Dayton realized their one saving grace was that the hangar crew wasn't exactly known for carrying weapons. He joined the melee of desperate men, grinning with surprise to see Rooke back in the here and now, and giving as good as the rest, as he straddled one man, pummeling him. His smile abruptly disappeared as he spied another man pistol-whipping Dickins with an apparently dead blaster, as an additional one held him down. The commander dove into the fray, knocking both men to the ground.
"Where the hell have you been?" Dickins yelled, in place of a 'thank you', as he rolled away and scrambled back to his feet. Blood poured down his face from an ugly gash above his eye, and he absently wiped at it, treating it as more of an inconvenience than an injury. "Did he get away?"
"He's away!" Dayton checked the insensate thugs. One was dead. He dropped the other, not really caring. He noticed a sudden new energy fill his men within hearing distance. "Starbuck made it!" he hollered to them all in English and then again in Standard, before dodging a strike to the head with a wrench.
"Well, then he's done his part, let's do ours!" Ryan growled. "Let's murderize 'em!"
A roar filled the air, and for a moment, they didn't realize it had come from the hangar, so preoccupied were they in their fight. Ryan turned his head towards the noise, an unease settling in his gut. "Incoming ships!" They were holding their own for now, but if more pirates joined the fray . . . God help them . . .
"It sounds like Vipers!" Dorado shouted, a grin spreading across his features as he caught his wingman's eye for an instant before returning to the battle. "Yeah! Vipers!"
Rooke whooped in joy his gaze switching to the hangar, not seeing the man coming at him from behind.
"Rooke, behind you!" Porter shouted, hoping the sense of alarm in his voice would make up for his lack of Standard.
Rooke turned too slowly, at first focusing on the Earth man, wondering what he was on about, before he recognized that look on Porter's face. He began to pivot, but stars exploded in front of his eyes as the heavy bar slammed into the back of his head. The momentum of the blow drove him face first to the ground.
"Rooke!" Dorado yelled, driving an elbow crossways into a pirate's jaw, then bringing his weapon down on the fellow's skull, and watching him crumple before turning towards his fallen friend.
Dickins was already there, tackling the crewman who was about to finish Rooke off. They went down in a heap, and the crazed Earth man grabbed the man's head, repeatedly driving his skull into the surface. "How do you like it? Tarmac taste good? Does it, huh?" He sneered, even as the man's eyes rolled back into his skull, and the back of his head cracked open like a rotten egg.
Another din from the opposite direction drew his attention. A further force of an equal amount of men, possibly from the rumoured settlement, were sprinting towards them. Obviously, one of the hangar crew had made it past them and had gone for help. Dickins grabbed up a pipe, howling in outrage, before sprinting to meet them.
----------
"Back off, Boomer." Starbuck warned him, as he spotted his friend coming up on his wing.
"Or what?" Boomer asked.
"Or I'll cut off your lifetime supply of Empyrean Ale."
"You really know how to hurt a guy." Boomer grinned. "Be realistic. You're flying a rusted coffin with several nails already driven into it, and you're going up against a maniac in a Viper."
"That's what I love about you, Boomer, your eternal optimism." Starbuck smiled, feeling the right side of his face crack where his face had collided with the tarmac over a half a day ago. "Look, this guy makes the Eastern Alliance look like the Academy Glee Club. They're pirates. They blast unsuspecting ships with their Dynamos, and then turn the crew into slaves to harvest the foulest excuse for food you ever tasted this side of that all-night café we found in Skorpia City. They also developed this torture device they call the Obediator to maintain order. Believe me, buddy, Bex deserves to die several times over, and any death he'll get in a Viper will be too good for him."
"Starbuck, even if you win, we can't afford to lose a Viper. Not this way. They're too precious."
"Well, if I can convince him to pull up and step out so we can take it home, I'm willing." He stated ruefully. "Besides, she belonged to the Pegasus, so technically she isn't ours to lose."
Boomer sighed. "I'm still going to keep an eye on you. If you don't give him a run for his cubits, I will intervene."
"Only on my word." Starbuck insisted.
"Starbuck . . . "
"Give me your word, Boomer." Starbuck's voice lost its usual light banter.
"How exactly did this turn around on me?" Boomer asked his canopy, shaking his head in bemusement.
"Lu will explain it to you . . . where is she, by the way?" It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't heard her voice on the comm line. Or Lia's.
"Remember, it was her day off." Boomer adlibbed. "Probably out looking at sealing frippery." He regretted the lie as soon as it left his lips. He wasn't sure why he had an instinctive reaction to protect Starbuck from the truth, but . . .
