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 ye
lled, 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
Galactica, 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 recoilless 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.
“Vipers! Clear to launch,” Dualla said crisply.
Now they could only wait, and do their best to steer the ship away from trouble if anything got past the Vipers.
Behind a window overlooking the launch bay, Launch Officer Kelly ran quickly through the checklist. “Choker, this is Shooter. I have control—stand by.” On the far side of the window, a Viper Mark IV was lined up in the launch tube, fuming and ready to go. The pilot, Choker, glanced at him and gave a thumbs-up inside his closed cockpit. In two other launch tubes, the identical ritual was playing out.
“Viper One-One-Zero-Four, clear forward.” Kelly verified that all systems were ready. “Nav-con green… interval check… mag-cat ready—”
At those last words, a powerful piston slid forward and latched onto the Viper’s undercarriage, ready to catapult the fighter to launch speed. At the same time, a great steel door in front of the Viper dropped down, exposing the launch tube to open space.
“—check door open… thrust positive, and… good luck.”
The launch officer pressed the button that fired the electromagnetic catapult. The Viper pilot was slammed back in his seat as the fighter rocketed down a long, triangular tube.
Outside Galactica, the Viper shot out of the launch port in the side of the ship, followed quickly by four more. They grouped up, waited a few moments for the sixth and last to appear, and when it didn’t, they got their clearance and lit their thrusters and fired off on an intercept course with the incoming enemy.
In launch tube four, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace sat sealed in her cockpit, steaming as she waited for the launch officer to complete the checklist. She heard “Interval”—and raised a thumbs-up, eyes straight forward—“check”—every fiber of her body focused on the battle she was about to join, as the launch officer went through the items: “—thrusters positive… stand by.” Kara winced. What this time?
Then she heard words she hated. “Thrusters fluctuating. Abort takeoff.”
Frak!
“Galactica, Viper Eight-Five-Four-Seven, throttle down to safe.” Making it sound like a curse, she powered the thrusters down.
“Roger, Viper.”
“Frak—get me out of here!” she shouted angrily.
Outside the launch tube, the crew was in frantic motion. “Let’s go, let’s go!” Tyrol shouted. As soon as the exhaust cleared, the rear section of the launch tube opened, exposing the Viper, and the mechanical crews swarmed over her. “Let’s get her out of there. Cally! Prosna! Figure out what’s goin’ on!” The two specialists were already up on a service ladder, opening the engine compartment panels.
When the cockpit canopy lifted, Kara ripped her helmet off and glared furiously at Tyrol. “Three frakkin’ aborts, Chief?”
“We’re on it, sir. It’s the pressure-reg valve again.”
“We should pull it!” Cally called, leaning in to look at the valve.
“We can’t,” Prosna said. “We don’t have a spare.”
Despite his words, Prosna and Cally quickly disconnected the valve and lifted it out. If they couldn’t fix this thing in minutes, Starbuck was going to be out of the fight—and maybe they all would be…
As they worked, Starbuck could do nothing but listen to the wireless chatter coming in from the Vipers already out there. It didn’t sound good.
“Inbound enemy contact… bearing two-four-seven… range one-one-five…closing …”
Kara couldn’t take it anymore. “Let’s go!” she screamed at the deck crew.
Tyrol was caught up, as well. “Come on, let’s go, let’s go!”
Cally, up on top of the engine pod, called down, “We should just pull the valve and bypass the whole system.”
“We can’t do that, the relay will blow,” Prosna said, struggling to loosen a connector.
“It’ll hold! I’m telling you, I put that—”
“Just pull the valve!” Chief Tyrol roared.
Overhead, someone on the wireless was shouting, “Wedlock, you and Keyhole, over the top…” All thos
e pilots out there were in combat for the first time in their lives. They need me out there!
In the engine compartment, several pairs of hands worked furiously to bypass the faulty valve, while Starbuck came closer and closer to blowing her stack.
In the CIC, Adama called out commands for the maneuvering of the ship, as he kept his ears tuned to the reports coming in from the Vipers. “Firing. Miss!”
Adama winced. “Bow up half. Forward left… one quarter.” He was watching the attitude readouts with one eye, and position reports of the Vipers and the Cylon raiders with the other. “Stern right full.” The thruster controls, scattered from one end of the ship to the other, were all under manual control. “Engines all ahead full!” He had chosen his direction. Now he was going to try to get Galactica out of harm’s way, and let the Vipers do their jobs.
“I can’t, I can’t get a lock! I can’t get a lock!”
“Ahead full, sir,” reported Colonel Tigh. “Engines report full.”
Overhead, the wireless had more reports from the Viper squadron. “Oh wait I’ve got it. Karen’s got him, Karen’s got him—no!”
Adama turned away, grimacing, then looked back up.
“I can’t get a shot! I can’t get a shot!”
Adama fumed. Where was Starbuck? Why wasn’t his best pilot out there?
“They’re comin’ on. Vipers, stay in formation! I can’t get a lock… ! Oh wait—I’ve got him. I’ve got him!”
“Come on!” screamed Starbuck.
“Ready! Ready!” shouted Prosna, slamming the engine access port shut.
“Clear the tube, let’s go!” shouted Tyrol. “Get her in!”
Starbuck smacked her helmet back on over her head and secured it. The crew was lowering the cockpit canopy, while the chief hollered, “Move—move!”
About one minute later, flying a Viper that had “Raymond the Raygun” stenciled on its cockpit, Starbuck shot out of the side tube of Galactica, a tight grimace on her face. As soon as she was clear, she kicked in her thrusters and slammed herself into a sharp turn. She passed quickly alongside Galactica, then rocketed ahead, on her way to the battle.
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