Title- Future (Part 2b/6) REVISED
Rating – PG-13
Pairing- Lee/Kara, a tiny bit of Helo/Boomer
Archiving- BSG 2003, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, Fanfiction net, all others please ask
Warnings- A bit of violence in this part

Spoilers- Seasons 1 and 2 (however, the spoilers are interspersed with lots stuff from my brain so… ;-)

Disclaimers- I don't own these characters and I am not making any profit off them. I'm just borrowing them for fun (well, maybe not the poor characters'...). ;)

Many thanks go to Audrey for the great beta:-)

Summary part 2b – Starbuck, Helo and Boomer make it back to the fleet.

NB: I decided to repost this because I was getting irked by the fact that I neglected to fix something I meant to fix before posting this part originally. Yes, it's very minor. Yes, I'm probably being ridiculous. Oh well –what can I say, I suck! ;-)

Italics indicate characters' thoughts.

-Cylon Occupied Caprica-

Lieutenant Kara Thrace
Call Sign 'Starbuck'
Day 8 on Caprica

"What've you got?" Kara whispered, slithering over on her belly to reach the two men who were observing a small group of Cylons from their rocky perch on the edge of Caprica city.

The one nearest to her pointed down. "Eight of the metalheads at one o'clock. They seem to be waiting around. Two of the human model ones went into the building on the right." He pointed to a gleaming, rather squat structure. "Ten more –three male humanoids and seven centurions- just left to go further into the city."

She nodded. "And?" She asked.

The second man, Gregor, answered for his friend. He didn't look up however, keeping his eyes on the activity below. "You know, I was doing some of the looting for food around here even before you had us begin to stand watches and keep tabs on Cylon activity. So I've gotten used to knowing where the toasters are. I guess you could call it an instinct." He shrugged and finally turned towards her, grinning. "If I hadn't, I'd pretty much be dead by now."

"Well, for the last week or so, they've been more active. More agitated, moving around more.. I don't know. And I don't know why. It almost reminds me…" He continued even more softly.

"Of what?"

"Of an anthill. You know, when you disturb it or something?" He shrugged, a rather sheepish expression on his face. "Sorry. That doesn't make much sense I guess."

She smiled and patted his shoulder before beginning to inch away again. "Hey, don't knock it. Your instincts've kept you alive so they must be good for something. I've never been one for ignoring that." She said.

Once she was far enough away from the city for it to be safe, she stood and began walking, deep in thought.

She had finally told Denn about Sharon –over Helo's objections. She hadn't been sure how he'd react, but she had had to do something to prepare for the very real possibility, especially now that she had her people keeping track of Cylon movement and activity, that there would be someone who would get a look at another 'Sharon' and begin to ask some pointed questions. All in all, he hadn't taken it as badly as she had thought he might have.

He had apparently already decided the only way out was to trust them, and learning about Sharon hadn't changed that overmuch. But he had warned her that things would get sticky if –or when- the others found out. She shrugged mentally. She'd cross that bridge when she came to it. There wasn't much she could do about it now, and whether it happened now or later she figured the reaction would be the same.

In the meantime, they were using Sharon's pregnancy as an excuse to keep an eye on her and not to assign her any responsibility. Besides, based on recent experience neither she nor Helo were inclined towards sharing everything that was on their minds –another example of this was the fact that she and Helo had elected to keep the arrow and the knowledge of it between the two of them.

Kara had also finally extracted from Helo a detailed description of what had happened to him. Gregor's comments, as it happened, dovetailed nicely with Helo's story. All in all it seemed like Helo was right when he said the Cylons wanted Sharon back very badly.

How very interesting.

She began to hum tunelessly as she made her way back to the cave. Stopping before one particular tree with a particular scratch in its bark, she gestured up at the invisible sentry she knew was perched in the foliage above her. When you didn't have high tech means at your disposal, you used what you could, in this case –good old fashioned line of sight.

She entered the cave. Denn, in the midst of helping one of their sick eat some of their precious food, nodded in greeting. She leaned against a wall and waited until his task was completed. Joining her, he pitched his voice low so it wouldn't carry. "How are Gregor and Ian and the others?" She shrugged.

"Good. Gregor says the toasters are quite active in that part of the city." He nodded.

"I heard from some of the other scouts."

