Z-plus 26 months: Part One

It wasn't all that often that Kara or Lee took Zak down to the deck, and even rarer that they took him any closer than the second story platform overlooking the hangar. But, when nothing major was being done as far as maintenance and a group was already out on patrol, sometimes one of them would take the toddler down to see the Vipers. He was developing a fascination with them, which they blamed on Boxey. The fifteen-and-a-half-year-old had already gotten approval to start taking basic flight once he was sixteen. Combat flying and Vipers would have to wait until he was eighteen, but so far that hadn't curbed his excitement any. And Zak idolized the teen.

"Viper!" the little boy told his father as Lee took him down onto the deck, pointing to one of the fighters.

"Mmm-hmm, that's Daddy's Viper."

"Me fly?"

"Not for a long, long time." Zak stuck his lip out. "Sorry, buddy, but I promised your mother that before you were even born. We've already got one hotshot pilot in the family; don't need two."

"We already have two," Kara corrected him as she joined them, having just finished the quick post-flight maintenance she and Phoenix had been doing on her Viper. "What we don't need is three. Hey, there, Junior Cadet," she teasingly greeted Zak. He raised a hand to his forehead to salute her; the boy was destined for the military.

Zak wasn't finished with his father, yet, though. "You and me fly?" he persisted, pointing to the Viper.

Lee looked to Kara. "Is Tyrol around?"

"No, why?" He just smiled, and holding his son, started up the ladder to his Viper.

"You've got ten seconds to look around," he told the toddler once they got in the cockpit.

"I'm counting," Kara called to her husband. "One…two…"

"So you want to fly, too, huh?" Lee quietly asked his son. Zak nodded. "Do Daddy a favor? Take your time at learning."

"Ten," Kara declared, and Lee climbed down. He handed Zak to his mother.

"Are you actually off-duty now?" he asked her. She should have been done an hour earlier, but then got suckered into fixing her fighter.

"Yeah. How long are you going to be at your office?"

"I don't know. I'll meet you for dinner at least, okay?"

"Yeah."


Zak definitely was one of the most active children Kara had ever known. They'd given up on trying to make him take afternoon naps, and every evening, as it approached his bedtime, they'd get him washed up and in pajamas and then just let him run around their quarters and play until he tired himself out. It made all of their lives easier not to try and contain his energy.

As Kara looked up from the book she was reading, she noticed that Zak was running around the room in circles, his arms outstretched like wings. The little boy smiled when he noticed that he'd caught his mother's eye.

"I a Viper, Mama!" Zak exclaimed as he continued to toddle around. It hadn't been a surprise at all when he'd taken an interest in flying – they would have been more surprised if the child of the two best pilots in the fleet hadn't been attracted to Vipers and Raptors and flight. But his all-out obsession at the tender age of two was reminding his mother a little too much of his namesake.

Zak wasn't paying much attention to where he was going, and wound up tripping over one of his shoes, which he'd left in the middle of the room. Seeing him do a face-plant into the floor made Kara cringe. Lee was sitting at the desk in the room, looking over the schedule for the next week, and was therefore a lot closer to their son than she was. He picked Zak up and set him back on his feet fast enough that the little boy decided he hadn't hurt himself adequately to warrant tears. Lee playfully inspected his son, pretended he really was fixing up a Viper.

"I think you've got a malfunctioning navigation sensor again, huh?" he asked, trying to explain the fall. Zak nodded; he knew fighter parts better than he knew the alphabet. "Hmm, let me see what I can do…" The little boy screamed with laughter as his father tickled him. "All right, there. I think that's better."

"Or you could just get the junk out of your flight path," Kara added, retrieving his shoes.

"You all set?" Lee asked Zak.

"Uh-huh."

"Viper 02-Zulu is away!" And with that, Zak was off and running once more. Lee turned back to his paperwork with a smile. He knew his son had changed him, and all for the better.


About a half hour later, Zak came to a stop in the middle of the room, and looked up at his mother with sparkling blue eyes he could barely keep open – it was time for bed.

"Okay, say goodnight to Daddy," she told her son as she picked him up.

"Night-night."

"Goodnight, short stuff."

"Be finished with that paperwork by the time I get back," Kara told Lee, only half joking. He laughed.

"Yes, Sir!"

Zak was already halfway out by the time that Kara got him tucked under his blanket. "Night, mister man. Sweet dreams."

"Love you, Mama," he replied as he drifted off. She switched off his light and headed back out into her and Lee's room. As 'ordered' he was putting away his work.

"He asleep?"

"Out cold," Kara replied.

"So is it playtime for us now?"

"Only if it's a quick game. It has been a long day, and if I'm staying with Zak in the morning, I need to get some sleep."

Lee smirked. "Ah, yes, and since I'm only out on CAP, I don't need the rest, right?"

"Exactly."


There was one huge downside to training new fighter pilots on Galactica as opposed to doing it back on the Colonies – there were no simulators. Trainees were in the cockpit from day one, and therefore, day one usually didn't go so well.

"Watch your nose, nugget," she told the pilot-hopeful that she was out on the training course with. At the start, landings were the most difficult skill most of them could imagine, especially combat ones.

"Relax, Mom; I got it," she heard Zak reply, only he wasn't the two-year-old she'd put to bed that night, but a teenage hotshot that was having trouble lining up correctly in the approach pattern.

"Keep an eye on your speed – you want a hard landing, not a fireball." She was trailing him in her own fighter, although she wasn't going to do as hard of a landing as his. No sense in making the knuckle draggers fix two sets of divots if they didn't have to. "Zak, you're coming in low; get your nose up!" He was trying, but it just wasn't working. His Viper was going all over the place. "Forget it; wave off," she told him, turning sharply to go around Galactica's starboard landing pod instead of through it. Over her shoulder, however, she could see through the canopy that Zak hadn't followed suit.

"I can do it, Mom," he protested.

"Damnit, Zak, wave off! That's an order!"

But he wasn't listening to her anymore. He just barely managed to clear the bottom of the opening for the deck, but his nose was still low. It hit ground first, and considering how fast he was coming in, it was no surprise that the Viper went cart-wheeling end over end until it smashed into the flight deck wall. What little there was left of the fighter burst into flames.

"Zak!"


Kara shot up in bed, breathing as though she'd just done her morning run of Galactica's decks at a sprint. To her relief, she saw that she was in her quarters, not a fighter.

"What's the matter?" Lee sleepily asked as he woke up as well. Kara didn't answer him, getting out of bed and going to check on Zak. He was sound asleep, curled up in a ball with his blankets thrown off his body. "Kara, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she finally replied, getting back in bed. "I'm fine; go back to sleep." Lee knew he wasn't going to get anything out of her that she wasn't willing to say, so he turned over and obeyed. Kara, however, laid there awake for the rest of the night. It wasn't a dream she'd forget easily.


TBC…