Chapter 4
"You can't do this!" Tyrol yelled as the guard locked the door behind Sharon.
"We have no choice," he explained. "This came from command. Lieutenant Sharon Valerii, to the brig, no explanation. I'm following orders."
"Who's orders?" the Chief asked.
"Colonel Tigh's," he said simply. "And right now he speaks for the Commander."
Tyrol looked over at his wife, who had sat down on the bed with a look of utter confusion on her face. "She hasn't done anything wrong," he said for at least the tenth time since the guard had appeared on the flight deck to arrest her. Or contain her. Or whatever the hell they were calling locking her up for no reason.
"Colonel Tigh would like you to meet him up in the CIC. Maybe he'll explain things then."
Tyrol's glance to Sharon, back to the guard, and then finally resting on Sharon again said more than words could.
"She'll be fine," the guard told her. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to hurt Boomer."
Tyrol took a deep breath before addressing his wife. "I'll find out what's going on," he told her. "I promise."
She nodded but didn't speak, and he knew how scared she was. Thank the Lords they had at least done this at work. If they'd taken her in front of Boxey, he would have had to have done something. As it was, he hadn't realized what was going on until they were nearly off the flight deck.
Now he reached through the bars to grab her hand and give a squeeze before he left her. Her grip was so tight it hurt. Heads were going to roll for this.
The walk to CIC was quick. He didn't have any patience for any of it. Once there, Tigh gestured for him to wait, spoke to a Lieutenant - Geita, the Chief thought - then walked towards him.
"We'll be meeting the Commander in his office."
"What the hell is going on?" he asked fiercely. Rank be damned - they had his wife in prison.
"I won't go into it here," Tigh said with finality. Tyrol resisted the urge to hit the man then and there. He had never liked him - not even before he'd sentenced the majority of his deck crew to death - but the feelings he had now were very close to hatred. Still, he couldn't do a damn thing for Sharon if he was sitting in that cell beside her.
Tigh led the way towards Adama's quarters, which also served as his office. Tyrol was escorted inside, where the Commander was at his desk and their Chief Physician, Doctor Salik, was sitting on the foot of Adama's bed.
"Thank you for coming," the Commander said. He looked tired, the Chief noted, and worn. For just a moment he felt a deep sympathy for the man who had lost his son only an hour before, but his fear for Sharon was foremost in his mind.
"I didn't have a lot of choice," Tyrol remarked.
The Commander didn't comment on his rudeness, but instead introduced their doctor to him. Tyrol shook his hand, but his heart wasn't in it. Formalities be damned, he wanted to know what the hell was going on.
"The Commander has asked me here because I'm the closest thing we have to an expert on Cylon physiology," Salik told him.
"Why Cylon?" he asked, confused.
Adama stood to face him. "We have evidence that Sharon Valerii may be a Cylon plant."
Tyrol just stared. They were all frakking insane. "A Cylon?" It would have been a great joke, except that no one was smiling and his wife was in the brig.
Tigh stepped forward then with a photograph. It was slightly grainy, a gray background with a number of people carrying weapons. "This was taken on the planet we just returned from. They aren't human. These are Cylons. See how some of them have identical features?"
Tyrol had noticed that. He had also noticed that two of the women towards the back of the picture bore a striking resemblance to his wife. "This is impossible," he murmured, more thinking than talking.
"I was there," Tigh said simply. "I saw them. And the weapons are real. They did their best to take the tanker out before we could get it off the ground."
"This isn't Sharon," he said simply. "Sharon wasn't even on the mission."
"We know that," the Commander added. "We know that Cylons have a limited number of bodies. I remember the Cylon on Ragnar telling me that his consciousness would be transferred to an identical one. I suppose they're like clones, for lack of a better word."
"What does that have to do with Sharon?" he asked, but he was very afraid he knew where this was going.
"Until we can prove that she is - or is not - a Cylon, we have to suspect that she is," Adama answered.
"She's not a Cylon!" he yelled once more.
"That's what I'm here to find out," Salik said calmly.
"How?" Tyrol had no patience for guessing games.
