"Wait—wait a minute," said one of the passengers. It was Aaron Doral, the public relations officer who had guided her around the Galactica. He looked distrustful and belligerent; with his PR demeanor completely gone, he seemed a different person. "Who put you in charge?"
Laura was momentarily caught off guard by the challenge. Around her, the faces of many of the other passengers were filled with sudden uncertainty as to her authority. She thought of how to answer, and decided to approach it—and Doral—head on. Just like a teacher being challenged by a student in a classroom. Walking toward him, she said, "Well, that's a good question. The answer is, no one."
She pressed her lips together, holding the printout tightly in her hands. "But . . . this is a government ship, and I am the senior government official, so that puts me in charge, so"—she raised a hand to gesture to him—"why don't you help me out, and go down into the cargo area, and see about setting it up as a living space?" Before he could answer, she turned away from his scowl and said to the others, "Everyone else, please—please—try and stay calm. Thank you."
With that, she took Billy by the arm and pulled him aside. She handed him another piece of paper that the captain had given her. "All right—this is the passenger manifest." Billy took it from her, and he was nodding, but he looked very shaky. His hand, like the captain's, was trembling. She paused in her train of thought and looked at him closely, meeting his gaze. "Are you all right?"
Billy straightened a little, and suddenly seemed energized. Too energized. "Yeah. Yeah." He swallowed. "My parents . . . moved to Picon two months ago . . . to be closer to my sisters, and their families, and their grandkids, and . . ."
Laura sighed deeply, but refused to let the pain onto her face. She gazed at Billy, letting him see her sympathy, but not weakness. At that moment, the captain appeared at the head of the aisle. "Madame Secretary—we've got your comm link." She nodded acknowledgment, but before turning away, put a steadying, motherly hand on Billy's arm. She made sure he registered the gesture, then hurried away to the cockpit.
Seated in the copilot's seat with a headset on, Laura tried to decipher what she was hearing over the wireless. It was Jack Nordstrom, an advisor in the president's office, with whom Laura had worked for years. It was clear from his voice that Jack was exhausted, distraught, and probably frantic with worry about everyone he cared about.
"Thank God you're not here, Laura . . . thank God. It's complete chaos. Never seen anything like it."
"Jack! Where is the president?"
"The dust in the air. People wandering the streets."
She spoke deliberately, insistently. "Where . . . is . . . the president, Jack? Is he alive?"
"I don't know. I think so. We hear all kinds of things."
Laura let her breath out in frustration. "Have the Cylons made any demands? Do we know what they want?"
"No. No contact. I'm pretty sure about that."
Insane. It was just insane. She struggled to ask this next question. "Has anyone discussed"—she paused and shook her head, then pushed on—"has anyone discussed the possibility of surrender? Has it been considered?"
Jack answered immediately. "After Picon was nuked, and three other planets, the president offered a complete, unconditional surrender. The Cylons didn't even respond!"
Before Laura could think of an answer to that, she turned her head at a flash of rocket thruster, and out the cockpit window beyond Captain Russo, saw the Viper blast away at a sharp angle. The captain was talking to someone on another frequency. "Colonial Heavy Seven-Niner-Eight . . . where?" His hands worked at the nav and dradis screens as he listened. He looked scared. "What should we do?" He found what he was looking for, and his finger tapped a fast-moving blip on the dradis screen. "Uh . . . copy that."
His gaze jerked to meet Laura's. His hand went to the throttle. "The Cylons have found us. There's an inbound missile."
Laura craned her neck this way and that, trying to spot the missile. "Where the hell'd our escort go?" Together with the captain, she looked everywhere. "Is that it? It's moving too fast." We don't stand a chance . . .
* * * *
Lee had the throttle of the old Viper pegged to the limit. How the frak did they ever win the first war, flying these crates? He was flying purely by the seat of his pants, trying to get in front of the missile. The projectile was fast, and it was flying a swerving, evasive course. And that was just what Lee was doing with the Viper, too.
