As the ritual demanded, the leader removed the communications helmet and stared at his minions, his many eyes glowing with a rare moment of elation.
"Yes," he said, "the final annihilation of the alien pest, the life form known as man. Let the attack begin."
The two subordinates made perfunctory bows and rejoined the spider web of fellow executive officers. Even before they regained position and Imperious Leader had redonned his helmet, large apertures had opened all around the main circle of each Cylon base ship. Cylon warships emerged in precise sequence from each aperture and flew to their pre-battle positions, where they formed a twelve-tiered, coruscating wall that, when fully constructed, divided into waves, each of which had a human world as its eventual target.
No other Colonial Fleet battlestar had been able to launch full contingents of fighting craft in time. The Cylon attackers now picked off easily the ships, sitting ducks, that were catapulted out. Adama realized with mixed sadness and anger that only the Galactica's fighters were left to lead the fight against the immense attacking force. Outnumbered, they alternately dodged and flew at Cylon fighters. Laser cannons fired and cross-fired, their radiant, thin lines changing to spectacular eruptions of yellow and red flame when they found their targets. As usual. Fleet warships fought with more skill and better accuracy, but the overwhelming odds of this battle—this treacherous ambush—seemed to be working against them, and Adama experienced a sharp pain in his gut each time Cylon fire destroyed one of his ships. The Fleet would lose many pilots today, perhaps all of them. They had already lost Zac. Adama told himself to stop thinking of his son's death. He must stop thinking of it. It had been painful enough to watch it happen while he stood helplessly by, watching it on a screen like one of the entertainment cassettes he often watched in his quarters. There would be more pain later, but now, like all commanders who had tragically lost sons in battle, going back in time through the many devastating wars the race had endured, Adama had to keep his mind on his duties.
Apollo rushed onto the bridge, and Adama hastened to his side. The young man was out of breath and he spoke in a staccato fashion:
"Cylons . . . ambush . . . they ambushed us . . . had to leave Zac . . . no other option . . . had to leave . . . didn't want to, but had to . . . he's disabled . . . I'm going to go back and lead him in . . ."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Adama said. His mind raced, searching for a way to tell Apollo of Zac's death. The two brothers had been devoted to each other and there seemed no gentle way to break the news.
"Father," Apollo said, desperation in his voice, "I left him . . . just hanging there . . . his ship was damaged . . . I didn't know what else to do. I've made my report . . . if I don't go back . . ."
Suddenly, staring into his father's eyes, Apollo perceived their sad message.
"Zac?" he said in a weak voice. Tigh came to his side and spoke.
"Captain Apollo. Zac's ship was destroyed just short of the Fleet."
"But . . . but . . . I left him."
"You had no choice," Adama said gently.
Apollo turned away, his face pale. Adama recalled the few times when Apollo, as a child, had shown such excruciating pain. He wished he could take the man into his arms as he had once embraced a crying boy. But Apollo would, he knew, only brush off any sympathetic touch at this moment, and Adama knew enough to let his son come to terms with his own pain. Telling Apollo again that he had had no choice, the commander quickly scanned the screens of the communications panel and ordered Tigh to report.
"Captain," Tigh said, "we must know how many base ships we're dealing with."
"No base ships," Apollo replied, some strength coming back into his voice as he attended to duty. "Only attack craft. Thousands of them. I saw them hovering over—"
"You must be mistaken, Captain," Tigh said. "I mean, fighters couldn't function this far from Cylon Warbase without base ships. They don't carry sufficient fuel and—"
"No base ships!" Apollo shouted angrily. "Just fighters. Fighters lined up from here to hell. I saw them. Maybe a thousand, maybe more, maybe—"
"How do you explain it, Apollo?" Adama said, forcing his voice to remain normal in order to quell his son's natural anger.
"I don't know," Apollo said, his voice calming. "We picked up an empty tanker on our scanners. My guess is the Cylons used it to refuel for the attack. They flew to the tanker from wherever their base ships are right now."
