it was another case of our ships falling apart." She needed to move on. "Do we have a final casualty count yet?"

"We still have a few people in critical condition who were medevaced to Galactica's sickbay." The Chief began. "As of right now, the count is at seventy-five lost souls."

Roslin's expression remained unchanged. "Thank you, Chief." She said simply. "Those were all the questions I had."

"You're dismissed, chief petty officer." The admiral gave the slightest of nods as he finished jotting his notes.

The chief stood up and straightened his jumpsuit. "By the way, the captain of the Botanical cruiser wanted me to express his thanks for letting them borrow one of our DC teams."

"We're in this together, aren't we?" Tigh offered. "Go get some rack time while you can."

The Chief quietly left the room, and Adama closed the door behind him. He sat back down, eyeing Laura. They each seemed to be waiting for the other to speak first.

"This is a catastrophe." Roslin let out, finally breaking the silence. She immediately wished she'd chosen a better word, but catastrophe seemed to be the best descriptor. "We're already on strict rationing as it is."

"In the short term, the situation might actually be worse than we initially thought." Adama explained. "The Botanical cruiser was getting ready to make a shipment of food tomorrow. Most of it was lost in the accident."

"Gods, we can't seem to catch a break today, can we?" Tigh let out in disgust.

"How long can we expect our current supplies to hold out?" Felix piped up hesitantly.

"We've probably got two or three weeks before we start running into serious shortages." Tory revealed, her eyes locked on her notes. "If we crack down on rations even harder than we already are, maybe a bit longer. Some ships have more stockpiled than others, so it's hard to get very exact."

"Okay." Laura steeled herself. She needed to assume control of the situation. "Tory, I want you to contact each ship captain and get an inventory of their food supply. Let's see if we can't get a timeline more specific than a 'couple of weeks.' She looked to Adama. "Admiral, I'd like you and Commander Lee on board Colonial One the moment he jumps back. That planet may have just become our saving grace."

The flock of Raptors would have almost looked graceful touching down one by one around the Fire Nation encampment, if it weren't for the still-deafening roar of their engines. One by one, they slowly spun down. The Raptor's hatch closest to Helo popped open first. Three marines came barrelling out, rifles drawn. Then another three, and another. They were in full body armor, with helmets obscuring most of their face. They started pointing weapons in the direction of the Earth Kingdom soldiers.

"Hey hey!" he yelled out, displaying his outstretched palms. "Stand down! It's okay, We're all friendlies here."

The marine on point, a thin woman with jet-black skin, didn't look convinced. To Helo's relief, though, she finally pointed her weapon towards the ground, and her men followed suit. Agathon helped Sharon up, and handed her off to one of the marines. He asked him to make sure she got some real antiseptic on her wounds.

"You mind telling us what the hell happened to you, captain?" Came Racetrack's half angry, half annoyed demand. She gave a nervous side eye at Rokkon, still standing beside Karl.

"Who are you people?" the sergeant asked, bewildered. "Are- are you Air Nomads?" His face snapped to Agathon. "Did she call you captain? Captain of what?"

Racetrack gave another nervous glance at the sergeant, then looked back at Helo.

"They rescued us." Helo blurted out, trying to diffuse the situation. "Our team was captured. This man is Sergeant Rokkon, and these are his men. They followed and got us out."

"Thumper said they were.." The pilot started, before stopping herself. "She said they were-"

"Throwing rocks at you guys?" Helo interrupted

Racetrack froze, then produced a quick nod. "Yeah."

"Are you telling me you've never seen an Earthbender before?" Rokkon asked, trying to insert himself into the conversation again.

"Rokkon," Helo began. "No, we've never seen an EarthBender before."

Rokkon's bewildered expression shifted from Helo to Racetrack, then to the squadron of marines and Raptor crews slowly gathering behind them. Agathon noted how every single set of eyes was staring at Rokkon, or his few dozen soldiers scattered across the encampment. Everybody seemed to be trying to get their first real look at the natives.

