by Peter David
It never gets easier.
The truth of that continued to echo through his brain, and he did what he always did in these situations: He compartmentalized his mind. The concerns that if he had to mourn the loss of his remaining son, he might crack completely . . . the notion that, sooner or later, Apollo and Starbuck’s luck would have to run out, they simply could not go on beating the odds forever . . . all of this he tucked away in one little chamber of his brain, a small compartment with a door on it that he would slam, turn the key in, lock, and then go on about his business. His fears and terrors could make as much noise from within their imprisonment as they wanted, but it was all muffled and meaningless. And his face never reflected an instant of it.
“Lieutenant Gaeta, ETA on the Jump, please,” called out Adama.
Felix Gaeta scanned the readouts as he worked on programming the next Jump into the ship’s computer. It wasn’t as if he had to do the Faster Than Light calculations from scratch every time. He routinely updated them so that he would be ready to Jump the fleet to a safe location as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, there had to be systems, procedures followed and double-checks made, lest a miscalculation send the Galactica, the Pegasus, and the entire civilian fleet leaping directly into a planetary body. Certainly that would solve the problem of constantly being pursued by the Cylons, but it was an unacceptably terminal means of addressing it. “Three minutes, twenty seconds, Admiral,” Gaeta called out, his voice calm and level and not sounding the least bit rushed despite the fact that a fleet of robots was trying to kill them. He realized he was scratching his right hand and forced himself to stop. It was a nervous condition he’d recently developed, a response to the constant stress. It was starting to give him a rash, so he was forcing himself to deal with it.
“See if you can shave a few seconds off that,” Tigh said, stepping around to Gaeta’s station. “Every single one counts.”
Adama winced a bit inwardly. He knew it was Tigh’s way to be brusque, to demand the best and more than the best from his officers. But he didn’t feel there was anything remotely constructive in what Tigh had just said. Certainly Gaeta knew that every second counted. This wasn’t a news flash or an observation that had just come to Tigh’s attention. However he wasn’t about to remonstrate his XO in the midst of a battle situation. The depressing thing was that he knew that, even if he scolded Tigh about it in the privacy of his quarters, it still wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. Tigh would either apologize and say he would try to do better, or he would say that Gaeta had in fact looked at him sideways two days earlier and he was letting him know who was boss. Either way, nothing was going to change anytime soon. Adama was beginning to think that he had seen it all.
“Never seen that before,” Starbuck muttered.
Her words, even though they were spoken to herself, sounded in the ear piece of Lee Adama, who was in the midst of engaging a Cylon raider that was coming right at him. “Starbuck, this is Apollo, I didn’t copy that!” he said, firing at the raider that deftly angled away from him.
Starbuck didn’t answer immediately. She was studying the battlefield before her. At least there were fewer raiders this time. The number of Cylons assailing them seemed to have dwindled since they had blown up the Resurrection ship, the vessel that had functioned to “resurrect” Cylon agents after they were killed. She strongly suspected there was a connection, although she wasn’t sure what it was . . .
Head in the game, Starbuck, get your head in the game.
She barrel rolled and swung around toward a Cylon raider who was coming at her, guns blazing. Except . . .
Except . . .
“They’re shooting wide!” she said as deep space was filled with Vipers going up against Cylon raiders. “I’m not even dodging the frakking things! It’s like they’re not even shooting at me!”
“Of course not, they’re shooting at Galactica! Or the fleet!”
“Negative, I say again, negative, Apollo,” Starbuck insisted. “I’m tracking trajectory! They’re shooting at . . . at nothing!”
“Why the frak would they be doing that?” said Apollo. “Trouble with target lock?”
“There aren’t people in those things shooting their guns, Apollo! Those ships are Cylons, remember? It’s like saying their whole fleet has a giant head cold and can’t see straight!”
Even as she spoke, she continued to press the attack. And now Apollo saw what Starbuck was talking about as the Cylons essentially did everything they could to stay out of the Vipers’ way while returning fire that was woefully off target. Apollo hadn’t been tagged even once.
