"Come on, Sweet Lady." Starbuck held his hand out to her.

"You first. I'll follow. And don't give me that look. You're on my terrain now."

"You weren't supposed to be here at all; remember?" Starbuck didn't climb all the way to the bottom, not wanting to sink into that overwhelming darkness until he saw that she was headed down after him. The area they landed in was a fairly large access way with tunnels leading off in four directions, but those tunnels narrowed, with a small walkway on the side that was barely wide enough for one man. Each tunnel turned into a pitch black unknown after only a few metrons.

"Single file," Rene ordered pointing down one of the tunnels. They could stay out of the fetid water if they stuck to the sides of the tunnel. "Jake take point, Max join him. Apollo, then Starbuck. I'll wait to direct Avery's men."

"I'm not going without you," Starbuck said firmly.

"Where am I going to go, Starbuck? I'm following. Boomer needs you. Go!"

"You need cover." Starbuck motioned for Apollo to move on. Apollo nodded in agreement as he shifted Boomer's weight to his other shoulder. Boomer mumbled that he could walk, but his voice was groggy and Apollo didn't put him down.

"Not enough room for me to support you on the walkway." Boomer didn't protest, just grunted as Apollo tried not to drop him into the dark water that filled the tunnel.

Rene directed Avery's men to follow as more men streamed down the ladder, heading off into the dark chasing the distant glow of Jake and Max's illuminator. Starbuck took the opportunity to dig in the pack Rene was carrying to pull out another illuminator, turning the brightness to low so there was just enough to light up a few steps down the tunnel, but not to draw attention from up above. The ground rocked under their feet a few times, dust and foul water raining down on them. When the rocking stop, he thought he could feel a different kind of vibration, much like marching.

Starbuck surveyed their surroundings. It wasn't as smelly as he thought it would be, but then again there hadn't been anyone using the turboflushes in this neighborhood for at least three yahrens. The water in the bottom of the tunnel didn't appear to be that deep, but he hoped he wouldn't have to find out either.

Rene asked the next man down the ladder if that was all of them. It was Avery that turned to her. "I'm the last." Off in the distance they could hear a man's scream in pain that was quickly silenced by a Centurion's pulsar rifle.

Avery loomed over Rene. "When is the help coming? Why haven't they gotten here yet?"

Starbuck knew he shouldn't be shocked that the man's attempt at intimidation had no effect, but to watch Rene pushing at the heavily armed man to get him moving down the tunnel had Starbuck a bit worried for her safety. "I told you. We're it. Go!" The sound of centurions echoing down the hatch motivated Avery to listen to Rene and begin running.

Starbuck grabbed onto the pack on Rene's back so he didn't lose her in the dark. In his mind, they weren't running fast enough, especially when pulsar blasts ripped through the opening of the shaft they had just descended. He heard a plink of something metallic dropping down the shaft and a splash of water. He threw himself forward, pushing Rene and Avery down in a domino effect just before the solenite charge exploded, showering them with filthy water and chunks of cement. Another plink let him know another grenade had been dropped through the hole.

"MOVE!"

Avery and Rene didn't bother to get to their feet, crawling as fast as they could down the walkway into the black. The blast pushed them further down the tunnel. Starbuck saw the light far ahead wink out. He kept hold of Rene's pack as his illuminator went out and the tunnel was plunged into total darkness. He could feel the panic rise in his chest at the sudden and complete loss of sight. It was like his eyes couldn't open wide enough to let in any light. The only thing of substance was her pack in his hand. He couldn't imagine having to spend more than a centaur in these dark, fetid tunnels. How had the rats made it three sectons? What if they began to bomb the tunnel and it caved in? Would he be trapped down here in the dark until they died from lack of oxygen? Actually, that was the best case scenario he realized.

Rene's words helped to keep the panic at bay. "Hang on. I got this." He could feel her pushing at Avery as she guided him and herself up to their feet. "Just keep running, hand on the wall ahead of you. Feel the wall and follow it, there's the turn." They slid around a corner and Starbuck nearly lost his footing at the sudden change in the ground beneath his feet. His hold on her pack almost brought her down with him.

