Everyone seemed to know instinctively what to do. The pilots started making walk-around inspections of the fighters, while the deckhands made quick checks under access panels, removed wheel chocks, and began moving tow-tractors into position. Kara strode alongside the nearest Viper with Chief Tyrol and squinted through the cockpit canopy. “Are you sure they’ll fly?” she asked doubtfully.
Tyrol paced energetically, swinging his arms as he surveyed the collection of fighters. “Well, the reactor cores are all pulled, of course—but they’re stored hot, and they’ll pop right back in. Then all we have to do is recalibrate, restore the hydraulics and batteries, refuel, load the ordnance, and you’re ready to go.”
Kara looked back at him, biting her lip. “I thought all the ordnance was taken off back at Rhapsody Station, everything but what the CAG’s squadron took with them.”
Tyrol looked pained. “Yeah, most of it’s gone. In fact, the only reason we have any at all is that Caprica Base wanted us to offload some there.”
“So, we’ve got—”
“We’ve got about enough to load up your cannons. Not a hell of a lot more.”
Kara took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“The biggest problem is getting these things over to the port launch bay.”
Kara looked sharply at Tyrol. “Why can’t we use the starboard launch?”
“It’s a gift shop now.”
“Frak me.”
“All right, let’s go!” Tyrol called out. “Everybody pick a bird, we’re going to the port launch bay! Get the tows on the ones closest to the service passage, and let’s get’em moving! Reactor crew, get back to port-side and start breaking the reactor cores out of storage! Let’s go, we need to get these birds flying!”
The first Vipers were already in motion, on their way to the port hangar.
Things were for the moment quiet in the CIC, as everyone did their jobs and prayed for better news. Still no word on a place to find ammunition. A course had been plotted that would take them to the biggest fight, but right now they had nothing to fight with even if they got there. The commander was very quiet, waiting for developments, especially word from the hangar deck—and word from the CAG’s squadron.
Petty Officer Dualla was scowling over the latest incoming comm printouts when Lieutenant Gaeta peered over her shoulder. “What’s the latest, D.?”
She felt a knot in her stomach as she said, “A lot of confusion. I’m not getting much solid information from the fleet, but I keep seeing these weird reports about equipment malfunctions.”
“Why’s that weird?” Gaeta asked.
Dualla shook her head. “It’s the number of malfunctions. It’s happening all through the fleet. One report said an entire battlestar lost power just before it came into contact with the enemy. They said it was like someone just turned off a switch.”
Gaeta frowned at her. “And?”
“Apparently that was the last message from her, on an emergency transmitter.” Her voice faltered. “Before she was destroyed.”
Gaeta didn’t answer, but his face was grave as he turned to report to the commander.
CHAPTER 17
GALACTICA VIPER SQUADRON, NEAR CAPRICA
The CAG’s squadron was rapidly approaching the reported position of the Cylon formation. Its numbers and configuration seemed to be changing every time they took a new dradis reading; the electronic interference was infuriating. At the surveillance panel behind Boomer, Helo was giving minute-to-minute updates on the long-range situation. “We’re down to two confirmed Cylons now. Approaching visual range on their formation.”
The CAG, leading the Viper formation, called back, his voice distorted by interference on the wireless, “Okay, Boomer, we’ll take it from here. You back way off.”
“Roger that,” Sharon replied—and hit the maneuvering thrusters, lifting the Raptor out of the Viper formation, then allowing it to fall back behind their advance. She had her fingers crossed, and she was scared to death. She knew they all must be. Even the CAG, all toughness and confidence, was flying into his first kill-or-be-killed combat mission. He never let it show, but he knew his limitations; they all did. And Sharon … Stop it. Stop thinking about it. Do your job, just do your job and don’t let anyone down, all right?
“All right, boys and girls,” the CAG was saying. “Break into attack formation. There might be only two of them out there, but I want you to stick with your wingman and do not get overconfident.”
The Vipers were nearly out of visual range, ahead of the Raptor. Boomer followed their progress by their wireless chatter, and by the little blips on the dradis screen, brightening as the little hoop-shaped lines of the scanner beam rotated past them. Still only two …
“Anybody know what these things look like?” someone asked. Scott, Boomer thought.
He was answered by a female voice. Erin. “The pictures I’ve seen of old Cylon fighters, they looked like a big flying wing.”
A third voice: “Those pictures are forty years old. How do we know what they look like now?”
“Just shoot at whatever you see,” answered Erin, with a laugh that was maybe a little too carefree to be real.
“Okay, keep the chatter down,” the CAG interjected.
“Boomer,” said Helo, behind her.
Sharon looked again at her dradis screen. The number of Cylons approaching the Vipers was multiplying rapidly. Oh frak. “CAG, Boomer. We’ve got a lot more contacts coming up. We’ve got a couple of squadrons, at least.” She was trying to count them, but the display kept changing too rapidly. “Look sharp, you guys …”
In the dark of space, where nothing lived, the Cylons came in search of prey. They were silver, sleek, and powerful, with gull wings that swept sharply forward and inward at the tips, like great claws. The machine intelligence that drove them was relentless and implacable. They feared nothing; they would stop at nothing; there was nothing they would not destroy, if it bore the scent of humanity.
