* * * *
Galactica, Combat Information Center
Throughout the CIC, tension was growing as the enlisted crew ran through checklists and startup procedures for the FTL Jump, with Gaeta and Tigh overseeing their work. Commander Adama was sidetracked from his study of the planetary and tactical charts by Petty Officer Dualla handing him a printout. "It's from Colonial One, sir," she said.
"Colonial One? What the hell ship is Colonial One? The president's dead, isn't he?"
"Yes sir," said Dualla evenly. "The new president, by succession, is former Education Secretary Laura Roslin. That's the first part of the message."
"The first part? What's the second part?" Adama put his glasses back on and read the printout. He squinted at the message in disbelief, and as he reread it, his jaw tightened with anger. "Is this a joke?" He looked at Dualla. "Are they within voice range?"
"Yes sir," said Dualla. She already had her headset on, and she sidled around a corner of the console to the transmission panel. "Colonial One, this is Galactica . . ."
Lee Adama was sitting in the copilot's seat in the transport cockpit, awaiting the call from Galactica. He knew it wouldn't take long. Of all the conversations in the universe he could imagine, this was probably the one he least wanted to have. The thought of it was crowding all other thoughts from his mind, including ones that kept trying to come back, such as, were all his friends on Caprica dead now, and what about his mother and her fiancé? These things weighed heavily on the back of his mind—and yet, the scratchy voice on the wireless drove them once more out of his thoughts.
"Colonial One, Galactica . . . Galactica Actual wishes to speak with Apollo."
He had to struggle to get his breath. What was his father going to say? As if he didn't know. "This is Apollo. Go ahead, Actual." He pursed his lips and waited for a reply.
It was a minute or so in coming. Captain Russo fiddled with the wireless tuning, as if worried that they were missing the signal. Finally they heard Commander Adama's voice:
"How are you"—they could hear the commander clearing his throat—"is the ship all right?"
Lee could not keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "We're both fine. Thanks for asking." Captain Russo glanced over at him, but said nothing.
"Is your ship's FTL functioning?"
Lee glanced at Russo, who nodded. "That's affirmative."
"Then you're ordered to bring yourself . . . and all your ship's passengers . . . to the rendezvous point." Pause. "Acknowledge."
Lee hesitated. "Acknowledge . . . receipt of message."
"What the hell does that mean?" the distant voice thundered.
"It means, 'I heard you,' " Lee said impatiently.
His father's voice sharpened. "You're going to have to do a lot better than that, Captain."
"We're engaged in rescue operations. By order of the president." Your commander-in-chief.
"You are to abort your mission immediately."
Lee winced. "The president has given me a direct order."
"You're talking about the secretary of education. We're in the middle of a war! And you're taking orders from a schoolteacher!" Adama's voice shook the little wireless speaker; his anger practically jumped out into the cockpit of the transport.
Lee was aware of the president coming back into the cockpit, and listening to the conversation. But before he could either gauge her reaction or reply to his father, a beeping sound from the dradis display interrupted the argument.
"We've got trouble," Captain Russo said.
"Uh, stand by, Galactica." He leaned toward Captain Russo. "What?"
Russo tapped the dradis screen. "Inbound Cylon fighters." He reached and pressed a series of switches. "Spinning up FTL. We have no defense against the fighters. Eduardo, give me a plot."
At that, President Laura Roslin came forward, putting her glasses on. "How long till they get here?"
Russo look startled at her reappearance. "ETA, two minutes."
"He's right," said Lee. "We have to go. Now."
"No," said Laura, shaking her head.
"Madame President, we can't defend this ship—"
"We're not going to abandon all these people."
"But sir—if we stay—"
"I've made my decision, Captain." She spoke clearly and unemotionally, her eyes focused outside the cockpit, searching for the Cylons.
He stared at her in disbelief for a moment. She was as pig-headed and irrational as his father. "You're the president," he said, peeling off his headset and climbing out of his seat to squeeze past her.
She looked startled at his sudden departure. Eduardo moved quickly from the jump seat back into the copilot's seat. "All right, then," she said.