She reached for him, "It's okay. I got this." But then her hand dropped away and all he had was his grip on her pack to guide him. He had never been a kid afraid of the dark, but then again, since the void around Kobol, he'd never been anywhere this dark. Orphanage dormitories were well lit so that the minders could check on them. The barracks almost never completely lights out. He knew after this little foray, he'd be sleeping with an illuminator for a while. The complete black had his mind playing tricks on him as each noise was some new monster awaiting to attack. He wasn't breathing hard just from running and thought he might totally lose it, when suddenly ahead he could see the dim glow of the illuminator guiding the way.

Jake's voice called out echoing down the tunnel in a singsong of a childhood game where one person pretended they were blind and was trying to find others to tag them out. "Vixen?"

"Tail!"

Another blast echoed behind them down the tunnel, and Starbuck felt Rene's hand reach for him, grabbing at his jacket. "I've got a hold of you," he said over the sound of debris falling. "Just go. I'm not sure if they're following yet, but they will."

"Unless they cave in the tunnel!" she replied.

"As long as it's behind us . . . "

"And not on top of us!" she finished his thought.

He felt her hand let go and heard Avery grunt as Rene forced him to hurry. She nearly dragged Starbuck from his feet as his hand kept hold of the pack and she lunged forward at the sound of centurions behind them.

They ran in the dark, taking what seemed random turns. They lost the glow ahead of them and Starbuck wondered if they were going the right way at all. By his reckoning, they had gone in a circle. They took another turn and Rene grabbed at him, dragging him flat against the tunnel wall, holding him there as a red beam swept the tunnel. As the centurion clomped past and headed away from them, Rene leaned in to his chest. He held her there for a moment hanging onto something solid in the dark, feeling her shiver. They were both soaking wet from the lake, not to mention their recent sewage spa treatment, compliments of the Cylon Empire. She pulled away, reaching for his hand, guiding him down the sewer tunnel. He had to admit he was lost. He wouldn't last a cycle down here. Not only that, he was desperate to get out. It wasn't just the closeness of the tunnel walls, but the echoing of the sounds assaulting his ears. The darkness was a blanket threatening to smother him. Every now and then there was a small flicker of light from hatch holes above, or the winking of the illuminator far ahead, but the light was too fleeting and too soon was snuffed out by the dark.

He was sure they had lost those ahead of them, when he was startled by Jake's voice from far down a tunnel. "Vixen?"

Rene whispered to Avery in front of her to send the message forward. They had kept together somehow. Rene had been right; they were on her and Jake's terrain. They took turns and tunnels as if they had the map memorized. In the dark, it was hard for Starbuck to tell time. With the extra adrenaline, it seemed centaurs they were down in the dark before the line of people stopped in front of them. The sounds of Centurions behind them had receded. Everyone seemed to hold their breath listening to ascertain if they had evaded the enemy. Just above a whisper Jake's voice echoed eerily to them, "We lost the walkway. Are we headed the right way?"

Rene pressed a button on the compass, and the small light was like a beacon in the dark. "Yeah, but we should do recon. Hold position." She turned to Starbuck and said low, "Follow the wall to the last ladder. We need to take a peek."

"We can't just stay down here for a while? We haven't gone far enough." He couldn't believe that he was starting to prefer being here in the dark versus being exposed on the surface. The rats had been right, the centurions had not followed them in mass, just one or two had made it down. But that could mean that more were above waiting on them.

"No. When we lose the walkway, the tunnels get so narrow you have to swim in them, and…" she hesitated.

"We can handle a little more filth. We Colonials aren't as prissy as you think," Starbuck joked.

"Didn't you ever wonder why all the rats are small? You won't fit in the tunnels. Swimming is not the problem. It's size."

Starbuck felt a chill crawl up his spine at the idea of getting stuck in a tunnel of mong in the dark and the kind of slow death that would be. "Surface it is. You let me do the heavy lifting." He felt along the wall before finding the ladder. He looked up to see small dots of light above from the holes in the access cover.