The nose of each raider was a shrouded metal head. In another time and place, it might have been taken for the helmeted head of a warrior, a visored knight on his way to a joust. But as it drew close to its quarry, the visor opened, and where there might have been eyes there was only a single red glowing spot, and it swept back and forth, back and forth, as it sought to identify its targets.
And then its deadliest weapon of all was unsheathed, as its silent and invisible electromagnetic talons stretched out to find its enemy’s pitiful computer networks, and turn them off. Like flipping a switch …
Jackson Spencer, the CAG, felt a satisfying rush of adrenaline as he caught first sight of the enemy, emerging from the glare of the sun, dead ahead. He heard the warning from Boomer, but they were committed. “All Vipers, weapons free. Let’s go get’em.”
Together, in perfect formation, the twenty Vipers fired their main burners and accelerated toward the enemy. So far, he still saw only two Cylons on his small dradis screen. As they drew closer, he could just make out their shape. They looked almost batlike, with hooked wings. It was impossible to tell what their weaponry was, or what method of attack …
What the frack—?
Spencer glanced down at his instruments. Every single display was flickering and distorting. An instant later, they went dark. He had no instrumentation.
And … he had no power, of any sort. Thrusters were gone, lights were gone, ventilation was shut off. Complete systems failure. The Viper was suddenly drifting, turning, all attitude control gone. Spencer blanched, feeling more helpless than he’d ever felt in his life. There was no way he could lead the squadron. He quickly keyed his mic. “I’ve lost power! Jolly! Jolly, take over! Jolly, can you read me?” He turned his head to the right, trying to visually keep his bearings with the rest of the squadron.
His heart sank. All of the Vipers were dark, drifting. They’d all lost power. A couple were pitching slowly end over end. He looked to his left, just as one of the other Vipers careened toward him a
nd slammed into the side of his ship, then bounced away. Shaken, he started running through his emergency checklist, but there was nothing he could do; he was dead in space, helpless. And so was his entire squadron …
Boomer gazed at her dradis screen with growing fear. What’s happening to them? Why are they drifting like that?
Helo leaned over her shoulder. “What’re they doing?”
“I don’t know. They’re just going straight in,” Sharon replied, struggling to keep her voice steady.
“The comm chatter’s gone. They’re not talking anymore .”
Sharon keyed her mic. “CAG—Boomer.” Shut her eyes for an instant. “CAG—Boomer. Do you read?” She glanced back at Helo, her fear now turned into full-blown horror.
The Vipers tumbled, coasting straight into the jaws of the enemy. Spencer had tried everything. He kept trying, snapping switches, struggling to get some spark of life out of his ship. Main power was dead. Auxiliary power … he couldn’t tell, because all the meters were dead. He continued calling on the wireless: “Boomer—CAG. If you can hear me—they must have done something to our computer systems. Some sort of electronic jamming. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He fell silent, as the two Cylon raiders swooped down on them, like sharks out of the depths of the ocean. There was a bloodred light sweeping from each of them. The Cylons arced past, as though inspecting the squadron, giving him a surprisingly clear view of them. As they circled back, CAG thumbed his mic again. “There’s no cockpits! There’s nobody flying these things!”
An instant later, he saw the contrails of missiles erupt from the Cylons, like streamers in a fireworks display. At least two dozen missiles had launched at once, and they were streaking in perfect arcs toward the Viper squadron. “Oh my God.” Words failed him utterly as he watched helplessly, adrift, as the crisscrossing streamers flawlessly targeted every Viper in his squadron.
He saw three of his fighters explode in balls of fire in the instant before his own missile found him. And then his world ended abruptly in a flash of fire and death.
Sharon was paralyzed with horror at the sight of every single Viper flaring on her screen with the telltale signature of exploding metal, then vanishing. It was unbelievable. The entire squadron; utterly destroyed.
Except for them, in their Raptor.
And the dradis contacts of the Cylons were now changing course, turning toward them.
“Boomer, get us out of here!” Helo shouted, heading back for his console.
“Right!” she cried, bringing the Raptor quickly about and opening the throttle to the redline. The Raptor sprang away from the scene of the disaster, with the Cylons in pursuit.
Behind them, the debris of the Viper squadron swirled like flotsam left in the wake of a typhoon.
CHAPTER 18
COLONIAL HEAVY 798, NEARING CAPRICA
Laura Roslin was barely able to stand in the tiny shipboard lavatory. She hunched over the washbasin, pressing a damp cloth to her face, fighting to stop the tears. Damn you, body. Damn you, cancer. How dare you do this to me! How dare you make me so weak! She shuddered uncontrollably, as the feelings of sickness and helplessness overwhelmed her. Finally she hauled in a ragged breath, willing herself to regain control. She dried her face, then straightened up and breathed deliberately in and out until she had reestablished a façade of calm. Opening the lavatory door, she stepped back out into the cabin of the transport.
The pilot was speaking to the passengers. Everyone looked grave. Something bad is happening. What? She pushed forward to her seat, trying to hear what the pilot was saying.
