CHAPTER ONE
------LIFE-----
"...listen to me. Forget the damn toaster. Climb now or your dead. . . Gods damn it Kara, pull up now. We can still pull out of this, we haven't gone past the point of no return. Pull up!"
She was engulfed by the light. It was welcoming. Leoben was right. There was nothing terrible about death. When you finally face it, it's beautiful.
"Gods damn it, where are you?" He looked around for her in the clouds until he spotted the Viper. "Visual. Visual. Okay. Kara, I'm coming to get you." His Viper raced towards hers.
"Lee. . . I'll see you on the other side."
"Kara, please listen to me! Come back."
"Just let me go." She was ready. He was keeping her here.
"Gods damn it Kara! You come back! Come back!"
She knew in her heart this was the moment. "It's okay. Just let me go. They're waiting for me."
Her Viper exploded. "No! No!" yelled Lee.
His radio crackled with static. "Lee," it was his dad. "Do you have her in sight? Can you see her?"
He pressed the comm trigger next to his thumb and responded. "Negative. She. . . went in. She went in."
"We're sending in the search and rescue birds right now. We'll find her," said Adama over the radio.
"No dad, it's no use. Her ships in," his voice broke. His rational thought almost turned into tears, "...pieces. Her ships in pieces. No chute. We lost her." Those words struck him deep. He pulled up and left the gas giant.
-
I woke up with a gasp for air. For a split second I didn't know where I was. The room was pitch black, except for a small green LED light on the wall next to me. Then, like most mornings, my memories came flooding back to me. Long story short: the worlds had ended. Life was restricted to a handful of people. We were exiled from everything. The floating rock we lived in was our home.
I touched the LED on the wall and the lights came on. My pupils involuntarily constricted. I was in my quarters on the Craton. Formally Commander Sheratons quarters, they became mine a few years ago after the holocaust. I sat up and picked up the journal I kept on the nightstand next to my bed. I rubbed my eyes with my other hand to wipe away the sleep. I checked my watch. I had been asleep for twelve hours. Surely I'm late for something! Then I remembered this was my one day a month I had off. I stood and reached out my arm just enough to turn on the coffee pot on the other side of the tiny room. Then I sat back on my bed and opened the journal.
The smell of coffee flooded the cabin. It joined with the smell of the Craton. It smelled like someone was making coffee in a brand new locker room.
Since the holocaust, I would have vivid dreams. At first I feared it was from the trauma of what happened back then, physically. I thought my brain had some loose wiring. But the doctors gave me a full exam and found nothing. When I finally spoke to a therapist, she advised me to start writing down my dreams to keep track of them. The journal I kept next to my bed was full of dreams. In some dreams I was a participant. In most, I was an observer. Occasionally I had a normal dream. And rarely, very rarely, I was someone else.
I opened the journal and flipped through it. I found the empty page I was looking for and quickly jotted down my dream before my short term memory could wipe it from me. At the bottom of the entry I usually concluded with a date and a point of view remark. I wrote the date in FTB time. Then I wrote the P.O.V: This was the first time I was God. Not a god. Not one of the Gods. I actually believed I was the one, all knowing God. I'm afraid.
I sighed. Then the phone buzzed in its slot in the wall adjacent my bed. There were two phones. One of them always connected with the CIC. This was not that one. I sighed again. This was my only day off. I wanted to do nothing. I growled at myself and picked up the phone. "Cody," I answered forcefully.
"Admiral," said Matt Tinker on the other end. Matt was one of my closest friends. He was also the Commander of our only Battlestar, the Virgil. Today was his swing shift as FTB Commander to fill in for me. For him to call me meant this was serious or he wouldn't have bothered me.
-
"What is it Matt?" I asked while I closed my journal.
"The Battleship Athena is in trouble. One of their Raptors just jumped in to report. They were in low orbit of Scorpia picking up survivors when the Cylons jumped on top of them. Right now Athena is out running them, flying around the planet at low altitudes, but they can't keep it up for long. Their FTL took a direct hit and they need some help with the Baseships so they can leave the planets atmosphere."
"Prep Dock-Jump-Zone," I hung up the phone and picked up the CIC phone. I quickly got a response. "Begin jump prep from dock jump zone for Scorpia orbit. Five minute personnel recall. Start the clock!" I hung up the phone and got dressed as fast as I could. It didn't take but a second for the ships speakers to broadcast the message. I could only imagine what the civilians on FTB were thinking when they heard the recall on the stations Public Address system.
The Craton was hard docked into the station. A long process was involved in detaching all the connectors. Through trial and error, we managed to get the time down to little over five minutes. Of the Colonial warships, Craton and Virgil were the only ones at the station. And detaching a Battlecruiser was far easier and quicker than detaching a Battlestar. Especially if that Battlestar was being overhauled (an overhaul Virgil desperately needed).
I finished putting on my uniform, threw some water on my face and my hair, and made my way to the CIC. It was a brisk walk, considering it was just down the corridor. The double glass doors to the CIC opened automatically, and I walked in with a tablet computer in my hands. I was busy writing our mission program.
-
My first best friend, David Slaton, a Chief Petty Officer, and a better computer programmer than myself, took the tablet out of my hands. And, in one fluid motion, continued right where I left off without asking anything. This might of seemed insubordinate to others. But to me, David knew what was acceptable. He knew I needed to do other things. And he also knew he could write a better program than I could. He was cocky and arrogant. We were in each others peer groups. We got along perfectly.
I walked up to the lighted information management table. On the table were grids and maps of Scorpia and its celestial bodies. On the other side of the back-lit table was my executive officer, Mike Marks, busy at work. He was a little older than I was. I had earned his respect and his trust. He was a good guy, but he was all business. Marks had one of the many corded phones to his ear and was continually looking up and down from the overhead DRADIS displays to the table.
I looked down to the table and up to look at DRADIS. I checked the time. The five minutes were up. We had to leave now. I began barking orders. "Seal all hatches. Retract the walkways. Clear all moorings, and release the docking clamps." As I gave each command, people reacted swiftly. The CIC was ordered chaos. I heard and felt the docking clamps release, and for a moment I felt the gravity plating compensate for the new inertia causing our upward momentum.
Marks hung up his phone. "Admiral, we have a full crew on board."
"Very good. Mr. James," he was my communications officer. "Request permission for inner jump."
James relayed my request to FTB's CIC. I could only assume Tinker was ready for this. In theory, there was enough space inside the moon for a ship the size of Craton to use its FTL and not have repercussion from the spatial distortions. In practice, we ever only allowed Raptors and transports to jump in and out like that. This would be a first for all of us. "FTB reports all clear," responded James.
"Helm, put us in the jump zone," I said calmly. I watched DRADIS closely as the helmsman did his best not to crash us into the Dock Tower. It took less than a minute. Craton floated over the tower at an equal distance from all points around us. This was the Dock-Jump-Zone. "Marks, jump the ship." I looked back up at DRADIS.
Marks walked over to the FTL console. "In three," he lifted the guard cover and inserted the glowing green key. "Two," I held onto the table. I hated jumps. "One." He turned the key. We disappeared into oblivion. Little did I know, disappearing into oblivion would be the highlight of my day given the events to come.