Closing note:

This is the final chapter of "The Rescue". Thank you for taking the time to read this story. I really hope you enjoyed it! Please take a moment to leave a brief review with your thoughts about the story. Special thanks to Artemis the Rebel for her great feedback on this story and for her encouragement while I've been writing Shore Leave, its follow-up. Such feedback is a big help to me as I continue writing upcoming storylines. If you're a Star Wars Rebels fan, please check out her excellent story, Ezra Lost, or one of her other stories.

Thanks again and happy reading!

VST

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Chapter 13:

A short time after Starbuck practically ran out of the medical bay, Jostine was still sleeping seemingly peacefully, but a bit of stirring movement brought Cassiopeia into the room to check her signs. "Guys, it looks like she's waking up. Jostine, can you hear me? How do you feel, dear?"

"Mmmn. Not dead," Jos muttered with one eye cracking open and a somewhat goofy looking grin that more than likely was completely unintentional. She raised an unsteady hand to her face and attempted to rub it but with her arm feeling about as steady as gelatin and her fingers feeling tingly, she ended up letting her arm flop back to the bed.

After giving her some water, massaging her hands and arms to help restore them to reasonable working order, and helping get some stray hairs out of her face, Cassie ran a few more diagnostic checks and said, "Okay, dear, you're looking very good and you'll be up and about in no time. For right now, though, you have some company, so I'm going to leave you in their good hands for a little while, and then you'll need to get some more rest. If you need anything, or if you get tired and need me to come in to kick them out, just press that little button right there, okay?"

Jostine nodded and stretched. Oh, it was so great to be alive, but by the Lords, it hurt so much! Then, she gingerly turned her head to see Ensign Walrach, her boyfriend, and Lieutenant Urdea, her foster dad, standing at the foot of the bed looking at her with nearly identical looks of concern.

"Okay, you two," she said, "I'd tell you to come up here and give me huge hugs but my chest hurts like Hades. And that's saying something, since I think I've actually been there!"

Walrach said, "The Med Tech told me to tell you he's sorry about that, and that you're going to be a little sore and definitely tender there for a few cycles."

Jostine nodded slightly, since even that hurt. With her head slowly clearing, she looked at the men and said, "Okay, I'm listening. You, boyfriend," pointing at Walrach, "have some serious explaining to do if you plan on keeping that title for any length of time. And Pops, can you massage my feet? They're starting to tingle like my hands and arms were."

Walrach, a bit red, looked at Urdea, who nodded to him as he started to massage her feet and lower legs. "Jos, it was a training exercise. Your Pops helped Captain Apollo and Lieutenant Starbuck set it up based on part of a real mission several yahrens ago…you know, before his accident. He saw that the Foundry Ship had a somewhat similar layout to the building where the original mission took place, and since the foundry part is shut down for now until we can resupply, it wasn't too hard to make it pretty similar to the original mission to see how you trainees would do. You were given the briefing that Urdea wrote based on his recollection of that mission and some info we found in the files, with a few modifications to match our conditions and what we had to do to make the mission work. Captain Apollo and Lieutenant Starbuck were there monitoring the whole thing from the control room."

Jos groaned, "No! They saw it, too? They'll never let me be a Warrior now!" She rubbed her hands together nervously. "The atmospheric entry through the turbulence? All those 'tough Cylons' and special modifications to our equipment? It was all fake?" she demanded, staring at him, as she started to feel a bit more like herself.

"Yeah, pretty much. The drop ship pilots had fun with that! Don't know if you noticed, but the Cylons never moved except for their arms-Sergeant Greenbean had several Warriors operating them and their weapons by remote control. As for the special modifications, that was actually real, but not quite like you were told. You see, we had the armorers basically depower all your weapons so you wouldn't destroy all the foundry equipment!" He looked at her with concern and added, "This is the third time the exercise has been run, but nothing like this has ever happened before."

