Z-plus 26 months: Part Three

They had ten systems to search. Each one took three days of round the clock Raptor patrolling to finish scans. Working out the math, with six Raptors it would take fifteen shifts over five days in order to complete the search. And that was only if everything went exactly according to plan, which rarely if ever happened. After two days, they'd fallen behind due to the Raptors needing servicing and the difficulties in the scheduling of both CAP and search patrols with the limited number of pilots on the Battlestar. There was no such thing as a single shift anymore, not until the Pan Gal Liner was found.

"Galctica, Raptor 323, requesting permission to launch," Kara said over the wireless system of the Raptor she was flying in with Sharon.

"Roger, 323, you are clear," the launch officer replied. "Good hunting."

Before bringing the Raptor off the deck, Sharon turned slightly in the pilot's seat to look back at her friend. She was worried about her. While most of them had been flying double shifts and possibly catching a bit of sleep in-between, Kara had been going for the past two days straight. Sharon hadn't even seen her eat anything other than a protein bar that someone might toss in her direction as she walked across the deck from a Raptor that had just come in to another one that was on its way out. Kara was acting-CAG now, and although no one had said it yet, they knew that pretty soon the 'acting' would get removed – the search wasn't going well.

"Let's go," Kara said, and Sharon snapped out of her thoughts, turning back to the controls.

"Do you have the jump coordinates set?" she asked once they'd cleared Galactica.

"Ready when you are," Kara replied.

"Then start the jump clock. Five…four…three…two…one…" Reality bent as they moved to the next star system. Kara had actually begun to get used to the feeling of jumping, she'd been doing it so often.

"Beginning scans," Sharon told her once she'd recovered from the move. "So far, I'm not detecting any incoming." That was the good news. Making sure they'd beaten the Cylons to their search area was always top priority. Then they started looking for the Pan Gal liner.

The system was divided into sectors, each about the size of their Dradis limits. Over the next few hours, they moved from one sector to the next, scanning.

"Sweep eighty-five is negative," Kara reported a couple hours later. Sharon sighed.

"Sweep eighty-six is negative." They'd finished with that system and had come up empty once again.

"Setting coordinates to return to the fleet," Kara said, her voice hard.

"We're going to find them," Sharon told her. It was the mantra that everyone kept repeating. Kara didn't reply; the statement had lost all of its comfort value about thirty-six hours earlier.

"Ready to jump on your mark."


When Kara came in from her eighth straight patrol the following afternoon, one of the deck hands had a note from the Commander ordering her to take a shift off. They still hadn't found anything.

Kara forced herself to eat a plate of food from the mess hall, trying not to think about how Zak would be making a mess with the pasta dish if he was there. She'd intended upon going back to the deck and helping with maintenance, but now that she was out of the cockpit, the adrenaline was wearing off, and she realized how exhausted she was. If Adama hadn't yanked her off the line, she would have needed to start taking stims.

She headed down to her quarters, and opened the hatch, telling herself that she'd get a four hour nap before heading back to work. Kara had to stop herself from calling out to Lee from habit, letting him know that she was home. There was no one to call out to, her brain needed reminding. She was alone in their quarters, and she swallowed hard in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. The desk was littered with some of Lee's paperwork, including a halfway finished schedule for the week that was about to start. The book he'd been reading was lying on their bed, a scrap of paper marking the page that he'd been on. A couple scribble drawings that Zak had made were lying in the middle of the floor; she'd been working on the pictures with him the morning before the Liner had disappeared. Their quarters were frozen in time from that morning, and Kara couldn't bear to be in them for another moment. She turned, shutting the hatch behind her, and walked back down the hallway.


"Beginning sweep fifty-three," Lonestar reported to Jammer as they flew one of the Raptor search patrols.

"Beginning sweep fifty-four," the pilot replied. They both watched their Dradis screens as they covered the search area. Nothing, nothing, and more –

"Contact!" Lonestar called as a blip appeared on the screen.

"Is it the Liner?" Jammer asked, turning around in his seat. The ECO watched the screen as the radar tried to identify the object.

"Oh, frak," he muttered. "No. Multiple contacts, Cylon Raiders." Jammer killed the scanners and made the Raptor do a quick U-turn. Lonestar started setting up an FTL jump back to the fleet.

"In case you weren't aware," Jammer called a few moments later, "A Raptor can't outrun Raiders, so it would be really nice if we could jump sometime soon!"

"Ready to jump on your mark," Lonestar told him. The Raptor disappeared just in time to avoid the missiles that were being shot at it.

It reappeared amid the Colonial fleet, and Jammer instantly got on the wireless. "Galactica, Jammer. We've got a problem!"


Everyone knew that the search operations were racing against the clock – the longer it took, the better the chance that the Cylons would find the defenseless liner, and the better the chance that the Cylons would find the rest of the fleet again as well. Galactica's Raptors were also in danger – if the Cylons discovered the fleet while they were out patrolling and Galactica had to jump, the Raptors would all be left twisting in the wind. It wasn't something that anyone wanted to consider, but these were the thoughts that filled Commander Adama's mind as he sat in his office, reading over a few reports that one of the crewmen had brought him.

