01 - Battlestar Galactica (30 page)

Adama reached under the table and pulled out a wide-view star chart. He
studied it for a moment, then pointed to a cluster of stars thirty or so
light-years away. “The Prolmar Sector.”

“That’s
way
past the Red Line,” Tigh protested.

The Red Line. The distance beyond which their calculations were considered
too uncertain, too risky for a single Jump. And yet, how else to get beyond the
reach of the Cylons? No one knew where the Cylons were based, but the Prolmar
Sector was at least in the opposite direction from Armistice Station. So in a
game of wild guesses, it seemed a better bet than many they might choose.

Adama turned to Gaeta. “Can you plot that Jump?”

“I’ve never plotted a Jump that far, sir,” Gaeta said worriedly.

“No one has. Can you plot that Jump?”

Gaeta took a moment to think about it. “Yes, sir.”

Adama nodded. “Do it… by yourself.”

Gaeta acknowledged, took the chart, and headed for the FTL station.

Tigh looked very worried. “The margin of error at that distance…”

“I know. It’s a big risk. We could be way off, we could land inside of a
sun. But at least we won’t be here with the Cylons.” Adama turned to the
vertical situation board and changed the subject. “This is a bad tactical
position. We’ll pull the
Galactica
out… five klicks. Send out
the fighters.” He traced on the board with his
hand. “The civilians will come out behind us, cross the threshold, and make the
Jump—while we hold off the Cylons.”

He turned back and faced Lee. “Once the civilians have made the Jump, every
fighter is to make an
immediate
combat landing. We won’t have much time.”

“I’ll tell them,” Lee said.

“I want
all
my pilots to return.” He fixed Lee with his gaze.
“Understand?”

Lee stood unmoving for a moment. “Yes, sir, I do.” Every muscle in his neck
seemed taut. Then he turned and headed off to the pilots’ ready room.

Adama and Tigh both watched Lee go. Then Tigh leaned across the table and
said, “So could I ask what changed your mind?”

Adama felt about six layers of emotion pass through his face, then clear
away. “You can ask,” he said, with a straight face. Tigh finally let out a wry
chuckle, and Adama matched it.

Tigh’s next question was a lot more sobering, though.

“So what do we do about our prisoner?”

Ragnar Station, Interior

“What? You can’t—you can’t—you can’t do this!” Doral’s cries echoed through
the metal-walled chambers of the Ragnar Station. Tigh accompanied a crew of two
guards and two crewmen carrying cases of supplies, as they force-marched Aaron
Doral into a huge, unused compartment within the Ragnar Station.

“You can’t just leave me here to die!”
Released by the guards, Doral spun
around and shouted his desperate plea.

Tigh answered in a steely voice. “You’ve got food, water, all the luxuries of home.” Even as he said it, he was turning to go back to
Galactica.
The guards and crewmen followed.

“I’m—I’m begging you! Don’t do this! I’m not a Cylon!” Doral cried behind
them.

“May be, but we just can’t take that chance,” Tigh said with finality. “For
all we know, you could be the one who gave them our position.”

“I’m not a Cylon!”
Doral screamed.

The guards, backing out of the entrance, pulled on the heavy steel doors.
“What kind of people are you?”
Doral shouted, as the heavy doors shut with a
thunderous boom. There were two further clanks as locks slid into place.

Through the heavy steel doors, they could still hear his shouts:

“Don’t leave me… !”

Leaving Ragnar Anchorage

“Action stations! Action stations! Set Condition One throughout the ship!”

The warning voice echoed repeatedly as Commander Adama turned off the main
corridor, went down a set of steps, and strode into the CIC. The place was afire
with tension. The crew were doing their jobs with deliberation overlaid with
urgency. Colonel Tigh met him. “The fleet is ready to Jump, sir.”

Adama nodded. “Lieutenant Gaeta,” he said, crossing the center of the CIC.

“Yes, sir.”

He handed Gaeta an octagonal paper bearing a complex series of numbers.
“Disperse to all the fleet. Final coordinates.” He’d had two other people plot
the Jump independently, and used their results as a check on Gaeta’s
calculations. Gaeta’s work was confirmed. The start-point coordinate was still
missing; that would have to await their emergence from the storm.

