that vision thang - The Aftermath, Chapter 15

two months before Kara and Sam’s wedding,
on the surface of a nameless planet


    “I told you to let me pilot,” Starbuck grumbled half to herself. She was trying to open the entry panel to the Raptor Lee had just crash landed.

    Already aggravated, Apollo swore under his breath. “You were the one who miscalculated the jump. A few more meters and we would have cleared that final level of atmospheric debris.” He lent his strength to the effort, managing to crack the panel just enough to feel a whoosh of freezing air even through his heavy flight suit. “Frak, that’s cold.”

    Starbuck spared a moment to give him a dirty look. “It’s a frakkin’ ice planet. Did you expect a tropical breeze with sunny beaches and blue water?”

    Apollo bit back a retort and continued prying the non-functioning door open. The crash had fried their sensors, the communication systems, and the internal rescue beacon. They needed to scout out the area before setting the manual rescue beacon and hunkering down to wait for SAR. “Just take a quick look around, set the beacon, and get back in here before we both freeze to death.”

    “Why is it that I have to do this?” Kara asked, some of her usual bravado fading.

    “You miscalculated the jump.” Lee stood back from the door, open just wide enough to let Starbuck squeeze past in her environmental suit.

    “I did not!’ she protested. “Just because you aren’t as good a pilot as me-“

    “Starbuck!” Lee shouted. “Go, for gods’ sakes!”

    She jumped out, and was back in a matter of minutes, a bleak look on her face. She motioned for Lee to help her re-secure the panel before reporting her findings. Once fastened, she removed her helmet and rubbed her face with the rough gloves of the suit. “We’re so frakked, Lee.”

    Her tone and look spooked him. Starbuck always saw a way out of whatever box she or the fleet was in. If she was this negative this early, they really might be frakked. “Sitrep?” he questioned.

    “Everything is frozen, as far as I can see. There is no shelter of any kind, no growth, no animals.” Kara began pulling off the rest of her suit. “And the sun is setting. Our advance intelligence gives rotation time as two days.”

    The seriousness of the situation began to sink in quickly. “Night is coming. Two days of night. On a sub-zero planet of ice.” Lee blew out a breath. “We have maybe ten hours of oxygen on board, after taking that hit-“

Kara looked him square in the eye and added, “And a malfunctioning distress beacon.”

“Frak!” Lee swore. “Can the beacon be fixed?”

“If Gaeta or the Chief were here,” she replied tersely. “But not us.” She handed it to him to look over, and after a few minutes, he agreed.

Shrugging on any extra clothing they could find on board, both Lee and Kara were silent. They kept their helmets off to preserve a final reserve of oxygen, should it be needed. Lee adjusted the life support system to a lower setting; although neither of them should feel much more than some fatigue, it could buy them a few more hours of oxygen. Kara searched the raptor for ration bars and emergency blankets, piling what she could find onto the middle of the floor. Squatting down, wrapping one of the foil heat-trapping blankets around him, Lee studied the pile. “We can make it last three days, if we don’t have to do much physical labor.”

Kara nodded. “We have more food than air.”

“But it’s an oxygen rich atmosphere,” Lee protested. “The mix isn’t too far off what we’re used to. We can let the outside air in if we have to-“

“And freeze to death in the process,” Kara added dryly.

Lee ignored her tone. “We might be able to figure out a way to heat it some. Not necessarily a pleasant option, but one to consider if it becomes necessary.”

“What do we do while we’re waiting for a miracle rescue, sir?” Kara asked in a sarcastic tone.

    Lee laughed. “Try not to kill each other, I guess.” He settled down in the co-pilot’s seat, nodding to the pilot’s chair. “Take a load off, Kara.”

    She sighed, but joined him. “I never thought that it would end like this. A flash of fire, an explosion in space- just not a slow death.”

    “Now that we’ve heard from Ms. Sunny Disposition-“ Lee tried to joke, but it fell flat. They really were in danger of dying here. Limited air, food; the problem of extreme cold; and last but not least, no way to tell Galactica where they were, and no chance for the Galactica to get a visual on them until the planet’s sun rose in two days. “We could-“ Lee shrugged, pulling the blankets tighter around him, “talk.”