"And?" She asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing new from the Cylons, we've got a little more food… And they haven't found anything yet… But there is something else."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I just thought you should know that there are rumors I heard about recently."

"Go on."

"Some of the later arrivals here, just before you came… They said… They said that they'd met up with some people –they lost sight of them later, before they got here- who told them that they'd heard of more survivors who had been taken in by the Cylons and tortured, experimented on, things like that."

"Like your mother."

He nodded sadly. "Yes."

"But there's more." He continued. "I don't know if this is for real or not, but I heard that there are even camps out there, somewhere. Camps where they keep people for –something. I don't know what."

"Frak." She said. He nodded.

She rubbed her eyes tiredly. It seemed like everyone wanted her to fix everything these days. "Well, let me know if you hear anything else." He nodded again, then looked at her questioningly.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

He hesitated, then plunged ahead. "What makes you so sure those scouts will find anything useful for getting us off this planet?" She laughed.

"I'm not sure at all, actually. But it's the only thing I know to do, at this point. The chances of us being able to steal a Cylon ship able to carry us all out of here are pretty frakking low, and that leaves us with just one possibility -a transport the Cylons don't know about." Somehow, that didn't seem to reassure him.

She clapped him on the shoulder before moving on into the cave. Henry and Diane, two nurses from Picon who had been vacationing on Caprica and who were the only medical personnel they had, were tending the sick. She looked at them and they shrugged, indicating no change.

In other words, no one had worsened or died during the time she was gone.

She tried to think of what else she could do. Nothing came to her.

-Day 16 on Caprica-

"Hey Starbuck!" Helo's voice caused Kara to roll around and rub her eyes. She'd been hoping for some much needed sleep. It didn't look like she was going to get it.

"Yeah. Okay. I'm awake." She said crossly, sitting up. Her side twinged, but at least it hurt less than before. "What's going on?"

He came to sit beside her, visibly still concerned for her. "Sorry to wake you. It's just that you wanted to be told if anyone found anything shipwise-"

She straightened up at that. "Someone found something? Like what?" Helo winced.

"Yeah well, I wouldn't pin my hopes up over this one… Basically it's an abandoned shipyard, with a few hulls. That's all they really are, actually. Hulls. As in empty."

"Empty?"

"Yeah, just old rotting metal hulls." He snorted. "I guess it makes sense that the toasters wouldn't leave anything we could use."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I guess that would be a bit much to ask." She stood and walked out of the cave.

"Where are we going?" He asked as he followed.

"Well, I want to see those rotting empty hulls. You never know."

Yeah, they really are pretty much rotting, and they really are empty. She thought a few hours later as she walked through the morass of hulking, decaying silhouettes. It wasn't like they had much choice equipment to work with, though. All they had was this scrap heap on the outskirts of one of the smaller Caprican cities, and a couple of spare parts they'd been able to scrounge up.

"So, which one d'you think we should pick?" She asked Helo with a touch of humor. "Rotted, rotted, or just decaying? Though I suppose we should get the engineering and tech types on this too." Helo shrugged.

She sighed. "Okay, well, let's go back and get some of our people on this."

The next few months were grueling. Despite cutting back somewhat on their usual tracking of Cylon activity, Kara and Helo had very few people to assign to the various tasks associated with their little operation.

They had a small cadre of former engineers (some with more useful qualifications than others) and a few others with knowledge that would have qualified them as military techs. These were sent to select the most likely hull among the aforementioned group of decrepitude and degeneration and, with the help of a few people who had worked as builders, to begin the painstaking and apparently impossible process of building a hyper-capable ship essentially from scratch. More people had to be assigned as sentries and guards for protection whenever the group left the cave, and more went with along to assist with the grunt work. Yet more found themselves combing various regions looking for spare parts.

In the meantime, Kara was attempting the impossible by teaching a few volunteers the basics of piloting without any teaching aids, sims, or spacecraft of any kind. However, she had at least shown up with the proper star charts, and so plotting and a jump should be possible –assuming the necessary people could be taught to execute it.

One or two of the group had asked Kara how they were to elude the Cylon presence in the system (assuming of course they managed to get themselves underway at all), but she never gave them an answer.

No one, save Helo and Sharon, knew where she went when she went to check on her raider.

Finally, in addition to everything else working against them, there was still one crucial consideration. Fuel. And the only source of that was literally –the ennemy.

-Day 46 on Caprica-

She looked around her at the somber ship graveyard. The silence combined with her surroundings was truly eerie –it almost seemed to sing to her of drowning hope.

Okay, that was maudlin. She thought, laughing mentally at herself as she turned a corner. As she did so, the contrast between what lay before her and the wasteland she had just walked through was striking.

Several men and women were visible, laboring over a large hull, several sections of which had visibly been replaced by newer alloy plating.

Denn walked up to greet her. "How are things at the cave?" He asked.

"Fine. Still trying to make pilots out of sow's ears." She answered somewhat sarcastically. "And how's the work here going?"

He grimaced. "Slowly. Really slowly. We've been really careful in our design and building so far so as not to waste any of the parts we have, but even then it's pretty obvious we're going to come up short."

She sighed. "Well, we've got some more stuff for you at the cave. It's not much, but the others took apart some housing stuff they found in Caprica city and figured you might be able to use some of it." These days, not all spare parts had the words for use in spacecraft written on them.

Denn nodded. As they reached the others, she noted the air of fatigue on their faces. Despite that, they smiled as they saw her. She smiled back. "You guys are doing good." She said, and they were. Like Denn said, things were progressing slowly. On the other hand, they had come far.

Several more of the team came to speak with her, detailing not only needed parts and tools, but grievances. As was her habit, she listened to every one attentively. To some, she offered solutions. Others she promised to look into. When necessary she gave a sharply worded answer or refusal.

As she walked away she missed the glance, slightly envious, that Denn sent her way before bending back to his work.

-Day 92 on Caprica-

She'd already managed to teach Basic Flight with no sims on board the Galactica, and now she was actually managing something along those lines with no sims and no ship. All in all, she felt she had some reason to be proud of herself.

She was in the midst of lecturing her group of three pupils –usually she had four, but Helo had taken Sharon with him and gone with one of the survey/scout teams earlier that morning- when several people burst through the cave entrance. Her eyes widened when she noted the blood on their clothing.

"What the hell happened?" She asked Susan, one of the engineers.

"The Cylons ambushed us on the way back." The woman panted, obviously winded.

Frak. She'd wondered if it was just a question of time before the toasters found out about their efforts. "Who'd we lose?" She asked tightly. By this point Kara was able to make out the fact that none of the people standing before her was seriously wounded.

"Harvey and Thompson stayed behind… They… stayed behind so that we could escape." Susan was shaken. Kara nodded.

"Anyone else?" The other woman nodded sadly.

"They caught up with us a second time… They got Ian and Sonia."

Frak. Four dead, and those last two had been part of the tech team. And aside from that, she could see that the people facing her weren't eager to go back out there.

She sighed. "All right. The first thing to do is to make sure you weren't followed here." She waved one or two of her pupils along with her, moving to the mouth of the cave. They hesitated, and she stopped when she saw their eyes. Fear. She glared at them until they reluctantly followed.

Ah yes, the start of another lovely day in the hind end of the galaxy. She thought to herself angrily.

But that was fine. She'd deal with all of them later.

-Day 93 on Caprica-

After exploring the area around the caves and talking with the sentries, they had come to the happy conclusion that the tech team had not brought the Cylons back with them. Furthermore, after checking the construction site it appeared that they had lucked out and that the Cylons did not seem to have discovered it.

However, the difficulty lay in convincing everyone of that.

It was only after much heated debate that she managed to convince anyone to go back outside, let alone to the building site. She had volunteered to go with them to help replace the dead sentries and to help out with the building –despite not being a tech, she wasn't completely ignorant of the inner workings of spacecraft.

That had at least made them somewhat ashamed. When she had proven she was willing to keep her word, they had seemed even more ashamed, and work had resumed. Kara felt only relief. As time passed, they looked fearfully up at every sound –fearing aerial patrols. They leapt at every sound, fearing ground patrols. And their eyes became drawn with the constant stress and fear.

But they kept going, and achieved the impossible.

She did not stop to consider the significance of that fact. But then, she had never been one for introspection. A lot of things were easier that way.

Six months to the day from her arrival on Caprica, Kara Thrace squeezed around the corner of a warehouse in Caprica city as she examined her target. Finally she nodded. It looked doable –to a crazy person like her, anyway.

Squeezing back, she picked up her backpack and motioned silently to her companions, who set out in several different directions.

She inched her way forward, acutely conscious of the centurions just a few yards to her right. She had purposely chosen the most dangerous location in the warehouse as her part of the operation. She grinned. What could she say? She was an adrenalin junkie. She certainly hadn't picked her career flying Vipers out of a hat. Just in case however, she had made sure Helo knew about her part of the operation and was able to carry it out -if her luck didn't hold this time.

Setting down her pack, she began to position and arm her share of the explosives.

She reached the others' observation point, a few streets out, just as the weapons depot exploded.

"Did everyone make it out?" The man she was talking to grinned back at her.

"Yep." They watched, laughing, as the Cylons began to swarm in the vicinity of the building they had just sabotaged. Kara took great satisfaction in noting that they looked like a bunch of hornets whose nest had been stepped on. She turned to look towards another nearby building.

"Are they out yet?" She asked tightly. The other shook his head, his grin fading. Their wait was filled with anxiety. Thankfully, it was of short duration.

Kara sat up as she glimpsed several of their group making their way towards them from the second building, heavy packs on their backs. As they arrived, the second building exploded. Kara's team fell back quickly, making its way out of the city. When they reached the outskirts, Kara turned back to look at the city for what she sincerely hoped was the last time. They had just seized enough fuel to carry out their operation, and gotten some well-deserved revenge to boot. And their sabotage of the two Cylon installations should serve to camouflage the fact that their ultimate objective had been the fuel.

For a time at least -and that should be long enough for them all to get the frak away from here. Assuming something didn't go wrong.

She sent a prayer to the gods.

-Six months and 2 days on Caprica-

It was dark when Helo woke her.

"Starbuck." He said as he shook her shoulder. "We've only got about three more trips to make before everyone's settled in the transport."

She nodded. That was her cue to get going. However, she'd made sure she had time for a little detour first.

"Okay."

Starlight shone brightly down on her as she stepped outside the cave. The forest was mostly silent as she walked, save for sounds from various animals. Despite her own eagerness to be gone, she was going to miss this place. She hadn't ever spent much time outside the cities or spacecraft up until this point, and she had been somewhat surprised to find that she liked the country.

Helo had been forced to stop laughing at her about three months ago when she had proven that she had, by necessity, become quite adept at getting around despite the lack of roads. Which was just fine –it saved her the trouble of having to frakking hit him.

She was going home, but home to what?

She'd avoided thinking about the events that had led to her being here, but it was impossible to avoid those thoughts now. Impossible not to wonder if some things could ever be forgiven. She swiped at her eyes and turned her thoughts outward, having reached her destination. A destination that in many ways was just an unpretending patch of forest resembling a great many other patches of forest in this part of the world.

She knelt down before a particular patch of ground, laid the flowers she had been holding over it, and bowed her head.

"I just wanted you to know…That we're leaving. That we made it this far." She said softly. She paused, gathering her thoughts.

"I didn't know you for very long, but I just wanted you to know I did my best to do what you asked and to keep my promise. I have to say I don't understand why you said all those things about me. Why would anyone have visions about me? But I did what you asked. Even if I don't understand."

"Be at peace, and with the gods, Sara." She rose and began to walk away.

She wondered if it just her imagination when she heard a voice in the whisper of the wind, saying, I do…

A few hours later, with morning just ghosting upon the horizon, Helo was helping out with the last trip from cave to transport with Sharon along for the ride. Around him several people were carrying equipment, supplies, and one another as the last of the sick were being brought to the transport.

Suddenly a shot came at them from behind and struck a nearby tree.

"Everybody down!" He shouted, shoving the woman next to him to the ground and drawing his sidearm.

There was a long silence, punctuated only by the breathing of the people around him. Finally, one of them began to rise. "Stay down!" Helo cried –but it was too late. The man screamed as a shot struck him in the chest –a scream that died as quickly as it was born. Blood began to seep onto the ground as he stared up at the sky, glassy-eyed.

The others lay silent and frozen as the sound of marching, increasing in volume, could be overheard.

"Frak…" Helo said under his breath as roughly twenty centurions came into view. He shot one and it fell, writhing. He shook his head. There was no way he was going to be able to deal with them all. He was drawing breath to tell the others to run when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a shape stand and move to face the enemy. Sharon!

As she moved to face them, it seemed for a moment that she would be trampled. Stopping only a meter or two from her, one of them made a move to grab her and she twisted away. Then she did something he'd had absolutely no idea she was capable of –she lifted the toaster nearest to her and literally threw him several meters towards his fellows. She turned towards them –towards him, with a wild expression on her face. "Run!" She yelled.

Finally throwing off their paralysis most of the others ran, leaving everything behind including the last of their sick –four people.

Helo didn't. "Run!" She said again, visibly upset.

"Frak that!" He answered. "I'm not leaving anyone behind!" He shot at one of the toasters as it neared her. It fell.

"You don't have a choice!" She said, getting into his face. "These people can't make it Helo! You have to leave them!" He scoffed at that.

"That's convincing. We're just humans remember? And you're not." He said sarcastically as he sent off another shot.

"I care about you, Helo. And all you'll do is die if you stay here. You won't save them. You can't. And the others need you." She grabbed his face, made him look at her.

He had tears in his eyes –because she was right. He had no choice. He turned to the few others who had had the courage to stay behind. "Let's go."

"But…" One of them protested. Helo shook his head.

Reaching down, he put his sidearm in the grip of Henry, one of the sick. "This is yours." He said hoarsely. "Use it any way you will." Braving their mutinous looks, he ordered the others to precede him into the forest.

He didn't turn back when he heard the gun fire once, twice, and a few more times… Until finally he couldn't hear it fire at all.

A short time later they were in sight of the transport, which was being readied for departure. By any conventional standards it would have looked a ramshackle affair, all fused bits of metal alloy and spare parts. They had named it the Icarus -or rather, Helo had once jokingly suggested the name as a means of making sure they didn't get too big for their britches and jinx it all.

Denn was waiting for them as they reached the ship and paused to catch their breath. "What the frak happened?" He asked, giving Sharon a hard look. "I've heard some really weird stuff from the others-"

One of the others, a short dark-skinned woman, interrupted him. She pointed at Sharon. "She's a Cylon. She has to be-" Helo swiftly cut her off and at the same time glared down another of his fellows.

"No time to talk now. We got ambushed. Let's just get going." Denn's face tightened at that.

"The others?" He asked. Helo shook his head. Denn's eyes took on a sad look. He waved them all inside. "All right. Let's go." He said quietly.

"But I saw her!" Another man said. Denn shook his head firmly in response and gestured them all inside. One of the others seemed to be about to say something more, but shut his mouth with a snap upon seeing Helo's and Denn's faces.

Once past the hatch, Helo headed for the cockpit.

Helo wasn't a pilot, but he was acting in that function this time –at least he had spent a fair amount of time around pilots and had known the basics. Jake, an elderly man and former commercial pilot for Colonial Flightlines, was acting as copilot. They and another two volunteers with no experience had spent some time being 'trained' by Kara, and the other two were along for the ride as backup. He and Kara hadn't been entirely sure what they would find at the other end of their jump, and so had planned for the possibility of a long flight.

He strapped himself in, noting that Sharon had taken a seat behind him, and keyed the ship's intercom –one of the few original ships systems which had still been marginally functional.

"Everyone ready?" He asked tersely. A few minutes later he received the all clear from the passenger compartment.

The ship had already been put through the pre-flight sequences and checks, and so with a quick prayer to the Gods, Helo set them aloft. His co-pilot relaxed visibly as the ship's engines roared to life.

Not so for Helo.

Looking down he saw the city then the planet below as they rose. He would probably never see this place again. He dragged his eyes away.

One important detail in their plan had been the choice of the moment at which they would set off. After some time of observation of Cylon patterns on the ground and in the air, they had noticed that air patrols were sent out at fairly regular intervals but that every few days there was a window during which there were no Cylon craft in the air in the vicinity of Caprica city. Why this window existed was a mystery, but one that presented a rare opportunity.

Things went well until they reached the outer atmosphere. They had pre-calculated their jump parameters, but they would need to get far enough out from the planet to escape the effects of its gravity before initiating a jump.

A soft beeping noise sounded in the silent cockpit.

"Multiple enemy contacts –we're surrounded!" The copilot announced, just as a hit shook them from stem to stern.

Helo only nodded. There wasn't much of this the old girl could take. Come on Starbuck. He thought, You can do it. You can pull off another bit of magic for us.

At that very moment Kara was flying her raider in what was, even for her, a truly daring bit of flying. She was in fact sitting right in the middle of the Cylon fleet.

