"Aurora"

It wasn't that Kara Thrace didn't want to fly a patrol. She loved flying. She loved flying more than she loved anything else left in the universe. She hated tedious patrols however. Endless hours of sitting in the cockpit, staring at the dark of space…. She had no love for that. She wasn't afraid to admit it, she was a combat junkie. Ten hour patrols bored the hell out of her, especially long range patrols, but they had to be done, even if they were mind numbingly dull.

" We're almost to the turn around point," she said into the wireless. " Racetrack, do a final scan and then we'll head back to base." Back to the endless grind that was life on the Galactica, but things could be worse. She had a card game planned. Hotdog was holding a bottle of aged ambrosia and she planned to win it.

" Doing final scan," Racetrack said. Kara looked over to the Raptor. Racetrack was good, better than she would have expected when she first met the woman. Sometimes it was hard to believe that it hadn't even been a year since the twelve colonies had been destroyed. Racetrack hadn't even been flying for that long, but it didn't show. Not any more.

"Seems pretty quiet out this way," Lee Adama said over the wireless. His viper, one of the last Mark 7's, shifted into her view. " We can send the fleet this way with no problem. That's a switch."

Inside the cockpit of her Viper, Kara nodded. It would, baring an attack that led to an emergency jump, take the slow moving fleet almost a month to reach so far. She sighed. It was a long way to come for nothing. They hadn't found anything interesting in the scans, not even any big rocks to avoid. Just another dull part of the universe, she thought with a sigh.

" I've got something!" Racetrack called. " It's big! It's…." There was a long pause. " It looks like a battlestar…."

Kara felt herself tense up and willed herself to relax. It hadn't been so long ago that the Pegasus had turned up and it hadn't ended well. Another battlestar? Was another problem, and it wasn't like Racetrack was whooping for joy. " What have you got, Racetrack?"

There was a long pause. " It's a battlestar but… I'm getting a reading on the metal, not an energy spike. I've never seen anything like it."

" Apollo, let's take a look." She kicked in the turbos before Lee replied. In seconds, she was honing in on the readings that Racetrack had picked up.

"Dammit," Lee said. Kara agreed silently. It was a battlestar. Not as new as the Pegasus, but definitely not as old as the Galactica. It was a dead ship. She had seen such ships before.

" She's been holed. Look at the starboard side." Kara maneuvered her viper over the dead behemoth. "It's hard to spot but there's a crash site. Do you see it?"

"Burn marks right over the center. They suicided into the center of the ship." Lee spoke softly. " If the Cylons used their virus program, the crew wouldn't have even had time to launch. The Cylons would have shut the ship down and then holed them to be careful. Bastards. We better head back and let the commander know."

Kara nodded as she flew a pass over the ship. " Got the name… the Aurora. Wasn't she out on deep exploration?"

" The Battlestar Aurora was commissioned twenty years ago. She had a crew of 1500, and over two hundred Vipers attached. Her armaments include nuclear missiles and traditional armament. She left the Sagitarron docks eight months before the attack on the colonies and was on a five year exploration mission." Gaeta looked down at his briefing papers nervously. " The recon photos and scans indicate that the ship hull was pierced and rapidly lost atmosphere. If the damage isn't severe, it would be relatively easy to repair the hull and restart the life support. Anything beyond that… we would need more information."

Adama leaned back in his chair. The Aurora had been a good ship, with a good commander and crew. He didn't hold out much hope that she could be brought back from the dead and returned to service. That was expecting too much. However, it was possible that she could give the fleet tons of badly needed supplies. Even if they salvaged just a few of the Vipers, that gave the Galactica weapons it badly needed. Decompressing the ship was a vicious Cylon maneuver, but it did leave valuable supplies in a frozen state. They could use the firepower of another battlestar, they needed it badly, but he doubted the Aurora was in a repairable state.

" The fleet is three and a half weeks from the Aurora." Lee paced around the briefing room, and pointed at one of the large diagrams he and the crew had made. The crew was bizarrely excited about the find. Adama understood it in a way. He just hoped they weren't too crushed when it became obvious that the battlestar was not in any shape to join the fleet. Lee pointed to one of the pictures of the damage. " I am proposing that we send a team ahead of the fleet to begin the salvage and access the damage. We can get the life support systems running, get an inventory on useful supplies and possibly even start supply runs back to the fleet." Lee looked around at the amassed officers and at the president and vice president. " This is a valuable opportunity for us. I don't need to tell you how desperate we are for resupply."

" What about getting the Aurora running?" President Roslin leaned forward in her seat. Adama looked her over carefully. She seemed tired, but interested. It made him reconsider the idea. He felt it was risky to send a salvage team ahead. They needed every single trained soldier they had to keep the fleet running and protected. Lee wanted a minimum of ten people and a Raptor, and skilled, irreplaceable people at that. If something went wrong, those ten people represented a loss that the Galactica could ill afford to handle.

On the other hand, the crew needed hope and the Aurora represented supplies that would keep the fleet going. If they didn't send a team ahead, the salvage would be rushed, and there would be no chance to see if the Aurora could fly again. Without life support and engines restarted, it would be next to impossible to get much other than the compliment of Raptors off the ship. The reality was that they could ill afford to let the opportunity pass by. Even a few Raptors full of food and water would help the fleet.

And Laura was interested. That had been happening less often as of late. He gestured to Lee. " This would be strictly a voluntary mission. I don't want anyone pressured to go."

Lee smiled. That was something he had missed, for a long time. " Sir, I already have had a list of over two hundred people willing to go. That's more than I can fit in one Raptor."

" Let's hear more, then." He wasn't going to let excitement override sense. If it was too dangerous, it wasn't going to happen, regardless of how many people volunteered.

" I'll need a few pilots. That'll be myself, Starbuck, Helo, and Racetrack. I also need an engineering team. Gaeta and Dualla have experience with the life support and computer systems, and Tyrol, Cally, and Jammer will handle mechanical work and help inventory supplies. Dr. Cottle agreed to give us Seelix as long as we let her salvage medical supplies and I've got Venner, Davids, and Zarrell for firepower, inventory, and technical work." Lee pointed to one of the diagrams. " If the damage is just a hull breach, we're confident life support can be restored in hours. If not, we're back on the Galactica before our suits run out of air."

" The first priority is life support," Gaeta added helpfully. " We'll start assessing the ship and preparing the salvage once that's done. Just the ammunition alone makes this worth the risk."

"Not to mention the spare parts," Kara said quickly. " And its unlikely but if the ship isn't in bad shape…."

"That's the least of the priorities," Lee broke in before Tigh could scoff.

" But it does have a certain charm…." Roslin said softly. She looked at Adama. " Of course this is a military decision…. But I do approve of this mission. I think the fleet needs something like this. It will give the people something to look forward to for the next few weeks. And with no Cylon activity, it's not that risky."

It was an unnecessary risk, Adama thought, but as he looked at everyone's faces, faces filled with excitement, he didn't have the heart to say no.