He understood a great many things now, and chief among them was the need to not just tell Athena he respected her, but to show it, as well.
Did you hear anything I told you in the temple? Apollo's mind touched hers. I've always thought of you as my equal, and my complement. You aren't going to choose now to prove me wrong, are you?
In Apollo's mind, he could hear Athena laughing.
"I'll take the bridge of the Galactica, with Tigh."
Later, as these things tend to go, Apollo would recall that Cain had been remarkably quiet and compliant, as if he had known, even then, how this would end. Some things, of course, have to happen certain ways.
Apollo looked at their faces, and he couldn't help adding, "Now, let's go kick some shiny metal asses."
In the launch bay of the Galactica, pilots were scrambling for their ships; they were about to see some real action, and the cadets, who thought they were indestructible, were revved up and raring to go. They just couldn't believe that, when this day was done, many of them would not be returning home.
Boys and girl, older men and women, climbed into their waiting Vipers and made their orderly way to the launch tracks.
Trays was the most vocal of the lot, but he wasn't saying anything most of the young upstart cadets weren't thinking. He watched with Dalton, Troy, and Bree, as Starbuck, Boomer, Jolly, and Sheba, each prepared to launch. "What a waste of our new Vipers," Trays smirked. Bo jay, who was making a last minute repair to a frizzort in Trays' apex pulsar, heard the comment but said nothing.
"What are you, blind?" Bree asked, and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. "Apart from Commander Apollo, they're the best pilots this fleet ever has or will ever see."
Trays made a deprecatory noise at that notion, loud enough that Starbuck, the next fighter over, heard it all and knew that it was time to shut down someone's afterburners. He shouted to Bo jay, "Take off your overalls! You're taking Trays' Viper up!"
Bo jay couldn't believe his good fortune; a quick look at Starbuck's face told him this was not a joke, and he let fly a loud whoop and holler and began peeling out of his grimy uniform. Trays couldn't believe what he was hearing, either, and he swung out of the Viper's cockpit and stalked over to Starbuck, waving his arms and filling the air with invectives as he went.
"What the frack do you think you're doing?" he thundered.
"Saving you from yourself," Starbuck said. "But in more guarded terms, let's just say I'm replacing you with a far superior pilot, the only pilot who's ever outflown me, except for Apollo, and maybe Sheba on one of my bad days, and believe me when I say I don't often tell the truth in these matters."
Trays grew more animated, and Starbuck sat quietly, patiently listening to everything the young pilot had to say, and that was a lot. But when he was finished, Starbuck calmly lit a fumarello and watched the smoke rafter lazily up. "And while you're at it, why don't you see if Bo jay's overalls fit you, because you just got demoted, hotshot."
Everyone laughed, and Trays' face turned a shade of crimson only slightly less scarlet than Starbuck's favorite Viper. Starbuck, sitting on the edge of his cockpit, leaned over and gripped Trays by the shoulder, bearing down on the nerve cluster there, making the boy wince. He leaned in close enough the boy could smell the foul fumarello on his breath, and whispered, with an undercurrent of menace, "And just between us, if you ever lay another hand on my daughter, I'll personally rip your pogees off and fire them into the nearest sun… got me?"
Trays nodded, stiffly. Starbuck gave the boy's shoulder an extra tweak, just to show him this fossil, at least, still had a lot of fight left in him and that they hadn't even come anywhere near the limits of the pain he could inflict on Trays, if Starbuck felt he had the occasion to.
"Time to eat sky," Starbuck said, and let go of Trays' shoulder.
The Vipers fired up and moved forward, along the tracks toward the launch tubes. Dalton and Troy followed after, in their Viper Duet. The Duet was an odd looking craft, ungainly to look at, resembling nothing so much as two Vipers attached at the side. Strung between the two ships was a long, flat weapons module that could be fired both fore and aft, and the ships shared a single fuel source, which allowed the yoked fighters to travel farther on the same amount of fuel. Navigation and weapons could be passed back and forth instantly, shared or separated.