"Permission to go below?" Lee asked, on his way out. He didn't wait for an answer. He had less than two minutes to act before the Cylons would destroy them. She might think that he was jumping to his Viper—probably even hoping that—but he had another idea. A ridiculously long shot, but what other choice did they have?
He made his way at a run, down to the cargo deck.
He had seen a small control panel down there . . .
In the CIC, an enlisted man darted from the remote sensor console over to where Lieutenant Gaeta was working on the FTL solution. After a hurried conference, Gaeta darted just as quickly to Commander Adama's side. Tigh followed his movement with concern. "Sir," said Gaeta, "we have remote sensor telemetry from Captain Apollo's position, and two enemy fighters are closing in on her port . . ."
Oh frak no. Adama grabbed the headset he had torn off in disgust a minute ago, and tried to reach Colonial One. "Colonial One—this is Galactica! Apollo—you have inbound enemy fighters coming toward you! Get out of there! Apollo! Lee—get—Lee—!"
The bloom on the dradis screen told him he was too late.
In the cockpit of the transport, Laura saw and felt a blinding blast that hurled her against the back door of the compartment and took the world away.
In the CIC, the dradis display flickered, sorting through static, then went clear, showing no signal returns from the area where a minute ago there had been two civilian craft and two hostiles. Then the screen went dark, as the remote sensors were caught by the blast. They were all gone. Sensors, ships, everything.
Adama watched in disbelief, and finally bowed his head. He could say nothing. He could only fight to keep the pain from showing on his face. Lee. Gone. Why? Why Lee? He stood that way for a very long time.
Finally he heard Gaeta's voice through the inner static of the pain: "Estimate a fifty-kiloton thermonuclear detonation."
Nuke. Fusion bomb. Your only hope was to Jump out of there. Why didn't you? Adama's face creased with pain. But he could not, dared not, show any more emotion in front of the crew. Not now.
Gaeta's voice continued, "Cylons moving off. Sir."
Around him, everyone was silent. Everyone wishing they could help, wishing they could change it, wishing they could just say something. Eventually Tigh came up behind him and rested his hands on Adama's shoulders. And stood with him. Just stood.
The others slowly returned to their posts.
Adama, bracing himself on the plotting table, forced out the words, in a low, tortured voice: "Resume . . . Jump . . . prep . . ."
As everyone moved, slowly, Tigh raised his voice and snapped the command: "Resume Jump prep!"
Soon the attention-tone sounded, and Dualla's voice echoed throughout the ship. "Attention all hands. Jump prep underway. Set Condition Two throughout the ship. Set Condition Two throughout the ship."
Chief Tyrol watched on a monitor, holding his breath, as the last of the Vipers came in for a landing. There was no way this could be an easy landing, not with all the buckling in the landing bay caused by the nuke. But this particular approach was heart-stopping; it was Starbuck, and her ship was not controlling properly in slow flight. She was yawing wildly, nearly hitting the side of the bay. It bounced and skidded as she hit the deck. Finally the Viper came
to a stop on top of the hangar elevator, and Tyrol's crew wasted no time bringing it down for servicing.
When Tyrol got a close look at the condition of the fighter, he was beside himself. "Lieutenant! What did you do to my Viper?"
Starbuck was just coming down from the cockpit, yanking her flight-suit jacket open. She looked exhausted; her flight-suit was soaked with sweat; her face was an angry scowl. Squinting up at the tail section of the Viper, she saw what the chief was so upset about. "I wondered why the engine gave out," she said matter-of-factly. A big chunk had been torn out of engine number one, the topmost engine in the cluster, and along with it a good part of the vertical stabilizer. It was a miracle she and the whole craft weren't a cinder now.
Chief Tyrol circled around behind. "We're gonna have to pull the whole mounting. Get the high-lift." He stepped up to Lieutenant Thrace. "How did you manage to even fly this thing, much less land it?"