Adama's brow furled as he processed the information Apollo was providing. It was just the data he needed, it shed light on the elusive riddle of this sudden ambush and the fake peace conference. The thought that had been nagging him ever since the alert had been sounded came into the forefront of his mind. Tigh was speaking.
"Why operate so far from base ships when—"
"It makes sense," Adama said. "It's more important that the base ships be someplace else. Get me the president. Now!"
The president's blood-drained face flashed onto the proper screen before the echo from Adama's shouted command had faded from the bridge. Behind Adar, fire raged on the Atlantia bridge. Adar was frightened—Adama hadn't seen a look like that on his face since that day at the academy when they sweated out the senior finals.
"Mr. President," Adama said, striving to control his voice. "I request permission to leave the Fleet."
"Leave the Fleet!" Adar screamed hysterically. "That's a cowardly—"
"Adar! I've reason to suspect our home planets may face imminent attack."
The president, his eyes clouding with desperation, moved out of view for a moment. The Atlantia's camera readjusted, caught the broken man leaning against a wall.
"No," Adar muttered. "You're mistaken. Got to be. It's not—not possible—I couldn't have been that wrong. Not that wrong."
"Adar, this is not time to debate the—"
"Shut up, Adama. Don't you . . . can't you . . . I've led the human race, the entire human race to ruin, to—"
"Stop considering your place in history. We've got to act, man! We've—"
"I can't . . . can't act . . . can't even think straight . . . can't—"
"Look, Adar, it's not your fault. You didn't lead us to this disaster. But we were led."
"Led? But wh—Baltar?"
"Of course Baltar, damn it!"
"No, Commander, that couldn't be. I don't believe it. I won't—"
A deafening explosion drowned out the rest of Adar's sentence. The camera, blown off its moorings, momentarily caught a picture of a section of the command bridge being ripped open, then engulfing flame rushing across, then nothing. Adama shifted his attention to the starfield, where he could see the flagship cruising in the distance. Fires could be seen blazing inside it. Suddenly, with a burst of blinding light, it blew apart, disintegrated into thousands of pieces. After a moment, there was emptiness where the Atlantia had once been.
Activity on the Galactica's bridge came to a halt, as the crew looked on in stunned silence. However, Cylon warships closed in on their own ship now, and there was little time for reverent silence. Tigh now stood beside Adama, the inevitable printouts in his hands.
"Look, sir, our long-range scanners have picked up Cylon base ships here, here, and here. That puts them well within range—striking range—of the planets Virgon, Sagitara, and—"
He could not say it, so Adama finished the sentence for him.
"I know. Caprica."
Athena, who had been helping plot the course of the Galactica and the enemy base ships on a large, translucent starfield map, turned suddenly at her father's words.
"Caprica," she whispered.
"Helm," Adama said, not looking at her, "bring us around. We're withdrawing. Colonel, we're heading for home. Plot the proper—"
"Father," Athena interrupted, coming to Adama's side, "what are you doing?"
"Sir," said Apollo, from his other side, "our ships—"
"This is necessary," Adama said. "We'll leave our ships behind to defend the Fleet."
&nb
sp; "But they can't return to us," Athena said.
"Yes, it is possible for them to return. They can use refueling stations to—"
"If the refueling stations haven't been destroyed, too," Apollo said bitterly.
"Well," Adama said, "those with enough fuel, those that can obtain enough fuel, they can, well, they can catch up as best they can."
"Sir, I must protest—" Apollo said.
"Later, please," Adama replied.
"We should tell them, transmit our intentions—"
"No. If we have any advantage left, any advantage at all, it's surprise."
Adama briefly felt anger toward his two children as they sulked back to their positions on the bridge, then he suppressed all emotion as he crisply gave the orders that transported the Galactica away from the embattled colonial forces. He tried not to notice that most of the power ships in the Fleet were in flames.
When they had moved out of range of the battle, a bridge officer announced that all electronic jamming had ceased.