"When we cremated the Cylon, we found chemical compounds that were synthetic in nature. They weren't organic. We need to see if your wife has those same synthetic compounds."
"How?" Tyrol said again. An aircraft he could take apart and put back together blindfolded, but biology and chemistry were out of his league.
"We take a biopsy, we burn it, and we analyze it," he answered simply.
The Chief relaxed a bit. "So we can prove this is crazy," he said. "Fine. Do it."
"It's not quite that easy," Tigh put in.
Salik nodded his agreement. "The only tissue that appears to show the compounds is neural."
"Neural?"
"Brain tissue," the doctor clarified.
Tyrol decided that the discussion had gone from insane to surreal. They wanted to take a chunk of his wife's brain out to prove she wasn't human? He had to be misunderstanding.
"You can't mean this," he said softly.
"I'm afraid we do," Adama told him. He took a breath, let it out slowly, and explained. "There is simply too much risk to the fleet to allow even the threat of a Cylon plant to go uninvestigated."
"She's not a Cylon," he told them again. "Dammit, can Cylons get pregnant?"
Salik raised his eyebrows. "Pregnant?"
Tyrol nodded. It wasn't his place to tell them - Sharon didn't want to lose her flight status - but he didn't see an option. "A couple of months. She didn't want to say anything because Apollo would ground her."
At the mention of the Captain's name, Adama flinched visibly. A stab of sympathy hit again, but he pushed it away. "So she can't be a Cylon."
"We don't know how they reproduce," Salik said carefully. "I'll run a test, of course, but it won't prove anything either way."
"So you're going to take my wife - my pregnant wife - and cut into her brain to find out what I'm already telling you?"
"The biopsy will be conducted as carefully as possible," Salik mentioned. "If the testing proves negative, then she'll be released. Correct?" He turned to Adama for confirmation. The Commander nodded.
Tyrol had no clue what to say, or what to do. They were wrong. They had to be wrong, but the only way to prove it was to take out part of his wife's brain. Suddenly, freezing to death in space didn't seem like such a bad thing after all.
Kara met Chief Tyrol as he was walking back to the brig. "I need your help," she said without preamble.
"I'm busy," he told her simply, and kept walking.
"I'm not kidding," she told him, keeping pace with him and grabbing him by the arm. "Command has gone insane, and we have to do something."
That stopped him. She had known it would. "Do you know about Sharon?" he asked softly.
She looked at the ground. "I was on the planet," she told him. "If Tigh saw what I did, then I can imagine."
"They took pictures," he ground out. "To prove she's."
"Help me," she said desperately. She looked around quickly, then grabbed his arm to head towards family quarters. Once in the room that he shared with Sharon, she closed the door and met him eye to eye. "At least hear me out."
She could see the irritation in him - the impatience - but he gave a brief nod for her to continue.
"Get me a Raptor so I can go back to the planet."
Tyrol closed his eyes and sighed. "Kara, he's gone."
She glared at him for a moment. "Would you let them leave Sharon behind?"
"She might be better off there at the moment," he told her bitterly. The remark was pure frustration with no truth behind it, but Kara grabbed it like a lifeline.
"You get me a Raptor, and I'll get Sharon out of here."
He looked at her for a moment, the surprise clear on his face. "You're as insane as they are."
She reached out a hand to keep him from walking out on her. "Listen," she hissed, wanting to yell but not wanting to be overheard. "You know what they did to Doral. They'll do it to her, too. Tigh is running this show, and he doesn't are about anyone or anything except himself. He won't listen, he won't compromise, and we can not let him get away with it."
The Chief didn't answer, but he stopped tugging against her grip. She took that as a good sign.
"Look, they might go easier on her if she helps me get Lee back," Kara wheedled. She wasn't used to this. Normally she didn't cajole; she either did it herself or did without. But the bottom line was that she hadn't jumped Raptors since flight school - flown them, yes, but not jumped them. Sharon would increase her chances of getting there and back without incident. She would also be another set of eyes, another gun, and another pair of legs when they hit the planet. The more she considered it, the more she liked it. "He's the Commander's son," she added. "Sharon saves him, and Adama will back her against Tigh. I'm sure of it."