She seemed to be getting angrier by the moment. She yanked off her gloves. "That's not something I want to think about right now. Where's Prosna? He has to get that frakking gimbal locked, or I'll have his ass."
Chief Tyrol looked at her. "He's dead . . . sir. He died in the fire."
Suddenly she was a lot less like "Starbuck" and more like a stunned Kara Thrace. "How many did we lose?"
"Eighty-five."
Kara absorbed that shocking figure for a second, and her face narrowed and seemed to harden. "Right." She turned and strode away.
"Oh, Lieutenant," Tyrol called.
She turned darkly.
With difficulty, Tyrol said, "I don't know if you heard about Apollo, but—"
She looked completely defeated. "What?"
He couldn't say it. He could only look down, imagining how the Old Man must be feeling right now. His last son . . .
She suddenly got it. The blow, oddly, made her stand a little straighter, as though in defiance against the stream of bad news. "Right," she said. Swallowing, she began again to leave, then once more turned back. "Any word on Sharon?"
This time it was Tyrol who felt utterly defeated. He knew the score, even if no one was willing to say it. "No, sir," he said, looking up to examine the tail section of another Viper.
Kara hesitated, nodded, then headed off to the wardroom.
Tyrol suddenly felt paralyzed, surrounded by people, machines, things that urgently needed to be done. He could barely stand up straight, much less lead the crew. Specialist Cally, who had observed the exchange, stepped closer. "You okay, Chief?" she asked in a strained voice. She had only just hauled herself back together, after losing Prosna.
Tyrol couldn't answer. No, I'm not okay. Neither are you. None of us is. Finally he found his voice enough to whisper, "Get back to work." And he turned and walked quickly away.
Chapter 29
Raptor 312, Caprica Escape Orbit
Sharon Valerii, too, seemed less like a "Boomer" just now and more like a sorrow-weary young pilot. In order to conserve fuel and avoid attracting unwanted attention, she had cut propulsion once she'd achieved a transitional high orbit from which escape velocity was just a short burn away. There was little flying to do at the moment, but she couldn't help fiddling and checking.
When a scan of the area revealed no Cylons nearby, she decided to risk launching a communications drone. The ten-year-old boy she'd brought aboard was still sitting in the right-hand seat, watching her every move. Her hand on the launch button, she counted down, "Three . . . two . . . one . . . launch."
There was a little shudder through the deck, and a momentary flash of light as the drone streaked out from the bottom of the hull and twinkled off into space. "Drone deployed . . . and transmitting," she said to the boy, watching the drone's stats.
"Now they'll come find us?" he asked in a small voice.
"Hard to say. There's a lot of interference around here," she said, lifting her voice a little to sound more optimistic than she felt. "A lot of noise. It keeps my wireless from working." She fiddled with the electronic controls, then added, "Hopefully, once that communications pod I launched gets far enough away from here, a Colonial ship will pick up the signal and start looking for us."
The boy was silent for a bit. Then he asked, "Is everyone on Caprica dead?" He looked at her with imploring eyes, asking to be corrected.
"I don't know," Sharon admitted, in a muted voice. A lump swelled in her throat as she thought about Helo.
The boy seemed to accept that. "My dad's in the Colonial fleet," he said. "His name's Colonel Wake-field. Maybe you know him?"
Sharon hesitated a moment, then shook her head.
"He's a diplomat. He goes sometimes to that station where the Cylons are supposed to meet us." The boy looked very thoughtful, very vulnerable. "They never did, though—did you know that?"
Sharon nodded.
"They told me he's missing. But I think he's dead, too."
Sharon smiled briefly, despite the sharp pang the boy's words gave her. "What's your name?"
"Boxey," he said matter-of-factly.
She nodded, offering him another tiny smile. "You know something? Both my parents died when I was little, too." Another pang, as that memory resurfaced for the second time today. The terrible accident on the mining colony of Troy, which had destroyed the dome that was the only thing keeping two hundred thousand people safe from Troy's toxic atmosphere. They had all died, including her parents. Sharon had survived only because she was away at the time, en route to Caprica and her admissions interview at the Colonial Academy.
