Thirteen
Chapter Fifty
The Face Off
Earth Alliance president Garrison Hollifield had been with his wife when the election results were announced. She had finally been able to walk on her own again with crutches, and was making incredible progress. "What the…" was what he said when they announced the tie. After the proposal passed, he sat down on the bed where his wife was laying and said, "Well, gotta hand it to Zarek for being thoughtful, for the moment."
His wife was about to say something, but the communications monitor came on, and General Susan Ivanova's face showed up after the Gold channel logo disappeared. "Mr. President, we've just got word! The enemy is less than an hour away!"
"I'll meet you in the War Room!" Hollifield said to Ivanova, and the general nodded, clicking off the signal. He went over to his wife, kissed her gently on the lips, saying, "Be back soon!", and headed out of the suite and down to the War Room.
The War Room had been constructed during the Minbari War deep under the government palace inside Earthdome to protect it against Minbari beam weapons attacking the planetary capital from space. It was a huge room, with plenty of lighting and computer displays surrounding the main table in the center of the room.
President Hollifield took his place at the head of the table and said, "What have you got for me?"
Ivanova and Admiral Nelena Cain sat to each side of him, and Ivanova started the briefing by saying, "The enemy is almost to within range of jumping into Babylon 5 space. Rissen has evacuated the civilians to shelters inside the station, and has launched fighters. Galactica and Pegasus have launched their new Vipers, and the Alliance ships have launched their fighters as well. Rissen's already activated the station's defense grid, so we're as ready as we will ever be for this."
Hollifield nodded his head and looked over some of the reports in front of him for a moment. He then broke the silence by saying, "Cross your fingers, folks, because things are about to get really rough from here on out!"
Apollo's Mark IX Viper roared out of Galactica and out into space. "Form up!" he said to his squadron as he assumed the position in space that he had been assigned to by the battle planners. They knew that the Cylons could appear at any time, and may get the jump on them before their allies, the Drakh, attacked.
A few minutes after hitting space, the first Cylon basestar jumped into the area! "Basestar detected! They're launching raiders! All fighters engage and attack!" He brought his Viper around and engaged one of the Cylon raiders. He flew straight at it, drawing its fire, then did and up-and-over maneuver, diving down onto the raider and firing his Viper's pulse cannons, smashing the raider to pieces.
"Whoo-hoo! Oh baby!" he exclaimed over the radio. He went after another raider and dispatched it in quick fashion.
"Take that, you fraking toasters!" yelled out Viper pilot Brendan "Hotdog" Costanza as he pounded the Cylon raiders with his own pulse cannons.
"Gods, this feels so goooooood!" Louanne "Kat" Katraine as she plastered even more Cylon raiders, using all the tricks she'd learned in her brief career as a pilot to devastating effect on the enemy fighters.
"Don't get too cocky! They can adapt to us quickly!" Apollo warned, then briefly panicked as his display went dark for a moment, indicative of the Cylons using their virus. But the display came back less than a beat later, and Apollo smiled, calling out, "Not today, you bastards!" He promptly sliced another Cylon raider apart, this one appearing to have been the raider that tried in vain to spread the computer virus.
Commander Saul Tigh's Vipers were being flown by a combined force of Galactica's remaining Viper pilots as well as some Earthforce regulars, and he watched them as they went after the enemy on the DRADIS tracking display situated above the map table in the center of the Command Information Center. The CIC had been completely overhauled by Earthforce, and now boasted a lot more advanced tactical displays and communications systems, all guarded against the Cylon computer virus by the firewalls installed by the Earth techs.
Captain Artemis Kelly had been a landing signal officer, unused to serving in CIC, but was now effectively the second in command to Tigh, even though Earthforce Captain John Matheson had the official title. Together, the three of them stood at the main table, watching the battle unfold.
"Joker, watch your six!" Apollo called out over the wireless, which echoed through the CIC.
"Roger that, Apollo! Preparing to engage!" Joker replied.