Dalton didn't like to admit it, but she was glad to be sharing the Duet with Troy. It was intimate, somehow, and she now found that she liked the idea of shared intimacy with him.
"We've had difficulties in the past…" Troy began, and quickly amended, "handling this ship, but maybe, this one time, we can let go of our egos and work together."
The cockpits were side by side, and the pilots could see one another, so Troy noticed the sheepish smile Dalton offered when she answered, "Just as long as you follow my orders."
He smiled, and she felt that somehow, through the barriers, they had touched.
All across the fleet, everyone took a moment to gather himself or herself, realizing the enormity of the stakes, and that some of them, surely, would not be coming back. Those who believed said a silent prayer, for himself, and for the others.
Apollo checked all the flight crews and ships, and found them ready to go. "I want everyone to set their timers for ten microns," he said, cutting to the heart of things. "This is the amount of time we have to clear the planet, or we will all die."
"Nice morale booster," Starbuck quipped over the fighters' comm-line.
Everyone laughed, perhaps a little harder and a little more than the joke deserved, but they were releasing tension. There wasn't going to be much to laugh about in a few more centons.
Aboard the Pegasus, Commander Cain took the captain's chair on the bridge, and settled himself into its familiar seat, rested his hands on the arms. How many battles had he led from this seat? Cain closed his eyes, and let the surge of fear and ecstasy that impending battle always brought wash through him. Commander Cain always acknowledged the fear, to himself and to his pilots; any Warrior who didn't feel the fear before impending battle was a fool, and quickly ended up a dead fool.
Athena, likewise, felt the tickle of adrenaline flushing through her system; her blood was up, but she was also afraid. She acknowledged the fear, and took her place in the command chair on the Daedelus's bridge. On the flatscreen, Apollo's image towered over her, as it seemed he, himself, had towered over her all their lives.
"By the Lords of Kobol!" Apollo screamed, and raised his fist over his head.
Across the fleet, Warriors, officers and civilians alike raised their own voices in cheer. There are moments on which lives hinge, and they all knew that this was the biggest such moment they had ever faced.
In the launch bay, Starbuck smiled and gave the thumbs-up to his squadron of pilots. Then, one by one, the Vipers boomed down the launch track, through the aperture and out of the bay, and up and up through the long, vast tunnel leading to the surface. But then, it was not just a tunnel to the surface, it was a path that led the ragtag fleet into their most heroic and desperate battle since the destruction of the colonies.
Aboard the Cylon basestar, Raiders continued to blast from the twin sets of launch bays and scream down toward the planet's surface. Lucifer and the Chitain chieftan, Lord Schikik, watched it all from the bridge of the great mother ship, a combination of Cylon and Chitain technology.
Lucifer found the creatures repugnant, but, on the whole, more pleasant to spend time around than humans. The Chitain stood nearly two metrons tall, and their torsos were plated with natural, scaled armor, of a dark gray-green, so dark as to be nearly black. Rather than two arms, the Chitain had four appendages, the upper set of limbs that ended in three scimitar-like digits, and a lower set of limbs that were trunklike, enormous pincers. The lower portions of their bodies were serpentine, which, like their limbs, was the color of spilled blood. Impossibly, the Chitain carried themselves upright, like snakes that had learned a particularly good trick, and
advanced in the same slithering, rippling fashion. Not only did they move upright, their great bulk belied their blinding speed. The lower end of their tails narrowed to a wicked, sharp spike, not unlike a scorpion's stinger. Every centimetron of their bodies was designed only for battle; whatever harsh and hellish world they had come from, it was hard to imagine these things had any natural predators.
Chitain warships were fashioned after their own bodies, part starship, part armor, a long cylinder that tapered to a point; their forward propulsion was managed by the engine strands that hung from the front of the ship and curled around to the sides, while their weapons systems was a long tail that originated at the back of the ship. This tail could fire a laser pulse, or whip about and shatter any starfighter that had been foolhardy enough to venture too near. This new class of basestar combined the cold, Cylon mech look with the technorganic Chitain weapons array.