"You're talking like it could work," he said tiredly. "There is no way you can get down to that planet undetected, find him - if he's even alive, and then get out without being captured or killed. They probably called in a Base Star after the attack. They'd need it for fuel, anyway."
"We didn't drain the fuel," she corrected. "There must have been a billion gallons in that depot. We took maybe a few million. And it wouldn't have time to get there."
"Base Star's can jump, and their ships have fuel," he reminded her. "That makes this better?"
"I can do this. I'll bring Sharon back, I promise.
"You can't make that promise," he corrected. "You didn't even bring Apollo back." He looked at her for a moment and sighed. The guilt must have shown, because he reached forward to take her hand. "I didn't mean that," he corrected. "But that's just how uncertain this is. They left him because there were too many guns to avoid, and you're talking about flying right back into the middle of it. It just can't work."
"We won't land by the bunker," she corrected. "There isn't room anyway. We'll go in where we ditched the Vipers. Lee would have headed back that way. He knew the terrain, because we ran it on the way in."
"You don't even know if he's alive," Tyrol told her in a quiet voice.
"He is," she said fiercely. "Chief, I just have to get to him."
He shook his head, but at least he was staying, and considering. "It's a moot point," he finally said. "Sharon is locked in the brig."
That took Kara aback, but she didn't know why. They had chained Doral up and posted a guard, but she didn't think they'd work that quickly with one of their own. It would take more planning. It would take more time.
"So it can't work," Tyrol said quietly. "Even if we could get a Raptor out, and get Sharon to it, you only have two and a half hours to the jump. You wouldn't make it back. And taking in a Raptor would be sending them directions. If you were captured, they'd be here in a heartbeat and we wouldn't be able to get away.
"What do you think they'll do to Sharon?" Kara asked, taking the conversation into another, more productive direction.
"They said they're going to cut into her brain," he told her quietly. "To prove she's a Cylon. If she is, they'll kill her, or leave her, which amounts to the same thing."
Kara took a deep breath, thinking quickly and trying to put it all together in her mind. "We'll have to get Sharon out," she thought aloud. "Shouldn't be hard. I'm on a first-name basis with most of the brig guards. Then get her to the Raptor. What about help? Would Callie get it ready?"
"She might, but I can't be sure."
Her head snapped up and she was smiling. "Kohler would," she said quickly. "He was as pissed that they left him as I was. He'd help us."
"Who else," the Chief asked. This was good. He was thinking with her. "I can trust Hawk," she said softly. "And Evans, too. They like Lee. They would help."
"Cathy has a crush on him," he said with inspiration. "I could talk her into getting a Raptor ready; tell her it's for a mission. It's all so secret now that she wouldn't question it."
"Cathy? She's a kid."
"She's also a damn fine mechanic," he corrected. "And less likely to question it than Cally."
"Okay, that leaves Sharon," Kara said softly. "Will she do it?"
Tyrol thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I can ask," he finally said.
"Then let's go," she prompted. "We're wasting time, and there isn't much of it."
Sharon Valerii sat on the bed with her legs crossed before her, her elbows on her knees, and her face in her hands. She would not cry. She would not do this. They would straighten it all out. They had to. It was just a mistake. Someone probably hacked into one of the Raptor computers and they thought it was her. Or maybe something was missing from the flight deck; theft was always a problem in open areas. They would figure this out. She just had to hold herself together until they did.
She looked up when she heard her husband's voice. He was talking to her guard, and he didn't sound upset. Maybe they had it straightened out already. God she hoped so! This was going to scare Boxey to death. He'd lost so much already. He couldn't lose her too.
"Hi, Sweetie," he said as he walked towards the bars of the cell. The guard hadn't followed him.
"What's going on?" she asked quickly.
"Come here," he coaxed. "Let me hold you."
Her eyebrows raised at that. Not like him at all, but the situation wasn't normal. She stood and walked over to him, putting arms through the bars to encircle his waist. He did the same, leaning down with his face close to hers. Oh great, now she was going to cry.
