It was just as well Athena didn't watch. Starbuck's reactions seemed slower, somehow hesitant, as if there were some great gap between the impulse firing in his brain and the action of his hands. Too many times he just narrowly avoided Raider fire, and would have been destroyed several times over, had Boomer not been watching his back.
She looked at Apollo; he was not one to wear his feelings where anyone else might see them, but she knew him well enough to know something was tearing him up inside, some hard decision he was on the verge of making.
And then, of course, she looked once more at the monitor. It was hard to watch, but harder still to not know.
Trays and Dalton punched their turbos, extracting the last extra amount of thrust from their Vipers as the big ships moved into attack position.
Starbuck watched as the reason he was out here streaked back toward the relative safety of the Galactica. He could feel a tree of sweat forming on his back, and a trough dripping from his brow into his eyes. He blinked it away, but within microns his eyes were stinging again. He was having difficulty making his hands listen to his mental commands, as if there were some frizzort in his brain that sputtered and shorted out before the message could be translated into a language his body could understand.
It wasn't just fear causing this hesitancy, although he certainly was frightened; he had very nearly died, three weeks carved out of his life and removed like a block of stone, but he was also afraid he would freeze at the wrong moment and get those who relied upon him killed.
"We need to head back," Starbuck muttered over his comm-link, but his voice was small, his throat dry and pinched. He felt a tight band around his chest, constricting his lungs, making his heart thud like a bad engine bearing. Gods, he thought, so this is what a panic attack feels like. He decided immediately he didn't care for it.
Not that he could do anything about it except ride it out. For a few moments, Starbuck pushed it aside, thought he might be all right, and then the chest-crushing terror would come roaring back and bury itself more deeply in his heart.
"Apollo, sensors indicate the basestar is targeting us with its lasers," Tigh reported, studying the read out that scrolled past him on the screen.
The S-cube shimmered into life and Salik's holographic image appeared before Apollo. "Commander, the QSE is ready, awaiting your command."
Apollo looked at the scanner, saw the Vipers were still impossibly distant. One look at the anguish on her brother's handsome face told Athena what he was thinking. He knew what Cain said about acceptable losses, and knew what the old man would say about this, and, he would be right. But being right didn't make it any easier.
"Apollo, no!" she cried. "You can't!"
He looked at her, his face set. "I don't have any other choice," he said. "We lose a few pilots, or we lose the Fleet.
Which would you choose?"
Raider after Raider filled the screen, as plentiful as the stars, taking their positions, ready to attack the stranded fleet. Apollo understood at once this was why the Cylons hadn't made much of an effort to destroy the Vipers; what did a handful of fighters matter when the entire fleet was laid out before them?
Even though the basestars were still far away, still just rising over the rim of Kirasolia, their powerful plasma cannons could be seen to flash, like the strokes of lightning that scoured the surface of the dead world so far below. The pulse that would tear the Galactica in half would strike within microns. The pulse would not stop there, but keep ripping through any other ship unfortunate enough to be near the Galactica, and any ships near that.
"Forgive me," Apollo whispered to the Warriors who piloted their Vipers back to safety. "Salik, activate the QSE," he commanded. "Now."
The scanner showed the plasma bursts drawing closer, locked into a certain, fatal trajectory with the Galactica. Apollo took Athena in his arms and tried to shield her eyes from the impending doom as it filled the scanner, but she refused. She would not be spared this. She would be Adama's child to the end.
The glowing pulses streaked closer, until their intense brightness filled the screen, and even Athena, in her stoicism, had to look away or risk burning out her retinas. Apollo threw an arm across his eyes, and for a wild moment, he was sure he could see the bones in his forearm silhouetted through his flesh against the terrible light.
"Lords of Kobol, take us into your merciful arms," Apollo whispered an ancient prayer for the dead.
The scanner went blank.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IS IT just me, or is reality getting a little .. .fuzzy… around the edges?" Starbuck asked. He wasn't being facetious; his fractalated vision made him question what he saw, but he was, in this instance, correct.
