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 running 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!”
“Oh? Why’s that?” asked Lee, finally turning to see what the man wanted.
Doral looked extremely agitated. “Well, see, Captain—personally, I would feel a lot better if someone qualified were in charge around here.”
Lee looked at him in surprise. “Is something wrong with your pilot?”
“No,” said Doral. “It’s just that he’s not the one giving orders.”
Lee studied the man’s face for a moment, then decided he’d better go see for himself what was going on. As he walked away, Doral followed closely behind. “This is … uh, this is a bad situation, isn’t it, sir?”
Now, that’s stating the obvious, isn’t it? “Yes,” answered Lee. “Yes, it is.”
He found the stairway and ran quickly up out of the cargo area. In the passenger cabin, he didn’t have to look far to see who was apparently giving the orders. The Secretary of Education, Laura Roslin, was surrounded by a group of people, whom she was questioning closely. She was a middle-aged woman whom Lee had met before only briefly. An educator. Quietly intelligent, attractive, almost motherly. Probably not the leader type, he would have guessed. She had a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, as though she were cold. But if that suggested any weakness, the impression was dispelled at once. “What if we transferred the L containers from Bay Three to Bay Four?” she asked a man crouched beside her. “Then we could use One, Two, and Three for passengers.”
Lee recognized the man she was talking to as the transport pilot, Captain Russo. “Yeah,” Russo said, “that’s doable. It’s a lot of heavy lifting without dock loaders, though.”
“A little hard work is just what the people need right now,” Laura said. She looked up and saw Lee, as he strode forward to shake the pilot’s hand. “Captain! Good to see you again.”
“Likewise,” Lee answered. To Russo, he said, “Thanks for the lift.”
The pilot laughed. “You should thank her,” he said, nodding in Roslin’s direction. As Lee followed his glance, puzzled, the pilot slapped him on the arm and headed back to the cockpit.
Roslin had already returned her attention to the discussion with the young man who appeared to be her assistant. “Start the cargo transfer and then prep Bay Three for survivors,” she said, with startling authority and efficiency.
“Yes, ma’am,” the young man said, and moved off to follow his instructions.
Lee was still trying to put all this together in his mind. “I’m sorry. Survivors?”
Roslin looked back up at him and explained rapidly. “As soon as the attack began, the government ordered a full stop on all civilian vessels. So now we’ve got hundreds of stranded ships in this solar system. Some are lost, some are damaged, some are losing power. We have enough space on this ship to accommodate up to five hundred people, and we’re going to need every bit of it.” She stood up abruptly, as though intending to walk away.
Behind Lee, Aaron Doral was sputtering. “But we don’t even know what the tactical situation is out there.”
Roslin angled a glance at him and looked thoughtful. “The tactical situation is that we are losing.” She swung her gaze around to look Lee straight in the eye. “Right, Captain?”
Lee could hardly lie. As far as he had heard, they were losing badly. “Right,” he answered, with a nod.
“So,” Roslin went on, without a trace of self-consciousness about giving orders, “we pick up the people we can and try to find a safe haven to put down.” She walked toward the cockpit door, then turned. “Captain, I’d like you to look over the navigational charts for a likely place to hide from the Cylons.” She nodded. “That’s all.” And she turned away.
Lee, stunned by her complete command of the situation, glanced at Doral, who was still standing nearby, fuming—no doubt waiting for Lee to take over. Lee had to work a bit to hide a smile. As he walked away, he said simply, “The lady’s in charge.”
An unhappy Aaron Doral glowered after him.
CHAPTER 22
THE HILLS, SOUTHEAST OF CAPRICA CITY
Helo aimed deliberately low and to one side and squeezed off a single round from his Previn automatic. The round exploded in the ground, throwing a cloud of dirt into the air between Helo and the advancing mob. The people fell back, but his action did nothing to calm them down. Now they were not just scared and desperate, they were angry.
He called out, “That’s as close as you get—okay? Let’s just settle down here. Settle down, and no one gets hurt.” Even as he said it, his heart was going out to the people. Could he blame them? Wouldn’t he be just as desperate to get off the planet?