He climbed up the ladder, feeling Rene behind him. "I'll support you while you lift so you don't fall back," she said.

When he reached the top, he felt her arms wrap around his legs, helping him to keep hold of the ladder as he let go with his hands, pushing up with all his strength on the heavy steel lid to the sewer. At first it didn't budge, but then he was able to get it to move. The grating noise seemed to echo through the tunnels and he winced at the sound. He scanned through the slit he had made between the cover and the ground. The few paces he could see of the ground appeared clear. He listened and heard nothing. He lowered the lid back down, and whispered down. "I can't see much, but that doesn't mean anything."

"Need help shoving the lid all the way off?"

"No, I just didn't want to expose us like that." But he realized they didn't have much choice. They couldn't go forward down the tunnels and they certainly couldn't go back. "You have your lasers drawn?"

"Yeah, I've got you covered. Shove it off and use that luck of yours."

Starbuck pushed at the cover again. Getting up was easy, getting it to slide away was the hard part. He ended up having to climb up the ladder a few more rungs, using his shoulder to get the whole lid to move up and pushed it back with enough room to get his head up. Like a frightened open plains tunnel daggit he popped his head up and briefly scanned around before dropping back down. All he could see was a residential street, houses in nearly perfect condition all around. He listened as he looked down to Rene. Her eyes were still red, but they weren't tearing anymore.

"Sounds quiet," she whispered to him.

"Why the frack did you come back?" He sighed in exasperation at her.

Rene didn't hesitate in her reply. "To get you out of here. Where you go, I go. Get over it, Bucko, and take another look. We may be out of options, unless we head back and take another side tunnel."

He swallowed down his personal concern, tried to get out of his head the image of the babe in the woman's arms, and the woman's face as Rene's. Although it was a somewhat better image than the one he was beginning to completely comprehend of Rene and the rats surviving sectons in the dark dank tunnels.

He tried to focus as he looked out on the street around him. He could hear raiders in the sky, salvos hitting something, the crash of glass in the distance. Smoke was rising from what he assumed was the shopping complex that looked to be more than a kilometron behind them. The immediate area around him was clear and quiet. The street had begun to slope up towards the hills that rose beyond the city.

"I think we're good. We're out of immediate danger anyway." He dropped back down and Rene began to descend the ladder. She headed off down the tunnel, but not in the direction towards the others. "Where are you going?"

"Just to the next juncture to make sure we're not being followed closely down here. It will make coming out easier if we can do a few at a time and run for cover."

It was a sound tactic. She'd been doing her studies, or maybe had her own experiences she was drawing from. He followed her, lasers in his hands as she slunk into the darkness. He lost her as she rounded a corner. Anxious for her he called her name only to get a shushing sound in return. When she came back, he could just make out her vague form as she came around the corner. "We're not being followed. Let's do this. Avery told us they've been hiding up in the hills."

In the darkness he voiced his fear. "If they find your viper, how are we going to get out of here?"

"We'll find other vehicles or you and I can pilot a raider."

"But the device, don't you need it?"

"Starbuck, I pulled it before I dove in for Boomer. I have it. I knew we were all dead without it."

"Thank the lords," Starbuck breathed, but held his breath as he heard a new sound, a clicking of some sort. He leaned his head around Rene before he realized what he was hearing were her teeth chattering. "We need to get you moving, all of us moving. We need to find shelter and get dry."

"Let's go." They headed back down the corridor to find Avery and pass the word that the way looked clear. They all backtracked down the tunnel, with Rene and Starbuck backing even farther as they conferred with Avery.

"How far is it to your camp?" Starbuck asked

"About seven kilometrons in the hills, behind the third ridge, there's a burned out truck near the entrance to some tunnels. We can stop there and regroup before heading to one of our camps. I'll lead the way. Small groups, there's lots of cover to be found."

"Alright. Let's go."

