The jolt of the deck under the treads of the viper snapped her head back up. She'd drifted off and that was more puzzling to her than the rift she had just tumbled through. Sleep had always been an elusive luxury. For far too many yahrens she'd needed help to get some rest, whether it was another person to help defend her or when she didn't give a frack if she lived or died and consumed enough chemicals to trick her brain into shutting off. She briefly wondered which it had been this time as the harsh lights of the landing bay brought her back from the sleep that had folded over her. She had a vague sense of someone piloting that she could trust, but that had to be a dream.

She brought her head up again, wondering at the loss of time as the canopy was coming up and hands were reaching for her restraints, another for her helmet. She reached up to stop the hands trying to unbuckle the shoulder harness. The helmet she could do without, but she'd need the harness to launch. She needed to stay in the cockpit. This wasn't done. The mission wasn't over.

"No!" She thought she had shouted it, but the pain as the bright lights were cutting into her brain made it sound more like a groan. She could feel the bit of a machine drilling into her head, the rough burr rumbling in her ears.

The hands stilled and she flinched as something touched her face.

"Easy there, baby," a soft voice said as the hand touched her more firmly, cradling her face as another hand came up to block the light from her eyes. In the shade of that hand she could crack an eye open, realizing there were only two people in the whole universe who called her baby and she'd left one of them behind on Caprica. That thought crushing into her made her hand tighten on the restraint as she swallowed down the regret that burned up her throat. She should have insisted that Apollo keep the cockpit sealed. Once they got to her they wouldn't let her go.

Her eyes finally focused a bit on the face that was before her calling to her. She knew that face, the name bubbling up from the hole the drill was making, but it didn't make sense.

"Nik?"

A smile beamed at her nearly as bright as the lights of the bay.

"The Colonel thought he had lost you. I'm going to have to let the med techs at you but I have to know, what did you do with my best friend?" His hands moved over hers, gently tugging her fingers away from the clasps on the restraints. She let him loosen the harness as she tried to find the words that were floating in her head.

"Lost the vipers. Did a lot of hiking."

"Well now I'm jealous, you know I like a good hike. He's alive?"

She was able to get both eyes open but winced as the light brought back the knife point lancing into her temple. "Yeah. I have to go back." She tried to grip the harness straps harder to make sure they remained.

"Okay baby, but we need you awake to do that. No sleeping on the job." She snorted at that. He didn't sleep much either, none of her friends did.

She felt him tug the harness off her shoulders and slide his hands in her armpits to haul her up. "Little help here?" She thought he was talking to her and she tried to get her feet under her to haul herself up out of the cockpit, but Nik was brushed aside by a man that was just a vision from her childhood, only now his hair was all white, not just salt and pepper. She wanted to ask where the frak she was, but she didn't mean location so much as in time. The old man hauled her out of the cockpit and she felt Nik's arms come around her to help her stand on the platform as Adama's arms remained under hers. The Commander's face also held a smile, nearly as warm and vibrant as one of Starbuck's. It didn't make sense. She had fraked this up from the beginning. Why would that make him happy?

"Sir? I'm sorry…I…" But he wasn't paying attention to her, instead waving a hand for the Med Techs who had arrived. She looked to Nik hoping her friend might find that rebellious spark he once had and help her. "I have to go back. The Colonel and I…I have to…"

Nik mumbled an agreement to her, looked like he was about to help her, but a hand pulled him away and another was there, pulling her almost off her feet as arms wrapped her up in a tight embrace. It took Nik's voice calling out to help her fill in the blank of who this person was.

"Jason, I told you to wait across the bay. They haven't been through decon you idiot."

Nik was right and she tried to push the boy away, but Lords he wasn't a boy anymore, taller than either her or Jake, nearly as tall as Nik and strong too.

"Don't you do that again!" he shouted in her ear, and she nodded fast and hard making her vision swim and her knees buckle.

"Let go…you have to let go." She tried to push away stumbling, but Nik caught her, and then Crius was there, prying Jason off her. "I'm sick. It might be con..con…con…frak…I n…n. need you to take care of the k..k..kids." She didn't want to let go of him but she wouldn't be able to take it if she made him ill and what she had running through her was not of the usual variety of ick. Crius was able to get an arm around Jason's neck, but her son wasn't letting go. It took Apollo's voice of authority to loosen his hold as he firmly pulled Jason away from her.

"She might be contagious. I might be too. You should all back away." Rene caught the glare Apollo cast his own father. "You shouldn't be taking this risk. The fleet needs you."

