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 Wakefield. 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 hull 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.
As Gaeta’s count reached zero, the room surrounding them seemed to flex, all the angles changing at once, like a four-sided prism distorting and flattening, and finally folding in upon itself. The moment itself seemed to stretch out, as the fabric of space-time bent and folded …
If an outside eye had been looking closely and quickly enough, it might have seen the ship twisting in upon itself, for a fraction of an instant—before it vanished with a diamond flash …
And half a solar system away, it reappeared in the same way, and unfolded into the sky above the gas giant planet of Ragnar. Directly below, in the upper atmosphere of the planet, was the whirlpool of a massive storm, a reddish-tinged mark against the dreary olive green of the rest of the clouds.
Adama looked around at the monitors, but the information he needed was not there. “Report,” he called quietly.
Gaeta ran quickly from the FTL console to the nav, where he worked with the nav officer. “Taking a bearing now.” Frowning at the readouts, he finally straightened. His face was sober, but by the time he had finished delivering his report, he was grinning. “We appear to be in synchronous orbit, directly above the Ragnar Anchorage.”
Shouts and hand-clapping broke out around the CIC. Gaeta raised a hand in salute, and reached out to shake the hands of his nearest fellow officers.
At the plotting table, Adama actually smiled. Unbelievable. He glanced at his XO. “The old girl’s got some life in her still.”
Tigh laughed briefly. “I never doubted it for a moment.”
Nodding, Adama called out, “Lieutenant Gaeta—secure the FTL drive and bring the sublight engines to full power.” He turned back to his XO. “Colonel Tigh—”
“Sir.”
“Let’s update your chart for a course … right down into the eye of the storm.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Tigh began happily rearranging the transparent charts on the plotting table, the voice on the PA called: “Attention, Magazine Safety Officers, report to the CIC …”
Preparations were underway for the rearming of Galactica.
In her bunkroom, Kara Thrace was finally getting out of her flight-suit, and trying not to come unglued at the news of the shocking losses of this very young war. Most especially, the loss of Lee Adama. It was like being hit with Zak’s death all over again. As she opened her locker, revealing a small mirror on the inside of the locker door, her gaze fell on a photo she’d kept stuck in the mirror’s frame—a photo of herself with Zak, laughing and hugging, taken just a couple of weeks before Zak’s death. Though he was a shy man, laughing was always easy for Zak to do; he had eyes that just naturally seemed joyous, full of life. It was one of the reasons she loved him.
Kara let out a long breath. She stretched the picture out to its full original length, revealing the third person who had been folded out of view: Lee Adama, the serious one, the born pilot and ace student. For all their bickering, she’d loved Lee like the brother he’d almost become to her, and maybe a little more. The ache this picture produced in her heart was doubled, now.
Blinking back tears, she gazed at the picture, blurry to her now, and murmured softly, “Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. Take the souls of your sons and daughters lost this day …” She paused, swallowing back the lump in her throat, and continued, “ … especially that of Lee Adama, into your hands …”
Hangar Bay B was a quiet place now, and somber. The bodies of sixty-some fallen crewmembers were stretched out in neat rows on the floor, zipped into ticketed white body bags. They weren’t all there, of course; many had not been recovered—the pilots lost in battle, and the crewmen swept out into space during the emergency vent. But those who were here served as a sobering reminder of the price this ship, this crew, had paid already.
Launch Officer Kelly walked down the rows, carrying a fistful of dog tags, a grave expression on his face. He had not forgotten, nor would he ever forget, that many of those lying here might yet be alive if the XO and Chief Tyrol—and he—had not killed eighty-five people in the process of saving the ship. The fact that it was necessary did not take away the burning pain and anger.
More victims were being carried in past him. And he was certain this was not the end. He hoped there would be enough room in here for all those who would die before it was over.
CHAPTER 31
COLONIAL ONE
President Laura Roslin came to, groggily, and pushed herself painfully to a sitting position. Where am I? It took a moment to realize that she’d been sprawled on the deck of the cockpit. The two pilots were in their seats shaking their heads and rubbing their necks—they must have blacked out, as well. Power was just coming back on, the console lights flickering to life. What the devil just happened? Two Cylon missiles coming at us … She last remembered
having about three seconds left to live—three seconds to regret her foolish stubbornness in forbidding a Jump to safety. Because of the other ship. We would have left them to die. Instead, I stupidly decided we should all die …
Except they hadn’t.
“Captain Russo,” she said, struggling to her feet, her voice a raspy croak. “Why are we still here?” She steadied herself on the back of the pilot’s seat, squinting over Captain Russo’s shoulder.
The captain’s voice wasn’t much stronger than hers. “I’m not sure. I think the missiles’ warheads went off prematurely. Maybe Captain Adama can explain. Do you know where he—?”
Laura suddenly remembered. “He said he was heading below. You don’t suppose—”
Russo cast a sharp glance over his shoulder. “We’d better get down there. Eduardo, you have the controls.”
Racing down the staircase to the cargo deck, Laura was first to see Lee Adama sprawled on the deck unconscious, near some very large coils that had been offloaded from Galactica. Captain Russo grabbed a first-aid kit and was right behind her as she ran to Lee and crouched at his side. “Captain Apollo!”
He stirred and blinked his eyes open. With Captain Russo helping from the opposite side, she brought him to a sitting position. Lee’s eyes slowly came back into focus. “That was fun,” he croaked.
Laura and Russo looked at each other, and suddenly began laughing, even though they had no idea what they were laughing about.
“I think it worked,” Lee said woozily, as he struggled to get up.
“What exactly did you do?” Laura asked.
Blinking, he said, “I basically just used … the energy coils to manipulate the p-power of the hyper-drive.” Breathing hard, he continued, “Captain, you … spun up the hyperdrive … before the president ordered you to stay. I used the coils to h-harness that energy and p-p”—he struggled to speak—“put out a big pulse of electro … mag-magnetic energy that must have … disabled the warheads. Ohhhh—” He started to collapse, but Laura and Russo caught him and supported him until he could stand again. “I’m— I’m hoping—that it looked like a nuclear explosion.”
Battlestar Galactica Page 15