Avery didn't move, glaring at Rene in the light from the opening above. "You were supposed to bring help. Weapons, warriors. Did you even get the women to safety? You just leave them up there or did the Cylons…"

Rene cut him off. "I got them to safety. I told you I could do that. My word as a Warrior. Your kids are safe and getting medical treatment as we speak. I'm not lying about that."

"I find out otherwise, and the jackals will be feasting on your bones tonight. We'll discuss at the camp which body parts you are losing for not bringing more help!"

Starbuck shoved at Avery to get him out of Rene's face. "We're all in the same predicament here. She should have stayed there herself. Just get us somewhere that we can regroup and we'll look into getting us all out of here."

"I'm not leaving. The fight isn't finished." Avery turned to climb up the ladder and motioned for his men to follow once he was at the top.

"We regroup and we get out of here, that's the new mission, understood?" Starbuck whispered to Rene.

"Yes sir."

He wanted to say more to her, but one look in the dim light and he could tell she was feeling wretched. Her eyes were red, and her hair hung in limp strands in her face. Her wet uniform clung to her belly that was looking bigger than when they launched. The pack was digging into her shoulders and she shivered and clamped her jaw to fight her teeth from chattering. He started to reach for the pack, but she drew away.

"Apollo is going to need help with Boomer," was her answer to his gesture.

She was right of course, but it didn't ease his mind. Max, Apollo with Boomer, and Jake were the last to come back down the tunnel. Starbuck reached for Boomer with Apollo objecting, but Starbuck insisted. "You need a break, and I need cover." They lowered Boomer gently down and he tried to support himself, all the while professing he was okay, but even just touching the boot of his injured leg to the ground had him crying out in pain, as Starbuck quickly clamped a hand over his mouth. The yelp still rang down the tunnel, the echo receding until the return sound of centurion's boots came towards them. Starbuck didn't worry about being gentle as he tossed Boomer over his shoulder and began to climb, Apollo behind him helping to support the weight. He would have liked Rene to go before him, but there just wasn't room in the tunnel to change around locations. He had to hope that Jake and Max would keep her covered.

Starbuck loped off following the others for the hillsides, Boomer groaning at the movement. "Hang on, buddy. We'll get you patched up soon," he said to his friend, hoping he was speaking the truth. Once to the wooded area he paused to take a quick look back to see Rene and Jake struggling to get the cover back over the sewer access. He wasn't sure what help that was going to provide, but he didn't want to shout for them and blow what little concealment they had gained by leaving the sewers. He and Apollo waited there with Max for Rene and Jake to join them. Once together, they began the climb up the hills, running as fast as they could with the weight they were all carrying, scanning the skies and the town below for signs of pursuit.

After a metron it appeared that that the Cylons had lost their trail. The woods grew thicker providing even better cover. They didn't slow their pace until they were over the first ridge. Avery waited for them down in a shallow canyon choked with trees.

Starbuck slowly lowered Boomer to the ground. He was still bleeding and he knew they should change the dressing on the wound if they didn't want to lose Boomer to an infection or blood loss.

The leader of the survivors conferred with his men off in the distance before he jogged to the Colonials. "We have several more ridges to climb. You may have to leave him," Avery said referring to Boomer.

"Not an option," Starbuck answered, sweat rolling down his brow. There was a tense moment as the Colonials stared down the man.

"You're slowing us down. I'm telling the others to move on. I'll stay with you to show you the way."

"We would appreciate that," Apollo answered as he turned to Starbuck to take his turn at carrying Boomer.

"I'm fine, I can walk," Boomer muttered as Avery headed away from them to talk to his men. Jake pulled out a medkit and loaded up a hypo of analgesics that he pressed to Boomer's neck. The blood that was staining Starbuck and Apollo's uniforms told a different story.

Max stepped up to Apollo. "I'm stronger. My turn. He's my cousin. He ain't heavy."

Apollo agreed, realizing that they had far to go and would all need to take turns if they were going to keep up. He helped Max get Boomer up and slung across his back before Apollo took up the pack that Max had been carrying, grunting at the weight of it. It was almost as heavy as Boomer. "What did you pack in here?"