“Yes, sir.” Gaeta took the paper and went at once to the nearest comm
station. He would be transmitting the coordinates not by wireless, which the
Cylons might intercept even through the storm, but by short-range ship-to-ship
laser transmission. If they’d been at sea, they might have used blinker lights,
in a cascade from one ship to another.

Adama spoke quietly to his XO. “Stand by to execute battle plan.”

The fleet was moving.
Galactica
led the way out through the maelstrom
of Ragnar’s atmosphere, taking a carefully chosen course that would keep as much
of the fleet hidden as long as possible from the Cylons. The green clouds
swirled their toxic dance. Lightning flashed along the edges of the ships.

It was an armada such as humanity had never launched before, except perhaps
in the days of the exodus from Kobol, in the distant past. There were ships of
every size and description: small freighters and transports, enormous passenger
liners, private yachts, tankers, a ring-ship, one of just about every kind of
ship known to the Twelve Colonies. It was motley, it was ragtag, and it looked
as though it couldn’t possibly stick together in a coordinated fashion. And yet
it did.

Galactica
was now approaching the outer limits of the storm, close to the
point where they could take their final reading and make the Jump—and also close
to where the Cylons would detect them with ease.

As they reached the outer fringe of the atmosphere, the battlestar began a
slow turn, bringing herself broadside to the expected position of the Cylons.
Galactica’s
purpose was to defend the Ragnar storm exit point. If she could
protect the civilian fleet from the Cylons even for a few minutes, it would give the fleet the precious seconds it needed to make the Jump. Only a matter of
moments, now.

“Weapons grid to full power,” Colonel Tigh ordered, striding through the CIC.
“Stand by enemy-suppression barrage.”

On the outer hull of
Galactica,
forty-eight gun batteries swung into
position, both rapid-fire cannon and longer-range heavy cannon. In the last
battle, there’d been no ammunition for these guns, but now their magazines were
full. On the other hand, they’d faced only a few raiders before; now they were
up against a much more fearsome enemy, the Cylon base stars.

As the gunners made ready to fire,
Galactica
emerged at last from the
interference of the storm, into what should have been the calm of space.

Gaeta, on the short-range dradis, saw what most of the crew could only
imagine with dread: Cylon raiders swarming away from the nearby base star, like
bees from a hive. They were too many to count by sight, but the dradis console
told him the news. “Incoming seventy-two Cylon fighters, closing at one-two-zero
mark four-eight!”

“FTL, get your fix and transmit to the fleet!” Adama ordered, watching on the
overhead dradis monitor. He hated to give the Cylons time to disperse for
attack, but they were still out of range. Until…
closing, closing…
now. “Enemy suppression fire—all batteries execute!”

His command was echoed by Colonel Tigh, on the all-ship:
“All batteries,
commence firing.”

The outer hull of
Galactica
came alive like a manic fireworks finale.
The long-range cannon pounded out heavy fire against the enemy,
thud-thud-thud-thud,
relentlessly. The rapid-fire cannon
erupted in streaming volleys, creating a jet stream of deadly fire raining
outward at the incoming raiders.

The emptiness of space was filled with swarming killers, the scythelike Cylon
raiders breaking in seemingly random zigzags, the hail of fire from
Galactica,
and then the white-hot streaks of the fast-boosting Cylon
missiles, aimed at the battlestar and the fleet behind her. For a few moments,
it looked as if the suppression fire was doing nothing. And then the Cylons
started to explode, repeatedly, in great blossoms of fire…

From within the ship, it sounded like a continuous drumroll, over the
bass-drum pounding of the heavies. Adama watched, grateful for every gunner who
managed to pick off an incoming missile or an approaching fighter. Finally,
Gaeta called out, “Perimeter established!”

The suppression-barrage had created a bubble of relative safety immediately
surrounding the ship; now the Vipers were to widen the bubble and keep the
raiders at bay. “Launch Vipers,” Adama ordered.