The darkness of space might have seemed a good place to try playing chicken with a deadly missile. Except the missile wasn't after him, it was after the transport ship carrying a hundred or more people. Lee maneuvered smartly, pushing the aging fighter to its limits. He drew close, then swerved sharply into its path, and flew ahead of it, rolling and pitching, and finally breaking away from the course that was rapidly taking them both back toward the passenger ship. The missile followed him, locked on his engine heat. Good. Good. Lee maneuvered hard left, hard right, trying to keep it distracted. It was closing on him. I think it's good.
Close enough, and far enough from the transport. Lee gripped the stick tightly, and with a quick application of thrust, chopped the throttle and flipped the Viper one hundred eighty degrees around. Now he was flying backward in front of the missile, gazing straight down the barrel of its nose. It was arcing toward him, fast. He sighted, waited just the right amount of time, then opened fire with both rocket-cannons. A hail of glowing projectiles flew out from his Viper. A heartbeat later, the missile exploded.
He felt elation for one more heartbeat. And then the concussion from expanding gas and debris hit him. The Viper caught it squarely under the nose and flipped nose over tail, tumbling. The instruments flickered once, then went dark. Lee cursed, struggling to bring the Viper back under control. It was all he could do to get the tumble stopped, then slow his movement away from the transport. He was out of the fight. He had no more maneuvering capability.
Frak!
There did not seem to be any other Cylon missiles in the area, though, and he caught a glimpse of the transport, dwindling. It was safe, for the moment. He thumbed his mic. "Krypter, Krypter, Krypter! This is Apollo to Colonial Seven-Niner-Eight. I'm declaring an emergency. My systems are offline. I need assistance."
And then he could only wait.
Chapter 20
South Of Caprica City
Miraculously, part of the house was still standing. Even more miraculously, Gaius Baltar was still alive. Bruised, bleeding, he sat up coughing amidst the concrete debris and shattered glass. His ears were ringing, and his eyes were gritty with dust. They nuked my house. I just survived a nuke. It was unbelievable.
It was far from over, though. He could hear the sounds of distant explosions, and twice as he looked around he winced at a sudden flash of light. None as close as the burst that had destroyed his home. Not that that one was really so close. It must have been thirty klicks away. He suddenly remembered, with a shudder, the video images of Caprica City being bombed. How many people had died in the last hour? How did I manage to survive? What did I do to deserve survival? Nothing . . .
With that thought, he suddenly remembered Natasi, the way she had shoved him to the floor and thrown her body over his. He'd still been tossed across the room by the force of the blast. But without her actions, he wouldn't have survived. "Natasi!" he shouted, in a panic. He scrambled up to look for her. "Natasi!"
He did not have to look far. Her broken body lay where it had been thrown against the far wall. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, her body was bleeding where she had been hit by flying debris. He approached her slowly, somberly. "Oh, Natasi," he said, his voice breaking. He knelt beside her, and gently stroked her hair. "What did you do? You saved me. You saved my life. Why did you do that?" For a moment, his rage of just a short time ago was forgotten. He lowered his head and shook with grief and terror. What had happened to his life? Why had the world so suddenly gone insane? Was it really all his fault?
Another nuke flashed behind him, making him flinch. It felt a little closer, close enough to shake the ground. He had to get out of here. No more time to mourn what he had lost—the one he had lost. And come to think of it, now that he was starting to emerge from the mental haze that had fallen over him, she was not just the one he had lost, but the one who had brought this all upon them. He began to feel the rage close in again. The rage and shame. He pushed himself away from her body in disgust, heaved himself up one more time, and looked around wildly, trying to make a plan. Head for the hills, he thought. That meant going south, and east.
Grabbing a jacket, he ran for the door—what was left of it. Halfway through the shattered opening, he suddenly turned back and rummaged through the debris in the remnant of his living room until he found what he was looking for: his leather briefcase, with summaries of all his recent work. All the classified information, the information he had given to Natasi. To the enemy. He didn't know what difference it made, but he wasn't going to leave it lying around the house, where anybody could find it. Where they could find it, and know what he had done.
