The cockpit felt tight when the viper was in the tubes, all that metal surrounding her pressing down on her chest. She swallowed down the sudden sense of claustrophobia that threatened to creep up on her as she waited for the command to launch. She wanted out, but cracking the seal now would mean death, the Colonials had been very clear on that. Once in the tube, you were in until you launched, no going back. She took a slow breath and willed her hand to stop shaking. "The Colonials have all done this and those idiots made it," she reasoned to herself. "There's a first time for everything and then it's just the same old same old." She gave herself the pep talk she'd used when she was on the streets of Caprica City and having to try something new to get some cubits. "Even fraking just becomes fraking. A plus B, then do it again, simple math. The Colonials can do it, so can you." But her hand still shook and she was afraid to touch the stick until she could get her shaking to stop.

Crius's voice cut across the comms, trying to give advice and calm them down, but she had spent a lot of time around him lately, especially since he'd started up the late night study sessions. His voice was higher in pitch and he was talking too much and too fast. His country boy drawl was too obvious. He was anxious and it didn't help her to reign in her own fear.

"This ain't nothin' but a thing," Crius drawled. "Ya done it a hundred times in the sims. Just stick to your wingman like a burr. Spread out like ya got the whole range to roam. You're the daggit herding them bovines." Crius's voice was annoying, like the whine of a fly in your ear, the comm line adding a cold metallic ping to the timber she had once thought was warm like a campfire. Crius wasn't their friend, not now. He was their instructor and she wondered what bet he had lost to make him have to be here with the first wave of fighters. He kept talking, and it twanged like an out of tune guitar.

Instead she tried to focus on the irony of the situation. She'd made it off Caprica, out of the sewers, away from the Cylons, just to be thrown at them again. None of them were ready for this and she could hear crying on the comm. She wasn't sure who it was. She hadn't bothered to get to know anyone other than the instructors once she'd heard Captain Pallus use the words fodder. Crius had made it pretty clear they'd only been taught enough to get them out of a launch tube and to push a laser button. It was no accident they had wasted little class time on landing. Crius hadn't even spent much of their after hours training on that skill. Maybe she'd get to know a few of them after this, if they made it back and didn't wind up just crashing after they cleared the tubes. Maybe a few of them would even land, if not, she'd get to know them in the afterlife.

She wanted to scream into her headset that whoever the frak it was that was crying needed to shut the frak up. Hadn't they learned already from Caprica, the Cylons didn't care about your tears? You were just wasting fluids your body needed.

"And there will be a meal waiting for ya when you're done, so git' er done." That got her attention, Crius's incentive to get them into the cockpit, and damn she was hungry. It wasn't going to be bovine steaks they'd be eating though, or a glass of ambrosia to toast the dead. She didn't even think the Colonials would be getting that after this battle. It would be protein squares with a ration bar if they were lucky, the most they had eaten in a few days, and they'd be content with a full glass of water that didn't taste like recycled piss.

"Stop it!" she hissed at her own hand. Someone else had finally called across the comms to the one who was crying to knock it off. Then came the command they had been waiting for, "You are cleared to launch."

"Okay, buckaroos, time to start this rodeo. Noses up, full turbos, in order, let's go."

She didn't wait on the order, in fact couldn't even remember which number she'd been assigned for launching. "Might as well go first and get it over with," she thought as she grabbed the stick and jammed down the turbos. "You can't go to hell if you are already there." Her breath left her as she was slammed back in the seat and then she was clear and into space. It was glorious, the stars all around and she felt reborn, that is until she saw the first explosion off her wing. Someone had gone up in a burst of flames. Debris pinged off her canopy and her heart thumped hard as Crius whooped.

"Good job! Ya did it! Now form up." She couldn't reconcile his words with the life they had lost. A sudden trill of fear rang like a clear chord in her head.

"Arimis?!"

The beat of her heart didn't slow until she heard his voice, "I'm here. Jake?"

"On your left. Rene, take right, just like in sims. Lizbet, stick with Crius. Nik?"

"Yo," his viper lined up beside her on her right. They had all made it this far, but there was more to do than just get in the sky. They had practiced this late at night, in the sims and in their heads. If the Raiders could do a pinwheel, they could too. "There," Nik pointed the nose of his viper towards their target. They all took aim and the raider went up in a splash of white that made her reflexively close her eyes. She forced them open as her heart pounded hard in her chest. She coughed on the smoke. Had she been hit? No, that wasn't it. She'd crashed in the bay, had to be it. That was it, the flash from her own circuits frying as she crashed on landing only, she hadn't. She was better than that. She didn't mess up Dante's landing bay. He'd kill her and yet here she was, blinking at the brilliance of the flashing circuits and coughing on smoke.