"Listen to me," he whispered softly. "Don't say a word; just listen. They think you're a Cylon." She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast. "Wait," he whispered quietly. "Listen to me. They took pictures of Cylons on the planet, and one looked like you, so they're going nuts. They want to. Well, it doesn't matter what they want. They can't do it. Starbuck has a plan to get Lee off the planet, and if you help it might get the Commander on our side. At least I hope it will."
"What kind of plan?" she whispered, still feeling as though she were in shock.
"She wants to jump down to the planet, bring him back, and then jump with the fleet. It's a long shot, but she said if she can't find him in time she'll come back in time."
"She doesn't jump Raptors," Sharon said quietly.
"I know," he responded. "You do."
She looked at him carefully, meeting his eyes with a searching gaze. He wanted her to jump to a Cylon planet, look around, then try to get back before the fleet jumped. He was suggesting this. He - the man that had screamed at her for two days when she refused to go to a doctor because she didn't want to get pulled of duty - was suggesting this. "Does it look that bad?" she asked softly.
At least he didn't pretend not to understand. "Yeah," he said simply. "We have help," he clarified. "But we're doing this against command directives. I guess you could get into a little trouble."
She gestured briefly to the cell with a nod of her head. "Right."
She didn't really have to think about it. Tigh and Cylons didn't mix, and he was too close to the Commander to think that they might get him overruled. They thought she was a Cylon? The situation was unreal. Somehow, knowing they suspected that seemed more dangerous than jumping to a Cylon planet.
"How do you plan to get me out of here?"
He took a deep breath, leaning towards the bars to kiss her gently on the lips. "You ready?" he asked softly. At her nod, he kissed her quickly once more. "I love you."
"You too," she replied.
Then all hell broke loose. He screamed for help, the guard stood up to come towards them, and Sharon watched as two men tackled him from behind. Kara came in behind them, grabbing the key-card from the guard's pocket, and sliding it along the release. The cell door came open with a resounding click, and Sharon stepped out.
She didn't see exactly what they had done, but the guard was unconscious. One of the guys - Evan - placed a strip of tape across the guard's mouth and then the two of them dragged him into the cell. As they moved towards the brig door, Sharon caught Kara giving Kohler a brief hug and her thanks, and then they were all walking quickly towards the hanger.
They didn't have time to talk, even if they could have said anything about what they were doing. When they walked into the launching bay, Cathy met them with a nod towards her Raptor. "I'll be in Control," she said quickly, and took off at a jog.
Tyrol stepped up behind her then, taking her into a quick hug and kissing her on the cheek. "Come back," he told her firmly.
"I love you," she countered.
He kissed her again, then pushed her towards the Raptor hatch. Once inside, she found Kara already at the back panels firing up engines and warming up the jump drive. They really were going to do this. As the hatch rose up to close them in, she spared a thought that this looked pretty guilty. They were thinking she was a Cylon, and she was stealing a spacecraft to go to a Cylon planet. She just prayed that Starbuck's luck would get them through this. She didn't have much else to rely on.
Dualla frowned at her control panel. "Colonel, we have an unauthorized Raptor launch from the port bay," she said quickly. "It won't identify."
Tigh raised his eyebrows and walked over to stand behind her. "Hail it again," he said swiftly.
She did so, but still no response. She shook her head, and watched as Tigh quickly walked to the nearest phone and picked it up. The line went directly to the Commander's quarters. She didn't hear what was said, but she did see his body tense as he turned back towards her.
"Shoot it down," he said quickly.
Gaeta picked up the overhead link to call Action Stations, but they never got the chance. As Dualla watched, the Raptor jumped, it's blip disappearing from her screen with no warning. "It jumped, Colonel."
Tigh closed his eyes with a sigh. "Frak!"
Then, the printer to her right began clicking, and she looked to the wireless transmission that was heavily encoded. It had come from the Raptor before it jumped. "We got a transmission," she said softly.
She read the few words as she handed it to Tigh, and watched him explode into a rage. She wasn't sure just what had set him off. The words had been pretty simple, and definitely nonthreatening.
"I'll bring him back."
