In Those Brief Moments, All I See is Red: Chapter 2
II.
When Kendra Shaw's eyes fluttered open, she immediately scrunched them back shut. There were lights everywhere, even right above her head, blinding. She forced herself to relax, to take a few calming breaths, before she attempted to squint around. Instead of the soothing effect she was hoping for as she breathed, she instead found a harsh ache pulsate through her chest.
That's right, she had been shot. Once. By a Centurion. On the strange Baseship they had found. Her brain scanned through all the training she had undergone in order to be in the Colonial Fleet, and she recalled the documents regarding gunshot wounds: '...usually fatal when to the chest unless treated immediately. The injured will be unconscious for a number of days to recover.'
How she was even alive...
The sound of footsteps distracted her, and her attention moved to Commander Adama as he walked briskly towards her bedside. The Pegasus's doctor was there, too, standing not far away with a chart in his hands, but he hung towards the back to give the Commander space.
"Major. Glad you're awake," Lee said truthfully as he sat down on a small chair next to her cot. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light and were able to open a little more, she noticed bags starting to form under his eyes. It was likely he hadn’t found someone to take her place as the XO, and trying to be the Commander and the XO at the same time for more than a few hours was a certain road to a case of nervous exhaustion.
She tried to turn her head to the side, only to be stopped by Lee's hand abruptly reaching out to keep her in place. "Easy. Doc says it'll be awhile before you should be up."
After a few more deep breaths that didn't hurt nearly as much - or perhaps she was just getting used to the dull pain? - she hoarsely gasped out, "Commander, I'd like to give my report."
"You just woke up," Lee shook his head. "No. The report can wait. Starbuck's waiting to give her report, too. We've got a new batch of nuggets, and I'd like you fully recovered as soon as possible to help out."
She swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in her throat. How long had she been out, anyway? "I would still like to give my report, Sir."
Standing, then, to assert his authority over her, he flatly responded, "You have been unconscious for four days and I need my XO. Recover first, then I'll take your report."
Without the strength to so much as follow him with her eyes as he left Sickbay, she let herself relax and fade away again.
--
Kara Thrace moved her pen across the paper, trying to come up with a mission plan that would give the fewest number of casualties. Yet, despite all the out-of-the-box plans she came up with and tested, every configuration of Raptors, every selection of Pilots all came up with an fatality prediction of over 80%. She wanted to go back to Caprica to bring the survivors home, not to dwindle their numbers down further.
It would take more than sixty, maybe even eighty jumps to get there, and all would need to be calculated extremely precisely in a short amount of time. It would require probably close to 8 Vipers and possibly a lot more than 12 Raptors, which was a near impossibility to provide in the past, when Galactica was the only Battlestar and supplies were short.
But now they had the Pegasus, and now they could finally make it back, provided she could come up with a plan in which they would come out ahead. With Lee as the Commander, she could definitely make a convincing argument - she knew he would listen to her.
A knock sounded through the heavy metal of the closed hatch to the CAG's office she had been given here on the Pegasus, and she quickly stuffed the pages she was working on underneath the files containing information on the next set of nuggets to train.
"Are those for that mission you're trying to push?"
She looked up in surprise to find Lee already walking into the office. Either trying to find a good hiding spot for the report took longer than she thought, or she mistook his opening the hatch for a simple knock. Whichever it was, he had her completely figured out, and her eyes narrowed in his direction as she stated, "I'm working on the nugget profiles."
Chuckling, he stopped as he reached her desk and lifted the stack of files to reveal her half-complete mission plans. "These are 'nugget profiles', too?" he teased.
She reached over and grabbed the files out of his hands and slammed them back on the table.
"Is there anything you wanted, Sir?" she asked.
He should have realized teasing her about the mission wouldn't have been a good idea. No matter what it was - a person, an idea, a place - there were certain things that even Starbuck couldn't take a joke about. Her faith had always been one thing, Zak before that, and this mission was, for some reason, another. Helo had spoken to him once, briefly, about certain things that had taken place on that waste of a planet, and he only wanted answers from her.
"Not specifically, but..." he stopped, sighed, and then shook his head. "Kara. You could at least visit her in Sickbay, let her thank you."
She choked on a laugh, it coming out as a snort, and she finally raised her eyes to his and smirked. "Like she'd thank me. If I were her, I wouldn't even thank me."
A smile formed on his face and he shrugged, "Well, maybe. But you do deserve to hear things like that every once in awhile -"
"I'll have you know, Commander." She stood to face him and grinned as she stated his title - he still seemed much too young for the job. "That your XO absolutely hates me. And you know what? I hate her, too."
--
Six hours later, Kara found herself pacing in her office, nineteen more mission plans crumpled up into the metal garbage can on the other side of the room. And if there wasn’t the risk of running out of paper in the fleet, she was certain that there would be at least another few dozen joining them. She rubbed her forehead, then her eyes, trying to keep herself alert, having wasted her entire off shift planning instead of sleeping. And in forty minutes, she would be giving a briefing to the new pilot recruits.
After a taking five minutes for a quick shower, she left her quarters in the intention of getting to the Pegasus Ready Room early to set an example, and to try and come up with some last minute ideas for what she was going to say.
Her feet cared otherwise, and she took a left turn at the end of a corridor instead of a right, and later on made a few more incorrect choices through the passageways until she ended up at Sickbay, much to her annoyance. The doctor quickly ushered her in and took her directly to the XO's bedside - the last place she wanted to be.
Kendra appeared to be asleep, but when Kara stood at the side of the cot, her head turned to the side and she glared harshly at the Captain.
"Hey, Major, don't get pissed at me that you didn't die," Kara defended herself.
While blinking a few times, Kendra mumbled, "...Captain Thrace... is…"
And then she slowly closed her eyes and opened them again, and the severe expression on her face was gone. In her usual cold and confident tone, the earlier hoarseness in her voice gone, she ordered, "Captain. If you see the Commander, tell him that I would like to give my report to him as soon as possible."
The sudden change surprised Kara slightly. She nodded, then turned to leave.
--
Words were trying to form in Kendra's mind as she watched Kara walk away, but the letters wouldn't fit together, didn't make sense. There were a few things she could remember: A sense of calm. A man's voice. A searing pain in her chest.
And the colour red.