"Oh, frack," Troy's voice came back to Starbuck on his Warrior's helm. He saw it, too. They all did. The entire colonial fleet began to shimmer and ripple, as if it were something viewed through a distorting wall of heat. "They've activated the QSE!"
"Don't stop!" Starbuck shouted.
Dalton's Viper was the nearest to the warbling wall of energy and she unhesitatingly piloted her ship straight into the unsettling shift phase. To those watching from their respective vantage points, Dalton's Viper also began to ripple and distort. Inside the shift field, however, to Dalton's perspective, everything remained the same solid matter.
Cylon laser fire splashed off Trays' port wing, threatening to send his Viper spinning out of control. Inside the cockpit, sparks leaped and danced along the control console. Trays' face shield instantly and automatically dimmed to prevent the stuttershot of glaring light from momentarily blinding him and rendering him helpless in battle. Trays had been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to target the attacking Raider in his turbolaser sights, but the sudden, erratic flight path of his Viper made that even more difficult.
Starbuck's hands were jittering too badly to risk a shot at the Raider, and the ringing in his ears was rising to a high-pitched scream that, soon, only daggits and the certifiably insane would be able to hear. His vision began to blur, to double and treble. It was just a fit, he'd pull out of it momentarily, but his hesitation was going to get Trays killed.
"Troy…" he managed to gasp across his comm-line.
"I'm on it," Troy said, and thumbed his own turbolaser.
The Cylon Raider that had been harrying Trays disappeared in a wild, flaming spray of shrapnel, and Trays could hear the wreckage clanging and echoing off his main shield, even as he fought to keep his Viper under control.
"Nice shooting, Tr—"
A moment later, he was within the quantum shift effect himself, speeding toward the fleet. His comm-link vanished as soon as he entered the field. It was a very odd sight: the Viper just seemed to stop cold where it was, as if it were stuck between the tick of microns, and then, it slowly faded from view.
Two Cylon Raiders were bulleting for the shimmering wall of the QSE, speeding past Troy, Boomer, and Starbuck's Vipers. The Raiders could still do an incredible amount of damage to the fleet if they were in the same shift phase with it. Time only appeared to halt within the shift to those viewing it from without.
"Sorry, no free rides," Starbuck informed the Raiders, and locked the farther of the two into his sights. His vision was beginning to strobe with wild, purple splashes. Whatever was going to happen, he would have to finish his business here as quickly as possible. He had flown enough missions with Troy that they each knew the other's skills and battle tactics, and there was never a doubt as to which of the Raiders they would each attack. Starbuck had a long pursuit vector on his quarry, and he thumbed his turbolaser three times in rapid succession. If that didn't do it, he wasn't sure he could focus long enough again to try another time.
He was getting ready to alert Boomer to the situation when he saw his lasers slam home.
The Raiders had powerful shields, and anything but a direct hit would simply slough off them like rainwater. The third turbolaser scorched through the shields and struck the Raider, shredding it into flamin
g confetti.
In the distance, the powerful plasma cannons of the basestar targeted the Galactica, and a massive charge of energy built and danced, eddied and flowed, awaiting the moment of release.
Troy's quarry presented less of a target, as Troy was directly behind the Raider. He sighted the Cylon fighter's thruster and pressed the turbolaser on his navi-hilt. The burst went straight up the Raider's unshielded exhaust and ruptured the pulsar engines. The explosion of runaway energy instantly vaporized the Raider and its occupants.
"Troy!" Starbuck shouted into the comm-link.
Despite the opaquing effect of his Warrior's helm, the dazzling light from the vaporized Raider still burned an afterimage through Troy's closed lids, and he had to blink the world back into view before he could see what Starbuck was so excited about. There wasn't much doubt, because the entire fleet was… gone.
"Keep going!" Boomer ordered him. "There may still be a chance—"
The Vipers entered the space where, mircrons earlier, the fleet had been, and were instantly funneled down the same maze of spiraling tunnels of light.
