Thirteen
Chapter 48
Day of Decision
Lee "Apollo" Adama cast his ballot by putting the coded card into the slot, selecting Laura Roslin's name when the touch screen came up, punching the yes option when it said 'confirm vote for Laura Roslin', and taking the card out of the booth and handing it to the Earth Alliance government poll watcher assigned for this election to make sure it was on the up-and-up. Trailing behind him was Dee Dualla, who had, like Apollo, cast her ballot for Roslin.
They left the polling place on board Galactica and headed towards the Combat Information Center, where Commander Tigh was to brief him on the latest from Starbuck on the whereabouts of the Cylon/Drakh fleet that her squadron was tracking. "Good morning, sir!" Dualla said dutifully.
"Morning, Dee. What can I do for you?" Lee replied.
"Could I talk to you for a second? In private?" she asked, gesturing with her head towards a storage room. Apollo looked around, then nodded his head and walked over there. The room was empty, and Dee shut the door behind them after Apollo entered the room.
"What's up, Dee?"
Dee swallowed, clearly nervous about what she was about to say. She did manage to get the courage up to say what she wanted though. "Lee, I know that it's against regulations to suggest what I'm about to suggest, but…listen, I want you to know that…dammit, I don't know how to say it!"
"That you have feelings for me?" Apollo said.
Dee looked at him and nodded, adding, "In a way, it was a little convenient that Billy proved to be a Cylon, because me and him were drifting anyway, and…well, Lee, I've had my eye on you for a long time and…I always thought you were more into Starbuck anyway."
"Yeah, well, she's with that Anders guy now. Besides, it would be kind of awkward to be fraking my late brother's fiancée, you know?"
"Damned thing that you're an officer and I'm just enlisted, or else…"
Lee put his hand on her shoulder and said, "We might not be that way for long."
"Why do you say that?" Dee asked.
"Because…look, if we manage to defeat the Cylons and the Drakh, we'll never have enough people to fully defend what's left of the Colonies, regardless of where we go. Even if Zarek were to win, he surely realizes our future is tied with the Earth Alliance, and the fact that we'll need their help to defend us in the future!"
"What does your father have to say about that?"
"I haven't talked to him about that, but I've sensed he feels the same way. He doesn't want to admit it, because it means that the Colonies would pretty much cease to exist if they merged armed forces with Earthforce. And Roslin's not come out and said it yet, because she wants to find a way to keep our society intact while merging us with the Alliance."
Dee sighed, looked down and asked, "But what about us? Or can there even be an 'us'?"
"I don't know yet, Dee. I will say this, though. If you're willing to wait and see how things play out, I'll wait for you. If the time comes when it's not against regulations for us to get involved, we'll see how it goes."
Dee smiled, walked up to him, and hugged him. Lee leaned down and gently kissed her on the lips, then said, "We'd better go. Tigh's liable to get his shorts in a knot over us being late." She laughed and they departed the room.
As luck would have it, Commander Saul Tigh hadn't even noticed Lee and Dee arriving late on the bridge, as he was poised over some reports on the central map table in the middle of the room. "Captain, good! I need you to look at something." Tigh said as he looked back down at the star charts after acknowledging Apollo's presence.
Apollo looked down at the charts, expecting to see Epsilon 3 as well as the whole Epsilon Eridani system, but he was surprised to see that Tigh was looking at a star chart of the Colonial system. He coughed and said, "Sir, may I ask why you're looking at that star chart?"
"You may, but I'll beat you to the punch. It's part of the reason why I asked you here. Your old man and I have been talking about something."
"Funny, I didn't know you two liked baseball." Apollo joked sarcastically.
The barb didn't faze Tigh, who said, "Better keep your day job, Captain, because you've no future as a comedian. Besides, I think you'll like what your dad and I have cooked up."
"So what would that be?"
"A retaliatory strike against the Cylons, what else?" Tigh said.