"So just what happened to me?" she asked, barely above a whisper since anything louder seemed to hurt more. With an attempt at a grin, she added, "Surely you're not supposed to kill your trainees if it's just a training mission?"

Urdea, having finished with the foot massage, held her arm on the other side of the bed, gave her a little squeeze, and said, "Jos, there's a sensor in your suit that was supposed to give you a little shock when it detects you've been hit by one of the really low power beams our fake Cylons were shooting. If it goes off, you're supposed to get a message from Lieutenant Starbuck or one of the other controllers on the Command channel that it's a training exercise and that your part of the mission is complete. He tells you to stay immobile in your current position as if you're dead so you don't give it away to the other trainees. Your system drops off the comm grid so the others think you're dead and they have to take up the slack. It usually works really well, but it didn't this time."

"Then Two and Six, Jent and Caden, aren't dead? Right?" she asked hopefully, looking back at Walrach.

He replied, "Right. No one died, Jos…well, except for you, and luckily we got you back! They, and the whole squad, sent their well wishes for you to get well soon. They all wanted to come by, but we told them to wait until next cycle so you can get some rest. Oh, and you're all sworn to secrecy so the next training team doesn't find out."

"Please thank them for me. And I swear. So what went wrong?" she asked.

"When you took the hit, your lifesigns disappeared completely. They weren't getting anything in the control room and couldn't reach you on the Command channel, so we had to terminate the exercise."

"Why Wally? What happened, and why did it happen to me?"

Urdea took the question since he'd had to explain it Walrach. "Jos, it seems that your suit didn't fit you very well so we think it got shifted around when you were rolling—I heard you did really well with that!—and the shock device must have gotten damaged, going from delivering the little shock that it's supposed to give to surprise you to a really huge one that we didn't even know it was capable of giving. Greenbean looked at it and sent that particular circuit to Electronics for corrections so it never happens again. Anyway, it stopped your heart for a while, or at least sent it into fibrillation so you weren't getting any blood flow. Walrach said the Med Tech tried hitting you with the paddles outside your suit while your squad was still on the crusher floor, but the Tech probably didn't think about the suit being designed to resist electric shock. At least one of the diagnostic sensor leads had come loose, too, so the defib didn't work on you."

Wally added, "When you didn't respond, I knew something was wrong, badly wrong, so I scooped you up and rushed you into the conditioned part of the ship. We got your helmet off, and you had no pulse and weren't breathing. We cut open your suit and the Med Tech hit you a second time with the direct shock from the defib unit. He said it got your heart back in the regular rhythm and, fortunately, you popped right back up right before he hit you again! He said if we had been just a few microns later..."

She bit her lip with watery eyes. "Thank you, Wally. So I could have been permanently dead instead of just dead for-what, just a centon or two?" Walrach nodded.

Stopping for a moment to think about what might have been gave Jos a brief shiver, but putting thoughts of eternal harp music and winged munchkins out of her mind, she finally looked at Urdea and asked quietly, "Pops, if this was a training mission based on a real mission, were there real guys actually captured that led to it? And did you rescue them?

Urdea nodded. "Yeah, two excellent Warriors, two good friends of mine, though none of us ever knew Hamm's real name. And yes, we went in there, kicked Cylon butt, and got them out. It was tough...really tough...but we did it." He paused, looking away, as if remembering.

"It was tough? Did...did you lose someone getting them back?"

He nodded, with a glint of tears now in his eyes. "Seven someones in our mission, and that was after three others in the first attempt. Ten good guys died saving them. I don't even remember how many wounded there were, though I think they all eventually recovered."

Jos was startled at the revelation. "Ten dead and a bunch hurt? For just two? Was that really worth it then?"

