"Oh Lords, there is nothing hidden from you.
You hold the future in your hands."
A crackly wireless signal and the booming feedback of the PA system distorted Mother Elosha's voice reciting the opening lines of the battle prayer. They were already five hours sublight travel out from the surface of Zodiac. The holy mother had actually said the words almost ten minutes ago and the sound quality didn't matter too much because every volunteer on Galactica had learned the words in the cradle.
Captain Lee Adama, formerly the Galactica's CAG and on this final mission her X.O., walked over to the communications station. Along with Specialist Amy Krebold's normal duties at fire control she was also acting as com. officer. She nodded to him, pursed her lips and twirled a few analog dials. Elosha's voice came through stronger and clearer.
"You guard us in the early watches.
You protect us in the depths of space."
On the other side of the overhead draedus screens Lee's father, Commander William Adama, stood looking up at the backlit green and glass tactical display. On the display's right side, someone had sketched in their best guess as to the Cylon home system based on Valerii's babbling. Down the left side written in white grease pencil were the coordinates and duration of the three successive FTL jumps that would take them there. A primly and properly turned out Lieutenant Gaeta already had a cloth clasped in a tightly fisted hand ready to erase each jump's coordinates as it was completed. The tactical display and Gaeta's and Lee's brains held the only records of their flight path back to humanity's refuge. The plotting computer had been set for a full wipe after each jump completion.
"You hold the secrets of the past in your hearts.
You are our strength and our salvation."
Lee could see the Commander's lips move as they recited the words along with the two hundred and ten other volunteers on the Galactica. Viewed from this angle Lee's father seemed calm, almost peaceful, but when the rugged, scarred face looked down and the Commander's eyes locked with his son's, Lee saw the hungry, wolfish gleam of the warrior. The eyes said, At last we're actually going to do something besides run.
"You are the beginning and
You are the end."
All forty of the civilian ships had landed on the Zodiac, their tylium tanks dry. Galactica had taken every spare drop of fuel left for her marathon of FTL jumps. Her tanks were three-quarters full. It was more than enough to get her there, fight a running battle and perhaps even get her back. If the Lords flew with them.
The last box of personal effects and the last non-combatant had landed on Zodiac. The landing bays had locked shut. The batteries were charged, and the primary turrets and counter-fire artillery had been loaded with the last of their ammunition. Everyone on board carried a loaded side arm strapped to the hip. The infiltration party carried several, except of course for the thing that they had once called Sharon Valerii. As Lee had helped Kara prep the Cylon drone he had seen it stumble up the loading ramp like a walking skeleton, white, thin and loose-jointed.
The Galactica was ready for war.
"Give us courage as we enter battle
And strength to win your holy victory."
Lee's own lips stiffly formed the words of the prayer. As CAG he had been part of mission planning from the beginning and had approved the issuance of suicide pills, but that was different from carrying one around in his pocket. Two hours ago a med. tech had handed him a red capsule with instructions to "bite it open for quickest results." Lee had been sitting in the mess hall with Kara eating a last, tasteless meal of cold meat and colder coffee.
"It's cherry flavored, I hope?" Kara had quipped as the med. tech had checked off both of their names on his list. The tech hadn't laugh. He'd probably heard enough bravado already, and if they were captured like all on board the tech had sworn to take the pill. Not everyone looked suicide in the face and tried to laugh.
Kara had dropped her pill in an exterior flight suit pocket. She'd have to pop her helmet to swallow it. Lee had put his in the inside breast pocket of his uniform jacket. They hadn't talked about it, but after the tech had left, Kara's shaking hands had held on to Lee's for a long time. Or maybe it had been Lee's hands that had shook. Adrenalin, he reminded himself. Just adrenalin.
Besides the individual suicide pills, everyone in CIC had been told how to activate the self-destruct torpedo -- a coded pad and a simple toggle switch under the central console.
Elosha's prayer had reached the last couplet.
"May your dominion and peace
Encompass the universe in everlasting glory."
As the prayer finished, the eyes of six of the people in CIC turned to the seventh, the Commander. He looked steadily back as they all firmly recited,
"So say we all."