“Not hitting them? Are you sure?” asked Adama.
Petty Officer Second Class Anastasia Dualla said, “Reconfirming it, Admiral. Starbuck first noticed it, then Apollo, and now Hotdog and Kat are saying so as well. Either the Cylons have forgotten how to shoot, or they’re deliberately aiming wide of our people. And they’re not drawing appreciably closer to Galactica.”
“Admiral,” Gaeta informed him, “we’re ready to make the Jump.”
“Shall I recall the Vipers, Admiral?” asked Dualla, leaning toward her communications board in that slightly hunched manner she had when they were in the midst of a battle.
Adama’s mind was racing. He had come to know the clockwork repetition of the Cylon mind, or at least he thought he had. Why in the world would they start changing tactics now? Something seemed wrong.
“Admiral . . .” Dualla prompted.
“He heard you, Dualla,” Tigh said sharply, and Adama realized that Tigh was standing near his shoulder. The decisive sound of his voice and defiant look of his posture would never have betrayed the confusion in his eyes over Adama’s hesitation.
“He’ll give the order when he’s ready.” Then, in a low voice that only Adama could hear, Tigh murmured, “Which will be anytime now, right?”
“Tell the Vipers to buy us more time. Make sure the Cylons keep their distance,” said Adama said in a calm, almost detached voice. Then he continued, “Colonel . . . scramble a raptor for immediate launch. Lieutenant Gaeta, relay the Jump coordinates to the raptor. Tell them I need a recon mission stat. In and out. If they linger at the Jump point even one second, that’s one second too long.”
Neither Tigh nor Gaeta nor any of the rest of the crew in CIC even pretended to understand, but fortunately enough, understanding an order wasn’t necessary for following it.
So it was that a raptor, under the guidance of Lieutenant Kathleen “Puppeteer” Shay (so called for her compulsion to have her hands in so many things), hurled itself into the ether while the Vipers continued to fight a delaying action against the Cylons.
The call that came through seconds later from the Pegasus didn’t especially surprise Adama. He picked up the phone and said into it, “Pegasus, this is Galactica actual.”
“Galactica, this is Pegasus actual,” came the voice of Commander Barry Garner. The former engineering chief had been pressed into service as commander of Battlestar Pegasus after the assassination of Admiral Cain by a Cylon operative, followed by the scandalous murder of Commander Jack Fisk, who had had deep ties with the black market trade. Garner, who very likely had never figured to serve as his vessel’s CO, nevertheless did his best to be up to the challenge. If he ever felt overwhelmed by what was expected of him, he never let it show, a technique of which Adama approved. “Admiral, all due respect, what are we waiting for? Our Vipers are battling the Cylons right alongside yours, but it’s not as if we need an extended workout.”
“We’re investigating something,” Adama said cautiously. Under the circumstances, it was never safe to assume that the Cylons hadn’t found a way of listening in on their communications. In fact, it was probably safer to assume they had found a way and to act with appropriate caution. “Stand by.”
“Stand by?”
“Yes, Commander, stand by,” said Adama with particular emphasis on rank, a not-so-subtle reminder of exactly who was in charge.
Puppeteer, handling the controls with the vast confidence she always displayed in such situations, folded space around herself and leaped to the coordinates that Gaeta had conveyed to her. She had never quite adjusted to the sensation. It wasn’t enough of a reaction that it hampered her ability to handle a raptor or get her job done. It was just a second or two of nausea that swept through her, and then she was able to mentally right herself and get on with whatever her mission was.
This time was no exception. Puppeteer braced herself as the FTL drive kicked in and propelled her to the new destination that was intended to be safe haven—albeit temporary, of course, thanks to the damned Cylons constantly nipping at their heels. Not for the first time, Puppeteer wondered if there was ever going to be a time when humanity could just take a long, deep breath of relief and go about its business without worrying about the damned toasters leaping on them like jackals on lions.