The plasma bursts from the basestar burned through now-empty space, just missing the vanished, intangible fleet and ripping through a phalanx of circling Raiders. The fighters seemed to come unglued, molecule by molecule, evaporating under the deadly scythe of energy.
On the bridge of the Galactica, Apollo looked up from where he stood with his arms around Athena and at the scanner, which had flashed a brilliant, blinding white. He had assumed it was the fatal impact of the plasma burst the scanner was showing them, but now he saw the shifting lights of the tunnel through space and dimensions that the adjusted QSE had opened.
He felt a smile flow across his face, and he broke into laughter. Athena, puzzled, looked from her brother to the screen.
"We made it!" he said, and hugged her. "We're in quantum space!"
She watched the scanner and their journey down the hyperspace highway. Lights, the color of which she never dreamed, strobed intensely, stitched through with shorter, then longer, bursts of colored light, as if the universe were sending out a secret code. The lights resolved themselves into whorls that seemed to support the walls of the incredible tunnel through which the entire fleet now traveled.
"It's…" Athena began. Beautiful didn't come close. No simple, mortal word did.
"I know," Apollo agreed softly.
The pulsing lights and tunnel seemed to stretch on and on, and they all began to fear Baltar had betrayed them one final time, that the fleet would simply travel for all eternity down this endless, mad highway, with no hope of escape. Apollo had used the QSE technology before, but it was nothing like this. Before, he had felt like a phantom haunting the world of the living; but now…
He had to look away from the scanner. They all did. The things the universe had to show them, the secrets it was trying to tell them, to whisper in their eyes and ears and brains, would turn them all into gibbering, slobbering mindwipes if they looked at it for long.
"Where are we going?" Athena asked him. "Do you know?"
He stood with his back to the screen, and he had to fight the urge to turn and look. He didn't dare, and yet he had never wanted anything more. "I don't know," he admitted. "We're following coordinates given to us by Baltar, but I never imagined…"
Tigh looked alarmed, and there was something else there on his face, something Apollo couldn't recall seeing before, but there it was: terror.
"Baltar?" Tigh repeated. "You're using untested technology and unverified coordinates given to you by Baltar?"
"Doctor Salik has tested the adapted technology to the best of his abilities and determined both it and the coordinates to be reliable," Apollo offered in his defense.
Suddenly, the entire bridge was flooded with a brilliant light that erupted from the scanner, so bright that all shadows were washed from the room; so bright that, even through closed eyelids, they could all see the details of the bridge quite clearly. And then, the tunnel end frayed apart like old flexi-weave and the fleet appeared once more in normal space. There was no sense of deceleration because the ships had not actually moved under their own power; rather, the space around them had moved and shunted them down the long hyperspace corridor.
On the scanner, in the distance, a planet and its satellites wavered and warped into sight.
As Salik had observed, time and space were both dramatically distorted near an intense source of gravity such as a black hole. Space, he said, could literally be folded back upon itself, but, due to temporal inertia, time tended to flow in one direction. The quantum shift effect, however, was powerful enough to fold time, to push the fleet out of phase, if only for a very brief period. With a technology that could fold time, Salik reasoned, the fleet simultaneously possessed an ever-greater ability to fold space. And the proof of that lay before them, in the new constellations that wheeled about them, the foreign alignment of planets, and suns.
When they all dared to look again at the scanners, the images had resolved themselves into solid shapes once more. "We made it," Tigh announced unnecessarily. "But… where did we make it to?"
Apollo studied the screen, his face puzzled. "It's familiar," he muttered. "That planet…those stars. They all look familiar."
Athena was studying the scanner, too, but it wasn't the planet she was looking at. Rather, it was the absence of the Warriors that concerned her.
