Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the Battlestar Galactica universe.
Note: This starts off a littlle slow but there's much more to come. Please enjoy.

Wing and a Prayer
Part 1

By
N. J. Borba

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Through the forward window, Lee watched as a sea of Raptors morphed back into shape. And the stars around them re-solidified.

There was just one jump left now.

They were on their way back to Caprica to rescue survivors of the Cylon holocaust. And the admiral had thought it a good idea for him to be a part of Starbuck’s one woman crusade. Lee got the feeling it had more to do with babysitting than anything else. She hadn’t exactly asked permission on her first trip back.

Lee was not overly amused at the prospect of landing on his war-torn home planet to help rescue Kara’s lover. In theory, he knew it was the right thing to do; rescuing those they’d left behind. He just couldn’t seem to keep his mind from wandering to thoughts of the woman who sat beside him in the cockpit. Couldn’t help but let his thoughts drift to the hope that maybe this dead guy she was so hung up on, really was dead. And he didn’t much like himself for those thoughts.

Things hadn’t been good between them in months. They’d come to some form of understanding, but everything had changed after the Cylon raider Scar and his gunshot wound on Cloud 9. He didn’t know what to do about the distance between them. So he attempted to move on, at least as much as he could. Dating Dee was easy. She was kind, pretty and didn’t take off on hair-brained missions to rescue guys she’d only ever spent a few days with.

And just like that, his thoughts returned to Kara. Kara the enigma. His torture and his delight. She wasn’t easy at all.

Being Kara Thrace’s friend was one of the hardest things he’d done in his life so far. In the past it hadn’t been so bad. Back before the colonies were destroyed, before Zak left them. Kara had been his friend and Zak’s girl, which was fine because his brother was happy and she was happy and that made Lee happy. But everything had changed when his little brother died.

It had changed again after he and his father had learned of Kara’s hand in that death. But not enough to make much of a difference over the long haul. And the fact that she’d been with Baltar still pissed him off sometimes. But he could get past that too. As annoying as the doctor was, Lee could forgive. Because Lee knew he had just as much to do with that unfortunate event as Kara and Baltar had. His fears kept pushing her aside just as much as she was avoiding him.

But the realization that she was risking so much, traveling back to Cylon occupied Caprica, in hopes of finding a Pyramid player turned freedom fighter. It bothered him. It ate at him because he wondered if there was more to it than just a few days, nights, whatever it was they’d had. He hated to think that there might really be more to the Pyramid player than just a bit of fun.

All of his thoughts collided, contradicted each other and served to only confuse his feelings further. So he sat back, kept his mouth shut and waited. Listened to the soft hums of the Raptor. Watched the stars shine, wondering if they were just being born or had already died years ago leaving only the hint of their light behind. And he listened to her. Honed in on her voice and let it flow over him like water.

“This last one’s going to take us right into the planet’s upper atmosphere, so be sharp people,” Kara instructed the Raptor fleet. “We jump on my mark…”

Her breathing was calm. Hands steady at the controls. Face a mask of concentration. Lee could see the thrill of adventure in her eyes. The twitch of expected danger that creased her forehead. Lips full and pursed with anticipation. He looked away and closed his eyes for a second, trying once more to push her out of his thoughts. It didn’t help much.

Lee glanced over his shoulder and took stock of the situation. He spotted their ECO. Helo was at his station, monitoring the dradis. Behind him sat the two things making their trip possible. Firstly, the Cylon. Kara didn’t need much help flying so Lee had been put in charge of guarding their prisoner, rather than have a marine present. It was still hard to look upon the Sharon Cylon without seeing a pistol in her hand as she pumped two rounds into his father. But he was trying.

At the moment she didn’t look deadly, or scarred, or… anything really. Her expression was impassive. Sort of calm. Somewhat cold. She’d seemed willing enough to help them in the past but on this mission something had been off from the get-go. He suspected it had to do with the death of the Cylon half-bread but Lee didn’t want to allow his thoughts off on that tangent.