They had held their present location thus far in case the Pan Gal Liner managed to make its way to the correct coordinates. If the fleet jumped once more, then the liner might never find them again, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. So they would stay as long as it was reasonably safe to do so, and continue searching until they either found the ship or…he didn't want to linger on the or. They were going to find the ship.

A knock sounded on the frame of Adama's open hatch. Tigh was standing in the doorway. "We just heard back from one of the Raptors. They came across a Cylon patrol." Adama got up from his desk, re-fastening the top of his uniform jacket.

"The Cylons saw them?"

"Apparently they barely made it back here."

"Damn."

"It's only a matter of time before they find us, now. They can triangulate our position using our last location and the Raptor's."

"That still leaves a few different options they'll have to check out."

"So far we haven't had the best odds when it comes to gambling with them."

Adama sighed. "We jump now, and the chances of us finding that Liner decrease exponentially."

"I know, Sir…the President already has the civilian ships spinning up their FTL drives. They're just awaiting coordinates." Adama didn't reply. "What do you want me to tell them, Sir?"

"The Cylons haven't found us yet. As long as there's a chance the Liner's still out there, we're not leaving."


There was one small upside to Galactica always having more pilots than they had fighters – there was almost always an empty bunk available somewhere, and Kara took advantage of it in order to get a nap. She got a shower as well, and forced another meal down her throat before heading back to the hangar deck. She was doing a CAP instead of a search patrol, which wasn't her preference, but it was the only way she could fill the schedule.

Everybody knew that she wasn't in a screwing-around kind of mood. The other CAP pilots were choirboys in the ready room during her briefing. Since all the Raptors were out searching, they had four Vipers going up to patrol the fleet. No one asked about steeple chasing or a flyby for Galactica's observation deck or anything else other than going out and getting the shift over with as quickly as possible. The tension in the fleet was palpable; they all knew that an attack could only be a moment away. All of the ships were pulled in close to the Galactica to make protecting them easier.

Kara noticed out of the corner of her eye a couple flashes that indicated the Raptors had returned to check in. They'd been ordered to report back every hour to make sure that Galactica was still at its present location. If they returned to find the fleet was gone, they all knew where to go next in order to meet back up – as long as the Cylons didn't blow them out of the sky first.

The Raptors disappeared again, once they'd made their reports, and Kara couldn't help her curiosity. "Galactica, Starbuck."

"Go ahead, Starbuck."

"Did the search patrols report anything?"

"That's a negative."

"Roger."

They weren't going back to the system where the Raptor patrol had run into the Cylon Raiders. All they could do was hope that the Liner wasn't in that system and move on. They were in enough danger already without purposely putting themselves in more. Kara knew that Adama had to be catching flak from the President about his decision to stay, but she knew that her father-in-law would never leave Lee behind if he could help it. The fact that over 1000 other lives were hanging in the balance legitimized the Commander's reservations about jumping away.

Little flashes alerted her to the fact that another hour had passed and the Raptors were returning. She counted the six little bursts of light spotted around the fleet – and then seven, and eight, and nine…

"Galactica, Starbuck: we've got company out here!"

"I'm reading our six Raptors and…twenty Cylon Raiders," Phoenix told her from his spot in one of the other Vipers on patrol.

"Frak, is that a Basestar?" Killjoy asked his fellow pilots. Sure enough, another blip had appeared farther off on their Dradis screens.

"Starbuck to all Raptors – get your asses on the deck!" Kara called over the wireless.

"Alert fighters are being deployed," Galactica's LSO told them all. "Civilian ships are beginning their jumps." Kara flipped her Viper around end-over-end to go take on the Raiders, and the rest of her group followed suit. She tried to keep her head in the game, forcing away the thought that this was the end – as soon as Galactica jumped, 1,467 lives would be subtracted from the fleet's population count, and she would be alone again.


Sharon walked onto the hangar deck and looked around, trying to locate her CO. She finally spotted Kara sitting in a corner against the wall, a clipboard in hand. "Sir?" she quietly asked as she approached. They were both off-duty – it was the middle of the night – but that didn't matter at the moment.

"I've gotta get this done," Kara told her without looking up.

"What's 'this'?"

"It's the schedule. I gotta finish it before shift ends and get it up to Tigh."

"I think he'll understand if you're late…Have you slept more than a couple hours in the past few days?"

"Sleep wastes time that I could be doing something else. Right now, there's a helluva lot to get done."

"Kara, you can take some time to adjust. You're not going to do anyone any good if you burn yourself out. Slow down and think."

"No!" she said, looking up. "No, because if I'm not working, if my brain actually switches over, then I'm going to…I'm going to realize they're gone, and then I really won't be any use to anybody." Sharon was frozen in a shocked silence for a long moment.

"I'm so sorry," she finally said, but Kara shook her head, motioning for her to stop.

"I need to get the schedule done." So Sharon nodded and got out of her way.


TBC…