BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT

DISCLAIMER: Everything but this particular idea is owned by someone else. Please don't sue me, because as already stated, I own nothing.

A/N: Reviews! WOOT! Thanks to the folks who have, you're awesome. Geoff, hunting for the bit. If I find it, it's as good as changed.

Chapter 5

'The hangar bay looks like a warzone,' Athena thought as she approached the rail of the catwalk. She peered over, glancing between the organized chaos below and the man who stood, clinging to the metal handhold as though his life depended on it.

"Apollo?" She called as she approached. A small sun of relief dawned in her chest when she saw that he no longer seemed quite so haunted. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes." He shrugged. "No. I don't know."

"That's the wreckage the recovery shuttle has been working on, isn't it?" She stepped up and wrapped a supportive arm around her big brother's shoulder. At least he didn't shiver beneath her touch.

"It is." He sighed and watched the techs go over the pieces, cataloguing, measuring, comparing, moving bits from here to there. "From what I've heard so far, there's no way any of those birds could have chased Sheba. They've all been dead for a long time."

"But how's that possible? Boomer's scanner record shows them right behind her..."

"Until they broke up not long after passing into our universe," he interrupted.

"Maybe they weren't built to handle the stress of coming over," Athena supplied.

"They shouldn't have just broken apart," the dark haired warrior shook his head. "There was almost no physical turbulence."

"Maybe their power systems couldn't take it and they exploded. Remember the power drain on all your systems? Maybe theirs overloaded and blew out."

Apollo barked a short chuckle. "Maybe."

He looked across the wreckage strewn bay where a small group of techs was working on the badly mauled front fuselage of one of the fighters. There was a medical technician with them, observing as they pulled a flight seat out from the back. The seat was still occupied. There was no quick flurry of activity from the med tech. No emergency. The body went into a plastic bag and was laid on a gurney. One of the bay crew looked up and saw the pair on the catwalk. He waved them down.

"I wonder what he wants." Athena said as they made their way to a nearby ladder.

"Whatever it is, it can't be good."

Apollo went down first and, not waiting for his sister, began to make his way across the carefully subdivided hangar bay. He hated walking among the wreckage like this. Every piece he stepped around made him think of all the warriors who would never return. The euphemism was that they were on 'the last patrol'. The truth was that they were dead.

"Hey Apollo, wait up," Athena called as she skipped around the growing piles to catch up.

Apollo ignored her, concentrating instead on the grim expression of the waiting ground chief. From his expression the news he had was very, very bad.

"What's up, Chief?" Apollo asked as he arrived.

"No offense, Lieutenant," the red clad tech looked cautiously at Athena, "but you might not want to be here."

"I've been around this sort of thing before, Chief Tyrol," Athena replied with a slight chill. "Just get on with it."

"As you say," he shrugged. "Listen, I know this isn't one of our machines, but this is... worrying." He motioned and led the way around the side of the fuselage where a heavy tarp had been draped. "Contrary to what some of the others may believe, I didn't do this to keep prying eyes off of a dead pilot..."

"What did you..." Apollo's voice was cut short as the broad shouldered tech pulled a corner of the sheeting up.

"As you can see, these birds have different markings from ours." He pointed to the numerous small spheroid symbols that looked like skulls super imposed on broad axe-blades. "These are kill markings. My grandfather told me about them when I was a little kid." He looked up and saw where the two warrior's eyes were fixed. He nodded. "Yeah, that's why I covered it up."

There, on the fuselage, partially obliterated by damage and carbon scoring was the lettering 'Capt...tarbuck.'

"That's not possible," Athena breathed.

"Maybe not," Tyrol sighed unhappily, "but here it is."

"Who knows about this?" Apollo's voice was tightly controlled as he reached out to touch the dusty metal.

"Us three. For now." Tyrol said. "I don't know if the guys who did the space recovery paid that kind of attention to what they were hustling into the bay."

"Where are they now?" Apollo asked.

