01 - Battlestar Galactica (31 page)

Using the thrusters, he gradually succeeded in slowing the spin. He saw a
Cylon coming around, and his spin brought it directly into his sights. A quick
squeeze, and another blossom. But the Viper was still gyrating, and there were
plenty of enemies left.

Oh damn.

At his ten o’clock, he saw the white trail of a missile seeking its target.
And its target was him. There was absolutely nothing he could do now except hold
his breath and say good-bye…

The missile closed—and exploded in a hail of cannon fire, as a Viper shot
past him. And Starbuck’s voice screaming with delight,
“Wheeeee! C’mon,
basss-tard!”
And arcing right, then left, she destroyed the Cylon that had
launched the missile. She turned back toward him.
“Looks like you broke your
ship, Apollo!”

“I’ve had worse!” he lied, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “But thanks!”

His joy was cut short, though, as he looked to his left and saw another white
streak—and the fiery blaze of a direct hit on
Galactica.

Galactica,
Combat Information Center

Commander Adama wasn’t sure how much longer the ship could take this kind of
pounding. The CIC was shaking as if an earthquake had struck, and consoles and
wiring were flaring and sputtering. Colonel Tigh was making his way across the
center. “Function check on the damage control panel!” he shouted to the two
nearest crewmen.

Tigh reached Adama’s side as another hit threatened to crush the ship.
Grimacing in pain, Adama pulled himself up as Tigh reported, “We’ve got multiple
hull breaches. They’re targeting the landing bays. We’ve got to get the fighters
back on board, retract the pods, or we won’t be able to Jump.”

“Fleet status!” Adama shouted.

In the monitor, one last large ship vanished in a flash of light. Gaeta
turned. “Last civilian ship’s away!”

“Recall all fighters! Stand by to secure landing bays!” Adama ordered.

Dualla’s voice rang out, “Galactica
to all Vipers, Break off, come on
home. Repeat! Come on home!”

Apollo’s call reinforced the message. “All Vipers, this is the CAG! Return
home at once! Starbuck, that means you, too!”

“Frak that, I’m coming after you!”
answered Starbuck.

“Starbuck, shove the heroics and get home!”

“Save your breath! We go back together!”

Starbuck’s fighter continued to maneuver protectively around Apollo’s
disabled craft, raking one Cylon after another with her cannon fire as they came
too close. The other Vipers of the squadron were obeying the come-home order and
were flocking back to
Galactica.

In the port landing bay, wave after wave of Vipers came in hot, holding
together in shaky formation. With a thunderous, rhythmic pounding spread along
the entire length of the landing bay, they slammed down in emergency combat
landings. They all came down hard; many of them bounced and some collided. But
in they came, wing after wing of fighters, half of them with battle damage. The
last few came in hotter than the rest, and had to brake-thrust violently to keep
from plowing into the Vipers ahead of them.

Many of them broke something in landing. But their pilots came home alive.

In the CIC, Gaeta and Dualla were frantically tracking the IDs of the
returning Vipers, getting a count.

Gaeta straightened up with his clipboard. “Forty-three. Ship reports ready
for Jump as soon as landing bay’s secure, sir.”

Adama squinted up at the monitor, his stomach in knots. All back. All that
were alive. Or were they? In the monitor he saw a spread of Cylon missiles, too
fast for the gunners to handle. The ship quaked from the impact.

Dualla called, “Two Vipers still out there, sir! Starbuck and Apollo!”

Colonel Tigh strode past Adama, reaching for a microphone. “We can’t stand
toe to toe with those base ships.” He grabbed the mic.
“Retract the pods!”

Adama picked himself up from where the last impact had thrown him against a
table, and looked anxiously from one monitor to another. Pods retracting, and
Starbuck and Lee still out there? They’d lost Lee’s signal, but Starbuck was
still out there with him. “I can’t leave them here,” he muttered. Raising his
voice, he called, “Stand by on that pod retraction!” and to Dualla, “Patch me
through to Starbuck!”

“Yes sir.”

He picked up a slender headset and held it to his ear and mouth. “Starbuck!
What do you hear?”

