Disclaimer: I don't own any of it. Sad. So sad. It's a sad, sad situation…

Author's Note: I seem incapable of leaving well enough alone. Damnit.

Terra

"Lee... I'll see you on the other side."

"Kara, please, listen to me! Come back."

"Just let me go."

"Godsdamn it, Kara! You come back! Come back!"

"It's okay. Just let me go. They're waiting for me…"

She felt the explosion.

The roar went right through her, like a wind cutting through open-weave cotton. It shook her bones and drew a gasp from her as she was jolted from the peace that had cocooned her.

Gasping for breath, eyes wide open now, she turned in her seat, frantically taking in her surroundings.

She was unharmed.

The Viper was whole.

And around her there was no whirling cloud of deadly gas, only unfamiliar stars and…

Oh, gods…

It was a planet.

Blue and green alternately hidden and revealed by slow swirling white cloud. Oceans glittered at her, winking in the light of a yellow sun. Almost level with her on the planet's crown was a small white moon orbiting. At this distance she could see the continents' patterns of ochre and green, the white masses at the poles, a scattering of islands in one of the oceans like flung scraps of velvet…

"Unidentified fighter, unidentified fighter."

The wireless snarled to life. Kara reared back so hard out of shear surprise she came dangerously close to concussing herself on the back of her seat. She stared at the dash, stunned.

"This is Scoreboard-Five. Be warned, you have entered into Terran space uncleared and uninvited. Please hold position, identify yourself and state the reason for your presence," the voice continued. It was male, average timbre and sounded just rough enough to be middle-aged, she guessed.

A shadow fell over her, and she looked up.

Rising into view was a ship.

She'd never seen anything like it.

The thing was easily twice the size of a Raptor, but that was where any resemblance to any other ship ended. It was like a great, legless scorpion, she thought. The tapered stern curved first down, as though the scorpion's body were curling, then up, thinning to a barbed point that hung over the 'shoulder'.

Even more terrifying (and by now she really was working up to terrified) were the abso-frakking-lutely huge pincers held out in front of the ship. They were parting, ponderously slow, and between them she could actually see an electrical current, jumping back and forward in fizzing lines of jagged violet.

Then the pincers lowered a little, and she saw past them to the place where a real scorpion would have had its eyes.

Instead there was a dash window, and through it she could see two faces.

Human faces.

Looking back at her.

"Unidentified fighter, unidentified fighter. I say again, identify yourself and state your reason –"

Kara rediscovered her voice rather unexpectedly.

"Scoreboard-Five, this is Starbuck. I…I'm lost."

She saw the two people in the other ship – the Scoreboard – turn and look at each other before turning what she imagined to be quizzical gazes back on her.

"Say again, Starbuck."

"I'm lost," she admitted. "I was in a storm over a gas giant. I flew down too far…I thought my ship had blown up, but then I was here…"

She saw another look exchanged and heard a mutter of something that sounded like, "fucking hell…" whatever that meant.

"Starbuck, you're speaking with Captain Baylor Scoresby. That wasn't a storm you flew into – well, it was – but it was also a Carver's Gate. A wrinkle in space-time, kinda like a safer version of a wormhole or a black hole. Do you follow?"

Holy frak.

"Uh, yeah…"

"That particular one spits out just here, which is why we're here," Scoresby said.

"Guarding the planet?"

"Give the gal a prize."

Something raced across her brain like lightning; a flash of thought so physical it was like a blow.

"You said, before, that I had entered Terran space…?"

Scoresby responded a little cautiously. "I did."

"Then the planet…that's Terra."

"It is, but mostly we just call it –"

"Earth," she breathed. "I-I've found Earth…"

AN: 'Terra' is of course the Latin name for our planet. Since Latin is also found in various places throughout BSG, it follows that Kara, deeply interested in the old legend, would know both the current and ancient name for it.