With that tucked under his arm, he ran to his car. He would drive until he could go no farther—which probably would not be very far. And then he would go on foot. And if necessary, he would crawl, to get away from this nightmare. . . .
No one was going to criticize Sharon for her landing this time. It had been a bruising reentry, through Caprica's upper atmosphere. They'd broken out of the clouds not more than a few thousand feet above ground level. She'd steered clear of the obvious nuke attacks, while getting them reasonably close to Caprica City, in case there was some good they could do there. (Clearly out of the question now.)
She was searching the ground for a feasible landing spot. "There!" she shouted to Helo—to keep him engaged and alert. "I can put us down in those low hills. Hang on! Tighten your belt!"
Cautiously, she turned the fuel valve back on. She only needed power for a couple of minutes. "Try not to leak too much," she muttered to the ship. "Just hold on."
Skimming low over the hills, she picked out a spot and turned in to her final approach. Firing belly thrusters, she slowed, and lowered the Raptor to the ground. She killed the rockets and the craft thumped into the grass and skidded a little. Then it stopped dead on the top of a knoll. Best damned landing I ever made in my life.
She hoped she hadn't broken anything that would keep them from taking off again.
"I'm going outside to patch the fuel line," she said, squeezing past Helo. "How's the leg?"
"Good enough to come out there with you," Helo said, wincing.
"No, stay here. I can handle it."
He was already pushing himself up out of the seat. "The hell . . . you say. We do . . . this together."
Helo, in the end, wound up leaning against the side of the ship, wrapping his leg with more strips of cloth and adhesive, while Sharon crawled under the Raptor with a couple of toolkits to fix the fuel line. At least the bleeding had stopped. He wouldn't be good for running any marathons, but at least he could stand. He hoped Sharon could stop the fuel leak as effectively.
In the distance, mushroom clouds rose against the horizon. It was surrealistic—nuclear explosions reigning over this beautiful panorama of green hills and scattered trees. He saw another flash, another mushroom cloud. "That's six!" he said in disbelief. What could the damn Cylons be hitting? What was left? He ducked his head down to look under the craft. "How you coming on that fuel line?"
"Almost there," Sharon said. "We'll be airborne pretty soon. And get back in the fight." She peeled the backing from a large patch and reached up into the engine compartment to wrap it around the ruptured pipe.
"Yeah. Back in the fight." Helo limped forward, away from the ship. It hurt to walk, but he saw something coming over the hilltops, and he wasn't sure he was going to like it.
"Okay," said Sharon, her voice muffled under the craft. "That should do it." His back was to her, but he could hear her close the access panel, and pull the toolkits out from under the Raptor.
"Sharon?" he said suddenly. "Grab your sidearm."
A moment later she was beside him, and they both had their weapons out—large-caliber, Previn automatics. A sizable crowd of people was coming over the hilltop toward them. "Helo?" Sharon asked uncertainly.
"Stand your ground." Helo raised his handgun and leveled it with both hands. Sharon did likewise.
It looked like forty, fifty, maybe even a hundred people—all running for their lives over the hills. They were headed straight for the Raptor. Some carried suitcases, some books, some children. Some were falling down and getting up again. One was on crutches. Helo thought he knew what they all wanted. They all wanted to get off this planet before it was completely destroyed. They had just fled from Hell, and they wanted to live.
There was only one spacecraft in sight, and that was their Raptor. And they weren't here to carry passengers.
Chapter 21
Colonial Heavy 798
Laura Roslin leaned over the pilot's seat and pointed out the cockpit window at the tiny, tumbling spacecraft. "There he is. Can you maneuver over and bring him on board?"