The universe was going insane. Starbuck had shot up more Cylon raiders than
she could count, and still they kept coming. She continued maneuvering around
Apollo, keeping him alive until he could troubleshoot his machine, kick it in
gear, and head back home. As another raider exploded at pointblank range, she
heard a voice in her headset:
“Starbuck,
Galactica.
What’d you…
’ere…”

“WHAT?”
she shouted, over the intense cockpit noise, with just about
everything running or firing at once.

The next time it came in clearer. It was Commander Adama, astoundingly calm.
“Good morning, Starbuck. What do you hear?”

At that instant, her canopy was pelted by a hail of tiny bits of debris from
a shattered Cylon. Another time, she might have been worried about being holed.
But just now she could only grin crazily and answer, “Nothing but the rain.”

“Then grab your gun and bring the cat in.”

The pelting continued. “Aye-aye, sir! Comin’ home!” She pitched up and over,
potting another Cylon on her turn. “Let’s go, Apollo! Can you move that crate
yet?”

From the Viper behind, she heard Apollo’s voice:
“I’m losing power. I’m
not gonna make it, Starbuck! It’s over. Just leave, damn it
—
that’s an
order!”

“Lee, shut up and hold still!” Frakking hell with his orders. Starbuck fired
her nose and belly thrusters and launched her ship up and over, in a completely
reckless flip into an inside loop.
“Whhaaa-HAAAAAHH!”
Watching Apollo
pass by her in an inverted position, she gave it one more second, then yanked
back on the stick and repeated the maneuver and rolled sharply to complete the
loop. She was now in front of Apollo’s ship, aiming straight at his nose.

“Oh no,”
she heard Apollo murmur.

Starbuck kicked in power, hard, then eased back. She had to do this exactly
right, or she’d kill them both. Apollo’s ship loomed in front of her.
“YAHHHHHHHHH!”
She tickled the yaw ever so slightly to the right, banked a
hair—and slammed into Apollo’s Viper, nose beside nose, jamming the root of her
left wing hard against the tip of his nose. She threw the mag-lock switch,
praying that it would help hold the ships together.

“You are beyond insane!”
he shouted as he flew backwards toward home,
propelled by her engines. His canopy was maybe half a dozen meters ahead of
hers, and she could see him gesturing and trying to look around behind him.

“Kickin’ in the burn!” she cried gleefully, hammering in full power. Together, one forward, one backward, they screamed through space
toward
Galactica.

They were not the only thing screaming through space. Cylon missiles arced
past in dizzying succession. The enemy fighters, which until now had been
standing off from
Galactica’s
firepower, were closing in for the kill.
Only a little farther away, the Cylon base star was unleashing volley after
volley of missiles. A lot of them were being stopped by
Galactica’s
suppression fire; too many of them weren’t. Explosions flashed all along
Galactica’s
hull.

Commander Adama’s fists were clenched as he watched their progress on the
screen. He could see them approaching. The ship rocked with explosion after
explosion. The shattered glass of broken screens and lights was everywhere. Tigh
had his hands wrapped around the microphone, waiting for the order to Jump.
Adama knew what he was thinking:
Leave them behind! You have to leave them
behind or you’ll lose the ship!

“Come
on!”
Adama muttered under his breath, gaze fixed to the overhead
screen. He was going nowhere without his son and Starbuck. He counted the
seconds silently, calculating their progress. When he judged they were close
enough, he barked the order, “Close the landing bay doors!” They could make it,
in the time it would take the doors to close. He knew they could.

They’d better.

The missiles were flying everywhere, and cannon-fire from
Galactica
was spraying outward. Starbuck could do nothing but stay her course, and pray
that nothing hit them.
Galactica
loomed in front of them now; she could
see the lights of the landing bay, the beautiful landing bay. She was still maneuvering at high speed,
way
faster than any normal, or even combat, approach speed.

Apollo shouted to her:
“We’re coming in a little hot, don’t you think?”