"Rene!"

It was Nik's voice and she got an eye to crack open. His face hovered above her viewscreen. Yup, she'd crashed.

"Happens to everyone." She imagined Crius's instructor's voice. "You're sitting on turbos and fuel tanks. You want to get out and clear before it goes." She fumbled for the toggle that would get the canopy up, reaching at the frame to push at it so it would move faster. It didn't budge. She tried to reach for the ejection lever, but her arms were heavy and her fingers wouldn't close on it, couldn't grip it.

"Frak…I can't reach it. Get me out!" She pleaded to Nik but he shook his head at her. "Nik, get me out!"

"Rene, I can't." He said it quietly and she reached up to bang on the viewscreen, but her arms were trapped by the harness for the seat. She couldn't get the straps to let go. Crius's face came into view.

"You have to try! Get me out!"

"Calm down, Lieutenant! You're okay." He put his hands on the canopy, both hands forming the sign declaring that everything was good. If she was good, why did her chest burn so bad? Her heart felt like it was trying to punch out of her chest and her viper. Jake's face came into view as he pushed the others aside.

"Rene, take a breath. You're okay. Just need you to calm down." She tried to suck in the air, but it was hard to do as a mist blew in at her and she held her breath. Jake turned away from her, talking to an old man, "We are going to have to get her back into isolation and open her pod. She's freaking out."

"I'm not freaking out. I just want out before it explodes!"

Jake cracked a smile, "It's not going to explode. Guys, you need to get out of here, I'm going to open up her pod."

A gruff voice barked, "No you are not, Lieutenant. You will not expose my whole staff to that contagion."

She felt a bit calmer when Jake barked back, "I've been treating them for last secton and I am clear! She doesn't know where the frak she is."

"So tell her where she is and get her to follow an order or I will have you and the other pilots removed, do you understand?"

Jake winced.

She tried to draw his attention back to her. "How bad did I mess up his viper? How mad is he?" She tried to reach up again to the canopy but her arm was so damn heavy and numb. And naked. She wasn't in uniform, not even a jump suit. "What the frak?" But it came out mumbled as she felt something warm flow into the line in her arm.

"Rene, you're in the Life Center on the Galactica. You're in a life pod because of a bacterium you picked up on Caprica." His face hovered just above her, his nose almost touching the glass.

She looked around at what she could see, a blanket, a metal cocoon, and beyond, at an odd angle, Crius, Nik, Jake, Jason and beyond more beds and another pod.

"I didn't crash?"

It was Crius that laughed, "You didn't crash. You never crash. You've got landing down." His words brought back the images from her dream. She did have landing down, even the deck crew of the Zakar was impressed with her first landing, near text book, or was it the fact that she had survived and actually got the viper down in one piece? That was the next thought that slammed into her heart. She was alive. Who else made it?

"Where's Ari?" The smile fled Crius's face and she looked to Jake.

"He's at home," Jake answered as Crius backed away. Jake spoke to him, "I told you. She's a bit messed up in the head." Everyone's head turned at the sound of shouts, a voice somewhat familiar but she couldn't quite place. Jake turned back to her. "Your husband's not a patient man. You should do something about that."

"Husband?" The word earned her a hand sign from Jake as he placed it right in front of her eyes, the one to hold and wait, to be silent.

"I'll be back." Jake was replaced by Nik and Jason who looked worried and far older than she remembered the kid being. She had a flash to a conversation, her trying to talk him out of being a pilot. He would be old enough soon, but why would she talk him out of it? It wasn't an option with Dante. She'd been surprised the Commander had waited and not tossed the kid in when he was twelve. She could hear Jake talking to someone as another face pushed the guys aside. It was a woman, quite beautiful even in the med tech uniform.

"How are you feeling? Any pain?"

She thought about it for a moment, tried to remember what got her in here. Pods were for diseases and death, she knew that much from talking with Jake. But she felt fine, didn't she? She took a quick assessment. There were no harness straps holding her arms down, but they felt numb and her chest had a fresh scar. Her head felt funny, not a headache exactly but definitely one threatening to arrive. Her chest burned a little.

"I'm tired," she answered wondering what that would get her in the way of medications. "Head hurts and my chest."

"We were able to remove the Cylon technology, but your heart was damaged and repaired. On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?"

"What does a ten get me?" she answered and the woman didn't laugh, but looked annoyed and she decided not to push it with this tech. She'd find one she could bribe later. "Three." The tech gave her a nod, but still looked peeved.

"We can give you something, but not much because of the baby."