The Commander had never let his soldiers back down or slack off from their pledge to protect humanity. They said the words to him as a renewal of that commitment.
Besides the CIC throughout the ship the closing words were repeated -- in the four dorsal gun batteries, the starboard and port batteries, the rail gun fire cab, the engine room, the damage control station, the launch bay, the re-worked Cylon drone and in the forty-two Vipers, each of them ready and waiting to fling themselves into the last and most glorious fire fight in the history of mankind, all the way from the newly appointed CAG Lieutenant Keener at the head of the line back to Rat Frak at the tail.
A wavering, weak female voice replaced Elosha's on the wireless. It was President Roslin. "Galactica, with the grace granted me as President of the Twelve Colonies I bless your mission. May the Holy Lords and the great Creator God speed you on your way, stand by you in battle and bring you home safely. The prayers of all humanity go with you."
The Commander had been walking over to the communications console as the President spoke, and when she finished, he picked up the microphone and answered the necessary formal farewell, "On behalf of the two hundred and eleven men and women on board the Galactica, President Roslin, I say 'thank you.' May the Holy Lords watch over you all until our return." They were too far out to hold a meaningful conversation. The President wouldn't even hear the Commander's words for another eleven minutes.
Adama nodded to Lee. "Begin jump prep, Captain."
Gaeta stood ready at Lee's elbow. Lee turned to him and said, "Set course for our first jump point, Lieutenant."
They were on their way.
.
After the Commander's last words of farewell died away on the wireless, Lieutenant Kara Thrace let her hand squeeze the drone's unarmed control stick. She couldn't see nor hear Kelly's landing party strapped down behind her since she was the mission pilot and per Fleet regulations she wore a sealed pressure suit. "Hey Kelly!" she yelled and tapped the side of her helmet to remind him to turn on his mike.
Her earphones clicked instantly. "Sorry, Starbuck," Kelly said. "How long do you think?"
"We're moving," Kara answered. "Maybe two or three minutes more normal space flight to first jump post then Gaeta'll squawk condition 2 for a minute and we'll jump. After that we go from there."
"We go from there …" Kelly repeated after her in a quiet murmur. Kara had a lot of respect for Captain Kelly, but right now she suspected he needed some bucking up. It happens to the best of them.
"How's Boomer doing?" she asked.
After Lee had left the drone to take up his post in CIC, Kara had needed something to do. It was either that or sit down on the deck and steam up the inside of her flight helmet with tears and a runny nose. So she'd helped Kelly's tech specialist install the portable Redleken device on the weakly struggling Valerii's shaved head, gluing each electrode exactly where he told her. Chief Tyrol had been working on the helmet every minute for the last three or four days. He'd managed to get its charge capacity up to over three hours.
"She's lucid. Too weak for any kind of run, though. Private Gamert's standing by carry her if need be." At 200 centimeters and 100 kilograms Gamert was the biggest man aboard the Galactica. He was a damned good marine too and knew a million jokes. Valerii, Gamert, Kelly, Heppenmeier and two recent recruits that Kara had met twenty minutes ago for the first time constituted the landing party. Except for Valerii, they were all helmeted, dressed in environmental suits and armed to the gills with both hard shot and electromagnetic weapons. Valerii was dressed in a deckhand jumper and rubber-soled shoes. She was relatively clean so either someone had given her a bath or hosed her down, probably the latter.
Their landing party had been designated Angel Host, Kelly Angel One. Kara and the Cylon drone were Fiery Chariot. The Galactica was Ninth Heaven. The target was Hell. Valerii was the Devil.
"I can get there," Kara heard Boomer's voice in the background. "You just set us down, Starbuck. Let me do the rest."
Kara tried to twist around to look at the boarding party. The harness held her too tight. She gave a thumbs-up over her shoulder instead.
Any second now Gaeta's familiar voice would come over the wireless. Any second now. Through her heavy suit gloves Kara's finger tried to work Lee's ring on her thumb. They'd finally understood each other. They'd finally come together. It had been wonderful. Heavenly. Saying goodbye had been Hell.
Kara's earphones blatted static then Gaeta's familiar chant: "Set condition two throughout the ship. Set condition two throughout the ship." At last.