"Where are they?" she asked. She turned to Apollo, and repeated her question, more stridently this time. "The Vipers," she insisted. "Where are they? Did they make it, or did we leave them back there, with the Cylons…"
Before Apollo could respond, four ragged Vipers, all heavily damaged, exploded out of the shimmering curtain of quantum space. They had entered hyperspace with their thrusters burning, and the trip had done nothing to subtract from their momentum. The Vipers rocketed toward the landing bay of the Galactica, their destination before the phase shift phase, and that trajectory had not altered.
Apollo realized at once what was about to happen and opened the comm-link to the launch bay. "Lock onto those Vipers," he ordered Jolly. "Override their manual controls!"
Jolly studied the starfield from his point in the launch bay and saw the Vipers bulleting toward the ship. He keyed in the override command on the computer console and switched the Vipers to automatic pilot. The nearest fighter—Dalton's—responded to the dedicated slave-link that the launch bay's SYSOP established with its own navigational computer and fired its retro-thrusts; it began slowing down. The other three Vipers, also slaved to the SYSOP, began decreasing their terminal velocity as well.
Athena had been watching it all on the bridge scanner, and although she was relieved the others were safe, her heart felt as if it were about to burst in her chest. "Where's Starbuck?" she uttered. "Where's his Viper?"
Apollo had been wondered the same thing. He felt as if he were being buried alive in shifting, freezing sand; every decision he made was cursed with consequences out of all proportion, making it harder and harder to get back to solid ground. But he was still the commander and could not let personal pain interfere with his ability to lead. And most of all, he could not doubt his decisions—nor did he. Apollo ordered an emergency rescue team to deploy at once, to retrieve the Warriors and their Vipers.
But once that was done, Athena turned to Apollo, tears standing in her eyes, and said, "If anything happened to Starbuck, I will hold you personally responsible."
He looked at her, and made a sudden connection to something Starbuck had recently revealed and his own flippant response: I wouldn't want you dating my sister. Even words spoken in jest came winging back at him like shrapnel now. "Forgive me," he said. "I, I had no idea…" Still, there was nothing he could have done differently. Nor could he have stopped Starbuck from charging headlong into battle once more.
Athena said something, but he didn't hear her. He was too busy studying the scanner, and the planet that seemed improbably familiar.
Their ship was a shuttle designed for short-haul journeys, and was equipped with everything necessary to free and resuscitate a trapped or unconscious pilot from his fighter, but the Warriors were neither trapped nor unconscious…just dazed and confused by their unimaginable trip through quantum space.
Reaching the stranded fighters, the shuttle airlock cycled open and the rescue team spacewalked out, using controlled streams of compressed air to jet closer to their targets.
The first med on the spot, Nagi, reached Dalton's Viper, which had sustained some heavy damage from Cylon turbolasers, but was nonetheless intact. Her canopy was cracked, no doubt from the stresses of traveling through quantum space, but as Nagi rapped his gloved hand on the side of the little ship, the sound made Dalton stir and look his way in dreamy disorientation. If any oxygen had escaped through her breached canopy, her Warrior's helm still held enough to keep her alive.
Nagi called the support team over, and within moments they had attached a great length of fiberline to one of the Viper's landing gear. The other end of the line stretched all the way back into the Galactica's launch bay, and the signal was given to begin reeling her in. The Viper moved forward smoothly.
Trays was quite awake and animated, cursing them all for seizing remote control of his Viper when he had been perfectly capable of bringing it in for a landing under his own abilities. Nagi shut off his comm-line; he didn't need to listen to this.
As they were securing the fiberlines to the other Vipers, the fifth fighter, Starbuck's, suddenly burst through the still-fading rift in space, trailing fire and spiraling helplessly, unable to control its unchecked flight. One wing had been ripped away, either by Raider fire or the forces inside the hyperspace tunnel, and the fighter's hull had been punched through by laserfire in a dozen places. It had lost much of its momentum because its pulsar engine had been destroyed, and its wild trajectory kept it from slamming broadside into the battlestar. It glanced instead off the Galactica's bristling array of sensors and communications antennae. The deflecting force managed to slow Starbuck's Viper enough for the rescue team to jet alongside it.
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