Adama's voice sounded tremulous to her ears as he placed a hand on the Colonel's shoulders. "I need you and the rest of your team. What do you need?" The commanders next words indicated she had been out longer than she thought and her dreams of voices may have been communications with the fleet. " Vipers are prepped and shuttle is waiting. Plus, I am thinking of the fleet. You have a Cylon signal transmitting from your ship."

The words chilled her and she let Nik take all her weight looking up into his dark eyes that seemed more alive than she'd seen them in a long while, "It's me, not the ship."

"She was captured by the enemy along with Starbuck. They've been implanted with some sort of device." Apollo was back to sounding like a Colonel. It made her shiver.l

She felt her feet leave the ground as Nik scooped her up. A low long string of curses was flowing from him, so inaudible that anyone else might think he was just mumbling incoherently but she recognized the words. They were some of the first phrases that Nik finally spoke once they were rescued and seemed to be safe on the Zakar. He moved to take her down the steps and she wanted to struggle against him. She needed back in that viper, needed to go get them now while she could at least manage standing. She didn't know how much strength she had left, but she knew she had enough to at least get them back with vipers and weapons to help keep the ones she loved safe.

She felt other hands helping Nik to get her down the steps and she tried to push them away, but Adama's voice cut through her like he was flipping the circuit to activate the extra fuel reserve she had within. "Let the doctor do what he can to help you so you are strong enough to save them. Plus, we need to stop that signal before it endangers all of us. You can do that, warrior, I know you can. The Lords will guide you."

She sucked in a breath at that, feeling the sterile and reprocessed air fill her lungs. It felt clean and fresh for the first time since she set foot on the Galactica all those sectons ago. She would swear she could feel it scrubbing away at her, forcing her lungs to want to expel the toxins that were in them. Nik laid her out on the life pod the Med Techs had brought which made it hard for her to catch her breath. She swallowed down the terror that they would just seal her up in it and thereby seal the fates of all those on Caprica. She choked on the fear and frantically reached out for something to pull herself away. It was a strong dry grip she found and while it was Nik's eyes she latched on to, it was not his hand.

"Do what you can," Adama's voice commanded and she felt his grip squeeze her hand twice as he helped her sit upright. She didn't let go even when the pressure let up. She spared just a glance for the Medical team, out of curiosity if it would be Cassiopeia or the crusty old guy who often reeked of fumarello smoke. She got lucky, it was both of them and their presence did not bode well for her objective. Their hands were on her and she pulled on the only tether she had, begging for his help.

"Sir? I need to…"

Adama didn't let her finish the words. "I know. They are here to help you do that." It was a voice of command, but for once it seemed to be speaking the orders she wanted to follow. She searched his face for the tells that he might be deceiving her, but her gaze was pulled away by the flash of the biomonitor as it was waved over her. Hands reached for her and each touch by the techs felt like an electric shock.

"Don't move," Cassie said almost as authoritatively as the Commander. Rene looked to her hoping that she could make the woman understand, but Cassie was different without Starbuck there, all professional and no hint of familiarity as she calmly told Rene what she was doing. "She's hotter than a Borellian desert at 39-5, heart rate 126, resps 26 and shallow, BP 70 on 30. Definitely hypovolemic and probably septic."

"I'm scanning pulmonary opacities in the mid to lower lungs," Crusty Fumarello said. "There's your culprit."

"Prop her up, it's no wonder she can barely catch her breath," Cassie said as someone raised a support behind her. "Small prick here, Rene. First round of blood cultures for analysis. Hematology, electrolytes, GFR, LFTs, coags and blood gases."

"Steroid and antibiotics," Crusty Fumarello said as he placed a hypo to her neck.

Rene felt the warm rush of something good flowing into her. With the warmth came a flush of embarrassment that tried to crawl up her neck as she felt the zipper of the jumpsuit come down. She didn't have a pressure suit or anything else on under those coveralls. She wondered at the sense of shame that flooded her mind. It had to be at the loss of the uniform for she had been forced to discard whatever possession of privacy she had over her body a long time ago with Dante's trainings on the Zakar. Being nude hadn't bothered her in a while and besides, Nik and Crius had both seen it all many times. Was it the Commander? Adama had probably seen better women than her if Starbuck's description of the Commander's wife was even half accurate. The man didn't give her half a glance, focused instead on Apollo across the bay seeing to the refuelling of the Borzoi. She tried to focus her attention on that sign of hope. If they were fuelling, they were launching. Apollo couldn't get back without her.

"They're human hands," she tried to remember as she felt her arm pulled from the jumpsuit and the plastic cut away from the Cylon port. She let her thoughts roam where they wanted so she didn't have to pay attention to what they were doing, because if she thought about what she had been through at the hands of the Cylons she was going to scream and not stop for a long while. There wasn't enough air in this landing bay for that.

