One Month Later:
Galactica was seemingly calm. The rookie pilots were training outside and the deckhands enjoyed their breaks before the shuttle from Pegasus arrived. Starbuck and Apollo were coming to Galactica in order to work on a plan to free the people that were stuck in New Caprica.
It didn't take long for Kat, Racetrack and Hotdog to see the shuttle being brought to the hangar deck. Finally, all the deckhands stopped resting on their asses: some resumed their chores; others turned their attention to the shuttle.
When its door opened, Kara Thrace was the first to come to view, causing the three pilots to raise their eyebrows. The Starbuck they knew was badass. The Starbuck they knew would never be lovingly cradling a baby against her chest… But that Starbuck was. That Starbuck had a kid. Sure they already knew that, but seeing her interaction with the infant was completely different – Kara Thrace (now Adama) was completely at ease around her daughter.
But then, noticing the surprised looks, she glared at the three of them as she walked slowly on their direction. "What the hell are you lookin' at?" she asked in a threatening tone. "Don't you frakheads have stuff to do?"
Neither of them moved, not even Hotdog, who gulped audibly – he didn't want to get three more nights in the brig for indecent exposure, still, running away could make it worse.
"Why did you bring the kid along?" Kat asked bluntly.
"I don't know, Katraine. Maybe I should have left her in Pegasus with a diaper and a bottle by her side and she would just take care of herself," Kara replied sarcastically. "She's a baby, Kat, not a dog."
She shrugged her shoulders dismissively. "Whatever."
Racetrack approached Starbuck in order to see the kid better. Pilot or not, she just couldn't resist babies. "She's a cutie," Racetrack told her.
"Adama genes," Kara pointed out. Nobody could say that she wasn't Lee's daughter. Jamie's crystal blue eyes and her little nose looked more and more like her daddy's every day. Her hair, however, was blond but not the same type as her mother's. It was one or two shades darker, more like a honey color – a slight mixture with her father's brown.
Lee showed up by his wife's side. "Come on, we have to go. Dad is waiting."
Kara nodded and followed him to the Old Man's office. Kat was not far behind – being Galactica's CAG, her presence was required on the meeting as well.
Entering the room, they saw the Admiral sitting by the dinner table. Its surface was covered with star charts and space photos.
Before joining her father-in-law, Kara entered his room and laid her daughter on the bunk. Somewhere along the way to her grandfather's quarters, little Jamie had fallen asleep. Her mother covered with a blanket she had brought along and put a baby monitor (it was incredible what you could get by pulling a rank…) by her side, taking the other one with her.
When she returned to the room, Lee, Kat and the Old Man were already studying the papers on the table.
"But how did you get those?" Lee inquired, pointing at a space photo. "They seem to have been taken pretty close…"
"Thank Figurski," Adama said. "He had the idea to make some modifications on a raptor and cover it with carbon composite materials like we had done with the Blackbird. We launched it for the first time yesterday and Racetrack managed to take all these photos without being detected on DRADIS."
Kara sat by her husband's side and looked at the photos. There were hundreds of cylon ships in New Caprica's orbit. "Frak," she said. "It's gonna be a pickle to get past all these toasters."
"Unless we have a fleet full of undetectable ships, there's no way we can escape then all," Kat agreed.
"We need a good plan," Lee said. "One that they'll never see coming."
"I've been thinking of something," the Admiral announced and all attentions turned to him. "It is highly dangerous and potentially suicidal…"
Starbuck laughed. "Isn't it supposed to be me coming up with the crazy plans?" she asked.
"'Crazy' doesn't cover it," the Admiral informed her. "First, we have to trick them, make them believe we are attacking them directly with vipers and raptors, but that is the easy part. Then, I thought of having Galactica jumping in the planet's atmosphere and launching the vipers so they can do hit-and-run attacks to the cylon stations on the surface."
"No frakking way," Lee protested. "Galactica will be highly damaged if you do that! Maybe beyond repair!"
"Do you have a better plan, Lee?" his father asked in a harsh tone. "Please tell us if you do, because we are open to all suggestions right now."
Lee sighed and lowered his head. He didn't have any other plan…
"But what about the people on the surface? They could be caught in the viper's fire," Kat inquired the Admiral. "And the ships on the planet's orbit?"
"The resistance will be taking care of the surface," the Old Man said. He hoped Saul, Tyrol and Anders were up to the challenge or he would be responsible for a lot of civilian losses. "The other ships will have to be handled by Pegasus. If Galactica is indeed damaged beyond repair, Pegasus will be in charge of resuming the search for Earth." Gods forbid that happens, he thought. He trusted his son entirely, but Lee was nowhere near prepared to lead the fleet… and neither was Kara. He looked at his daughter-in-law, who had been silent for the last few minutes. "What do you think, Kara? You're the expert in this kind of plans…"
She sighed. "Maybe, but there are some things we'll have to rethink. For example, there are dozens of colonial ships on the planet. I doubt the toasters have left the launching keys just laying around for everyone to catch."
The Admiral hadn't thought of that… "We need someone to get them," he concluded. "Maybe Anders…"
"Anders won't do," Lee said. "He and the rest of the resistance will be too busy saving the civilians. Plus, the cylons probably have all their stations made human-proof."
Then, there was a light inside Kara's head – like an epiphany. "What if we use a cylon instead?"