Space twisted around her in half a heartbeat, using technology and scientific theory that she couldn’t have explained if someone had put a gun to her head. Still, it was like walking into a room and flipping a light switch. As long as the light illuminated the room, who gave a damn how it worked.
She was never actually able to perceive the Jump while she was in transition. It wasn’t as if some vast vortex of stars swirled around her in a hypnotic haze, providing a tunnel through which her ship hurtled. She was simply in one place, then she was in another, with a slight sense of having been stretched like a rubber band and then having snapped back almost instantaneously.
The FTL drive spat her out into the new coordinates, and she felt that same typical instant of nausea, which she pushed away from her.
Then space around her seemed to explode.
Acting completely on reflex and survival instinct, she jammed the raptor’s stick and sent the ship spiraling backwards. Even as she did so, her eye had just enough time to catch sight of something, and it took her brain another second or so to process what she was seeing.
“Frak me!” she shouted as she reactivated the FTL drive. Blasts continued to erupt around her. The ship jolted and she felt a moment of panic—not just from the prospect of dying, but from doing so without being able to get back to Galactica with her mission completed. She’d been hit—only a glancing blow. But they were zeroing in on her, and she couldn’t count on her luck to hold up. The FTL roared to life once more as she slammed the ship forward, and suddenly there was a blinding explosion dead in front of her, and everything went black.
“How much longer do we wait?” Tigh said. There was nothing in his tone that suggested he was challenging Adama’s authority, but he was clearly getting a bit apprehensive about the delay.
“Just long enough,” replied Adama. He had actually calculated exactly how long he intended to wait for a report from the raptor, balancing that against the apparently questionable Cylon assault. He was certain there would come a point where the Cylons would drop the miss-on-purpose assault and start firing for real, and he factored that in to a mental countdown that was running rapidly toward zero. But he didn’t feel the need to say all that to Tigh, and Tigh—being the officer he was with the long history that he and Adama shared—would never consider pushing harder on the question.
Ten, the mental clock ticked down in Adama’s head, nine, eight, seven . . .
Dualla suddenly turned and said, “Admiral! Raptor One is back! She’s reporting . . .” Dualla’s eyes widened.
“Dualla,” Adama prompted, time running out.
“Sir, Puppeteer says the Jump point is swarming with Cylons! She says it was like space was alive with them! She can’t even begin to guess how many there were!”
Colonel Tigh paled slightly upon hearing the news, and there was a moment of stunned shock in the CIC. Gaeta’s hand had been poised over the FTL controls the entire time. Now, as if all feeling had fled from his fingers, he slowly lowered it while staring in astonishment at Adama.
It never gets easier.
“An ambush,” growled Adama. “They’re trying to herd us right into it.” He paused and then said, “Dualla . . . get the horses back into the barn.”
“All Vipers, return to Galactica immediately.”
Knowing that he was about to order his officer to roll the dice with the last survivors of humanity, Adama said, “Lieutenant, plot a blind Jump. Best guess. Get us out of here.”
Gaeta visibly gulped, but it wasn’t as if the order was a complete surprise to him. It wasn’t the first time that he’d been required to do such a thing. He’d accomplished it successfully before, but it was always a white-knuckle maneuver. Acting as the thorough professional that Adama expected him to be, Gaeta said, “Aye, sir,” and number crunched as fast as he could. By the time the last of the Vipers had returned to the bay, he had coordinates transmitted to the rest of the fleet . . . prompting an immediate, albeit not unanticipated, communiqué from Garner on the Pegasus. “Are these coordinates right, Admiral?” he asked. “They’re different from—”
“I know that, Chief. The previous coordinates are unusable. This is our best guess.”
There was the briefest hesitation, and then Garner said coolly, “Well, then, this should be fairly interesting.”
“Yes.” Adama hung up the phone, then turned to Gaeta. Gaeta was staring right at him, waiting for confirmation. All Adama had to do was nod, and then Gaeta keyed in the final coordinates.