Unfortunately, he was just concluding, “Once again, we are processing the information we have been given. And I urge you all to try to stay calm. As we get more information, I will pass it along to you. Thank you for your patience.”
Laura settled into her seat beside Billy. She let her bewilderment surface to her face. Billy looked scared. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“But something is happening that’s not good, am I right?”
“Yeah. Some kind of civil defense emergency on Caprica. That’s all he could tell us,” Billy said.
Laura nodded and sat back. She was not reassured.
The cockpit of the transport looked, at first glance, pretty much like the cockpit of any large airliner, with perhaps a couple dozen additional instruments dedicated to orbital position and navigation, environmental controls, Lorey-field gravity, reactor status, and the like. The pilot, Captain Russo, returned to his seat, confirmed to his copilot that he was taking the controls back, and keyed the wireless mic. “Any luck over there, Captain?” he asked, peering out his left window to catch a glimpse of the Viper Mark II. He was hoping their escort, Captain Adama, might have more information. Russo and his copilot had not much more information than he had given the passengers, with one exception: Fearing panic, they had not told the passengers that among the confused messages they had heard was one, completely unconfirmed, containing the words “Cylon attack.”
Apollo’s voice was scratchy coming from the speakers. “No, just picking up a lot of confusing chatter.”
“Well,” said Captain Russo, “to be honest with you, I’m glad you’re sticking around. Makes us all feel better just seeing you out there.”
“Well, don’t get too comfortable,” Apollo answered. “This junker I’m in was meant for show, not combat. If we run into a problem, I’ll do what I can to protect you. But at the first sign of trouble, you pour on the speed and you run.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” said the pilot. “I’ve got my hand on the throttle. It hasn’t left since I got the first message.” He drew a deep breath. “Colonial Heavy Seven-Niner-Eight … out.”
Two Cylon raiders, one fleeing Raptor. Silent as space.
And in the silent darkness, a missile sprang from each of the raiders, trailing white contrails. They arced with flawless guidance toward the Raptor, as the Cylons pitched up and away.
In the Raptor’s cockpit, Boomer and Helo were working frantically. “Two missiles now!” Helo called from the situation console.
“Jam their warheads,” Boomer cried desperately.
“I’m trying! I can’t find the frequency. Drop a swallow!”
Boomer worked silently. “I’ve got two left.” She dropped one of the two remaining decoys, which spun downward out of the belly of the Raptor as she fired thrusters to lift in the other direction. The missiles took the bait and veered toward the decoy. Or one did; it intercepted the decoy in a heartbeat and exploded. The other changed course and resumed its pursuit of the Raptor. “Damn it! C’mon!” Sharon breathed, working the controls feverishly.
“Aw, frak!” shouted Helo.
“What?”
“Check the screen ahead!”
She did, and winced. A swarm of Cylons had appeared in front of them. “I guess we found the main fight.” No time to worry about that right now, though. They had a missile on their tail. She gave sharp thrust to the left and down, trying to evade it.
An alarm starting beeping. Behind her, Helo snapped, “Missile lock!”
Sharon shook her head. “We’ve got one left.” She released the last swallow.
It spun away, and miraculously, the Cylon missile pitched over to follow it. The two zigzagged for a moment, perilously close to the Raptor, and the missile hit the decoy. It blew in cascading explosions. Sharon’s heart leapt in triumph—and an instant later a cloud of shrapnel from the explosion hit the Raptor with a series of sickening thumps. Sparks and bits of molten metal flew through the cockpit. Alarms went off all over her board. She heard Helo howl in pain. Frak it frak it frak it! She tried to assess the damage quickly for critical failures, and keep flying the craft at the same time.
“We’re hit!”
“Oh, really!” Helo gasped.
She finally managed a look over her shoulder, and saw Helo bent over at his seat, jamming an emergency patch over
a hole in the floor. Blood was spurting from his thigh. Oh frakking Kobol! She had to keep flying, but a moment later she managed to turn again. “Helo—hey! Are you okay?”
“Aahh. Present.” He had one hand on his thigh, trying to stop the bleeding, and the other on the deck, struggling to position the patch to stop the venting of air from the cabin.
The cabin’s leaking, his suit’s punctured, he’s wounded … Keep flying the ship! “Stay with me!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Ferociously, she focused on the board in front of her. “Okay,” she breathed. “We have a fuel leak! We need to put down to repair it! The nearest world is Caprica.”
“A lot of company between us and there.”
“Yeah,” she said, and glanced back. He was sitting upright, putting pressure on his thigh. Good. Good. She couldn’t help him, except by getting them down. If he could just tend to his own wound a little longer …
But all those Cylons out there, between them and Caprica! How could she possibly get past them, especially in their crippled condition? She bit her lip, thinking. Then she had it. She aimed the ship carefully, hit full throttle for a few seconds, and cut the engines. Then she reached over to the fuel valve and shut off the flow from the tank, to stop the loss of the precious Tylium. Finally, she killed power to lights, gravity, and everything else that might be detected from the outside. The cockpit went dark, except for starlight coming in through the windows.
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