Fic: Lost in Space on a Desert Island (2/3)

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Title: Lost in Space on a Desert Island (2/3)
Author: merrykk
Characters: Kara, Boomer, Dee, Cally
Spoilers: None, set pre-series
Length: 10,500 words
Rating: PG-13 for language and action violence
Summary: Kara ends up stuck on a Raptor repair flight that has a lot more trouble than the brochure indicated, and she has to work with a new team if she's going to get them out of the trouble in one piece.

For lyssie, who asked for “Kara, Athena and Dee on a recon mission, possibly shooting down some Cylons or human pirates. C'mon, there had to be human pirates at SOME point. (Athena flies the raptor, Dee's there for communications and also it's her turn on the roster, and Kara's there to mock raptors for their inefficiency and general lack of sexiness) - OR, Boomer could be there, which could put it pre-series or season one.”

Part One

Part Two

Kara groaned and rolled over on her back, coughing a little. Not a bad landing, considering. The thick saltgrass, and the white sand below it, was as cushioning as anything, and Kara hadn’t even fallen in proper form.

She waggled her fingers and toes, felt no pain, and slowly sat up. “Frak you to hell, Tigh,” she muttered to herself, shaking the soreness from her limbs.

Strange as it was, she stood up to meet the force of a sea breeze and a bright summer sun shining down on her. Already she missed the feel of the deck beneath her feet, but this was like a piece of paradise. She could see a long white beach off in the distance, but nothing but a huge sand ridge on the other side.

And their Raptor. Lodged neatly in a sand dune, it had not exploded. Yet, but still. Kara wondered about the rest of the crew, then.

“Dee?” she called, walking towards the Raptor. “Cally, Valerii?”

“Agh,” came a voice to her left, and she saw Dee’s dark head just as her sarcastic voice added, “Great idea, Kara.”

Kara gave a tight grin as she offered a hand to Dee. “Live to snark another day, Dee.”

“How far did we fall?” Dee asked, putting a hand to her back, flexing it with a slight grimace. “No, wait, I don’t think I want to know.”

Cally and Sharon had been blown by the wind a few yards beyond, but were in fair shape as well. They all stood on top of a small dune, looking over at the Raptor.

“Sorry, I guess it didn’t blow up,” Cally said, arms crossed over her chest to keep her welt from being hit by the wind.

“Apologize for that again and I might hit you,” Dee said warmly, nudging her.

Kara laughed, but Sharon’s brow was deeply furrowed.

“That wasn’t our only problem,” Sharon said with a slight sigh.

Kara glanced around, took a deep breath. “Okay, right. So, our jump took us way off course, we aren’t exactly sure why. We landed on a desert island, thousands and thousands of miles from civilization. I say we have a nice little picnic, work on the Raptor when we’re refreshed.”

Cally gave her a little smile, even as she still had a tight, pained look.

Sharon gave her a hairy eyeball, however. “If it’s not an actual emergency, then every minute we’re gone and Galactica is assuming it’s an emergency is a minute we’re wasting of both our times.”

“That’s true, Kara,” Dee said, breathing out, resting a hand on her hip.

Kara nodded. “Yeah, well, it was just a thought.”

“Dee, can you contact anyone on the other side of Aquaria, maybe?” Sharon asked, brightening a little.

“Possibly,” Dee said.

“Then let’s go make sure that the engine is not going to explode, and we can work on that,” Sharon said, nodding.

“You’re the boss,” Kara said, shrugging. Sharon had been right and they couldn’t just delay for no reason...still, it wasn’t as if there was a danger yet, and the sun did feel good.

Approaching the Raptor with no small amount of consternation, Cally confirmed that now that the engine had automatically shut down, it wasn’t going to overload. Dee climbed in, started bringing the radio system back up online and slipped on her headset.

Kara sat with Sharon on the sand dune outside, stretching a little where she was still sore from the fall.

Cally eyed the engine as if she might tell what was wrong with her eyes only. “I’m gonna kill Chief for making me do this,” she muttered darkly after a second.

Kara glanced back at her. “Oh really?”

“Well, first he knows that jumps make me sick,” Cally said, turning around, a spark in her dark eyes. “And then he said that this was going to be routine check-ups, something he couldn’t spare time for.”

Sharon laughed. “At least that last part was almost true.”

“He’s getting lax,” snorted Cally, sitting next to them, kicking absently at the soft sand with her boot.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll talk to him when we get back,” Sharon said with a smile and a nod.

Kara looked up into the strong sunshine, felt it warm her skin. “If Chief had known, or planned, this little computer bug, you’d be sure that he’d have volunteered to crashland on the tropical island.”

“True!” Cally said with a snicker.