Hooked to the Cylon was a large conglomeration of technology that had linked their entire Raptor fleet together. In conjunction with Sharon’s computerized innards, it was making their trip faster and easier than Colonial FTL alone would have allowed. And, up till now, they’d thankfully only lost one Raptor. Lee hoped it stayed that way.

“…Mark.”

Three things happened in quick succession after Kara’s voice faded out. The sensation of being squeezed into tiny particles smaller than star stuff was not unfamiliar, but the high pitched scream of their Cylon companion was. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to hear anything as the FTL was engaged, yet her moan of agony echoed through the ship. And if that wasn’t bad enough, sparks of golden fire were shooting from the components Sharon was hooked to.

Something was very wrong.

“Frak!” Kara yelped as they came out of the rough jump. She spun around the best one could while strapped to a Raptor’s pilot seat. “Helo, what did we hit?” her tone was demanding but curious.

“Nothing,” Helo’s eyes scanned the dradis. No ships. No Cylons. No Colonial fleet. No other Raptors…

“What hit us then?” Lee chimed in.

“Nothing, it’s…” The ECO never got a chance to finish.

The ship jolted as they all felt space close in on them again. Hands clenched tightly to consoles and seats. Stomachs twisted and turned until the black void of space grew stars again. A split second later, before they could get a bearing, it was all happening again… over and over.

Three bodies felt the pulse of an FTL drive in flux as they jumped repeatedly. The Cylon, however, had ceased to feel a thing. Sharon made no noise because she was unconscious, slumped over in her seat. At least Helo hoped like hell she was merely unconscious as they pulled out of another jump.

“It’s the FLT drive, I don’t know how or why but we can’t stop jumping,” Karl managed to get the words out before the familiar, now dreaded, sensation hit them all again.

“Lordsss…” even as she was sucked into FTL again Kara was still frantically trying to control, something… anything.

They pulled out and Kara gathered her focus for a second. She hated flying Raptors. They were overgrown garbage dumpsters with very little maneuverability. For a simple rescue mission they were fine enough, but if any Cylon Raiders showed up at the moment, they wouldn’t stand much of a chance. “Thrusters aren’t responding. Navigational control is sluggish, at best…” her voice trailed off again into the faster-than-light folds of space.

Lee watched as the stars collapsed in on them yet again. He’d seen a lot of crap in the last year or so since the Cylons first attacked. He’d been shot at, climbed through muddy terrain in the hopes that an ancient arrow would get them to Earth, said his prayers as he flew through a Cylon Tylium mining compound. And lived to tell the tale each time. Even fighting Cylons every 33 minutes wasn’t so bad. At least it was predictable.

Whatever it was happening now, it scarred him. Knowing the situation was always half the battle. With facts one could calculate risk and take action. The unknown was far too infinite to dare think about controlling. Lee liked control. He liked the stability of knowing were he stood, which was why he still couldn’t understand why he liked Kara. She was none of those things. Yet he was still drawn to her like a flame he’d been told not to touch.

Then, just as suddenly as it had all started, it stopped.

Silence reigned for a few moments as the three of them prepared for another jolt. Eyes flicked glances between Major, Lieutenant and Captain. No one dared to declare their ordeal over just yet. Finally, with cautious movement, Kara collected herself the best she could. She faced forward and tried to tap life into a flickering console.

“How many jumps Karl?” Kara called out.

The ECO held his helmeted head in his hands as he tried to focus on the blurry screen in front of him. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell with all the interference…” he felt more than a little woozy.

“Best guess?” Lee prompted the man as he tried to steady the swaying of his own stomach.

“Close to thirty,” Karl made a small shrugging gesture from his seat. “Maybe more. Probably more,” he groaned as his head ached and he longed to tend to Sharon. “My insides feel scrambled.” Not quite as bad as the radiation sickness he’d felt on Caprica, but bad enough.

“Agathon, wait until we find a parking spot before you soil my deck,” Kara warned. She showed no outward signs of feeling ill. Plenty dizzy but not letting it affect her efforts to determine all facets of what was going on. Business first. “We don’t know how long we might be stuck in this thing,” she added.