The Chitain were scavengers, leaving nothing to waste, not even the bodies of their own dead; their cities were built from the hollowed shells of their fallen. What they didn't plunder and use as salvage, if it moved, they ate. They were ruthlessly efficient, and had a growing hatred for humans, following their last encounter with, and unlikely defeat at the hands of, the colonials.
Lord Schikik particularly wanted to see Apollo again.
"The humans have trapped themselves in an underground cavern," Lucifer reported the dispatch from the Centurion captain to the Chitain leader. "They also report an underground city made of fused silicate, granite and sandstone."
Lord Schikik might have smiled; it was hard to tell. "A crystalline city," he said, but already he was thinking of the scavengability. "Interesting."
"The city apparently reflects any act of hostility back upon its attacker," Lucifer added, and this time, he was certain Lord Schikik did smile. If such a thing were true, Schikik ruminated, what could possibly stand against an armada fashioned of such material?
In the exact center of the basestar, in the center of the room, the Imperious Leader sat high upon the tiered platform, its jagged spikes tearing the light and making diamonds. He wondered, momentarily, why Count Iblis had not contacted them, and decided this was not necessarily a bad thing. Eons ago, Cylon was home to a race of warlike, savage—yet—sentient reptilian creatures. But one day, an outsider, a stranger filled with as much hate as the ancient Cylons themselves possessed, appeared in their midst and introduced them to technology. They were indebted and in fear of him for decades, but he promised to make them the most ruthless, fearsome warriors the universe had ever seen, and he kept that promise by introducing human DNA— his DNA—into the Cylon genetic structure, evolving them into bipedal creatures. Cloning followed, making females of the species redundant and unnecessary. Soon, genetic manipulation also bred all emotion out of the reptilian creatures; all except hatred. They had plenty of that, but then, so did the stranger known as Count Iblis.
He had bred them to hate all humankind, and, predictably, the Cylons had turned upon Iblis, destroyed his human body, leaving his brain under their control, but the Count had proven more resilient and unpredictable than most. Although his brain remained slaved to the Cylons, Iblis's mind, his consciousness, continued to evolve, until he could project his esoteric body through space and time. He had escaped the remains of his physical embodiment and, as a result, became even more powerful. Freed of the tyranny of flesh, Iblis had been able to meddle in the Cylons' affairs, their evolution and the upward crawl of many other races, as well.
It was time, the Imperious Leader thought, for the Cylons to at last go their own way, free of Iblis's meddlings and interference. They were his children, true, but, as children will, they had grown up and were ready to find their own way, to write their destiny in flame and blood across the stars. Yes, past time. But how?
His third brain began to move in abstracts, positing, sifting, analyzing, rejecting. There was nothing the Imperious Leader enjoyed more than a good challenge, and he suspected the answer might be simpler than anyone thought.
Starbuck's Scarlet Viper at last roared out of the long, sloping fissure running from the secret shipping port to Kobol's surface, followed closely by the fighter squadron, and, at last, the entire colonial fleet, led by the three battlestars.
Aboard the Galactica, Apollo checked his timepiece, and opened the comm-line to the Vipers' cockpits. "This is where the felgercarb hits the numo," he said.
"You've really gotta work on those pep talks," Starbuck muttered around the butt of the fumarello he held clenched in his teeth. He caught himself whistling a simple tune, then realized it was the string of notes Apollo had led them to sing in the crystal city. Frack! Now that tune was stuck in his mind like a musical splinter! "Thanks, buddy," he groused.
"I want the cadet trainees to remain calm and stay close to the more experienced pilots," Apollo continued. "Starbuck, you just got a field promotion. You're wing commander. Look after our cadets."
Starbuck bit down on his fumarello. Wing commander? Frack, he'd never assumed command of anything before, but then, the idea began to sink in, and he tilted his head proudly. He liked the thought. Maybe he was actually starting to take life more seriously, since he had spent some time away from it. Whatever the reason, he slipped into the role as easily as a hand fits a glove. "Jolly, Bo jay, Boomer," he ordered, "don't let the cadets out of your sight, and remember, all of you, we're going to need to watch each other's ass if we plan on dancing on the tables in the ODOC tonight."