<O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O><O>

    Kara and Lee traded Academy stories, where their time had overlapped a bit but they had never had a chance to become friends. Kara had heard some of Lee’s escapades- he was must less straight laced those days, apparently- and Lee found out where some of Kara’s screw-up reputation came from. He was amazed, given the brig time she had served, that she hadn’t been tossed out by second year. And he realized- she was such a good pilot, the Fleet was as willing to overlook things as his father often was. The privileges of genius, he supposed. Then there were the funny stories, the legendary tales all incoming cadets were told as urban myths- the first year caught frakking in the commander’s office; the viper miraculously re-assembled in a night in a pain in the ass flight instructor’s office. The laughter turned melancholy, though, when the two realized that almost everyone they were talking about was already dead. Then, silence took over.

    Each pilot was trapped in is or her own thoughts, not willing to share with the other. Kara’s thoughts were desperate and dark; her fighter’s spirit made it impossible for her to simply accept death so placidly, yet there really was nothing they could do but wait. The problem was, the longer she had to consider her imminent death, the more she thought about her life and all the things she had done wrong.
Her foremost regret, as always, was her culpability in Zak Adama’s death. At least she would be able to apologize to him in person soon.

Lee interrupted her thoughts with an unexpected question. “Kara, that night meant something to me. Did it mean anything to you?”

    Caught off guard, Kara was unable to answer at first. It had been so long since she thought of that night; she had worked long and hard to avoid remembering it, not wanting to deal with the emotions it brought back.  She bit her lip and closed her eyes. “I was with Zak. On a break or not, I owed it to Zak to try and work it out.”

    “You didn’t answer the question. We’re going to die, and you’re evading the truth. Just be honest,” Lee stated softly. Moving closer, he forced her to meet his eyes with sheer will power. “Did it mean anything to you?”

    Barely a whisper, almost as if extracted against her will, one simple word. What was the use in lying now? “Yes.”

    “Yes?” Lee’s voice sounded odd, strained. “Then why did you go back to Zak?”

    “You wanted me to dump your brother for you?” Kara laughed nervously.

    Lee was suddenly in her face, heat in his eyes. ‘If you felt like I did- gods damn me, then yes. I did.”

    The shock of his admission brought out her own anger. “Then where did you disappear to, Lee? You were gone the next morning, and I didn’t hear from you again until the funeral. What was I supposed to think? I thought that you were disgusted with me, couldn’t stand to be around me. I know that Zak saw you a few times, but you never came back to see us both. I thought that it was my fault, that the mighty Apollo had judged me- too inferior. After all, I slept with my future brother-in-law, willingly. Happily. Hell, it was my idea, wasn’t it?”

The bitterness in her voice gave him pause. He tried to explain himself, years too late. “I didn’t have the right to ask anything of you just then. Gianne- the baby- I had to go back and fix it. I wasn’t free to pursue a relationship with anyone else.” Lee ran his hands through his short hair, making it stand up in a nervous gesture.  “But then I couldn’t find her, and by the time I got the nerve up to talk to you anyway, Zak told me that you were engaged. What was I supposed to do? You had never contacted me, either. How was I supposed to know how you felt? I mean, we were drunk and hurting-“

    “So you decided that it was a pity frak?” Kara shook her head in disbelief.

    “It was either that or break my baby brother’s heart.” Lee let the words hang in the air between them, heavy with the impending knowledge that there was only so much time left to them to attempt to fix an error in judgement made years ago.

    “I guess I understand, Lee.” She had given him no indication that it was more than a one-night stand; how could she be angry at him for hanging back, especially when he found out that she was engaged to Zak after all? Some would say that he was acting gentlemanly, refusing to kiss and tell to protect her as well as himself. It just didn’t feel that way, in hindsight. “But there’s no where to go with this now. We’ll be dead in a few hours. How much time did we waste, trying to avoid the whole thing?”

    “We have a few hours left.” Lee’s voice was unsteady. “We can make the best of the time we have left.”

    “What about Dualla?” Kara asked. She was aware that there was something starting there, and wondered just how serious it was.

    “What about Sam?” Lee countered, neglecting to answer her.

    “This started long before either of them was in the picture. If your brother didn’t stop me once, why would Sam or Dee now?” Kara trembled from more than cold. She was so very afraid that this was the end, and she would die alone. That Zak wasn’t waiting for her in the afterlife, after the things that she had done to him. And there was her very real and long fought attraction to Lee Adama; though the attraction was well beyond the mere physical. Lee was a strong soul, not weak like her. “Frak me, Lee. I want to remember what that night was like before I die.”