“No-o-o?” she answered, craning her neck to try to see past Apollo’s ship,
which was obstructing her view. She hadn’t meant it to come out as a question,
but she winced as she saw how fast they were closing on the landing bay. “Not
really,” she gulped.
Oh frakking gods, I can’t land at this speed.

Ahead of them, she could see the landing bay doors starting to close.

Another explosion shook the CIC. Adama pulled himself to his knees and looked
up at the screen.
“Come on…”

Across the room, Dualla reported coolly,
“They’re coming in.”
Adama
looked around in desperation, ignoring Tigh’s glare. Was he killing all these
people to try to save his son? Just a few seconds longer…

“HANG ON-N-N-N-N-N-N-N!” Starbuck yelled, as they screamed straight toward
the narrowing entrance to the landing bay. She struggled to get the bank just
right, and the pitch, and popped the thrusters down just a little. In the other
cockpit, Apollo was looking desperately left and right, trying to see what she
was doing.

Do these doors always close that fast?
She popped a little thrust to the
left, got the aim just right, and cleared the doors by a breath. “HYAHHHHH!” She
slammed on full braking thrust as they came in over a landing strip that was
littered with the rest of the squadron.
My God, I’m gonna hit somebody! There’s no way I can avoid
them—!

The instant the Vipers cleared the doors, Dualla reported breathlessly,
“They’re aboard!”

Standing beside Adama, Tigh called, “Stand by for Jump!” They were going to
Jump with the landing pod extended. They had no choice.

Adama’s fists were still clenched, his gaze hard on an interior video of the
landing pod. He could see the crumpled duo coming in over the tops of other
Vipers, flying way too fast.
Put her down. You’ve got a space there. Plant
it!

He watched as Starbuck did exactly that. When a patch of empty deck opened
beneath her, she brought it down hard. The Vipers skidded, sparks flying, out of
the range of the camera.

Lieutenant Gaeta looked up from his console. “Landing deck secure.”

Another camera picked up the Vipers, as they slammed into the interior side
of the landing deck and careened to a stop.

“Jump!” Adama commanded.

A hailstorm of missiles and raiders converged on the lumbering battlestar.
There was no way it could survive this final firestorm unleashed by the base
stars. It had just seconds to live before the knockout blow, the final killing
punch.

With a flash of white light and a wrenching twist of the space-time
continuum, the battlestar vanished. The Cylon firepower converged on nothing,
and vanished into the turbulent clouds of the planet below.

Rendezvous Point

Space seemed silent again. Peaceful. The peace of the dead, and of the
living. The survivor fleet was gathered around the scorched and battered, yet
comforting, bulk of the last battlestar, the one named
Galactica.
Where
they were, no one really knew. The Prolmar Sector. They knew the coordinates,
but beyond that, it was unknown, uncharted space.

Where they were going, no one really knew, either.

But the time for that would come.

Galactica,
Starboard Hangar

What had once been the hangar deck of a warship, and then the floor of a
museum, was now a place of mourning. It was filled to capacity with both the
living and the dead. The bodies of those who had fallen on
Galactica
were
lined up with military precision at the front of the great room. Each was draped with the flag of the Twelve
Colonies. A row of helmets represented the pilots and others who had died in
space, their bodies unrecoverable.

At the very front, standing at the same lectern where Commander Adama had not
so long ago delivered his speech at the decommissioning of this ship, was
Elosha, the priestess. Her words, songs, and prayers were being carried by live
video feed throughout the fleet. But standing before her in person was a
multitude assembled from the crew of
Galactica
and representatives from
many of the other ships. At front row center, side by side, stood Commander
William Adama and President Laura Roslin, leaders of the surviving free people
of the Twelve Colonies of Humanity. Flanking them on one side were Lee Adama,
Kara Thrace, Sharon Valerii, and Gaius Baltar; and on the other, Colonel Tigh,
Lieutenant Gaeta, Captain Kelly, Chief Tyrol, and Petty Officer Dualla.

The President and the Commander had already spoken in tribute to those had
given their lives. Elosha had led them in song and scripture. And now, with the
seventh scroll of Kobol unrolled before her, her dark face a strong and
captivating presence, she led them in prayer: