WHTMT - chapter 27

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Lee sat on the bed holding her till the pain passed. He whispered words of reassurance but inside he was panicking. Now was definitely not the time for the baby to come with no one else around to help. And was the blood normal or a sign of things gone wrong? Lee had no clue, but he knew it was his responsibility to calm Kara down and make her believe it was okay, even if it wasn't.

"You're okay. Everything's fine," he murmured.

"How do you know? Do you know anything about giving birth?" Her eyes flashed hotly and if Lee didn't know her better he'd have thought she was mad. She wasn't though - she was near hysterical with fear.

" 'Course I don't," he chuckled, hoping lightening things would help. "I've never done this before either but women have been having babies for thousands of years, long before hospitals and special equipment came along. We'll figure it out as it happens." He stroked her cheek gently. "Just remember, I'm here. We're a team. We will make it through this."

She nodded silently, eyes speaking louder than any words could - she was terrified.

"Kara, there's something I need you to do."

She looked at him inquiringly.

"I need you to help me with the code."

"But I can't ..." she protested, tears filling her eyes.

"You have to," Lee said firmly. "If we can contact Galactica, Ishay might be able to get here before the baby does." He smiled encouragingly. "And I could really use the help ... it's not like I remember much of the first aid I learned at the Academy, and giving birth certainly wasn't part of our field medicine training."

She smiled weakly but it quickly changed to a grimace as the pain hit her again.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked, face screwed up with worry.

She shook her head. "I'm scared Lee," she confided, voice shaking.

"I know you are," he said tenderly, putting an arm around her. "But we can do this."

"I'm scared I'm going to die."

"Kara, you're not going to die. You're the strongest person I know. You've suffered through so much in your life and it's only made you stronger. This is no different."

"Yes it is," she protested, and told him about her dream.

My gods, how horrible! he thought, trying to stay calm on the outside. I'm sure something like that would never happen - that sort of thing only happened on those old horror movies. Everything will be fine.

He kept repeating that last phrase - everything will be fine - to himself over and over, trying to convince himself to be positive and supportive. However scared he might be, she must be a thousand times worse. She needed him, and Lee wasn't going to let her down. Not again.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"They've jumped more than once," she said, tossing her blonde hair back off her face.

"We can find them," he said confidently.

"Well maybe you should be the one up here piloting this ship then, because I have no idea where to go," she said coolly.

"That's not your job anyway," he said, a trifle airily.

She looked at the other woman in the ship with them. The dark-haired one shrugged. "Beats me what she saw in him," she whispered.

He didn't notice though, being fully occupied with his own thoughts.

"It might take us a while, but we will get there," he said over his shoulder.

" 'A while'? How long is that?"

"Another day or perhaps a little more."

"Are you sure they won't jump away again before we get there?" the dark-haired one asked.

He shook his head, an enigmatic look on his face.

"How do you know that?" the blonde one demanded.

"It's time."

"Time for what?"

"Time for the baby to be born. I can feel it." He smiled, but instead of rendering his features more boyishly handsome the way it usually did, it gave him an evil look.

"So how do you know they won't jump away to make sure we don't find them?"

"Well, for starters, they don't know we're following them," he said, as if explaining things to a child. "And secondly, you don't think he'll be busy piloting the ship while she's screaming in agony, needing help giving birth do you?"

Both women shook their heads.

"Exactly." He smiled condescendingly at them, but rolled his eyes as he turned away. Sometimes he wished he could just do things alone. It was easier that way.

oooooooooooooooooooo

"I think ... think that's it," Kara panted, an hour after Lee helped her to the cockpit and they began working on sending a message to Galactica. She'd sweated through eight contractions and Lee had had to get replacement towels several times as they soaked through with blood and amniotic fluid.

"Are you sure?"

"Sure? No, but it's the best I can do."

Lee studied her carefully. She needed rest.

"Good enough then. Let's go." He helped her up and led her back down to the bed, putting fresh towels down before lowering her into a semi-sitting position against the pillows.

"Is there ... I mean, are there any clothes or some such ... around here? I could use something new," Kara suggested, pulling her soaked shirt away from her chest.

"You mean like this?" Lee pulled out an oversize T-shirt that someone had left in a locker.

"Exactly like that," she said thankfully, stripping off her shirt and bra and pulling the dry fabric over her head.

"Is there anything else I can do?" he asked.

"Not right now," she answered, smiling weakly at him. "Just stay with me?"

He sat down beside her and began to rub her stomach, feeling the movements within.

"Trust me, I'm not going anywhere."

oooooooooooooooooooo

Tigh's eyebrows drew together. It wasn't really anything ... but was it worth disturbing the old man? He wrestled with himself. He didn't want to miss anything important, but what he was seeing wasn't the cut and dried 'we're over here' message he was expecting.

He looked at the clock. It was 03:30. The old man should be sleeping ... was it worth disturbing him now or should he wait till shift change at 06:00? Adama forestalled his decision by arriving in CIC unannounced. Too late, one of the Lieutenants on duty noticed him.

"Admiral on the ..."

Adama stopped him with a hand. "As you were Lieutenant. No need for pomp and circumstance."

"Yes sir," the Lieutenant replied, cheeks reddening with embarrassment.

"Bill," Tigh called softly from his spot at the war table.

"You've got something?" Adama looked stoic but Tigh could hear the note of desperation in his friend's voice.

"Possibly," he said cautiously. "I was just about to call you." The lie slipped off his lips easily; he'd lied too often and to too many people including himself to look or even feel embarrassed about stretching the truth.

"Good thing I wasn't sleeping then," Adama said dryly. "What is it?"

"This." Tigh proferred the sheet of paper he'd been studying at Adama.

He looked at it intently for a moment.

"Can you tell me what I'm looking at?" he asked, as he threw his glasses on the table and scrubbed his hand over his face. "I think I'm too tired to make heads or tails of it."

"Well, this just looks like background noise but this little blip here," he illustrated with his finger, " is repeated here and here, and here ... It seems to be a recurring sound. Too frequent to be a coincidence. If you assume it's a word and compare it to the size of the other sounds, it's short one. Three, maybe four letters."

He looked up and met Adama's eyes, a significant look passing between them.

" 'Lee' perhaps, or maybe even 'help'," Tigh suggested.

"Or 'Kara'," Adama said grimly. "Possibly even 'baby'."

Tigh shot him a look of disbelief. "It couldn't be yet could it? I don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing but even I know it takes nine months."

"For a human baby. This one is only half-human. I think we can assume all of our assumptions may be incorrect."

"So what are you suggesting?"

"Pinpoint the location of those sounds. Then we send a ship with some medical staff. I'd rather be safe than ..." He stopped before putting it into words but they both knew.

Tigh nodded brusquely. "Right away."

Adama smiled gratefully before leaving CIC. He knew he should go back to his quarters and try to sleep, but until Lee and Kara were safely found, he knew rest would never come.

He smiled as he walked Galactica's corridors though. He knew many of the crew had a low opinion of Saul, and perhaps rightly so, given some of his tendencies, but given a tight situation, there was no one he'd rather have by his side. It was good to have people who understood you enough to know what you weren't saying.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Eight hours later, Kara had exhausted the supply of towels and run through every forgotten article of clothing Lee could find for her, and things were only getting worse.

Lee was beginning to pray it would be over soon, terrified though he was at the prospect of actually helping the baby come out, just so it would be over and done with. The hours of waiting and seeing her suffer were fraying his nerves to breaking point and he wasn't sure how he was going to keep it together to get Kara through it.

She was definitely looking rough around the edges - rougher than he'd ever seen her. He'd tried giving her some water earlier; with all the perspiring she was doing she had to be dehydrating, but it had only caused her to vomit so he'd given up on that idea. But now, hours later, she looked exhausted. The pallor of her skin was greyish and her eyes appeared to be sinking into her skull. They didn't register fear anymore either. Now they were blank.

Another contraction gripped her but she barely reacted, the tensing of her muscles and the sound of her breath hissing between her teeth the only signs of pain.

Lee saw a rush of wetness tinged with blood suddenly seep into the towel beneath her. He'd never really been a queasy person but this was starting to unnerve him.

"How are you doing Kara?" he asked softly.

She completely ignored him, as if in another world.

"Kara, come on. Talk to me," he said more forcefully.

She continued to stare.

He gripped her shoulders and shook her gently. "Kara!"

She turned blank eyes on him. "I can't do this anymore," she said flatly, voice barely more than a whisper. Then her eyes shut and she slipped into unconsciousness.

TBC