"I think they're beyond bribing, Starbuck," Kat pointed out. "The toasters are faithful to their cause; they won't just betray the others because we ask…"
She shook her head. "I meant Sharon," Starbuck specified. "Helo's Sharon. We find a way to get her on the surface and she can pretend to be on their side and get hold of the launching keys."
There was a short moment of silence. The plan was getting riskier by the minute…
"What guarantees us that Valerii won't betray us and just run away?" the Admiral asked in a neutral voice. She was a toaster after all. They played with human's heads like a child with a toy.
"Hera," Kara said simply. Now, she knew how powerful a mother's attachment to a child could be. The way Sharon looked at her little girl was the same way Kara looked at Jamie – pure love. "Sharon would never leave her daughter behind."
Lee nodded in agreement. He understood his wife's point and, deep inside, he felt like he could trust the Sharon Valerii who had been living in Pegasus for the past months. "Sharon is the best trump we've got. But the question is: will she do it?"
"Well, that's for her to answer, isn't it?" Kara replied. She turned to the Old Man. "So, what do you think, Dad? Is the plan set? Suicidal mission and Sharon? "
Adama wasn't happy with the plan even if he was the one to come up with it on the first place – it could doom the whole human race… But desperate situations demanded desperate plans. And, hell, if this isn't a desperate situation, I don't know what it might be, he considered. "We don't have another chance, do we? We'll have to go ahead with it. How long will it take the pilots to be ready?" The last question was directed to Kat.
She bit her lip in concentration. Kara concluded she might be making the calculations in her head. Flying a viper in a planet's atmosphere was no picnic. "A month or so…" Galactica's CAG said.
The Admiral nodded. "Alright. Then, the attack will be a month from today," he announced. He turned to Kara. "Have your pilots training direct combat techniques too. They are in charge of protecting the fleet during the attack."
---
A couple of hours later, the raptor that brought Lee, Kara and the baby landed back on Pegasus. The flight had been tense, silent. Even though they knew that the plan was for the better good, both Lee and Kara were scared. Terrified, even. If they screwed up with the plan, they only had one more month to live, to spend with each other, to enjoy their baby… They were risking everything.
On their way back to the Commander's cabin, Jamie, who had been resting in her father's arms the whole way back to Pegasus, started crying almost like she felt her parents' distress. That was enough to wake the couple from their apathy.
"Shh," Lee murmured to his daughter's ear, rocking her softly as he and Kara entered their quarters. "What's wrong?" She was fed and her diaper seemed to be clean.
His wife approached him in order to check on the baby and made sure everything was in order. "I think she's just cranky," Kara announced, caressing her crying daughter's soft hair. "You just want Mommy and Daddy to stop acting like a couple of depressive frakwits, don't you?" she asked Jamie.
"We should really stop using frak-related language in front of her," Lee suggested, shifting the baby, so she was closer to his chest and massaging her back. "We don't want her to become a potty mouth, do we?" Feeling her parents' attention, little Jamie calmed down and the crying started to fade.
Kara ignored Lee's suggestion. With them as her parents, becoming a potty mouth was the least of their worries. She smiled at her daughter and wiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. "There you go, Baby."
Jamie yawned in response – time to sleep… again. Talbot had said that prematures needed more sleeping time then the other babies in order to catch up with the full term baby's growth. Lee took his and Kara's bedroom in order to put her to sleep.
"Wait," his wife said when he was lowering the baby to her bassinet. He turned around and saw her sitting on their bed. "Let her stay here with us for now," she suggested.
Lee smiled softly and brought the baby with him to the bed, laying her between him and Kara. It wasn't long before Jamie's breath soothed and she was asleep. He looked at his wife, who was caressing their daughter's chubby little arm.
"I swear to gods, woman, if we survive this crazy plan I'll make you another one of these," Apollo promised, nodding at the baby.
Kara snorted. "Hold your horses, flyboy. You know, if this little girl hadn't come earlier, I'd still be pregnant," she pointed out. Being a mom was still new to her, as much as Lee told her she was great at it. "Jamie here won't be getting any sibling until she's at least four." She hoped that by that time they had already found Earth and settled in there – their kids deserved nothing less than a real home.
As he stared at the sleeping child, Lee tried to picture how his little girl would look at the age of four – he imagined she would be all dimples and smiles with honey colored pigtails. Somehow, he knew she would become a spitfire like her mom, Kara's very own partner in crime. But at the same time, little Jamie Caroline Adama would probably become a daddy's girl and the apple of her grandfather's eyes. But would she reach that age? In a month they'd be getting themselves in a massive battle…
"Just in case we get killed," Lee told his wife, "you know that I love you, right?"
She pretended to be surprised. "Really? I thought you had just married me because of my good looks," Kara told him, trying to sound disappointed. She didn't want to start some kind of depressing conversation…
"Don't let it bother you," he said, playing along. He was completely aware that joking was one of her most powerful shields. "I'm a big fan of your looks too."
"I'm glad to hear that," she informed him. "And just for the record, I love you too. It helps that you're also easy in the eyes and all…"
He interrupted her when he leaned to kiss her softly on the lips, being careful not to smash the baby as he did that.
Responding the kiss, Kara couldn't help noticing that, even though she had used a joking tone in the conversation, it had sounded more like an early farewell than anything else.
A/N: Alright, I guess I managed to update a bit sooner than I expected. I plan on skipping to the battle next chapter, so be prepared for a blast (in the eventful sense, I mean). Now, remember 10 reviews will get you a preview in my livejournal (link in my profile). Check it from time to time - I may post warnings in there.