Captain Russo and his copilot, Eduardo, to whom Laura had relinquished her seat, checked a few instruments. The pilot craned his neck to look back at her. "We can. But it's risky. I do have to think of the safety of the rest of the people back there in the cabin."
Laura put a hand on his shoulder. "Captain, if it weren't for Captain Apollo out there, none of us would be alive right now. Bring him in. Please."
The pilot nodded. "Yes, ma'am." He glanced at his copilot. "Let's set up for a docking. If he can't maneuver, we'll just have to float the number two cargo bay right over him and bring him inside."
"Let's just hope the Cylons don't come looking, while we're wallowing around doing that," Eduardo muttered.
Laura closed her eyes, praying she wasn't dooming the transport in the effort to save Captain Adama. "I have complete confidence in you," she said at last. "Now, while you're doing that, I have to see how our emergency planning is coming along." Without waiting for an answer, she headed out the cockpit door to the passenger cabin.
At this point nothing in the Viper was working except the battery-powered emergency life-support and wireless—and at that, the wireless mostly just produced static. Lee Adama could only sit and wait. He would not have blamed the captain of the transport if he had hit full throttle and run for safety, just as Lee had told him to do. After all, he had a shipload of passengers who were his responsibility. In fact, that was probably what the captain should have done. But Lee was grateful, nevertheless, for the sight of the big ship maneuvering toward him, its cargo bay door open.
As the Viper continued its slow tumble, the transport rotated out of view. Lee turned his attention back to his lifeless panels. If he could just get attitude-control thrusters working again! He didn't want to be rescued just to crash on the inside of the ship's cargo bay! Well, he hadn't tried everything yet. There was still this manual control bypass down under the instrument panel. Maybe he could fire the individual thrusters using the hand valves . . .
Pop . . . BAM . . .
Whoa. He had just slowed his pitch-over tumble. Or had he? No, that was the wrong way. He groped around for the opposite lever and yanked it. BAM . . . whoosh . . .
By the gods, it was working. Good thing, too, he realized, as the transport came back into view, looming suddenly very large outside the cockpit. He was about to be swallowed up by that big, yawning cargo bay.
The Viper slammed and skidded onto the deck of the hold, as it came suddenly into the influence of the Lorey-field gravity. Somehow it slid to a full stop, just before smashing into a wall with a wingtip. Lee laughed to release the tension, as he waited for the cargo bay doors to close and the area to repressurize. It wasn't a good landing, for sure—but if he could walk away from it, then it was good enough. When he saw a couple of crewmembers from the transport runn
ing from a stairway toward him, he realized pressurization was complete, and he pushed the cockpit canopy open.
Loosening his helmet, he was happy to hand it to the first man to reach in. "Welcome aboard, Captain Adama," the crewman said.
"Thank you," Lee said, climbing over the edge of the cockpit and carefully down the ladder that the crewman had propped against the side of the craft. He stepped away from the Viper and looked around at the cargo bay—surprisingly large, like the lower deck of a seagoing ferry, and mostly empty. Then he turned back to gaze at the battered antique Viper. No more complaints from me. You got me here in one piece, and you took out that missile that would have been the end of all of us. Taking a deep breath, Lee pulled off his gloves as the transport crewman helped loosen the collar ring of his spacesuit.
"Captain! Are you all right?" A vaguely familiar-looking man was running up to him.
"I'm fine." Lee turned to inspect his craft more thoroughly. As he did so, he caught sight of some very large coils just ahead of his Viper in the cargo bay. He walked over to take a look at them.
"My name's Aaron Doral," said the man, practically demanding attention. "I met you before. Took some publicity photos with you and your father."
Right—the publicity guy. Lee was more interested in these components.
"What are those things?" Doral asked, disconcerted by Lee's seeming inattention.
That was what Lee had been wondering, and he had just figured it out. "Electric pulse generators, from the Galactica."
"Really," said Doral. "That . . . that's interesting." He became more sober and determined. "Uh, Captain, I—I can't tell you how glad I am to see you!"
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