"Yeah, right," Starbuck returned dubiously. Luana was hardly the 'frippery' type.
Boomer winced. No, he had to level with his friend, "Actually, buddy . . . "
"There he is." Starbuck cut him off.
"Do you have a plan?" Boomer asked hopefully, after a pause. The time to discuss Luana had passed. "Any plan?"
"I think I'll just wing it. Unless I can find a torpedo launcher somewhere on this bucket of bolts." He chuckled as he heard Boomer's answering groan.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"Never." Starbuck agreed as his friend's Viper pulled away. He checked his scanner once again, this time reorienting himself to the asteroid field. The unit had neither the range nor the resolution of the Viper's gear, but this close, he didn't need it.
"Prepare to die, Starbuck." The pirate taunted him as the Rover came into sight.
"I've been ready for yahrens, Bex." He replied casually. "It's Death that hasn't been ready for me."
"That's about to change, lad." Bex changed screens to his targeting system, finding the small ship annoyingly difficult to lock on as it to moved constantly from side to side. At a glance it seemed to be heading straight for him.
Starbuck kept drifting, all the time realizing the Viper would have a better range, and more fire power than the Rusty Rover. . . his own personal pet name for his ship. He smiled slightly as the two ships raced closer, wondering how long it would take for Bex to lose his nerve.
Bex cursed softly under his breath. He still couldn't lock on target. He fired anyway, anxious about the other ship's increasing proximity. As he suspected, he missed, but kept his finger on the button anyway.
"You are one lousy shot, Bex!" Starbuck chuckled, diving slightly to avoid the line of fire. Bex obviously didn't have the feel for a Viper, and probably hadn't recorded many centars in the fighter he was flying either. He was liking his odds. "I've seen blind men shoot better than you!"
Bex gritted his teeth as he corrected his course, but overshot his position and dove below Starbuck's trajectory, while trying to fire on him. Starbuck chose that exact milli-centon to fire his lasers, connecting with the Viper's fuselage.
"That's got to hurt." Starbuck taunted the man again, looking down on the ship as he passed over her. He checked his instruments. As he suspected, the Rover's lasers had less than half the power of the Viper's weaponry. It would either take several more hits at the longer range, or he'd have to get in far closer, to take down the better protected Colonial craft. He shook his head. No serious damage.
"I've had love bites more damaging than that shot." Bex returned, but all the same, it shook him. Nothing appeared to be wrong, other than the sudden shake when he was hit, but he wasn't altogether sure.
"Well, if your women are as ugly as your men, that's probably true. Assuming they're even the same species, of course." Starbuck smiled as an angry snarl filled the speaker. "Can you fly any better than you shoot, Bex?" Getting a sudden inspiration, Starbuck headed into a cluster of asteroids.
"Just watch me." Bex snapped angrily, as he turned his craft and pursued.
----------
An empty enemy hangar filling up with Colonial Vipers; it was a tactician's dream come true! Apollo pulled his blaster as his feet hit the tarmac, running towards the pandemonium arising in progress from outside the furthest exit. The internal attack by Dorado and the men from Earth couldn't have been better planned to coincide with their own strike. He could hear the pounding of Colonial boots falling in behind him.
"Weapons on stun!" he shouted, repeating the explicit directions he had given his warriors in the pre-mission briefing. He spared a quick thought for Starbuck, wondering how in Hades the lieutenant was going to take on a state-of-the-art Viper with that old stumblebum of a flying crate. Lord's sake, his grandfather must have still been in diapers when that thing was built! He shook it off, knowing Boomer would keep an eye on him.
He rushed through the opening in time to see a small force of bedraggled men being swarmed by another. He switched the setting on his blaster and fired one shot towards the ceiling as his men flanked him, their weapons also drawn. The sound reverberated through the tunnel. "Hold it! Get your hands in the air! Everyone!"
The Colonial Warriors moved in, surrounding the group as faces on both sides gaped in surprise. Men slowly separated themselves from their opponents and hands tentatively reached towards the ceiling.
"We need a med tech!" Dorado yelled, kneeling over the unconscious and emaciated Rooke and gently palpating the back of his skull. He could feel an enormous lump there which he knew could only be bad news.
"Greenbean, go back and comm Sheba to escort in the shuttle. We need the med tech ASAP." Apollo ordered him before reaching Dorado and dropping down opposite him. "What happened, Dorado?" He quickly looked over the haggard man before him who was but a shadow of the husky cadet he had known at the Academy.