The Commander squeezed her hand and he tried to let go, but she held on and looked away from Nik to Adama's face. The man was still looking across the bay to Apollo and she followed his gaze. The Colonel had been taking steps towards them but had paused. She saw the quick flush of embarrassment before he looked away. Had Starbuck talked with Apollo about her? Had he described her to him in intimate detail the way he had described the Commander's wife in hushed awed tones. They were viper pilots, of course he had. When pilots weren't talking about flying like it was better than sex, then they were talking about the next best thing.

She laughed. It was almost ludicrous that in the midst of the mess of all this apocalypse felgercarb, these two men still had something resembling dignity. Most pilots had none before the destruction, and even less since.

Nik's voice cut through her thoughts. "You need to stay with us. A little focus, sweetheart."

"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled looking up to him. The sharp pain of a needle entering her arm with Cassie's calm voice, "Drawing another sample of your blood," helped to clear her vision. She locked onto Nik's face in an effort to silence the static of fear as it tried to rise in volume within her. It was easier to look on the eyes she knew, but his had always been either too deep like the sewers tunnels they survived in, or they were too reflective and you had to examine yourself in them. She missed when they had been like chocolate and he was sweet and funny. She felt a jolt of arrogance that maybe she could drag back the smooth talker Nik had once been from that dark vault of silence. Then she felt a different kind of jolt that zipped down her arm making her left hand clench and unclench spasmodically.

"Ow," she stated like a briefing she needed to give just so everyone knew the score. But the pulse of the electricity pumped through her heart, each beat chasing away the tainted fog in her head.

"I don't know what this is exactly but it seems to be connected to her central nervous system. I can't stop the signal without potentially paralyzing her, maybe even killing her, at least in this crude situation. For Sagan's sake, I'm a doctor not a science officer," the rough voice of the doctor informed them all, as she felt the muscles in her arm relax and she regained control of her hand.

The Commander answered, "We can worry about that later. The scanners are clear and our communications experts on the bridge found the signal to be localized and weak. We believe that unless the Cylons are specifically searching for the frequency, it won't register."

"But you registered it," she knew she was the one who spoke, but she heard Starbuck's voice come out of her.

"Yes." The Commander didn't elaborate and she appreciated that he knew she understood the implications of the facts. They had evaded the Cylons since their jump from Dilmun but she could bring their enemy back to them. She shut her eyes and tried to swallow down the nausea that rose at the guilt. If she lost it, they may not let her back in that viper. That's all that mattered right now, getting back in that cockpit.

She felt another sting of a hypo and jerked in alarm at not being warned. That always meant it was going to be followed with her losing conscious thought, and that was not how this was going to go down. She jerked again and knocked the hypo aside as she struggled to get up.

"Whoa!" Niks pushed down on her shoulders. "I like the signs of life, but let them finish."

Cassie's calm voice stilled her. "I have preliminary blood culture results, so those were just more antibiotics. The right ones this time. We also need to start a couple lines and begin fluid resuscitation. I'm sorry, I should have warned you."

She wanted to feel reassured at the med tech's words, but the doctor's voice skittered down her nerves and crashed into her head as they poked her a couple more times.

"I should be rushing her to the Life Center, not pumping her full of fluids and drugs so she can launch! Speaking of which, how fast can I run the bolus?" Crusty fumarello asked.

"Pressure infusion. We don't have time for anything slower and her heart is fine. We need to get her BP up," Cassie replied.

"Vasopressors?"

"Not yet."

She gripped Adama's hand hard, trying to focus on him, just him, as she tried to form the words, "I ch..chose this. I have to go . They are w..waiting."

He turned to meet her eyes, his full and sorrowful, not radiating the usual forceful confidence.

"I can do this. I made a vow. My life doesn't matter," she said hoping to chase away the doubts the man might have.

He held her gaze and she saw the echo of the disappointment so like that time yahrens ago when he was picking her up late at night from the local authorities. What crime she had committed she had long forgotten, but the look he gave her as he picked her up and dropped her off with his brother had remained in her memory . It stung nearly as bad as the cylon device in her arm. She tried to speak again, but his hand that fell on her shoulder silenced the words.

"Your life does matter, but you have made it clear in more ways than one that this is what you want. I'm letting you go."

She tried to say the words thank you, but she was distracted by Cassie pulling at the jumpsuit. "She needs a pressure suit. We don't want her passing out on launch. Men, if you would give us some privacy."

Adama squeezed her hand again and tried to let go. He had to reach down with his other hand to pry her fingers from his. She wanted to fight to keep that hold because if he was there, then there was a chance she could threaten him, or come up with some form of coercion to get him to let her back in the cockpit.