“If it’s more than three hours, we’re dead,” Karl’s monotone voice replied to her words as he finally unbelted himself and went to Sharon. “Life support was damaged at some point during all those jumps. Everything is fried,” he relayed as he propped the unconscious woman’s head up and tried to search for signs of life in her limp body.

Kara returned focus on her own console readings, which were still in constant flicker. They were only showing bits and pieces of information, all in a mess that was hard to decipher. She blinked back the nausea that started to roll in her stomach. They needed clear heads now if they hoped to figure out what was going on.

“Three hours?” Lee looked over at her, slightly alarmed by the prospect of death looming so near.

“We’ve lost main power which directly maintains life support function,” she began to explain. “What ever is left in this Raptor, about three hours or so, is all we have,” Kara didn’t like flying the things but she made it a point to know as much about Raptors as she did about Vipers. Truth be told, most of her knowledge came from hours on end of disciplinary induced work assignments served out on Tyrol’s deck.

“Auxiliary power?” Lee questioned.

“Not really. We have battery back up,” she informed him. “Which means working consoles,” Kara glanced down at her flickering screen. “Sort of,” she mumbled. “And limited radio frequency. Neither or which will last for a very long time,” she concluded.

“Great,” Lee sighed heavily as he glanced behind to see that Helo had removed Sharon from the seat harness and had laid her out on the deck. His eyes aimed forward again. “We’ve got no power and an unconscious Cylon. Doesn’t seem we’ll be going anywhere in the near future. Any idea where we are?”

As if in answer to Lee’s question, a soft static of noise filled the main cabin of the Raptor. Kara and Lee turned their heads to the rear of the ship, questioning gazes pointed toward Karl. Helo reluctantly removed himself from the floor and Sharon. He made his way back to the communications console. One green light flicked on and off slowly.

“What the…” Helo tweaked a few controls. A second later the low tones of what sounded like music floated around the ships interior. “Piano?” the lieutenant shrugged as he eyed Apollo and Starbuck.

“Must be picking up some stray signals. Radio waves from the Colonies have been bouncing all around space for decades, are we anywhere near Caprica?” Kara asked with a hopeful tone. They’d been so close to the end of their trip to Caprica. She’d been prepared for Cylons, even prepared to learn of Sam’s death if that were the case. She hadn’t been prepared to be stuck with Karl, Lee and a Cylon in a tiny Raptor with no power.

“Dradis is still frakked. I can’t get a bearing on our position,” Helo replied. The classical music continued, climbing to a crescendo. “I’m not even sure how we’re picking up any signal. Battery back up usually only lasts a minute or two, enough time to send off a distress beacon,” Karl reported, which he had done the second they’d stopped for more than two seconds.

“Raptors were equipped with a dual back-up system for longer range scouting missions. But we haven’t been using the auxiliary power feeds due to conservation efforts and the fact that we haven’t really needed to go on any long scouting missions,” Kara rambled off. “Must be a glitch or something,” she shrugged.

“A glitch with a nice melody,” Lee joked, grinning at her as the crescendo ended. He had to break up the seriousness somehow or else he was likely to go stir crazy real quick. He’d never been fond of tight spaces, flying a Viper being the only exception. In which case he was in control and free to roam the immensity of sky and space.

Kara felt her lips curl a little as well. She always did manage to find herself in hopeless situations where there was usually nothing to do but laugh or cry. She wasn’t about to let Karl or Lee see her cry. Thus, a spurt of bubbly laughter erupted. It was infectious and Lee grinned broader. Here they were, stuck somewhere in the vastness of space with no power, listening to phantom piano music, and still they were able to smile. Lee had to hope that was a good sign. Either that or their oxygen was already running low.

Helo disregarded their jovial interaction and returned to Sharon’s side. They all listened as the piano strains slowly died out. The music was quickly replaced by a series of segments that sounded like conversation of some sort. It wasn’t any type of language they’d ever heard before and it seemed to change every few seconds. A bit of static began to garble some of the broadcast and they figured the battery was finally going. But one very important message made it through a few seconds later.

All smiles and laughter abruptly ended as the clearness of perfect Colonial English filled the Raptor. Three words that undoubtedly would change all their lives yet again were spoken…

“Welcome to Earth.”

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To Be Continued…