"You can't do this!" Tyrol yelled as the guard locked the door behind Sharon.
"We have no choice," he explained. "This came from command. Lieutenant Sharon Valerii, to the brig, no explanation. I'm following orders."
"Who's orders?" the Chief asked.
"Colonel Tigh's," he said simply. "And right now he speaks for the Commander."
Tyrol looked over at his wife, who had sat down on the bed with a look of utter confusion on her face. "She hasn't done anything wrong," he said for at least the tenth time since the guard had appeared on the flight deck to arrest her. Or contain her. Or whatever the hell they were calling locking her up for no reason.
"Colonel Tigh would like you to meet him up in the CIC. Maybe he'll explain things then."
Tyrol's glance to Sharon, back to the guard, and then finally resting on Sharon again said more than words could.
"She'll be fine," the guard told her. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to hurt Boomer."
Tyrol took a deep breath before addressing his wife. "I'll find out what's going on," he told her. "I promise."
She nodded but didn't speak, and he knew how scared she was. Thank the Lords they had at least done this at work. If they'd taken her in front of Boxey, he would have had to have done something. As it was, he hadn't realized what was going on until they were nearly off the flight deck.
Now he reached through the bars to grab her hand and give a squeeze before he left her. Her grip was so tight it hurt. Heads were going to roll for this.
The walk to CIC was quick. He didn't have any patience for any of it. Once there, Tigh gestured for him to wait, spoke to a Lieutenant - Geita, the Chief thought - then walked towards him.
"We'll be meeting the Commander in his office."
"What the hell is going on?" he asked fiercely. Rank be damned - they had his wife in prison.
"I won't go into it here," Tigh said with finality. Tyrol resisted the urge to hit the man then and there. He had never liked him - not even before he'd sentenced the majority of his deck crew to death - but the feelings he had now were very close to hatred. Still, he couldn't do a damn thing for Sharon if he was sitting in that cell beside her.
Tigh led the way towards Adama's quarters, which also served as his office. Tyrol was escorted inside, where the Commander was at his desk and their Chief Physician, Doctor Salik, was sitting on the foot of Adama's bed.
"Thank you for coming," the Commander said. He looked tired, the Chief noted, and worn. For just a moment he felt a deep sympathy for the man who had lost his son only an hour before, but his fear for Sharon was foremost in his mind.
"I didn't have a lot of choice," Tyrol remarked.
The Commander didn't comment on his rudeness, but instead introduced their doctor to him. Tyrol shook his hand, but his heart wasn't in it. Formalities be damned, he wanted to know what the hell was going on.
"The Commander has asked me here because I'm the closest thing we have to an expert on Cylon physiology," Salik told him.
"Why Cylon?" he asked, confused.
Adama stood to face him. "We have evidence that Sharon Valerii may be a Cylon plant."
Tyrol just stared. They were all frakking insane. "A Cylon?" It would have been a great joke, except that no one was smiling and his wife was in the brig.
Tigh stepped forward then with a photograph. It was slightly grainy, a gray background with a number of people carrying weapons. "This was taken on the planet we just returned from. They aren't human. These are Cylons. See how some of them have identical features?"
Tyrol had noticed that. He had also noticed that two of the women towards the back of the picture bore a striking resemblance to his wife. "This is impossible," he murmured, more thinking than talking.
"I was there," Tigh said simply. "I saw them. And the weapons are real. They did their best to take the tanker out before we could get it off the ground."
"This isn't Sharon," he said simply. "Sharon wasn't even on the mission."
"We know that," the Commander added. "We know that Cylons have a limited number of bodies. I remember the Cylon on Ragnar telling me that his consciousness would be transferred to an identical one. I suppose they're like clones, for lack of a better word."
"What does that have to do with Sharon?" he asked, but he was very afraid he knew where this was going.
"Until we can prove that she is - or is not - a Cylon, we have to suspect that she is," Adama answered.
"She's not a Cylon!" he yelled once more.
"That's what I'm here to find out," Salik said calmly.
"How?" Tyrol had no patience for guessing games.