Kara felt like kicking off her shoes, but didn’t, especially as Dee’s voice finally came from behind.

“Guys, I’ve got voices.” They all climbed into the Raptor as Dee put it on speakers. “The radio won’t go long distance, but I have short signals, and this one is coming from the other side of this island.”

“The uninhabited island?” Sharon asked skeptically.

“Officially uninhabited,” said Kara, a little more darkly. She was getting a feeling that she knew what that probably meant.

The radio prickled. “Two, such investigations will be a waste of time—they are not part of the plan.” “Do we not all know the entire plan, do we not all know that?” “Six has wasted my time enough. Two, stay at your post.”

“What is that about?” Cally asked curiously.

“Some weird numbering system, apparently,” Sharon offered, arms crossed as she leaned in towards the radio.

“But why?” Cally asked further.

“It is kind of the habit of illegal operations to be less than clear,” Kara said dryly.

They all looked up at her, and she realized just how young they all were—even Dee—she felt like she was back at the Academy with nuggets looking to her.

“Off the grid screams illegitimate,” Kara snorted. “These people probably stole a space-worthy ship, made an outpost here, and are carrying out illegal activities.”

“You mean they’re pirates?” asked Dee, giving her a steady look.

“Don’t tell me you never thought about doing it,” Kara said back with a hint of a grin. “And pirates, smugglers, terrorists, insider traders...whoever they are, they don’t live on the bright side of life. Literally.”

“Which means we can’t go to them for help,” Sharon concluded, looking grim and putting a hand to her head, brushing back a stray hair.

“Not without better numbers, weapons, equipment, and a willingness for things to get bloody,” Kara said with a dance of eyebrows.

“Yeah, not happening,” Sharon said.

“We shouldn’t even need help, though,” Cally insisted suddenly. “The FTL drive isn’t dead yet, and surely Dee knows how to fix any programming errors, if we have time.”

“That’s not a certainty, but yes, we have a chance,” Dee admitted, nodding.

Kara almost opened her mouth, but then caught Sharon biting the inside of her lip. Kara held back the words, not knowing exactly why, but deciding to respect Sharon’s command for now.

“I never said we had to ask for help from the criminals,” she said, though, crossing her arms lightly across her chest.

Sharon looked up at her, surprised. “What?”

“Kara, this isn’t a game,” warned Dee.

“Hey, I don’t take criminals lightly, even if they are dumb enough to keep their radio channels unencrypted,” Kara retorted. “But there’s four of us, with weapons and a military fighter ship. There could be a way that we can take what we need.”

“Hey, we’re not going that far yet,” Sharon broke in, putting up her hand. “I get where you’re coming from, Captain Thrace, but we don’t even know if it’ll need to be that drastic. Dee and the specialist can work on getting our ship running, you and me will go get more intelligence on what our surroundings and situation are.”

“Exactly what I was going for, actually,” Kara said with a smile. She added a half salute. “Yes sir.”

“Take radios, then,” Dee said, handing over one of them. “I’ll keep track of the—well, we can call them enemy for now. I’ll keep track of their communications, let you know if there’s anything you should watch for.”

Kara rolled her eyes at Dee, but Sharon took the radio anyways. Making sure her gun was still clipped at her side, Kara followed her out the Raptor and towards the mysterious radio noise.

The wind flitting through the grass hid the sounds of their boots crunching as they walked up the ridge, keeping an eye out for anything odd, but in Kara’s case not expecting it. This was hardly out of the ordinary, unless you defined ordinary as only what Galactica usually did.

“This feels a bit odd,” Sharon said under her breath as they climbed a steeper portion of the ridge, boots aiding very little with the crumbly ground and driftwood. “Like those war training videos they had in the Academy; surreal.”

Kara hoisted herself up, pausing for a second to make sure of the bearings. “You joined the military but didn’t expect war?”

“It’s peacetime, it was just a job,” Sharon said, as they moved forward again, crouching a little as they reached the high point of this part of the island.

Kara said nothing; she’d been fighting people with that attitude for years now.

“Well, okay, maybe I expected something,” Sharon added, pleasantly surprising Kara a little. “But I thought the Cylons would break the truce, or something, and it’d be space battles. Nothing like this.”

Kara breathed out, jaw tensing with focus. “War doesn’t let you pick the style; you gotta take what it gives, don’t throw it back unless you’ve added a booby-trap.”

“So you can handle any type of war?” Sharon asked pointedly.

“If I have weaknesses, I’m not going to be broadcasting them,” Kara said, smirking. “But in this case, guerilla warfare was a study of mine after Vipers. I can snipe with the best of them.”

“Why?” Sharon asked.