The DRADIS indicator for Joker stayed lit, but the one marking the Cylon raider in pursuit of him didn't stay on for long. "Raider splashed! Repeat raider splashed!" yelled Joker, who went after another one.
"Sir, we've got a Cylon basestar coming at us towards our aft section." Kelly said as he read another display.
"Are they within range of our aft cannons?" Tigh asked.
"Confirmed, Commander. Target is locked and awaiting your command to fire!" Matheson said.
"Frak that bastard out of my sky, Captain! Fire at will!" Tigh commanded with relish. Matheson sent the command verbally through his headset to the firing station near the engine. Moments later, the red light of the particle beams burst from the ship's aft and slammed into the basestar, cutting away at one of the star's spokes and making its way towards the center of the structure, while a second from Galactica's underside sliced up another spoke, which created a rippling explosion that consumed most of the bottom half of the basestar.
Their momentary bit of enthusiasm changed as their DRADIS system indicated that something had just popped up near Pegasus. "Sir! A Drakh mothership just jumped in near the Pegasus!" Matheson called out, and Tigh looked on as the mothership launched its attack on Fisk's ship.
Starbuck tried to get her Whitestar around in time to help aid Pegasus, but other Drakh carriers jumped in at the same time and diverted her attention. Helo kept the ship on a course for the Colonial battlestar, but two Drakh carriers stood between them and the Pegasus. "We've got to get through this traffic, Helo!" Starbuck said.
"Recommend we swing around the aft side of the carriers and try and hit the mothership from behind." Helo recommended.
"Do it!" Starbuck said, and the ship turned right ninety degrees and made its way around the carriers, managing to avoid the fire of the Drakh vessels as they headed towards the mothership.
As soon as they came around, they and the ships that had made it with them opened up on the mothership from her port side. She directed others to swing around and take the attack to the starboard side, and they distracted the mothership long enough for the Pegasus to direct her aft particle beam batteries at the mammoth ship, slicing into it. They managed to heavily damage the ship, forcing it to pull back and get out of range of the particle beams. However, the Whitestars under Starbuck's command put paid to the mothership and destroyed it by hitting the ship's reactor. "Let's take care of the carriers!" Starbuck called out as the Whitestar turned back towards them to fight them off.
In the Observation Dome, the techs were running the station's defensive grid at maximum capacity, as the Drakh ships coming out of the gate headed straight for the station. "Fighters beginning to try to flank us!" one of the techs called up from the station below where Lt. Com. Sharon Valerii was standing.
"Set interceptors for long range dispersion fire! Concentrate plasma cannons on the cruisers and carriers!" Valerii ordered. The window in front of her was now covered by the blast doors, which protected the Dome from being breeched by weapons fire. "Sir! Heavy raiders coming towards the station! Recommend that we mobilize station security!"
"Where are they headed?" Admiral Rissen asked.
"Brown sector, sir!" Valerii replied.
"They may be going after the reactor!" Garibaldi said.
Rissen nodded at the idea and hailed one of the Whitestars. "Sanchez here!"
"We've got a possible boarding party headed our way, towards the back of the station!"
"Confirmed, Babylon 5 control! We're on it! Sanchez out!" said the voice. Whitestars flew down along the side of the station and raced towards the heavy raiders. Four ships were heading towards the station, and could not move away in time as the Whitestars began to smash them up. The sole remaining heavy raider tried to make a suicide run towards the reactor, but a particle beam cannon just above it killed off the ship before it got close.
Rissen was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when one of the techs screamed out, "Sir, we've got a Cylon basestar that's just jumped near the Pegasus! She's got nukes! Repeat she's got nukes!"
Tigh saw the same report and said, "Oh hell!", as the alarms went off behind him. "Sir! Recommend we move away! We've just picked up a basestar directly behind us. Looks like they miscalculated and couldn't jump closer to us! They've got nukes as well!" said Kelly.
"Fire pulse cannons and particle beams at that basestar! I don't want those nukes getting anywhere near us!" Tigh ordered.