Apollo almost did a double take, disbelieving what he was hearing. "Excuse me?"
"If we weather the storm, Adama wants to take the Galactica or the Pegasus back to the home system, along with some ISA forces, and strike them back where they least expect it. We're still working on the final details, obviously, because we're not sure what we'll have left when the enemy pays us a visit, but we know who we want to lead the mission." Tigh looked at him as he said that last part of the sentence.
"Me? Are you both sure?"
"We're both sure. Besides, since you'll be in a Viper and I'll be here on Galactica, we need to have someone around to take charge if this ship is lost."
"So I'm going no matter what?"
"Yes, unless you don't make it through the battle ahead. The plan is to make the attack even if both the Galactica and Pegasus are lost. The reason we're doing this is to divide their forces so that they can't commit to an all-out strike on Earth."
Apollo nodded and said, "Okay, I'll do it. Not like I've got a choice."
"I wasn't going to order you, Lee. This is pretty much a suicide mission, because even though we have a good amount of intelligence from there, there's no way to know for sure what all they will have in the system when we strike."
"Where do we strike first?"
Tigh pointed down to a planet they both knew all too well. "Picon."
Laura Roslin went right to sleep right after she voted. The campaign was officially over, and the ballots would not be counted until the polls closed at midnight station time. The results would not be long in coming thereafter, and they would know who the winner was soon after midnight.
She had voted when polls opened at midnight. There were twenty-five polling stations to accommodate all the voters, which, save for the handful of children as well as the few prisoners they had, meant most everyone could vote. Then she crashed in her suite, waking up at 9am station time to impatiently await the results.
Just because her campaign was over didn't mean that she could take the day off from the presidency. She had given herself an extra couple of hours of sleep, but it just meant she'd have more of a jammed-packed day ahead of her. First up, her security and military briefing with Admiral Adama, station commander Admiral David Rissen, Michael Garibaldi, and Tessa Halloran, who was chief of intelligence for the Interstellar Alliance.
Technically, Michael Garibaldi had no formal role in the Interstellar Alliance, but in her time of dealing with John Sheridan, the former president of the ISA, she had come to understand that Garibaldi was a valuable resource that was best not ignored. He sat in the back of the meeting room, quietly observing and waiting for the right time to inject the meeting with his input.
Adama started the briefing with the latest from Starbuck, who was tracking the fleet. "They will be here around the time the polls close, maybe shortly thereafter. They've got several cruisers, carriers, and at least three motherships. As for the Cylons, we took out two basestars, but we're not sure how many they'll bring to the battle."
Rissen added, "We've got plenty of forces coming to the battle. We have the Thirteenth Fleet here already, and the Sixteenth and Nineteenth will be here soon, as well as the Twenty-First. The Minbari are sending more warships, and the rest of the Alliance will be sending us ships as well. They'll be cutting it close, but they should be here before the enemy arrives."
"What I'm concerned about, Madam President, is that the Drakh and the Cylons may be using this as a flanking maneuver, and go after Earth with their main force. Hollifield and Delenn have sent what they could, but they also have to keep enough around to protect their own worlds, should they be attacked." Halloran stated.
Garibaldi interjected, "Which is the real bitch of this whole thing, because we don't know exactly what their plans are. We don't know if this is the heart of their attack or if this is the first stage of a greater attack to come."
Roslin leaned back into her chair and said musingly, "Well, with all of this dreadful news, I wonder if I should have voted for Zarek!" Her attempt at humor got a couple of faint chuckles, but it failed otherwise. They concluded the meeting and almost everyone left save for Adama who stayed behind with the president.
"If it means anything to you, I voted for you." Adama said as he was putting the materials he had used in the meeting back into his case.
"Thanks. Now, hopefully, we'll still have a government once I've won." Roslin said. "Are we ready, Bill?"
"We're ready as we can possibly be, Laura. Whether that means we live through this…" Adama shrugged, then added, "I don't know. Only the Gods do."