“Because it was fun,” Kara said, with a light chuckle. “So is this, right up my alley.”

Sharon paused as they came to the edge of the ridge. Kara got down on her hands and knees, sliding up to the edge on her stomach, Sharon slightly behind.

“Dee, got anything?” Sharon asked over the radio. Kara glanced back to hear the answer.

“Nothing important, nothing much of anything really.”

Sharon put the radio back and scooted up next to Kara so they could look down.

“That’s our smugglers,” Kara whispered. The ridge slanted down, not as steeply as it could have, curving around an area about half a mile across. Low buildings glinted with metal in silver and black, three of them in an inverted L shape from this angle. Neatly built to look very ambiguous, Kara thought. “Or pirates. I really can’t tell from this distance.”

Sharon pulled out a pair of small binoculars, and Kara glanced around for signs of the personnel they’d heard. She saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light grass nearest to them, and maybe a flicker of a couple more farther out. This distance, though, she couldn’t tell weaponry or uniform. “Anything?” she asked Sharon.

“The guard nearest has a standard Colonial automatic, most recent version,” Sharon said.

Kara raised an eyebrow. “Weapons dealers, maybe?”

“He’s in some kind of casual clothes, though that red vest might be bullet resistant,” Sharon commented.

Kara frowned, reached for the binoculars. The man was either old or blonde, given the color of his helmet-less head and scruffy facial hair; he moved easily enough, so Kara guessed the latter. “Definitely bullet resistant,” she said, nodding. “He’s an idiot, though; that’s mostly civilian gear.” She swept the binoculars up to the far side of the camp.

“I couldn’t get a good glimpse of those guards,” Sharon said.

Kara couldn’t either; the compound looked fairly low key. “Well, I wouldn’t bet on those buildings being simply warehouses, given their construction,” she said in a low tone, giving the binoculars back. “So let’s guess a few more guards at points inside, maybe no more than twenty people in all? At least at this time.”

“Boomer, sir?” came Cally’s voice over the radio.

Sharon ducked, cradling it to her face. “Yes, specialist?”

“We’ve got good news,” Cally continued. “Dee says she can’t completely fix the bug, but  it shouldn’t prove a problem if we can fix the FTL drive and add a slight reroute.”

“It’s broken, then?” Sharon asked, not looking terribly enthused yet.

“Well, not completely. But if we want to get off this world safely, we’ll need a part for that, and then a different one for the reroute to make sure we can jump safely.”

Kara raised an eyebrow, not sure that sounded quite ‘good’, more ‘okay’, but she wasn’t going to get into semantics when Dee was somewhere on the other line.

Kara grabbed the radio from Sharon as Sharon seemed to pause. “Look, these guys are going to blow military out of the sky if we show up on their doorstep and ask for help, and if they find our Raptor, it’ll be the same.”

“The part’s pretty common on all kinds of basic machinery,” Cally said.

“And some artillery pieces,” Dee added.

“Well, we’ve got the resources, then, just not at hand,” Kara said with a shrug of her shoulders. She handed the radio back to Sharon.

Sharon bit her lip, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.

Kara had a moment where she didn’t know what to do, but that didn’t last long. Sharon didn’t understand this kind of war, she’d said it herself. They were facing a life or death situation if they were discovered, which would happen eventually unless they could stop it. Success called for action. Kara grabbed the radio again.

“Okay, listen everyone, we’re making this work ASAP. Sharon and I are headed back to the Raptor, we’ll discuss strategy then.” Kara ended the transmission and tucked the radio in her belt, then started backing down from the ridge. “I said this was my specialty; I wasn’t joking.”

“Okay, that’s good,” said Sharon as she skidded down after her.

Kara took that as delegation and had not even the hint of a qualm about hijacking this command. She ran a few quick strategies through her head as they moved, but as they made it back in a little more than half the time it had taken them to get up, there wasn’t a lot of time. There was also no further information over the enemy’s radio, and apparently they still hadn’t investigated the Raptor falling out of the sky, assuming they’d noted it and known what it was.

Cally sat in the back of the Raptor with Dee; the latter had given Cally a gun, and she was passing it back and forth between her hands with slight nervousness, but a determined glint in her eyes. Dee just had a hand to her ear, still listening, still waiting.

Kara climbed in, leaned against the computer console and waited a second for Sharon. “Have we organized our supplies?” she asked first, looking to Dee.

“Standard Raptor kit,” Dee said, nodding.

“Okay, so we have a few stun grenades, some tranq darts, and a few rounds of basic shot for our weapons,” Kara said, crisp tone as she calculated quickly, tapping one finger in the air. “We’ve also got a compound with at least three external guards, probably more inside, but not too many given communications and size. It’s something military, we’re assuming, and so we can all but call it a fact that they’ll have the part we need.”