"Where do you live now?" he asked.
With an effort, she shook off the memory. "With a bunch of other people on a ship called Galactica."
"Isn't that a battlestar?"
"That's right," Sharon said. She thought a moment. "Hey, I have an idea. Maybe you could live there, too . . ."
In the rear compartment of the Raptor, Gaius Baltar sat huddled with all the other refugee passengers. He was cold, miserable, and lonely. He had never felt so alone in his entire life. No one was speaking. He could hear nothing except the throb of pumps and the hum of equipment in the compartment surrounding him. Until . . .
"You know what I love about you, Gaius?"
The voice was familiar; so familiar, for a moment he thought it was right inside his head. He looked up and started to look around—until he froze at the sight of Natasi, seated directly across from him, wearing that red, low-cut spaghetti-strap number that drove him wild with lust.
"You're a survivor," she said softly, huskily, leaning forward until he could feel her breath.
Natasi? Here? No, that's not—
He blinked and averted his gaze for a moment, shaking his head like a dog. None of the other passengers seemed to have noticed. They were all sitting, huddled as he was, in a state of shock. The nearest one was the old woman he had helped to get on board. He shifted his gaze back to Natasi. But there was no one there. Just the old woman, and the others. Not real. I'm hallucinating.
But it sure had seemed real—Natasi had looked as real as—
He suddenly came down hard on his own thought. No, it was not Natasi. Even Natasi was not Natasi—she was a frakking Cylon. Model number six of twelve models. He began to tremble, thinking about it. Model number six. Maybe that's what I should have called her: Number Six. She didn't deserve a real name.
The old woman was looking at him curiously now, and that's when he realized he'd been starting to talk to himself. He managed a slight, tortured smile, rubbed his stubble-covered chin. And turned his thoughts back to the inside, back to where someone was trying to drive him mad. . . .
Chapter 30
Galactica
The ship was closing up as though readying itself to spin a cocoon. All the Viper patrols had returned, and the launch bay and landing bay doors rumbled closed and locked into place. In the engineering bowels of the ship, great gears and magnetic sequencers ground into action, and the entire port and starboard launch pods began to retract into the great h
ull of the ship. The entire procedure took ten minutes and forty-three seconds. When they were finished, Galactica looked noticeably leaner.
In the CIC, the Executive Officer was going around the horn with final checks: "Nav?"
"Go."
"FTL?"
"Go."
"Tactical?"
"Go."
"Flight ops?"
"Go."
"Sublight?"
"Go."
"Helm?"
"Go."
Satisfied, Colonel Tigh spoke this time to Commander Adama. "The board is green, ship reports ready to Jump, sir."
Adama was standing at the plotting table, glasses on, mood subdued. He was showing no emotion, no sign of the blow he had just suffered. He spoke without wasting a single word: "Take us to Ragnar."
Colonel Tigh turned toward the FTL console. "Lieutenant Gaeta, execute the Jump."
The attention-tone sounded as Gaeta spoke into the shipboard PA. "All decks prepare for immediate FTL Jump." Gaeta reached down to the FTL console, gripped the handle of the FTL safety interlock, and pulled it out of its repository. On the end of the chrome handle were two long, bright-glowing blue crystals. He lifted it clear of the Safety slot and inserted it carefully into the Jump slot. Once it was in place, he twisted it firmly ninety degrees to the right. The mechanism clicked into place, and several lights came on across the board.
Gaeta spoke into the PA again. "The clock is running. Jump in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . ."
On the hangar deck, everyone was scrambling to find a seat for the Jump—not because the transition would be bumpy or jerky, but because it could be so disorienting. Chief Tyrol clapped his hands, trying to get everyone moving. Specialist Cally sat uneasily on a toolbox right next to the nose of a Viper. She winced with each second of the countdown. As the count reached two, she murmured to anyone listening, "I hate this part!"
No one answered; no one needed to.
* * * *
In the CIC, Adama and Colonel Tigh stood ramrod straight, facing each other across the plotting table.
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