When Adama finally obtained the location of the Colony, Helo and Athena were among the many who volunteered to crew "Galactica" for the attack-and-rescue mission. He devised the plan of using Raptors as boarding craft, inserting small teams of Marines into the Colony—a plan made extremely dangerous by the dense asteroid agglomeration and gravitational distortions caused by the Colony's orbit around a black hole. He and Athena were the only Raptor crew to survive the entire process of insertion, combat and withdrawal, but (with a little help from a repentant Boomer) successfully retrieved their daughter. Shortly thereafter, "Galactica" herself was boarded, and Helo was shot in the thigh. Hera fled the scene, and, despite knowing he would die of blood loss unless Sharon attended him, Helo demanded she protects their daughter.