“FTL engines on line,” Gaeta said. He glanced just once at his own hand, feeling that the entirety of humanity was residing in it, waiting to see what he was going to do. Then the FTL drive kicked in and the fleet vanished from the site, hurtling into the complete unknown.
A split instant later, they reemerged into normal space.
A blazing star hung directly in front of them.
“Frak!” exploded from Gaeta’s lips.
“Full reverse thrust! All ships!” shouted Adama, and the order was instantly relayed. It wasn’t entirely necessary, considering that when one is hurtling right into a star, it doesn’t take much to realize that the best direction to be heading at that moment is anywhere other than forward.
They were still thousands of miles away from the star, but distances in space could be eaten up very quickly, especially by ships that were dropping out of light speed. Furthermore, the Galactica wasn’t built for maneuverability. It didn’t corner worth a damn, and it wasn’t designed to stop on a mark. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. With no friction in space, the only force to halt the Galactica was the reverse thrusters. Unfortunately, they were already being acted upon by another force entirely: the star’s gravity field. It was just beginning to act on them and Adama had no desire to pit the strength of his ship’s engines against the pulling power of billions of tons of blazing gas. Worst-case scenario, they would be yanked in and toasted in a matter of seconds. Best-case scenario, the Galactica would be ripped in half. Neither was an appealing prospect.
The smaller ships were able to halt themselves easily, but then they madly scrambled to get out of the way, for the Pegasus—bringing up the rear—wasn’t slowing any easier than the Galactica. The civilian transports cut right, left, up, down and sideways, any direction they could go relative to the aft Battlestar that would easily smash them to bits if it collided with them.
The prospect of being rear-ended by the Pegasus occurred to Adama, but he had to deal with one crisis at a time. Although he might have been imagining it, he thought he could hear the hull of the mighty warship screaming in protest as the engines labored to halt the ship’s forward progress. No . . . he wasn’t imagining it. Above all the sounds of reports and orders being relayed and confirmed, people were looking around in response to what sounded like groaning, as if the ship were a senior citizen being forced to run laps. It wasn’t the first time that Adama was being reminded that the Galactica had been schedu
led for retirement, to be transformed into a museum due to its age. You and me both, we could use the rest, he thought grimly.
The Galactica hurtled toward a collision with the star, and the screens adjusted automatically to dim the blinding brightness so the crew’s retinas wouldn’t be burned away from looking at it. Adama had several seconds to ponder the irony of that: that they wouldn’t go blind while they were exploding in the nuclear heart of a celestial furnace.
The entire vessel trembled even more violently, and it was slowing and slowing, but it was going to be too close. And then, ever so gradually, the ship slowed to a halt and then stopped. Seconds later, the full force of the reverse thrusters finally accomplished the job, and the Galactica started to move backwards.
“Pegasus hasn’t stopped yet! She’s coming right at us!” Gaeta called out.
“Cut thrusters! Brace for impact!” shouted Adama. He gripped the nearest railings. He saw others closing their eyes involuntarily, although not looking at the screens certainly wasn’t going to ward off disaster.
The Pegasus was approaching them like some vast harbinger of doom, and suddenly they saw the vehicle cutting hard to port. It was going to be an unspeakably near thing.
“Come on, come on, turn,” growled Tigh.
And then, as if in response to Tigh’s imploring, the vast battleship moved sharply to port even as Galactica’s own reverse thrusters hauled them away. The nose of the ship angled downward in relation to the Galactica, and even as the Pegasus seemed gargantuan in their screens, it then dropped straight down and away from them. Adama could have sworn he’d seen the terrified faces of people on the Pegasus, their faces pressed against viewing ports, watching the two behemoths narrowly avoid each other.
A long, tense silence filled the CIC, punctuated only by the many sounds that the various instruments in the command center routinely made. And then Adama turned to Gaeta, who looked as if all the blood had drained from his face and was somewhere down around his shoes, and said as calmly as could be, “You trying to make things exciting, Lieutenant?”
