"You guys got those mouth guards in yet?" Starbuck's voice sounded cheerful on the com. Kelly had flown with her on a few missions over the last three years and had already pegged her as an adrenalin junkie. As long as a battle raged she'd be jumping her juice.
They'd just burst out of FTL like the proverbial bat out of hell, except instead of jumping out of hell, they'd jumped into it.
"Not yet, but we got 'em right here. Is it time?" Kelly fired back. He couldn't see Starbuck's face, just the blank silver backside of her helmet, and he'd had to shout into the mike to be heard over the engine. Unlike Starbuck's airtight getup, his combat helmet had no faceplate and the drone screamed like an angry banshee. Its rudimentary gravity generator pitched them around like they were in a howdah on the back of a drunken oliphant. Kelly had thought the Raptor's chancy gimbals made for a bad ride, but the Cylons had built their drones with death in mind, not passenger comfort.
"No," Starbuck answered. "We may have a problem. Could ya come up here and look?"
"Frak," Kelly muttered.
A new recruit named Gaines had his arms wrapped around the crucial poison pill transmitter that Tyrol had concocted from the drone's AI. Gaeta had programmed it with a shutdown order using Doctor Baltar's notes, some tests on Valerii and a history book in the Commander's private collection about the designer of the original Cylon model, a yokel Kelly had never heard of, some cybernetics guy named Gabriel Sochard, who in the Cylon Corporation's early sales campaigns had claimed his creations could be rendered perfectly harmless with a simple command. The book's title was War Merchant. Unfortunately, Sochard had disappeared before the first Cylon war without providing the command to the human war effort. His disappearance had remained an unexplained mystery, although during the early war years, cynics had assumed he'd orchestrated the whole thing to boost sales. It was just as likely the Cylons had taken him out. If he were still alive, he'd be pushing 100.
Doctor Baltar had always thought Sochard had used some personal reference for his shutdown order command, so Gaeta had programmed the transmitter to burst broadcast the entire text of War Merchant along with some other best-guess possibilities. Colonel Tigh had joked that they should transmit the entire Colonial dictionary. "No proper names in the dictionary," Gaeta had deadpanned. Gaeta had no discernable sense of humor. Apparently, guessing the Cylon shutdown code had been a popular evening news game during the early weeks of the first war, before the fateful bombing of Taurus City. Fleet Intelligence had taken over then with no luck. After the armistice, no one had cared anymore and Sochard's name had sunk into obscurity. The Cylons had achieved a sort of moral emancipation -- they were hated in their own right and no human dared remember they'd once been property.
In some ways the poison pill transmitter resembled a chrome-toaster Cylon head, a red light pulsating back and forth across one surface like a hideous metronome without the click, click, click. It would transmit the shutdown order via light waves once Valerii found them the right place.
The other new recruit whose name escaped Kelly at the moment carried their heaviest firepower -- a combination flamethrower and super-cooled machine gun. They weren't going to try for subtlety. And since Gamert was to keep his hands free in case Valerii needed to be carried, Kelly handed the Redleken helmet control to Heppenmeier, un-strapped and crawled on hands and knees -- it seemed safest -- until he knelt next to the pilot's seat. He held on its back to keep his balance. "What is it, Thrace?" he growled.
A suited finger tapped a draedus delineated screen image that looked like a beach ball surrounded by fireflies, each fly with a pair of wings reading 'u/k.' "Looks like Hell might have a satellite defense screen." Starbuck glanced sideways at him. "What did the Devil say about this?"
Kelly shook his head. "She babbles about 'God and His Sweet Chilluns' most of the time. Can you get us an eyeball view?"
Starbuck made a noise like a snorting horse. "If you don't mind 'em peeking in, yeah sure. Tyrol figured out how to depolarize the shield."
"We'll have to chance it. Are we being tracked?"
The seals on Starbuck's suit creaked as she shook her head. "There's a group at nine o'clock, maybe twenty minutes away. Two more at the edge of sensor range, at least an hour away at sub-light. Plenty of low traffic zipping close down to the planet surface, but no one's heading for us yet. We're cool."
Kelly looked up at the curved black glass that was the drone's forward bulkhead. "Get us a view of the planet, and I'll see what I can get out of Valerii." Awkwardly shuffling around on his knees, he turned to go. He said back over his shoulder, "And if you can do something about this frakkin' pitchin' around …"
One of Starbuck's hands waved a "yeah, sure." The other one was already tweaking the control panel. As Kelly moved back toward Valerii and his men, he felt the ship stabilize. The engine noise died. They were cruising without power. Kelly got to his feet. Only babies crawled.
A moment later he was crouched beside Valerii. Frak, she looked like shit, a living ghost. Although her head was up and she was staring past Kelly at the front bulkhead, which must be completely see-through by now, she had no strength for anything else and leaned limply against her restraining straps like they were the only thing keeping her from falling to the deck, which they were. Heppenmeier held out the helmet control, and Kelly turned down the gain to help her.
Kelly looked over his shoulder to see what she was looking at. A G-class planet almost filled their view. Plenty of white clouds trimmed the huge ball as was standard for a G, but instead of the usual blue, brown and green planet surface, there was an ugly dark gray. It almost looked like the whole planet had been paved over. A few of Starbuck's satellites stood out as sharp, dangerous pinpricks of black against innocently white clouds. They would have to get past the satellites to land, but once close to the surface, according to Valerii, Cylon central control would be as obvious as a carbuncle on his grandpa's skinny ass. Kelly certainly hoped so. They wouldn't have all that much time before the Galactica started kicking up a fuss for a distraction and threw Shiva at the planet.