"I got this." Nik pushed down harder on her shoulders as he leaned over her, forcing her eyes on his. "Pull it together. You have a job to do! Failure is not an option." His voice had an edge that sounded so much like Dante she shivered, but the words also told her they weren't going to stand in her way. She nodded hard, then shook it to chase out the shards of metal that were jabbing at her brain, swallowing them down to her stomach.

"Fear is the mind killer," she uttered the mantra. Not all of Dante's lessons had been bad. How to move when you wanted to sit paralyzed waiting for the final blow had been a good one. Keep moving, that's all you had to do sometimes to keep on living. She wanted to move and not die in a damn life pod.

Her words earned her a grin from Nik, an echo of an old one from back on Caprica. She cast him one back, "You going to help me dress? I thought you were only good at undressing women?" The shock at getting all those words out so easily, almost as smooth as something Starbuck might say, chased away her smile and brought reality rushing in like a tidal wave. "I have to go."

"And you need to come back. I've lost too many friends." He let up on her shoulders and reached for her hand to help her up. She was too relieved to be embarrassed about stripping down in the landing bay. Nik leaned down to help her pull off the boots as she shucked the coveralls.

Cassie started to protest for a moment, but must have seen it was unnecessary and ran the biomonitor over her once more. She held up the hypospray. "It's a vasopressor to help maintain your blood pressure. You're going to need it." She pressed it again Rene's neck and then removed the lines that had been pumping fluids into her. A moment later, she turned her attention to helping the warrior pull on the pressure suit and the new uniform. Rene let them buckle on her boots as each time she dipped her head down her vision faded. She heard the doctor's voice summarizing her medical progress for the Commander, but it blurred into the rumble of the burr bit drilling in her head.

The holster being strapped to her leg chased away the last of the gray clouds at the edges of her vision. She mumbled a "thanks," at Cassie before she took the step away, a bit unsteady, but the second one was easier since no one stopped her. The Commander's hopeful face almost made her drop. This wasn't real, or at least not as how she thought this situation would go. She looked back to the life pod wondering if she was still in there floating on some really good medications wishing she was returning to save her family.

"Lords, let it be real," she cast up the prayer before turning back to the Commander.

"No one would fault you if you are unable to do this." He attempted a sympathetic tone, but the begging in his eyes said something different.

"Dante never lied to me," she blurted it out, and tried not to enjoy how it made Adama flinch, but it made him drop his attempt at fatherly familiarity as he fixed her with a steely gaze.

"I am not lying."

"More d..d..delusional than me if you…you think…think I c..could live after l..l..leaving them behind." It was more than the drill buzzing in her head that had her choking on her words. It was her heart threatening to burst at the idea of being in the fleet without either Starbuck or Jake. "I'm okay." Those were words she could at least say without sounding like she was damaged goods.

Adama nodded at her and stepped aside revealing a vision that left her trying to catch her breath. A shuttle warming up and a whole squadron of vipers going through preflight checks. Crius's shoulder came up under her arm and Nik clapped her on the back as he went past to find his own craft. Apollo stepped forward to reach for her, offering a hand up to the cockpit. She wanted to admit to him he'd won the bet, but she couldn't find the words. He helped her down into the seat before taking his own and leaving it to Crius to help her get strapped in.

"This is happening," she said up to him trying to confirm the facts, before also making a demand. "You can't go. My kids are yours."

"I outrank you. Always will. Lizbet has them and Starbuck's my wingmate. Had I been along the first time, it would have all gone as planned because you know I like my missions how I like my fraking, one and done."

She didn't have enough energy to laugh at his joke, nor to contradict him. If they were going down, they'd do it all together like they did most things since the Zakar. He plunked the helmet on her head and she tried not to cry out in pain as he patted it before the canopy came down.

Apollo's voice was calm and steady and it gave her something to latch on to. "You just have to get us there. If possible, we are going to stay in the air. If we have to land, you just sit tight and I will haul you out if need be, agreed?"

"Yes, sir." Again words she could utter with ease. She desperately wanted to get back to Starbuck if nothing else he could see that yes, she could offer up respect when someone had earned it.

Launching wasn't as bad as in a viper, maybe because the borzoi wouldn't fit in the tubes, so they missed the slingshot effect of a launch. Apollo had to fight the controls and burn some fuel to break out of the Galactica's gravity well, but it at least left the launch slow as a shuttle.

"Ready?"

"Remind me not to doubt you again," she said out loud. He deserved to hear it.

"Oh, I don't know about that. Half of Starbuck's crazy ideas were mine first. He is going to be a bit steamed I brought you back. I'm counting on you to calm him down and save my life, got that? On the count of three. One…"

She breathed out the words, "Home," and knew the lords knew what she meant, or more specifically who she meant.