"They're clearing the air for their electronic guidance systems," Apollo said.
"That means the attack is under way," Tigh said.
"No, sir," said a bridge officer, "we're picking up long-range video satellite signals. Everything looks perfectly normal at home."
Everybody's attention centered on the monitors that displayed scenes of Caprica. Adama concentrated particularly on an aerial view that showed Caprica's beautiful, pyramidal architecture to a particularly good advantage. He had a similar view in his work room at home, not far from the scene he was watching. Ila had given the holoview to him. He must not think of Ila now.
Clearly, it was a beautiful day in Caprica's capital city. A downtown area bustled with shoppers, a row of residence pyramids appeared serene. The communications board was picking up broadcast transmissions. It all looked so peaceful, so much like the scenes they had all anticipated returning to at the conclusion of the peace mission, so ordinary that Adama for a moment considered that the battle behind them had been proven a lie, a dream, and instead they now flew toward a glorious reality.
"Commander," Tigh said quietly, "perhaps—perhaps we're in time. Or maybe, maybe the Cylon attack on our Fleet was just some action of a dissident faction, a small anti-peace movement trying to cause trouble . . ."
"Not likely, Tigh," Adama said. "Not likely."
The wave of Cylon warships appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere, on a screen adjacent to the home-planet views.
Serina's eyes teared from the steady glaring light bouncing off the fronts of the all-glass shopping-mall buildings. In the middle of giving orders to her technicians about where to set up the TV equipment, she whispered into the microphone of her makeup kit, told it to come up with something to alter the tear level in her eyes. It produced a sturdy, treated tissue with which she dabbed away the offending moisture. Besides acting as a sponge, it also medically soothed her eyes' irritation.
As she attended to her work, many startled passers-by stopped to stare at her—the price of being a media personality known all over Caprica. For herself, she had grown tired of the face known to millions. It was beautiful, sure—with all that auburn hair, plus the green eyes, and the full sensuous mouth, not to mention the slim, curvaceous figure that had become the Caprican ideal of beauty—but when you had to check it out daily, almost hourly, on monitors, verifying that it was suitable for general viewing, you could easily get damn sick of such comeliness.
Her ear-receiver announced thirty seconds to air time, and she got into position in front of the camera. As the count worked down to zero, she spot-checked the scene immediately behind her. She was pleased with the beauty of the flower arrangements, especially the raised quarter-circle of brightly colored flowers spelling out the word PEACE. Above the word were spread the flags of the twelve colonies. How impressive, she thought, and what a marvelous backdrop for the celebration that's going to break loose when the peace is officially announced. The count reached zero, the red light came on, and Serina began her speech.
"Serina here, at the Caprica Presidium, where preparations continue as they have continued through the night for the ceremonies that will commence when the long-awaited announcement is beamed here for the peace conference. Even though it's early dawn here, large crowds of people have gathered all around the Presidium complex. Anticipation is growing as Capricans ready themselves to usher in a new era of peace. So far, details of the armistice meetings are not coming in as hoped for because of an unusual electrical interference blocking out interstellar communication. We've not yet even received official announcements regarding the rendezvous with the Cylon emissaries. However, as soon as information is available you will see first pictures of what has been described as the most significant event since—"
The sound of a distant rumbling explosion was followed by a closer earsplitting noise of shattering glass as windows and door panels all around the Presidium broke simultaneously, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. The cameraman pointed in a direction behind Serina and to her left. She turned and looked that way. People near her had stopped working. Most of them looked back toward the area where the explosion had occurred. A few hurried past her, toward the mall exit. Farther away some raucous shouting began. Serina beckoned toward her cameraman and soundwoman, while still addressing the camera.
"Excuse me. Something's happened. C'mon, Morel, Prina, let's see what it is. Excuse me sir, madam, could you let us by please? I don't know what it was, but it sounded to me like some kind of explosion. Perhaps some sabotage from dissidents, if there are such a thing as dissidents on Caprica. Listen to that crackle of glass underfoot. You picking that up, Prina? Yes? Fine. I really don't know what—wait, here comes someone. Ma'am, could you tell me what—I guess she's not telling anybody anything. She looked scared, I thought. Maybe you noticed. Wait a minute, let's see if we can—excuse me, pardon me."