I guess I could also call this suicide. She thought grimly. She looked down, noting that her ship's scanner reported the Icarus had reached the outer atmosphere.

Time to get cracking. She thought as she set her ship in motion, putting herself directly in the transport's path. Reaching over to her right, she flipped a switch. That action caused a hidden compartment on the outer hull of the ship to open, venting its content of explosives. Biting her lip in her concentration, she set her charges, then detonated them as she arced away.

Nothing happened at first. Then everything went to hell as her raider was carried forth on the edge of the shock wave. An instant later, she was flying through the outer edge of a field of debris. "Yes!" She cheered as she saw that the Icarus' path was now clear. She watched until, a few minutes later, the Icarus reached her destination and jumped.

Bowing her head and closing her eyes, she took a minute to simply savor the feeling of relief. They were safe, and with the arrow with Helo on the Icarus she had actually accomplished her mission!

Distracted as she was, she failed to notice the raiders closing on her location. Or the fact that, damaged in the earlier explosion, her emitter was no longer sending out its regular 'I'm a friend' signal to the nearby Cylon fleet.

Kara's head shot up as she felt a concussion shake her raider. Frak! She thought in shock. I just took a hit! What the… Another hit followed, this one doing more damage.

She threw her ship into a sharp dive to evade her pursuers.

Another hit. She screamed in pain as she felt the flesh of her left leg burning. Sobbing, with her mind functioning on autopilot, she drove her ship into more evasive maneuvers. Wiping her eyes, she used the few seconds this gave her to input her jump coordinates, and activate the raider's jump engines.

She felt the wrenching disorientation of the jump at the same time as she felt a wave of pain turn her vision gray.

And then she felt nothing.

"Commander!" Commander William Adama looked up as Petty Officer Dualla spoke. "Picking up an unknown on an approach vector, sir!"

"Identification?" He demanded. She began to smile, and put a message on the loudspeaker.

"…peat. This is Lieutenant Karl S. Agathon on the Icarus. I have seventy-two refugee civilians from Caprica on board…" Dualla was smiling widely as a cheer made its way around CIC. Smiling, Adama gestured to Dualla and waited as she connected him to the transport.

"…Request permission to join the fleet."

"This is Commander Adama on the Galactica. Request granted." He chuckled. "It sounds like you'll have quite a few stories to tell, Lieutenant."

"Yes sir." Came the reply. "And sir…"

"Yes lieutenant?"

There was a slight hesitation on the other end. "Have you heard from Starbuck, sir?"

It was the sound of comm chatter that woke her.

She took in her surroundings, gasping as her leg reminded her viciously of recent events.

"Starbuck, do you read? This is raptor 5 from the Galactica, please respond." She grinned widely. She'd actually survived and made it back!

"Starbuck here, raptor 5."

There was relief in the other voice. "Do you need assistance, sir?" She laughed, at nothing and everything, and examined her ship's systems.

"Yes, thank you. That'd be much appreciated. I think I must have blown my engines on the way out…"

"Will do, Starbuck. Stand ready."

Moments later, she felt the shudder of a magnetic grapple gripping her ship, then movement as she was towed to safety. She laid her head down again and waited, watching the stars shine through her view screen. The landing bay of the Galactica lay straight ahead, then surrounded her ship as she landed.

She squeezed herself out of her cockpit and managed to stand unaided as she saw people rush towards her. She looked around her, breathing deeply, then froze as he stepped up to her.

Somehow, she couldn't look away. "Lee." She said, looking into his eyes and finding so much staring back at her. Hope, despair, sadness… and joy. She felt his arms as he reached out to hold her, the stubble on his cheeks, the hardness of his body and the taste of his mouth –salty with his tears- as he kissed her. Then a wildness arising inside her as their kiss deepened and his arms tightened around her, bringing together bodies and rapidly-beating hearts.

Someone cleared their throat.

They stepped apart self-consciously, and she winced as her leg wound decided to trouble her again.

"I…uhm… need to have a look at this thing and see what's salvageable." Tyrol said with a smile. "And I think you should let them take you to Life Station, sir." He indicated the personnel grinning around them.

"Uhm, okay." Kara said, rather at a loss for words. She let herself be drawn away and placed on a stretcher. Turning back, she watched him as they took her away.

She smiled. She was home.

Continued in part 3 :-)