01 - Battlestar Galactica (12 page)

He fell silent, as the two Cylon raiders swooped down on them, like sharks
out of the depths of the ocean. There was a blood-red 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, bring 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.

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 facade 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.

Helo looked up in the gloom. “So we’re coasting?”

She answered anxiously. “Best way to avoid attracting attention. No power
signature. Go in a straight line.” As she talked, Helo had his hands clamped to
his thigh, gritting his teeth against the pain. “Unless somebody actually gets
close enough to see us, we’ll look like a chunk of debris on the sensors.” She
stopped her machine-gun-like delivery for a moment to assess the readings on her
instruments. “I think we have enough inertia to make it to Caprica’s ionosphere.
Then we power up, and find a place to land.”

“Nice,” Helo panted. “Nice thinking there.”

Sharon checked their course one more time, then unbuckled to float back to
help Helo, grabbing the first-aid kit on her way. “Frak, Helo, you’re hurt bad,”
she said, bracing herself against a panel so she could tend to his wound.

For a second, he looked as if he was going to make light of it—but as soon
as she touched his leg, he gasped in agony. A piece of shrapnel, probably molten
metal from the hull, had gone straight through his thigh. It must have missed
the arteries, though, because the bleeding was slowing down. She had to cut the
leg of his spacesuit, praying the cabin pressure would hold. Then she was able
to get closure-patches on the wound and start wrapping cloth tape around it.
“Hold still,” she said, grabbing a hypodermic. Before he could say a word, she’d
stuck him full of antibiotic and painkiller.

He sat back, breathing hard, as she handed the tape to him. “I have to check
our position,” she said. Then with as much of a smile as she could manage, she
added, “Stick with me, partner. We’ve got to get through this together.” She
caught his hand and held it tightly until he nodded. “Good.” Because Helo wasn’t
just her partner, he was her best friend in the world—Tyrol excepted, of course.
She’d be devastated if anything happened to him. “Good,” she repeated, then
turned and floated back to her pilot’s seat.

Caprica was drawing visibly closer, and she was starting to be able to pick
out something of the situation there. The world was slowly being swallowed up by
murky clouds, and here and there lighting up with flashes of light under the
clouds.
Lords of Kobol, what’s happening?
she thought. And then she
realized: All those flashes were nukes going off on the surface of Caprica. The
planet was being destroyed.

“Helo,” she said shakily.
Don’t tell him how bad it is, not yet.
“We’re getting close to the atmosphere. I’m going to set up for entry. I think—”
She checked her instruments again before continuing. “I think we can make it
close to Caprica City. The city itself may be under attack, so I’m going to aim
for the area just to the south.”

“Okay with me,” he said. “Just so you do the flying.” He barked a laugh to
mask his pain.

“I will,” Sharon said. J
will.

And with that, she powered up the systems and began steering the Raptor
toward a smoking, high-speed entry into Caprica’s atmosphere.

Galactica,
Combat Information Center

The assembled personnel in the CIC stood silent and grave as Commander Adama,
bulky microphone in his hand, addressed the ship. Adama’s voice echoed through
the corridors. “Preliminary reports indicate that a thermonuclear device in the
fifty-megaton range was detonated over Caprica City thirty minutes ago.”

Though Adama could not see it from where he stood, all through the ship,
shock waves reverberated among the crewmembers who had not previously heard the
news. The Viper mechanics one by one stopped their work, reactors
half-installed, their hands and their bodies seemingly drained of life.
Caprica City, nuked…
Caprica City was the ship’s home port, and to many
of the crew, it was the city they called home. Many of them had family, friends,
and other loved ones in Caprica City and the surrounding region.
Caprica City
…
It was too shocking to grasp, that this city, their home planet, was being
destroyed by the Cylon attack.

Adama continued, “Nuclear detonations are also being reported on the planets
of Aerilon, Picon, Sagittaron, and Geminon. No report on casualties. But obviously, they will be high. Very high.”

On the hangar deck, holding a piece of test equipment in her hands, test
equipment that right now felt meaningless, Specialist Cally asked without
looking at anyone, “How many people in Caprica City alone?”

Kara Thrace answered, her voice barely audible, “Seven million.”

Seven million. How many were already dead?

Standing almost like a statue in the CIC, Adama continued, with barely
suppressed emotion, “Mourn the dead later. Right now, the best thing we can do
is get this ship into the fight.” He paused for a very long beat. “That is all.”

And on every deck of the ship, crewmembers who had halted their work slowly
came to, picked up their tools again, and continued their preparations to do
exactly what their commander had asked.

Colonial Heavy 798, Cockpit

It seemed like a very long way, as Laura Roslin mounted the flight of
steps—only about six steps in reality—that led to the cockpit door. She drew a
breath and knocked. When the captain opened the door, she started; she was on
edge, and she knew it wasn’t going to get better soon. “Excuse me,” she said to
the captain, stepping past him into the cockpit. He was holding a printout in
his hand, and his face was ashen. He backed away to let her into the cockpit.