Rokkon looked at the soil, and brought an outstretched palm just above the ground. He clenched his fist, and a chunk of dirt and rock came flying up out of the ground like magic. The sergeant brought his fist up, levitating the material above his hand as the dozen or so Colonials exchanged shocked looks and confused words.

Silently, Rokkon clenched his fist into a palm. The rock shattered into dust. He stretched out his other hand and held the thousands of fragments suspended in mid air between his palms. He brought his fists together, and the fragments reformed into a single, compact rock again.

He let it fall back into his palm.

"Heee-lo." Racetrack took a step back, nearly tripping over herself. "What the hell is going on? How are they doing that?"

"You've never seen a bender." The reality finally seemed to settle on him. He dropped the rock, leveling it back into the ground with one swift motion. "I've never seen anything like your airships. Not even the stories of the Air Nomads mentioned anything as fearsome as these." He took a step towards the raptor.

A marine raised her weapon.

"No." Helo put a hand up. "It's okay, let him."

Rokkon slowly, deliberately, walked up to the spacecraft. He held a hand over its metal hull. Finally, he set it down and started running his fingers across the ship's body. He turned back to the Colonials. "You might as well ask me how I draw breath, or command my arm to move. It's a part of my being. It's an extension of myself. It's as natural as picking something up." Rokkon took his hand back. "Now, answer one of my questions. What are you people? What part of the world do you call home?"

"We're not quite from around here." Helo explained again.

Rokkon took his hand back, and resumed his normal, tight composure. "We saved your life, you owe us more of an explanation than that."

"Somewhere not from this world. Somewhere we can't go we can't go back to." Helo said, his voice somber. "We lost our home."

"You lost your home." Rokkon nodded in solidarity. "I can understand that. All of my men can." He kneeled in front of one of the slain soldiers. "So you know nothing of the Fire Nation, the hundred year war, the Avatar, anything?"

"We don't. But we want to learn, hopefully someday soon."

The sergeant stood up, and walked to within an inch of Agathon, staring him dead in the eye. " Captain Agathon, I need you to understand, as long as your people are here, these men, the Fire Nation, they will attack you. Again, and again, and again. They are butcherers, and they understand nothing but war and death. They burnt our village to the ground just days ago. They'll probably turn this forest to cinders just trying to find us."

"Thank you for the warning." Helo desperately wanted to stay longer. He wanted so much that it physically hurt. He wanted to just let Rokkon talk for a week. What were these people like? How did they live? What defined their culture, their way of life? And of course, everything there was to know about the seemingly magic, inexplicable, bending. This was a fact finding mission, and that last part seemed like a pretty damn important fact . "Right now, we need to go back to our people."

"And my men need to get to the next village." Rokkon said curtly. "Ever since the Fire Nation failed to conquer the Northern Water Tribe, they've become more brutal trying to make progress on this front."

"Thank you, again, for what you've done for us. Maybe we'll meet again someday."

"Maybe we will." Rokkon replied. "Goodbye, Captain Agathon."

The warrior turned around, and one by one, his men turned away from the Colonials and their machines. They gathered their prisoners, threw their arms behind them, and started moving the ground itself below them, sending them speeding off and leaving a thick cloud of dirt dust in their trail.

The Fire Nation encampment may have been void of life, but it had a bounty of artifacts just waiting to be taken back to the fleet. They found parchment with what looked like writing, but not in any language they recognized. The maps were the most exciting find by far, with clearly marked cities and villages. Though, what Helo was most excited to bring back to the fleet, was something he hid from the other crews. Tucked away in one of the tents, was a satchel filled with real, fresh, honest-to-God's bread. He hid the bag in the lower compartment of his Raptor before running his pre-flight checklist and breaking for orbit, wondering how exactly he was going to explain all of this at his debriefing.

Commander Lee was there to greet him and the others in Pegasus's starboard flight pod. Helo caught his CO walking up before he could even set foot onto the flight deck.

"You mind telling me what happened down there?" Lee demanded.

The Officer took his time replying, much to Lee's annoyance. Helo looked to Sharon, then behind him at the Raptor he'd just stepped out of. "We need to pull the gun camera."