Urdea pondered silently, reflectively, for a moment more, then said, "Yes, it was expensive, but it was worth every bit. You see, Jos, when you're out there, in space, or on some hostile planet, or even on some dinky moon like that one, you want to believe that you're more than just yourself, that you're part of something bigger. You want to believe that...whenever your time comes to be in that horrible spot, when the Cylons are torturing you for the location of the fleet, when they're using you as a lab test animal as they apparently intended to do with my friends Trent and Hamm, or whatever, that someone will stand up for you, to at least try to bring you home. That way, you'll resist until the very end, with everything you've got, no matter what. We demonstrated that again that time, and every person there saw it and will remember it for as long as they live...though, I think I'm the only one left alive who was there."

"It just seems like such a steep price," she said, wincing.

"It was, Jos, but we paid them back for it, every last cubit. We destroyed their base, which was a bioweapons factory, and we think we got rid of all of their production and the alien equipment that they were trying to take. We even took a sample of the dispersible bioweapon agent that they'd been able to produce, and our scientists were able to develop a vaccine so if they're ever able to produce it again, it won't matter. As a result of that raid, we've all been inoculated against it so they won't be able to produce the death and destruction that they had planned. Someone even told me that we took a piece of the alien technology, but I never heard anything about it, so I'm not sure if that was true or if they were ever able to do anything with it if it was. In the end, yes, it was expensive-very expensive-but I think it was well worth it."

Jos was holding both their hands, and she looked from Wally to Urdea and back. "I hope that when my time comes, to be on whichever side, that I'll be able to do what it takes like all of you did, those captured and everyone who worked to save them. They all sound like great guys."

"Yes, they all were. The two we rescued are gone now, too, though. I think both of them were still assigned to the Atlantia and the First Fleet when it was destroyed at the so-called Peace Conference." He fell back into a reflective silence, thinking of those rescued, of those lost, and of the haunting eyes of all of the caged creatures that they had no way of rescuing. He fought back a tear as the others joined him in silent thought. They sat that way for a couple of centons, each contemplating on what had been said and what it meant to them.

Jos finally sqeezed both of their hands and said, "Thanks, Pops." He could see that she looked teary eyed and weary as well. A moment later, she added, "Uhm, do you mind excusing Wally and me for a centon?"

The thought of young love and life going on despite its many problems brought a smile back to his face. "Sure, Jos, I need to get back on duty anyway; I'm right in the middle of a case that seems to be threatening to become my life's work-if Colonel Tigh has anything to say about it! Have fun, kids, and get some rest, dear, so you can get well soon." Looking to Walrach, he added, "Catch you later, Ensign." They clasped hands, then Urdea gave Jos a little peck on the forehead and a whispered "Love you" and headed out. Jos smiled weakly as she watched Urdea depart, knowing that he cared for her as if she was his real daughter.

Cassie stepped back in just after Urdea left and tapped her wrist chrono indicating that it was getting late. Jostine flashed two fingers at her, and Cassie nodded with a smile, turning away to give the youngsters a last moment of privacy before Jostine's much-needed rest time. Jos turned slowly to Walrach and looked him squarely in the eyes. Speaking barely above a whisper, she said in a grim, determined voice, "And YOU…you were in on it? You knew about the whole fracking thing, even when you were laughing at me for losing my dinner on the way down to your so called moon?"

Following his rather contrite facial expression and nod, she glared at him for a moment with the most serious face she could make under the circumstances and then said, "You know you're really, seriously, going to pay for this, right?"

He grimaced and nodded again, as if in a very dark daggit house, filled with very deep dark daggit doo. Then Jos laughed, suppressing the pain in her chest, and said, with a twinkle in her eyes, "But not tonight. When this all started, I thought I was going to help rescue some of our Warriors, some brave heroes. You ended up rescuing me instead. Thank you Wally. You saved my life, and you're my personal hero. Now kiss me goodnight you big dummy!"

And, joyous that his girlfriend had been rescued and restored to life from her ordeal, he did.

The End

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One last note: Thanks again for reading. My follow-up story, "Shore Leave", picks up shortly after this story ends. I hope you'll check it out.