.
Back almost fifty years ago when the Galactica had been built, she'd had four exterior cameras, mostly for show because given the enormous distances of space and the limitations of glass lens -- even digitally enhanced by computer analysis -- the cameras rarely provided useful information. During the three years since Judgment Day two of the four cameras had been damaged and left un-repaired.
But they still had port and starboard views and Gaeta's re-wiring of the CIC had placed the monitors at his tactical station, which had been relocated next to the FTL engine control. After their first jump the lieutenant had an exclusive view of the blazing white, pink and orange Slasenger Nebula. The battlestar's next jump took her away from the decades-wide drift of charged gas and dust to a part of space so black that only a handful of stars gleamed like colored diamonds set in velvet. They had moved to the galactic rim where stars were much further apart.
Each time as the ship had gathered itself and leapt through time, space and reality Gaeta had kept his hand resting on the gleaming blue jump key. He and tall, dark-skinned Specialist Anderson stood over the FTL jump console double and treble-checked each other as they extracted each completed jump from computer memory and called up the next. Captain Adama had taken the wipe cloth from Gaeta and as each jump was completed wiped out the coordinates from the tactical display.
For the time being the normal space helm was more or less a dead stick. They were FTL jumping in succession and had no need for piloting yet.
Gaeta had FTL jumped the Galactica almost fifty times now since Judgment Day, but the power that he was controlling still thrilled him. Nothing else would have torn him away from his wife and daughter. He loved them but one last opportunity to command time and space to his bidding had been something he couldn't pass up. And the Commander had asked Gaeta to review the FTL combat tactics manual in depth. He was ready. He was more than ready -- he was eager to end the Cylon war with whatever it took.
The Galactica was in countdown for the last jump that would take them to the battlefield. "… eight, nine, ten. Jumping now," Gaeta intoned for the benefit of the ship at large and the X.O. and Commander in particular. And once more the Galactica's FTL engines pulled the ship apart here and put her back together again way over there.
.
"Report location," Lee Adama barked as he watched the central draedus console flicker and re-organize itself with new information.
Specialist Anderson looked up from the FTL station where Lieutenant Gaeta was deleting their last jump coordinates and preparing the jump-clear in case they found themselves under immediate fire. Anderson sidestepped to a re-wired navigation station and peered into a screen. Its ghostly green light reflected off his face. "We're nineteen thousand seventy-eight, uh, point three klicks from a G-class planet in solar orbit around a yellow sun, two moons, a great deal of electromagnetic activity." He looked up at Lee and the Commander. "We appear to have achieved the target location, Sir."
"Excellent," the Commander grunted. Turning to the draedus overhead, he asked, "But do we have any company?"
Lee hopped up one level to stand behind a middle-aged crew-cut man. His name was Casper and he knew everything there was to know about reading draedus signals. The Commander joined them, standing below on the other side of the console. Casper said, "Closest contact is at eleven thousand six hundred klicks and appears to be bound for the planet, Sir." He pressed a few keys, fine-tuned a dial. "I'm not sure how many contacts there are all told. The draedus doesn't recognize the class. They're in a tight, evenly distributed formation around the planet. I've never seen anything like it."
Looking over his shoulder, Lee could see what he meant. The planet ahead looked something like a pincushion surrounded by hundreds of tiny dots, each marked with "u/k" for unknown by the draedus analyzer. The screen was so crowded with glowing type that it was hard to read. Nothing was moving their way.
"They haven't seen us yet," Lee murmured to himself.
"It won't take them long," the Commander said. He turned back to Gaeta. "Give Fiery Chariot the FTL coordinates for her run-and-jump then launch her."
"Yes, Sir."
Lee tried not to think about Kara flying off on her mission. Her Cylon drone appeared briefly as an enemy bogey on the close-range draedus then it disappeared.
The Commander turned to Lee. "Let's go make war, Captain." He smiled as he said it.
Somewhere inside him Lee found the nerve to smile back. "Amy," he said to the com. station. "Tell the launch bay to insert Vipers and prepare for launch." Turning to where Anderson and Gaeta had taken up stations at the ship's stick, he continued, "Helm, set a course for Hell."