Elbowing her way through the milling crowd while maintaining continual check to see that her crew followed her, Serina forced her way to an open spot. Morel, her cameraman, quickly set up the camera and nodded to her to begin.
"I still haven't figured out what—oh, my God! Look at that, will you! Morel, get that on camera, quick!"
Morel pointed the camera where she directed, at the horizon beyond the city where a huge brilliant fireball was rising like a drifting but erratic sun. It was followed by another, just as huge and just as bright.
"A tremendous explosion," Serina said, looking toward her soundwoman to make sure it had been recorded. When the aftershock rumble faded, she resumed her commentary. "Two explosions. You saw them on camera. People are beginning to run in all directions. This is terrible, horrible."
She hoped her voice was not giving away her feeling that it was exciting, also.
"Nobody seems to know—"
She was interrupted by a Cylon warship streaking across the sky, shooting bursts from laser weapons into the crowd. Around her people started to fall. My God, Serina thought, this is real! It's war! It's not just a disaster, it's—
A pyramid to her left exploded with a thunderous roar, a monolithic building farther away started to fall forward, splitting away from its foundation, pieces of it falling onto a running mob. The whole street began to rock and Serina fell unglamourously into a clump of greenery. She looked up; Morel was steadily aiming the camera her way.
"Not at me, Morel. The explosions, the fire. This is terrible. Ladies and gentlemen, it's terrible, someone's bombing Caprica City. It looks like Cylon—"
A fighter swinging low over the city made her duck her head into the bushes. It fired in her direction. A young woman running by her plunged to the ground. Standing up, Serina started to go to her aid, realized suddenly she was dead.
"She's dead. My God, she's—Morel, Prina, we better get under cover, we better—"
Throngs of people ran by her, jostled her, almost made her fall again. More explosions, screams, planes firing. Morel continued to point the cam
era at her.
"It's hopeless," she said. "People are dying all around me. I don't even know if we're still on the air. I see a small child over there, running for his—Look out! Look—"
Another low flying plane released another volley of laser fire. Morel was hit along with his camera. Sparks flew from the splitting camera as Morel fell to the ground. Prina started to run, abandoning her soundboard. Serina threw down the microphone, ran toward the young boy she had seen chasing after an animal. Another swooping attack fighter came directly at them, its laser cannon at full blast. Diving, Serina pushed the child away from the burning laser path before it reached them. Holding the trembling child close to her, she watched an entire wave of fighters scream by, their weapons indiscriminately adding to the awesome destruction. A pillar of concrete crashed a few feet away. Serina tried to ignore the yells of pain amid the rubble. Something fell upon her, and suddenly there was no air.
One of her arms was still free and she could move it. She began frantically digging toward the surface, resisting the driving impulse to take a breath. Her arm broke through. She frenetically shaped an escape hatch in the dirt and pulled herself and the child into the air. After taking a quick inhalation, she pulled the child all the way out of the hole and checked him over to ensure he was all right. He was a small boy, about six years old.
"Don't try to move for a minute," she said to him.
The boy began to cry and Serina pulled him to her, comforting him.
"Everything's going to be all right," she said.
"Muffit," the boy said, "where's Muffit?"
"Who?"
"My daggit. My daggit. Where is he—"
"Your daggit. Oh, I'm sure he's fine."
Daggits, animals native to Caprica, had been easily domesticated by the first colonists and had become the favorite choice of pet among younger children. Parents liked the four-legged, short-furred rascals because, in spite of their playfulness, they always protected children. Serina smiled. She was continually amazed by the unique ways children focused their concentration. This boy, unaware of the meaning of the Cylon invasion, was more concerned about his lost pet than the devastation around him. He probably thought finding the daggit would set everything right again.
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