The voice of Dualla called out over the all-ship,
“Vipers, cleared to
launch.”

In the port launch bay, Captain Kelly gave the word, and Vipers sped down
multiple launch tubes, flung into space by the magnetic catapults…

In the lead squadron, CAG Lee Adama, call-sign Apollo, led his wing of Vipers
in a sweep, starting by getting them the hell out of the line of fire of
Galactica’s
gun batteries. His call went out to all the Vipers:
“Broken
formation, Razzle-Dazzle, don’t let ’em use their targeting computers! And for frak’s sake, stay out of
Galactica’s
firing solution!”

In another Viper, Starbuck nodded, keenly aware of just how difficult that
was going to be. Cylons everywhere, freewheeling dogfight—and pull it off
without getting directly between
Galactica
and the enemy.

From
Galactica
came the final instruction, Dualla’s voice calmly
passing on the order:
“Vipers engage fighters only. Leave the base star to
us.”

“Okay, people, let’s do it.”

At Apollo’s signal, the Vipers shot outward in irregular formation, opening
fire on the approaching raiders. In moments, all was chaos again, as fighters
dodged and swerved, engaging the enemy. Some Cylons exploded, but so did some
Vipers.

Apollo was hard pressed to track the immediate adversaries, keep a watch on
the squadron at the same time—and do so without the aid of onboard computers. He
was flying the way he had not flown since his last war games: spinning,
twisting, flying tight and fast, and mostly by the seat of his pants. To his
right, he saw one of his wingmen explode, hit by a Cylon missile. Cursing
viciously, he dodged a raider, brought another into his sights, and let loose a
burst on the cannon. It exploded. But there were so many more, far more of the
Cylons than of the Vipers. He made a hard pitch up and a left turn, just in time
to see another of his wingmen explode.
Frak!

No time to think about it; three more raiders were buzzing around him. He
kept turning, flipping, shooting. Another enemy gone. Several more coming in…

* * *

Colonel Tigh’s command went out to the fleet: “Galactica
to all civilian
ships. Commence Jumping in sequence.”

As still more Cylon missiles streaked in, some this time aiming for the
civilian ships that were beginning to emerge from the storm, bright flashes of
light signaled the departure of one ship after another through the folds in
space that would take them to safety.

Galactica
was holding the perimeter, but just barely. The Cylons were
pressing the attack inward, and the Vipers could not avoid giving up ground. It
was only a question of time until the Cylons broke through.

The Cylon missile tracks were getting closer, overwhelming the ability of the
gunners or Vipers to stop them. In the CIC, Gaeta’s voice shouted a warning:
“Incoming ordnance!” An instant later, the CIC shook from an explosion on the
outer hull—then another. More than one screen shattered or went dark. The hits
were probably not nukes, but were bad enough.

Tigh was on a handset at once. “Damage control—!”

Apollo’s jaw set with grim determination as he and his crew-mates fought
against the steadily turning tide.
How many ships away?
His thumb
squeezed the trigger, and another burst bracketed a Cylon above, below, then
dead center. He veered out of the explosion path.

As he came back around, he saw another flash, and another of his shipmates
died.

A flash, a different kind, and another civilian ship was away.

His headset was filled with chatter from the other pilots, warning each
other, giving breathless encouragement, cursing with rage. Apollo remained
silent except for the occasional barked order. All of his attention was on
flying, shooting, and keeping an eye on
Galactica
and the fleet. Another ship away—a big
one, too, just before a Cylon missile streaked right through the spot the ship
had occupied an instant before.

Another target in sight.
Kill the frakking thing.
He squeezed a long
burst, longer than he should, but it ended in a blossom of exploding Cylon.

Still another coming in, though, and he couldn’t come around quite fast
enough. He saw the streak out of the corner of his eye, then felt the
bone-crushing
SLAM
of the impact, and his Viper spinning out of control.
Frakking hell!
He fought to stabilize it, but his left wing was gone, the
engine on fire, and all he had left working was a handful of thrusters.

Somewhere dimly he heard Starbuck’s voice:
“Apollo! Do you read me?”
He had no time to answer.