Shouts of anger gave way to pleas. One man was waving a fistful of money. “I have to get to the port! I’ll give you fifty thousand cubits!”
“Sixty thousand!” a woman shouted.
“We’re not taking money!” Helo shouted back. “This isn’t a rescue ship. This is a military vessel.” He leveled his weapon again as the crowd surged forward, pressing their case. Beside him, Sharon had her own gun aimed at the crowd, protecting him, and protecting the Raptor. “We’re not taking money!” he repeated.
Several of the people in the front of the crowd made as though to charge. Sharon raised her gun and fired a warning burst into the air. The people fell back again in alarm. But voices soon rose again, one woman calling, “But what about the children?”
That was too much. “All right, all right!” Sharon yelled, her change of heart taking Helo by surprise. “All right.” She caught her breath, but did not lower her weapon. “Children first. Children.” She was suddenly flushed with an awareness that she, not that many years ago, had through good fortune alone escaped a cataclysm on her own homeworld of Troy. Why should she deny that same fortune to these children ?
There was a stirring in the crowd, as parents pressed bags or keepsakes into the hands of their tearful children, and hustled them to the front of the crowd before they could protest or refuse. Sharon and Helo waved the children into the Raptor. Sharon silently counted them as they ducked through the entry hatch. When all the children were aboard, she turned back to the crowd, her face drawn and harried. “All right—we can take three more people.”
An assortment of hands shot up, and people started calling out again. “Why only three?” someone called.
“That’s the maximum load if we’re gonna break orbit,” Helo said, shouting over them.
The man who’d been about to charge a minute ago strode forward with gritted teeth and a clenched fist. “Who chooses the three—you?”
“No one chooses!” Sharon called out. “No one.” She hesitated. “Lottery.” She glanced at Helo, and he nodded in appreciation at her quick thinking. “Everyone gets a number. We put’em in a box, pull out three. That’s it. No arguing, no appeal.”
For a tense few moments, the crowd absorbed that. Helo thought maybe they weren’t absorbing it enough. “I will shoot the first person who tries to board before then,” he said, waving his gun enough to make the point.
That quieted them down. Sharon cast him another glance. “Helo, get out your flight manual and tear out the pages … .”
CHAPTER 23
GALACTlCA, PORT HANGAR DECK
The race against time was heating up in the Viper maintenance area. The deck was littered with service racks and forklifts. Chief Tyrol was striding from one workstation to another, consulting, cajoling, and whipping his people into faster action. The good news was that they’d managed to plug reactors back into a dozen of the fighter craft—thanks to the modular swap-in, swap-out design of the systems. And they’d filled the fuel tanks with quantum-catalytic Tylium, so the reactors had something to burn. The bad news was that they were still frantically trying to calibrate the power plants so they could fly without blowing up, test the valves and hydraulics, check out the flight instruments, and load ammunition into the rec
oilless rocket cannons.
If he had to, Tyrol figured he could have six or eight of them flyable in a couple of hours, though how well they would fly was another question. Word from the CIC was that they could expect Cylon company any time now. Tyrol was wound about as tight as he had ever been in his life, determined to have these Vipers ready when the commander called for them.
And every once in a while, he spared a few moments for worrying about Boomer and Helo, from whom nothing had been heard since their brief, truncated report that the entire Viper Mark VII squadron had been destroyed, leaving the Raptor alone and fleeing for its life.
COMBAT INFORMATION CENTER, NINETY MINUTES LATER
Commander William Adama stood silent and sober as the attention-tone preceded an announcement from Executive Officer Tigh, standing beside the dradis console officer. “Attention. Inbound dradis contact, rated highly probable, enemy fighters. All hands stand by for battle maneuvers.”
Adama turned his head to meet Tigh’s gaze. “What’s the status of our Vipers? Can we launch?”
Tigh had a handset stretched on a long cord from another console, and he was talking into it. He looked up. “Chief says we can launch six. He needs more time with the others.”
Six Vipers! To defend the ship? Adama drew a silent breath. It was the only defense they had. There was no ammunition on board for Galactica’s own guns. “Launch Vipers,” he said grimly to Petty Officer Dualla, who was at her station with a headset on, watching closely for his orders.
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