"When we cremated the Cylon, we found chemical compounds that were synthetic in nature. They weren't organic. We need to see if your wife has those same synthetic compounds."
"How?" Tyrol said again. An aircraft he could take apart and put back together blindfolded, but biology and chemistry were out of his league.
"We take a biopsy, we burn it, and we analyze it," he answered simply.
The Chief relaxed a bit. "So we can prove this is crazy," he said. "Fine. Do it."
"It's not quite that easy," Tigh put in.
Salik nodded his agreement. "The only tissue that appears to show the compounds is neural."
"Neural?"
"Brain tissue," the doctor clarified.
Tyrol decided that the discussion had gone from insane to surreal. They wanted to take a chunk of his wife's brain out to prove she wasn't human? He had to be misunderstanding.
"You can't mean this," he said softly.
"I'm afraid we do," Adama told him. He took a breath, let it out slowly, and explained. "There is simply too much risk to the fleet to allow even the threat of a Cylon plant to go uninvestigated."
"She's not a Cylon," he told them again. "Dammit, can Cylons get pregnant?"
Salik raised his eyebrows. "Pregnant?"
Tyrol nodded. It wasn't his place to tell them - Sharon didn't want to lose her flight status - but he didn't see an option. "A couple of months. She didn't want to say anything because Apollo would ground her."
At the mention of the Captain's name, Adama flinched visibly. A stab of sympathy hit again, but he pushed it away. "So she can't be a Cylon."
"We don't know how they reproduce," Salik said carefully. "I'll run a test, of course, but it won't prove anything either way."
"So you're going to take my wife - my pregnant wife - and cut into her brain to find out what I'm already telling you?"
"The biopsy will be conducted as carefully as possible," Salik mentioned. "If the testing proves negative, then she'll be released. Correct?" He turned to Adama for confirmation. The Commander nodded.
Tyrol had no clue what to say, or what to do. They were wrong. They had to be wrong, but the only way to prove it was to take out part of his wife's brain. Suddenly, freezing to death in space didn't seem like such a bad thing after all.
Kara met Chief Tyrol as he was walking back to the brig. "I need your help," she said without preamble.
"I'm busy," he told her simply, and kept walking.
"I'm not kidding," she told him, keeping pace with him and grabbing him by the arm. "Command has gone insane, and we have to do something."
That stopped him. She had known it would. "Do you know about Sharon?" he asked softly.
She looked at the ground. "I was on the planet," she told him. "If Tigh saw what I did, then I can imagine."
"They took pictures," he ground out. "To prove she's."
"Help me," she said desperately. She looked around quickly, then grabbed his arm to head towards family quarters. Once in the room that he shared with Sharon, she closed the door and met him eye to eye. "At least hear me out."
She could see the irritation in him - the impatience - but he gave a brief nod for her to continue.
"Get me a Raptor so I can go back to the planet."
Tyrol closed his eyes and sighed. "Kara, he's gone."
She glared at him for a moment. "Would you let them leave Sharon behind?"
"She might be better off there at the moment," he told her bitterly. The remark was pure frustration with no truth behind it, but Kara grabbed it like a lifeline.
"You get me a Raptor, and I'll get Sharon out of here."
He looked at her for a moment, the surprise clear on his face. "You're as insane as they are."
She reached out a hand to keep him from walking out on her. "Listen," she hissed, wanting to yell but not wanting to be overheard. "You know what they did to Doral. They'll do it to her, too. Tigh is running this show, and he doesn't are about anyone or anything except himself. He won't listen, he won't compromise, and we can not let him get away with it."
The Chief didn't answer, but he stopped tugging against her grip. She took that as a good sign.
"Look, they might go easier on her if she helps me get Lee back," Kara wheedled. She wasn't used to this. Normally she didn't cajole; she either did it herself or did without. But the bottom line was that she hadn't jumped Raptors since flight school - flown them, yes, but not jumped them. Sharon would increase her chances of getting there and back without incident. She would also be another set of eyes, another gun, and another pair of legs when they hit the planet. The more she considered it, the more she liked it. "He's the Commander's son," she added. "Sharon saves him, and Adama will back her against Tigh. I'm sure of it."