Flipping his helmet mike out of the way, Kelly took Valerii's chin and pulled her face to his. "What are they, Sharon? What the frak are they? You'd better tell us fast. We're going to be there in a few minutes."
Her bruised brown eyes slid away from his, trying to return to the planet view. "They're God's plan, his special babies. He's going to send them out to decontaminate the whole of creation."
Kelly looked at the planet once again. The pinpricks had grown to the size of perfectly round sand grains. According to Starbuck's draedus display each of them massed about ten times the Galactica. He turned back to her and asked, "They're robots?"
She just nodded, her expression almost dreamy. "Children of God. They carry the perfect fire. When they find an organic intelligence infection, they'll sterilize, and when they're all done the universe will be clean once again."
"Oh frak," Kelly muttered. In their single-minded insanity the Cylons were creating an intelligent arsenal determined to wipe out anything that breathed. Apparently it hadn't been enough to kill humans. They were going to destroy life.
One impossibility at a time, Kelly thought. First I'll destroy the Cylon home world, then I'll destroy this frakkin' fleet. Yeah, right.
Valerii's tired eyes looked back to Kelly. She smiled and for a moment, the Raptor pilot that he'd flown with over the past three years returned. "Don't you worry, Cap, they're not turned on yet. Dead as so many doornails."
"You're sure?" Kelly asked, but he'd already lost her focus. She was staring past him once again.
He pulled his helmet mike back down to his mouth. "You get all that, Fiery Chariot?"
"Every word, Angel One. If the road's open, I'm going in before they start looking at me too closely. You'd better strap down again and get out those mouth guards."
.
Every Viper pilot served a CIC internship during training so Lee had been in there during a combat launch before. But that had been a lifetime ago on the Atlantia during war maneuvers. Since Judgment Day, he'd always flown his own bird. To him, being in here for a battle felt like being wrapped in cotton wool, all the action muffled with distance.
So far only one deathstar had deigned to investigate their arrival, which was both good and bad news -- good that they wouldn't be pulverized into assorted molecules without firing a single shot and bad because for this mission to have even the faintest chance of success, they needed to keep most of the Cylons' attention concentrated on them. If they didn't have it, they had to get it, hopefully by blowing up something just to add to the fun. So that was the first order on their menu -- one Cylon deathstar, deep-fried.
"All Vipers are launched, Sir," Amy Krebold's deep female voice announced.
On the speaker overhead, Keener's tight, clipped voice gave his squadron last minute instructions. "Remember to fly as erratic as a firebug with a mosquito up its ass. Watch your wingman and keep your eye on where the Galactica's shootin'! She's gonna take out Papa Bug for us." The usual stuff. Lee had said pretty much the same thing in every engagement since Judgment Day. His pilots had always listened, some of them had obeyed. A few had come back.
Over at the draedus Casper called out his bad news. "Deathstar is launching fighters. I'm counting, uh, seventy-two." Lee glanced at Casper. He was pale, and his eyes were as round as quarter cubits.
Since ordering the Viper launch, the Commander had said nothing, just watched and listened, but when Casper finished, he turned to Amy's com station and barked, "Get me the dorsal gun crews on the phones." A few seconds later he was talking into a headphone mike that he held in his hand. "It's going to be up to you boys to make every shot count. Wait for the X.O.'s command, then pick your target on the deathstar and plaster her until she comes apart. May the Lords and our most holy creator God guide your aim."
For the rail gun and the dorsal heavies, they had enough ammunition for about twenty minutes of engagement, no more. For the smaller port and starboard suppression cannons that protected the Vipers, they had less than ten minutes worth.
To Gaeta at the helm, the Commander said, "Hold us steady Lieutenant and prepare for a one hundred eighty degree roll if the port cannons run out of ammo." Gaeta acknowledged with a crisp nod and a murmur, his eyes on his engine room readouts. The FTL engines were still powered up, a highly dangerous proposition since the FTLs were as touchy as hell; and if the Galactica took a major hit in the engine area, it would all over for them, their Vipers, the Cylon fighters, the deathstar and anything else within a hundred klicks. There wouldn't even be a dust cloud because the FTL field would scatter their molecules to every quarter of Creation.
For a moment the Commander stared up at the draedus which already showed their Vipers bashing on the enemy bogies. The green lights from the displays glinted off his glasses and made his eyes opaque and unreadable. However, a pair of tight, chapped lips revealed the Commander's state of mind. To Lee, he said, "You may commence firing, X.O."
Lee had moved to stand behind Amy Krebold, whose console controlled the suppression fire cannons that bristled in two long deadly rows down Galactica's port and starboard. "Let her rip, Specialist, port-side cannons only. Order the dorsal batteries to fire as they bear."
"Yes, Sir," Amy's hands danced over her console as she murmured quietly into her headset.
The draedus became a complicated dance of light as the shells sped toward the target. Casper threw up a different read on the overhead, one that tracked incoming shells only.
The deathstar had begun firing too and a barrage was headed their way. Lee watched as five Vipers peeled off from engaging Cylon fighters to chase them down.
A buzzer went off. "Radiological alarm," Amy Krebold said. She leaned forward to look at a screen. "Two of those are nukes."
On the draedus the trajectories plotted for the shells and the Vipers intersected on the other side of the Galactica. Keener's kids had better be damned good shots, frakkin' damned good shots, or they were going to be forced into an FTL hop they didn't want to make. Or they were going to be toast.
.