Frowning a little, she added, “Dee, can you draw me up a schematic?”

Dee nodded, coming over to the computer and pulling up a program. Kara rattled off some estimated sizes, and a few seconds later, Dee had a rough model. Kara called back in her memory for the entrance/exit points and added them in, revising her calculations in a second.

“We’re supposed to break into that?” Cally asked disbelievingly.

Kara put up her hand. “No rushing. Now, these guys are pretty lax, not surprising given how far off the grid they are. I’m not sure why they didn’t notice the Raptor, unless they thought it was a meteor, which I think are fairly common on Aquaria. Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth checking out yet. Anyways, their security isn’t dramatic yet.”

“Of course, it would be in their best interests to have it look that way no matter what,” Dee said, leaning back in her chair by the computer.

“There’s no way they could hide it that quickly, not with the kind of landscape out there,” Sharon put in before Kara could speak.

“Not external security, certainly,” Kara said, nodding to her. “And external is where they’ll pinch us, if they can. Dee, Sharon, either of you good shots?”

Dee raised her hand. “From a safe position, yes.”

“That’s what I’ll need,” Kara said. “Okay, so, Dee and I will take down the guards, while Sharon and—Cally, right?—get to the nearest entrance. Sharon sends a grenade in, uses tranqs on anyone else in the near vicinity, and gets Cally to where she can grab the parts we need.”

“I can probably shoot if I have to,” Cally said.

“Until it’s necessary, it’d be easier if you stayed focused,” Sharon advised.

“Exactly,” Kara said, pointing her finger. “We want speed and direction. Much as a brawl’s my usual color, that’s not what we’re after. Sharon can provide more than enough protection, assuming the plan works.”

“What else is there to the plan?” Sharon asked, brow furrowed.

“Well, Dee will be keeping track on the radio, so we’ll know where to step in as soon as they mobilize,” Kara said. “We keep the reinforcements off your back and hold the exit open for you. Then we hop back to the ship and get off this planet. How long would it take to get the engine running?”

“Three minutes,” Cally said, after a brief glance to Dee. “She got the program arranged, and I have everything else set up already.”

Kara nodded. Something told her that there were quite a few variables, especially the interior of these complexes. She looked at Sharon and Cally, saw two very raw soldiers, no matter how much strength of will they seemed to have. But there was Dee, and she had a head on her shoulders that wasn’t disapproving entirely of Kara’s plan.

What really sunk the deal was when she looked back at the model that Dee had built on screen, and something just felt right. She nodded again, to herself. She had a good feeling; she wasn’t going to thwart that.

“Okay, gear up, I want to be out of here in a few minutes,” she said finally.

She barely noticed that Sharon automatically saluted her with a “Yes sir” too. The mission certainly wasn’t the same as it had been a mere half hour ago.

Kara grabbed the sniper attachment from the Raptor’s kit, then walked out into the sun to prepare it, shaking her right hand loosely as she did so. Glancing up at the sun, she calculated angle and distance. It’d been a while since she’d done this; in fact, the last time she’d held a gun outside of a firing range had been a recreational battle with Karl and Crash and Maggie and red paintballs.

“Captain Thrace?”

She glanced around, rifle half assembled, and saw Sharon standing there.

“Call me Kara—what is it?”

Sharon stepped a little closer, a tightness at the corner of her mouth. “I know you haven’t really said it, but this is war, right? These people could kill us.”

“Believe me, they’re not going to get the chance,” Kara said, snapping the longer barrel onto the gun.

“Hey, don’t talk to me like that,” Sharon protested.

Kara raised an eyebrow.

“Look, you’re leading now, I get it,” Sharon said, low and sharp, arms lightly crossed over her chest. “It’s good—I can’t do it here. But I’m not going to ignore my instincts, and I know that things could get rough. Maybe they don’t need to know, but I do. We’re splitting up. What do you want me to do if the worst happens?”

Kara flicked the last switch on her gun, and popped in the ammo, brow drawn. She didn’t usually like being surprised on missions, but Sharon was doing it the good way. “The worst happens is that you and Cally have to take down the enemy,” she said.

Sharon opened her mouth.

“We’re getting the part, we’re all getting out, and it’s not going to be a big deal,” Kara said before Sharon could continue.

Sharon gave her a long look, then nodded. “Yes sir. Simple mission.”

Kara threw her a grin that was almost a grimace. “It helps if you have more confidence.”

Sharon just turned and walked off, still nodding slightly.

Kara felt the smooth surface of the gun in her hand, gave a brief glance down the sight. This was a simple mission; no point in worrying. It wasn’t like the worlds were at stake.

Part Three