"You're talking like it could work," he said tiredly. "There is no way you can get down to that planet undetected, find him - if he's even alive, and then get out without being captured or killed. They probably called in a Base Star after the attack. They'd need it for fuel, anyway."
"We didn't drain the fuel," she corrected. "There must have been a billion gallons in that depot. We took maybe a few million. And it wouldn't have time to get there."
"Base Star's can jump, and their ships have fuel," he reminded her. "That makes this better?"
"I can do this. I'll bring Sharon back, I promise.
"You can't make that promise," he corrected. "You didn't even bring Apollo back." He looked at her for a moment and sighed. The guilt must have shown, because he reached forward to take her hand. "I didn't mean that," he corrected. "But that's just how uncertain this is. They left him because there were too many guns to avoid, and you're talking about flying right back into the middle of it. It just can't work."
"We won't land by the bunker," she corrected. "There isn't room anyway. We'll go in where we ditched the Vipers. Lee would have headed back that way. He knew the terrain, because we ran it on the way in."
"You don't even know if he's alive," Tyrol told her in a quiet voice.
"He is," she said fiercely. "Chief, I just have to get to him."
He shook his head, but at least he was staying, and considering. "It's a moot point," he finally said. "Sharon is locked in the brig."
That took Kara aback, but she didn't know why. They had chained Doral up and posted a guard, but she didn't think they'd work that quickly with one of their own. It would take more planning. It would take more time.
"So it can't work," Tyrol said quietly. "Even if we could get a Raptor out, and get Sharon to it, you only have two and a half hours to the jump. You wouldn't make it back. And taking in a Raptor would be sending them directions. If you were captured, they'd be here in a heartbeat and we wouldn't be able to get away.
"What do you think they'll do to Sharon?" Kara asked, taking the conversation into another, more productive direction.
"They said they're going to cut into her brain," he told her quietly. "To prove she's a Cylon. If she is, they'll kill her, or leave her, which amounts to the same thing."
Kara took a deep breath, thinking quickly and trying to put it all together in her mind. "We'll have to get Sharon out," she thought aloud. "Shouldn't be hard. I'm on a first-name basis with most of the brig guards. Then get her to the Raptor. What about help? Would Callie get it ready?"
"She might, but I can't be sure."
Her head snapped up and she was smiling. "Kohler would," she said quickly. "He was as pissed that they left him as I was. He'd help us."
"Who else," the Chief asked. This was good. He was thinking with her. "I can trust Hawk," she said softly. "And Evans, too. They like Lee. They would help."
"Cathy has a crush on him," he said with inspiration. "I could talk her into getting a Raptor ready; tell her it's for a mission. It's all so secret now that she wouldn't question it."
"Cathy? She's a kid."
"She's also a damn fine mechanic," he corrected. "And less likely to question it than Cally."
"Okay, that leaves Sharon," Kara said softly. "Will she do it?"
Tyrol thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I can ask," he finally said.
"Then let's go," she prompted. "We're wasting time, and there isn't much of it."
Sharon Valerii sat on the bed with her legs crossed before her, her elbows on her knees, and her face in her hands. She would not cry. She would not do this. They would straighten it all out. They had to. It was just a mistake. Someone probably hacked into one of the Raptor computers and they thought it was her. Or maybe something was missing from the flight deck; theft was always a problem in open areas. They would figure this out. She just had to hold herself together until they did.
She looked up when she heard her husband's voice. He was talking to her guard, and he didn't sound upset. Maybe they had it straightened out already. God she hoped so! This was going to scare Boxey to death. He'd lost so much already. He couldn't lose her too.
"Hi, Sweetie," he said as he walked towards the bars of the cell. The guard hadn't followed him.
"What's going on?" she asked quickly.
"Come here," he coaxed. "Let me hold you."
Her eyebrows raised at that. Not like him at all, but the situation wasn't normal. She stood and walked over to him, putting arms through the bars to encircle his waist. He did the same, leaning down with his face close to hers. Oh great, now she was going to cry.