Max spoke as he started walking again. "While you guys were off taking a swim, I merged some supplies. Didn't think we want to eat or drink anything from here. Radium levels are high. I want my nephew to be born with ten toes without the webbing."

Starbuck winced at the warning in those words as he heard the thunder rolling in the hills. "How much farther?"

Apollo reached in the pack for a water bottle. "Not sure, but if it's seven kilometrons up hill, I think we'll be hiking after dark."

Starbuck swore and stepped over to Rene. He tugged the pack from her back. He didn't realize how rough he was being until she yelped a "Hey! Ease up."

"Just give me the pack." She handed it over and he pulled out another bottle of water and a breather. "Drink and put that on."

"I'm fine, Starbuck. I checked the levels, we're okay. It's a lot less up here." She did take the bottle and took a drink, handing it back to him.

"When did you last eat?"

"Starbuck, I'm fine." She yelped again as he reached out and grabbed the back of her neck, pulling her to him.

Nose to nose he tried not to shout, instead his words coming out as growl. "I told you to stay behind!"

He felt her shiver, could feel her damp uniform, could feel his. They all were soaked and tired. He took a breath to calm himself. Yeah, he was proving everyone right, too many damn emotions involved. He should let her go, he knew, but he held on, loosening his grip, pulling her into his arms instead. She seemed too stunned to do anything but to let him. He whispered into her ear, "I need you to be safe. I need to meet my child someday, alright?"

She nodded, mumbled again, "I'm fine."

He pulled back until they were nose to nose again. "I love you, that's why you need to follow my orders. When did you last eat?"

"Same time you did. It goes both ways, Bucko."

"I'm not eating for two."

Jake shoved a protein bar in between Starbuck and Rene's face. "Eat. He's right."

Starbuck gently let go of her, reaching for the bar and unwrapping it for her. "Chew, swallow, drink and wear the breather."

"I am not wearing a breather for seven kilometrons." She took the bar and the water bottle, ripping a bite off dramatically.

"Sit and rest." But Rene shook her head at him.

"No, we keep moving. Are we staying with them or taking off on our own?" Rene spoke to Apollo who had come over to join them.

"The mission was to save them. For now, we will stay with them and try to convince them to join us. We will need to get some vipers or raiders, and they may be able to assist us in that. We are stronger together."

"Do you trust them?" Starbuck asked, watching the hillside, trying to pick out the men, hidden quite well in their camouflage. "Frankly, I'm not interested in losing any body parts later at the camp."

"Didn't think we would have to trust them," Jake added.

"Define trust?" Rene said.

"Do you think they will help us get in the sky and get the frack out of here?"

Rene didn't get a chance to answer as Avery had come back, snapping at them, "Get moving. We have that whole slicing off body parts to get to. We like to do that before the moon rises."

"Look, we came here to help save you. Not our fault that you prefer living in hades," Starbuck snapped back.

Avery pointed his rifle into Starbuck's chest. "And she was supposed to bring help. So far you're just another burden to carry, so get moving or I'll finish you all off here."

"Easy there," Starbuck said.

Apollo stepped between Avery and Starbuck, "Like the man said, we came here to help. We have your women and children somewhere safe. If you want them to stay that way, I suggest we find some cover, regroup and then we'll talk about who is going to be slicing up whom."

Avery lowered his rifle and growled, "Get moving. I'm not waiting on you anymore." He stalked off towards a couple of his men who were waiting on him, motioned for them to move on.

"Still think he's our best bet?" Starbuck asked.

"We don't have any other option at the moment. Let's catch up to Max. He's going to need our help with Boomer." Apollo headed off, and Jake followed. Rene handed the water bottle to Starbuck, but he mumbled that he was fine.

"Pretty boy, I need you to take care of yourself too, because when I go down, you're going to have to pick me back up." He nodded at her wisdom, took the bottle and finished off what was left before stowing it in the pack. He hoped they'd find more water that was clean. He wasn't particularly fond of having a kid with more than ten toes, or worse, webbing. On the other hand, at least he'd be a good swimmer.