"Still out, picking up debris," the man shrugged. "They'll probably be bringing in some of the thruster units this trip, if the radiation's not too bad. Somehow I don't think it will be."

"What do you mean?" Athena asked, finally tearing her eyes from Starbuck's name.

"When we get wreckage like this, the first thing we do is double check the bone-gnawers readings." The man's lip quirked slightly as he saw the two pilots react to his informal nickname for the rescue and recovery crews. "We check for radiation, booby-traps. Everything. What we found with all this stuff is that they were cold. I mean like years in space cold."

"There should be at least a little solar radiation, shouldn't there?" Athena asked.

"Oh, there was that, but you see, even in the best maintained Viper, burning tylium emits a little radiation," he shook his head at the woman's wide-eyed surprise. "Nothing to worry about. It's exceptionally low level, but very specific. You'd have to fly Vipers all day, every day for about a thousand yarens to pick up the smallest indicators of radiation poisoning." He laid one gloved hand on the filthy white metal. "It doesn't matter about the level though. We're real sensitive to tylium. There was none on this ship. None."

"But if it had pursued Sheba..." Athena looked from the tech to her brother and back.

"There would be signs of tylium radiation, especially near the baffle at the back of the cockpit," Apollo finished uncomfortably.

"There would be, yeah." Tyrol replied. "There wasn't any. I would say this old wreck has been drifting for..." he shrugged, "more than five yarens. That's drifting with no fuel aboard, you realize."

Apollo was about to speak again when the tannoy came to life and Colonel Tigh's voice interrupted them all.

"Captain Apollo, please report to the commander's office immediately." The voice repeated twice more before stopping.

"Keep a lid on this," Apollo told the technician as he turned to leave.

"Someone's going to find out about it soon," Tyrol said. "I can't keep it quiet forever. Someone's going to see."

"There's more to learn here," Athena told her brother, "I'll stay and find out what I can."

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"You wanted to see me..?" Apollo asked as the hatch slipped open.

"We have an emergency," Adama gestured to the empty seat in front of him, "and I need your input."

"Emergency?" He took in the hard, somehow worried expression on his father's face. "It's about the hole, isn't it? About Bojay."

"It is," the old man nodded gravely. "You, Starbuck, Sheba and Bojay are the only ones who have been to the other side." The pause that followed showed his discomfort at what he had to say next. "I've come to you for your advice regarding a rescue mission."

"Because you think Starbuck is still affected somehow?"

"That is a concern, yes," Adama nodded as he rose form his seat, "but it's more because you are a squadron leader and you have experience with conditions on the other side." He stepped to the view port and looked out at the stars. "You have the ability to examine this from both sides; the side of a man who may be risking the lives of his friends, and the side of a man who knows that there is an important job to do."

Apollo nodded.

"From the little the technicians have been able to learn from Lieutenant Sheba's flight voice recordings, we know that Doctor Wilker's modifications to our normal flight helmets successfully counteract most of the electromagnetic disorders from the other side," Adama said. He turned to look at his son. The young man sat attentively, without any apparent distress. The old man nodded again, pleased. "Since this situation has arisen, I've had a number of helmets modified, but there aren't enough."

"I'll bet you haven't had anything other than combat helmets done," Apollo bit the tip of his thumb thoughtfully. "There wouldn't have been any reason to this early on."

"You are unfortunately correct..."

"There's another situation you need to be aware of," Apollo looked up towards the man at the window. "It's about the wreckage in Beta Bay."

"Yes?"

"I've just come from there. One of the fighters that pursued Sheba belonged to a Captain Starbuck." The young man watched how the realization hit his father.

"Captain Starbuck?" The older man blinked, his mind racing. After a moment, he sighed in resignation. "If we had the luxury of time, I would gladly devote more to this, this... mystery." The old man's face hardened. "Unfortunately, we don't. We have to get a rescue crew in to recover our pilot as quickly as possible. What I need to know is whether or not unshielded personnel can operate in that environment, and if so, for how long?"

A/N: Another short one, but the scene is short. Important, but short.