The gradual slope of the underground launch tube worked to the fleet's advantage, bringing them out on the blind side of the concentrated Cylon and Chitain forces. Starbuck immediately spotted the large opening in the enemy's position the colonials could exploit. "Boomer, you and Bo jay begin escorting some of the less-armed civilian ships through," he said.
The Forge and Scorpius Ascendant slipped through the Cylon armada, but there were too many Raiders for the fleet's good fortune to hold for long, and one of the Chitain fighters, its propulsion tendrils doubling as sensors like insectoid antennae, detected the sudden appearance of the colonials. The Chitain fighter peeled away from the main attack force, its weapons stinger whipping back and forth, spitting deadly energy beams at the Civilian ships just emerging from the fissure.
"We're spotted!" Starbuck warned his squadron. "Engage the enemy, but protecting the civilians is your first priority!"
The Chitain fighter dodged and darted, its tail stinger flaring brighter as its attack intensified. "I'm on him," Boomer called, and veered away to confront the approaching craft. Energy scored across the Viper's forward shields, sloughing harmlessly away, giving Boomer all the chance he needed to slip in beneath the hostile ship and take his fighter into a climb, thumbing the turbolaser as he ascended. His first salvo tore the stinger away from the Chitain craft's underbelly, and his next shot ripped straight up through the craft, tearing it, and its pilot, in half.
But more laser pulses burned past him, and Boomer saw the first wing of the Cylon and Chitain fighters bearing down on him. "This would be a good time to listen to what Commander Apollo said and start covering the other guy's ass," Boomer reminded the other pilots. He held the firing button down on his navi-hilt and watched his laser fire rip across a starfield full of Raiders. Two went down, spiraling out of control into one another, but the rest thundered overhead, past Boomer and after the civilian ships still rising out of the fissure.
The battlestars formed a blockade between the civilians and the onrushing Cylon fighters, taking the brunt of the enemy laser fire while responding with their own barrage. The shielding on the battlestars was stronger, able to withstand more than the ragtag, unarmed civilian ships, but even so, they couldn't take the pounding they were receiving forever.
Athena, aboard the Daedelus, gripped the arms of her command chair as the battlestar rocked and jumped under the beating it was taking. A bridge officer reported to Athena that three Cylon Raiders that had been on the planet's surface were rising now,
trying to slip in through the cloud cover their attack on the hidden city had thrown into the air. The battlestar trained its artillery on the three Raiders as they attempted a flyby, strafing the unarmed civilian ships. It was a tricky maneuver, firing at the Raiders through the clutter of civilian ships and weaving Vipers, but the Daedelus's gunnery crew scored two direct hits on the Cylon fighters before they had to cease fire or risk hitting the Cerebus.
"Frack!" she cried, and banged her fist on the arm of her command chair. She watched the third fighter disappear on the far side of the civilian ship, impossible for the Daedelus to target.
But just beyond the civilian ships, a Viper had broken away from the aerial battle and bulleted for the Raider. Bo jay guided his Viper between the Cerebus and the Raider and opened fire. A moment later, the flaming wreckage of the Cylon ship went spinning down to the surface of Kobol, leaving a long, black tail of smoke in the air.
Everyone aboard the bridge of the Daedelus let out a heartfelt cheer of joy and relief.
On the screen, Bo jay started blasting at a cluster of Chitain Stingers that had chased after his ship. One, two, three, the Stingers exploded in a glittering cloud of particles.
Athena squinted at the fast-moving object on the screen. "Is that Trays' Viper?" she asked. "When did he get so good?"
"He didn't," Apollo answered over her open comm-line. "That's Bo jay. Starbuck benched Trays."
Athena smiled behind her hand. Leave it to Starbuck to change the seating arrangements at the last moment. "You be careful out there," Athena whispered softly, as if by the magic of the heart in love Starbuck would hear her. "You come back to me this time."
"Captain?" the bridge officer interrupted; there was something like fear in his voice.
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