"Listen to me," he whispered softly. "Don't say a word; just listen. They think you're a Cylon." She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast. "Wait," he whispered quietly. "Listen to me. They took pictures of Cylons on the planet, and one looked like you, so they're going nuts. They want to. Well, it doesn't matter what they want. They can't do it. Starbuck has a plan to get Lee off the planet, and if you help it might get the Commander on our side. At least I hope it will."
"What kind of plan?" she whispered, still feeling as though she were in shock.
"She wants to jump down to the planet, bring him back, and then jump with the fleet. It's a long shot, but she said if she can't find him in time she'll come back in time."
"She doesn't jump Raptors," Sharon said quietly.
"I know," he responded. "You do."
She looked at him carefully, meeting his eyes with a searching gaze. He wanted her to jump to a Cylon planet, look around, then try to get back before the fleet jumped. He was suggesting this. He - the man that had screamed at her for two days when she refused to go to a doctor because she didn't want to get pulled of duty - was suggesting this. "Does it look that bad?" she asked softly.
At least he didn't pretend not to understand. "Yeah," he said simply. "We have help," he clarified. "But we're doing this against command directives. I guess you could get into a little trouble."
She gestured briefly to the cell with a nod of her head. "Right."
She didn't really have to think about it. Tigh and Cylons didn't mix, and he was too close to the Commander to think that they might get him overruled. They thought she was a Cylon? The situation was unreal. Somehow, knowing they suspected that seemed more dangerous than jumping to a Cylon planet.
"How do you plan to get me out of here?"
He took a deep breath, leaning towards the bars to kiss her gently on the lips. "You ready?" he asked softly. At her nod, he kissed her quickly once more. "I love you."
"You too," she replied.
Then all hell broke loose. He screamed for help, the guard stood up to come towards them, and Sharon watched as two men tackled him from behind. Kara came in behind them, grabbing the key-card from the guard's pocket, and sliding it along the release. The cell door came open with a resounding click, and Sharon stepped out.
She didn't see exactly what they had done, but the guard was unconscious. One of the guys - Evan - placed a strip of tape across the guard's mouth and then the two of them dragged him into the cell. As they moved towards the brig door, Sharon caught Kara giving Kohler a brief hug and her thanks, and then they were all walking quickly towards the hanger.
They didn't have time to talk, even if they could have said anything about what they were doing. When they walked into the launching bay, Cathy met them with a nod towards her Raptor. "I'll be in Control," she said quickly, and took off at a jog.
Tyrol stepped up behind her then, taking her into a quick hug and kissing her on the cheek. "Come back," he told her firmly.
"I love you," she countered.
He kissed her again, then pushed her towards the Raptor hatch. Once inside, she found Kara already at the back panels firing up engines and warming up the jump drive. They really were going to do this. As the hatch rose up to close them in, she spared a thought that this looked pretty guilty. They were thinking she was a Cylon, and she was stealing a spacecraft to go to a Cylon planet. She just prayed that Starbuck's luck would get them through this. She didn't have much else to rely on.
Dualla frowned at her control panel. "Colonel, we have an unauthorized Raptor launch from the port bay," she said quickly. "It won't identify."
Tigh raised his eyebrows and walked over to stand behind her. "Hail it again," he said swiftly.
She did so, but still no response. She shook her head, and watched as Tigh quickly walked to the nearest phone and picked it up. The line went directly to the Commander's quarters. She didn't hear what was said, but she did see his body tense as he turned back towards her.
"Shoot it down," he said quickly.
Gaeta picked up the overhead link to call Action Stations, but they never got the chance. As Dualla watched, the Raptor jumped, it's blip disappearing from her screen with no warning. "It jumped, Colonel."
Tigh closed his eyes with a sigh. "Frak!"
Then, the printer to her right began clicking, and she looked to the wireless transmission that was heavily encoded. It had come from the Raptor before it jumped. "We got a transmission," she said softly.
She read the few words as she handed it to Tigh, and watched him explode into a rage. She wasn't sure just what had set him off. The words had been pretty simple, and definitely nonthreatening.
"I'll bring him back."