"He was smashed in the head with something . . . a wrench, a bar . . . He has a lump the size of an ovum on the back of his head." Dorado looked at him worriedly. Lords, to finally gain their freedom only to have Rooke die . . .
Apollo nodded, knowing there was nothing they could do until the med tech arrived. "Anyone else?" he yelled.
"Over here!" Jolly hollered. He was already leaning over the supine man crumpled in a corner. The man coughed and sputtered, blood-tinged spittle covering his chin and anything else in its path, as he gasped for breath. An expanding sanguinous stain covered his ragged tunic, his hands held protectively over the obvious wound. "He needs a medic. Looks like he's punctured a lung."
"Dorado, we need to move out quickly. Who's coming with us?" Apollo asked.
"Just this group of us." Dorado motioned towards the other prisoners. Former prisoners. Somehow he would have thought it would feel a lot better than this. Neither Rooke or Dickins looked like they were likely to make it.
"Then let's get the wounded to the shuttle and get out of here." Apollo rose to his feet. "What about Commander Cain and the Pegasus?"
"Wait a minute. What about these bastards?" Dayton demanded, indicating the pirate hangar crew as he strode towards the captain.
"Look, your wounded need medical attention now. This is simply a rescue mission. Now let's move." Apollo ordered turning to help Dorado with Rooke
Dayton grabbed Apollo by the arm, swinging him around. "Listen, Buster, you can't let these people get away with what they've done to us. All of us." He looked back over his men, and pointedly at Rooke
"You are?" Apollo asked, shrugging off the grip. He took in the man's bloodied rags and sunken eyes. He gathered by the man's bearing that the blood was someone else's, the eyes however, were most definitely his.
"Colonel Mark Dayton, US Air Force, NASA Commander for the Space Shuttle Endeavour."
"NASA?" Apollo asked in bewilderment.
"It's a long story, Apollo. Believe me, neither Rooke or Dickins has the time for it." Dorado assured him. He felt a hand grip his shoulder and he looked up from where he kneeled.
Bojay smiled weakly down at him, shaking his head at his mixed emotions; relieved and happy to see them, but horrified at their condition. "Thought you were dead, buddy."
"At times it might have been preferable." Dorado returned with an attempt at humour, gripping the hand briefly.
"Cain? The Pegasus?"
Dorado nodded. "Alive and well three sectars ago. I'll tell you all about it later. Promise." He switched his attention back to Apollo.
"I'm Strike Captain Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica." He told Dayton. "I already have my orders. We leave now. It's up to you whether you come with us or not." He leaned down, reaching beneath Rooke's arms, relieved to see Bojay gently pushing Dorado aside to take the lower body. "On three. One, two, three." Together they lifted the malnourished man with ease. He didn't even look back to see if the NASA Commander was following . . . whatever a NASA Commander was.
----------
The incessant beeping of the medical equipment was driving Ama a little barmy. She paced beside Luana's bio-stretcher as she waited impatiently for Dr. Salik to finish with his hectic preparations and come talk to her. Lia sat silently beside her sister holding Lu's hand, as she watched the rise and fall of her chest, artificially sustained by the ventilator.
"Ladies, we have to take her in now." Salik said, as he approached them in his surgical scrubs.
"Well?" Ama asked, wondering what the final result of the extensive brain scan revealed.
"Nothing's changed, Ama. It's a miracle the medical team was able to resuscitate her. As we thought, she has a subdural hematoma—a collection of blood putting pressure on her brain." Salik wasn't altogether sure how long the young woman had been without oxygen. The med tech had reported that she was already cool to the touch when they found her, but that could have been attributed to being transported through space in the freezing-cold environment of a non-pressurized cargo hold. In fact, that scenario could have worked to her advantage, providing she arrested on the Hephaestus.
"I don't understand, I thought she ran out of oxygen." Ama interrupted, trying to comprehend the sequence of events.
"She took a blow to the back of the head at some point. Whether it was the lack of oxygen or the pressure on her brain which caused her cardiac arrest is a moot point. Either can cause brain damage. I need to do a craniotomy to drain the hematoma. Now."
"Doctor, what are her chances?" Lia asked, her eyes beseeching him to be direct with her.
"I'll honestly know that better after the surgery when I can determine the extent of the damage, and that's assuming she survives. I've already outlined those risks for you." He watched both women nod somberly and then motioned for Cassiopeia to help him move the patient into the operating room. "I'm sorry, but we really need to get her in now."