"Baby?" It crashed into her head like a viper into the side of the Zakar, the fragments of the memory scattering like fiery debris. A handsome man, a smile that was brighter than the sun, blue eyes, and a nursery covered in dust, laying a blanket over a husk of a small body, wanting to reach out to touch the hair that still remained on the tiny dried head. It would be so soft, but would it still have that baby smell she so loved? Her hands trembled as she felt the rain hit them, and then the slippery cold of the mud, too tired to get up.

"Rene?" The tech was calling her name, but she didn't see the woman's face, just that door as she closed it, the blue letters with clouds, Adama and Aiden. She found her lips forming the names. One was important, but which one?

The tech called to her again, and Jake was there beside the woman. Jake had said Ari was home, but he wasn't. He wasn't there or anywhere. She caught the sob in her chest, but it hurt so damn bad as it stuck there as she tried to breathe around it.

"You okay, baby?"

She tried to answer, but she was afraid that all that would come out would be the names, Ari, Adama, Aiden, that husk of a baby, but Jake hadn't been there with them for that part of Caprica and she wondered why not. He was always there with her, but no, someone else was. She looked around for him, that pretty boy smile would do a lot of good right now. It would cage the beast of fear that was trying to sit on her chest. "Is he okay? Don't tell me he died. Just …just d..d…don't."

"Starbuck's okay. He's right here." It was the woman that answered her and she remembered why she might be mad at her. He'd wanted to seal with this woman, but he didn't. She turned to look where she indicated the man in the other pod, and there wasn't a smile, and he wasn't pretty. He had a few days of fuzz grown in awkward patches on his face. His eyes were dull and filled with worry. She could barely see him through the glass of his pod and hers.

"What did you do to him," she asked Jake, but the tech answered instead, rattling off something about an illness and wires and...she hadn't asked the tech, she locked eyes with Jake and was able to get a hand up, but the fingers wouldn't quite form the right word. She heard another voice, but she didn't recognize it as it said, "That's a good sign." No, it wasn't, but Jake got it anyway.

"Caprica. We've been on Caprica for a secton and it damn near killed us. We shouldn't go back."

"Why the hades would we?" She laughed and it caught in her chest, came up as a cough. Once she was finished and could breathe, she figured out the mist was good and soothing. Jake was still there, worry now etched on his face, so familiar to the first time she saw him. She swore he was aging backwards, he looked so old when they first met compared to a secton ago. The memory flashed of him on the makeshift stage on the Eagle Bash grinning like a child on yule day. Without the worry, maybe he could be a kid. She realized he'd have less to worry about if she stopped jumping around the universe. Well, there was no need to now, was there? She had the dress, and the ambrosia and all the musical instruments they could ever want.

She looked over to the pod beside hers at the pretty boy encased in glass. Like a fairy tale, she wondered if she could crack the glass with the magic silver hammer, would his kiss make her rich? Lords she missed her mom and the stories she would tell and the warmth of those childhood moments washed over her.

She felt something warm enter her body again, and it stung a little too. "You should get some sleep too." The soft woman's voice wasn't directed at her. She saw Jake's façade crack a little as the woman laid a hand on him before she moved away.

"She's pretty," she said and Jake shrugged, one that she knew meant he was going to give it a go and see where it went. She had an odd thought of the four of them sharing quarters, sharing an ambrosia, sharing their lives. It was nice, like a fairytale, a house in the mountains and a lake and the kids playing in the sun. She looked over to the pod beside her again smiling, and it earned her one back and the weight lifted from her chest.

She turned back to Jake, wondering at the grin on his face, if he really could read her mind. "Our kids? They're safe?"

"Yeah, of course they are. Lizbet has them. Get some sleep and I'll see about getting them in to see you, or better yet, kick that bug out of your system and we can go to them."

"Okay," she felt heavy and very tired. "Can you get me the good stuff?" A guarded look crossed his face as he looked up to the med techs, before he looked back.

"I'll see what I can do, but they know."

She understood the deeper meaning of those words. It hinted at the sectars of having to be on the straight and narrow with the buckled up too tight Colonials. How could any of them breathe in the confines of those narrow roles? It squeezed her lungs. The air in her pod held the scent of chemicals and processing. She heard an alarm sound and Jake leaned closer.

"Relax. I'll figure it out, you know I will, and if I don't, that's what we have him for." He waved a hand at the other pod. The smile was nice to look at and she was too tired to worry about any of it right now. She just needed some sleep, and a pod was a good place to do that. No one could get at her without some warning, and she felt her chest relax.

"That's it, baby. It's all good," Jake purred. She felt her heart skip as she felt the pain of the loss, only she wasn't totally sure who it was she was missing, Jake or…the word came to her lips, a soft whisper, "Ari, why couldn't you have made it here?"