Vipers flanked the oncoming raiders and let them pass, going instead after the missiles fired at Galactica. Apollo took one out, and two other pilots took down another. He ignored the oncoming fire as he dove down upon a third and scrapped it.
"I've got the last one!" Hotdog called out as he fired his pulse cannons. "Hit! I've got it!"
"Good job Hotdog! Now to take care of those raiders!" Apollo turned his Viper around and began to take on the automated Cylon fighters.
Fisk knew they were done when the first nuke hit their ship, near the engines. "We've still got power for now. Start evacuating non-essentials, Trammel. We'll try to hold them off long enough to get everyone we can off the ship!"
"What about the secondary Vipers?"
"Launch them! Use them or lose them, Barry! Get them out just in case we're lost!" Fisk said. The Vipers roared out of the bays, the last one just getting out ahead of an oncoming nuke, which hit the starboard side landing bay, breaching it and letting loose its explosion throughout the ship.
"Sir! Fire on all decks! Recommend we abandon ship!" Trammel said.
"Give the order! Can we make it to the escape vessels?" Fisk asked.
"No sir! The way's blocked by the damage by the nuke, and the radiation's too bad to get near them anyway!" Trammel replied.
"Then by Gods we'll go down with a hell of a fight! Fire at will!" Fisk said.
Pegasus fired everything she had at the oncoming basestar, and did a good bit of damage as it approached them. However, the Cylons were able to launch one last nuke at the battlestar.
Fisk knew they had only a moment, and quickly said to his executive officer. "Great to have served with you, Captain!"
Trammel saluted and said, "Great to have been under your command, sir!" Then the nuke slammed into the bridge area, going off and breaching the ship. It was a mortal wound, as explosions ripped through the stricken Pegasus and exposed most of the interior to the vacuum of space.
"We've lost them, sir! The Pegasus is gone!" Valerii said quickly, turning back to her station. Adama slumped back into his chair, physically shocked by the loss. The wound he received from being shot began to ache, and he grimaced in pain.
"Damn!" Rissen said, banging his fist on his thigh. "What about our other ships?"
"We've lost two frigates and a cruiser, but we're doing ok. The Drakh are still coming at us!"
Deep inside the shelter assigned to the Colonial government, they were tracking the battle as well. Newly elected Colonial vice-president Tom Zarek stood beside president Laura Roslin as the news came in about the loss of the Pegasus. "Damn them! Those are a couple thousand more of us lost!" Roslin said.
"I know. Hopefully the Gods will spare Galactica, or else they'll be nothing left of the Colonial fleet." Zarek replied.
In another part of the shelter, Sheridan and Garibaldi monitored the battle as well, and were not optimistic. "They brought everything but the kitchen sink to the battle, looks like!" Garibaldi mused.
"Yeah, they certainly did. I hope we have enough to stop them!" Sheridan said.
"I do too. Hopefully this is their main attack and not just the first wave!" Garibaldi said.
Sheridan nodded and added, "If it's just the first wave, we're screwed!"
Back in the War Room in Geneva, Admiral Cain stared ahead into space at the tactical display that showed the Pegasus lost. "Two thousand good men and women lost!" she said finally.
"We'll get them, Nelena! You have my word on that!" Ivanova said.
"That won't bring them back!" Cain replied.
"No, it won't, but it'll keep them from killing anymore of us." Ivanova added.
Cain sat down in a nearby chair, and Ivanova sat down in a nearby one. "I should have been on that ship! Died beside them!" Cain said, holding back tears.
"Best to mourn them later and get the enemy while we're still here!" Ivanova said. Cain looked at her with fury in her eyes for a moment, then they softened. "You're right!" She got up and walked over to the main table again, where the president sat, and Ivanova came along with her.
"Things don't look good, Susan. Not at all!" said the president in a depressed tone.
"No sir, not at all!" Ivanova said, as they went silent and studied the tactical reports further, frustrated at being unable to do anything more proactive to change the tide of the battle.