Thirteen

Chapter Sixty-Five

Colony In The Balance

Adama winced when the DRADIS indicated that Poseidon was lost, then was thrown off his feet when Galactica was hit by a missile that had gotten through the gauntlet of interceptors being fired at it. Realizing he was uninjured, he got up as quickly as he could and turned around to Abernathy, only to see that the young man's face had been scorched by the explosion of the console in front of him. "Matheson, see what you can do for him!" Adama shouted, and the Earthforce captain rushed over to him to feel for a pulse, only to find that the young man was dead. He shook his head at Adama and Adama turned away and banged his fist on the table.

Mortimer was still at her station, but she had been tossed around like a rag doll as well, and she grasped her ribs and shoulder, obviously in extreme pain. "Mortimer, get down to the medical bay!"

"Negative, sir, you need me here!" she said.

"You sure?" Adama asked.

Mortimer nodded, and Adama took her word for it. Meanwhile, the pilot chatter was continuing, and Adama could see that the situation wasn't getting any better among the fighters.

"Sir! Apollo requests clearance to land. His squadron is low on fuel!"

"Clearance granted!" Adama said. He would relieved that his son would be landing soon, because they had already lost over half of the alert fighters on duty when the battle started, and the secondary fighters that had launched after them had seen a third of theirs destroyed or damaged.

Apollo was leading his remaining squadron when the Cylon raider came out of nowhere and shot up his ship. One of the bullets punctured the cockpit and part of the shrapnel went into his side. "Oh frak!" Apollo screamed as pain flooded over his body. His arms were still working, and he willed himself to land his crippled Viper into the bay. It wasn't the best landing he ever made, but it was down on the deck in one piece. Once all the other remaining Vipers were inside, the doors of the port-landing bay were closed and repressurized.

"Let's go people! The CAG's wounded!" Tyrol yelled as he sprinted over to Apollo's Viper. Brad Lee was bringing over a ladder and a medical team was rushing into the bay right behind him. Tyrol took the ladder from Lee and ascended it to open the cockpit. When he opened it, he could smell the iron in the blood as it flowed out of Apollo's body.

"Hey, Chief! Did I get her down in one piece?" Apollo asked deliriously.

"Get that gurney ready!" Tyrol said as he unbuckled Apollo and slowly pulled him out of the cockpit. He got the legs out as well and swung them around, where Lee grabbed them and slowly helped the stricken pilot down onto the deck, where he was placed on the gurney. "You're going to be fine, sir!" Tyrol said as he bent over him to help the medics strap him in.

"Tell my dad I love him if I don't make it, will you Chief?" Apollo said.

Tyrol nodded and the medics rushed him off the deck and towards the medical bay. The deck chief shook himself out of the shock and ordered Apollo's Viper cleaned up and moved over to the repair bay. "Refuel these babies and get them back in the fight! C'mon, move people!"

Lee was helping Tyrol move the damaged Viper, saying, "Do you think he'll make it?"

"I don't know, Brad. Right now, we can't worry about it! C'mon, bring it over here so your boys can patch it up and get her back into the fight!" Tyrol replied, not wanting to think about how badly wounded the admiral's son was.

Starbuck's Whitestar was back in the fight, and things were going from bad to worse. "If I didn't know any better, I'd swear they were sacrificing those basestars so that the Drakh ships could get through!" she called out to Helo.

"You might be right! What do you want to do about it?" Helo said.

"Scan to see if there's a Drakh mothership nearby!" Starbuck ordered, and Helo complied.

"One right behind the basestar at four o'clock!" Helo replied.

"So they are running interference? Let's go around them and see what we can do!" Starbuck said.

The Whitestars swung around the basestar and headed towards the Drakh mothership, which saw what it was doing and began to open up with its weapons array. The basestar continued on its way, heading for the Independence and her tactical group.

"Form up, people! We're going to do a little skin dancing!" Starbuck said.

Helo looked up, shocked, and said, "Are you insane?"

"Better crazy than dead, Helo! Put in the parameters into the computer and let's see what this baby can do!" Starbuck replied.

Skin dancing was a technique used by Minbari fighters to get extremely close to a ship they were attacking to either fire on it or to prevent the enemy from firing on them. Helo brought them so close to the ship that Starbuck swore that the belly of the Whitestar bottomed out on the hull of the mothership. "Okay, let's shoot this place up!" Starbuck ordered.

The Whitestar opened fire at point blank range on anything on the surface of the hull, creating breaches all over the place. Another Whitestar had attacked the engine area and had set off a huge plume of flame, indicating that they had hit something near the engines. "Ship's going critical, Starbuck!" Helo said with some considerable surprise in his voice.

"Move us away, Helo!" Starbuck said, and the ship, along with the others in what remained of their fleet, sped away from the mothership as it blew up, scattering debris all over the place.

"Independence has just taken out the basestar, sir!" one of the other junior officers reported, and the president nodded, not taking his eyes off the main board, which displayed critical data on the fight above the planet.

"It's no use! For every basestar or major ship in the Drakh fleet we take out, we lose two or three of ours! At this rate, we won't have anything left!" Ivanova said.

One of the guards came up to him and handed him a note. It was from Andromeda, and simply said, "The tide is ready to turn!" He folded up the paper and put it in the pocket of his suit jacket, and said to the two generals, "I'll be back shortly."

They had an idea of what he was about to do, so they said nothing as he left. He quickly headed out the door and into the hallway, making his way to where the others were assembled for what he had planned.

Andromeda was there, along with Six and Baltar. "Is it ready?" he asked Six.

"The retrovirus is ready, Mr. President. It should allow you to do what you want to do." Six replied.

He nodded and said, "Begin the transmission." She nodded and moved over to the console and input the instructions that she had been given.

He took Andromeda's hand and closed his eyes, and Andromeda did the same. What they were about to do was to link all the microscopic probes together for Hollifield to activate the programming that had been administered discreetly by Bester. Hollifield could see a myriad of images in his mind's eye of the various probes that had gotten inside the basestars, as well as some of the Cylon motherships that were nearby.

"Are you ready?" Andromeda asked.

"Yes!" Hollifield replied, and he began to do what he hoped would take down the fleet.

It was all going well for Vacit, until the human Cylons began to rebel. "What?" he said as he saw Cylon basestars suddenly turn away from attacking the Alliance ships and start going after the Drakh ships. "What's going on?" he yelled over to Talia Winters.

"I don't know!" she said, and then she felt it, along with Vacit. "There's someone here!"

"It's him! Dammit it's him! How could he do this?" Vacit said, rage building in his voice.

Bester looked shocked, and he said, "He had to have had some help! He's gotten to the human Cylons somehow!"

The door to the command center opened up and several human clones started walking towards the trio. "Stop this! Listen to me! Stop this!" Vacit said.

"We need to get out of here!" Bester said.

Vacit was about to argue, then he realized that each human Cylon was coming towards him, and that all the mechanical Cylons on board the ship had been deactivated. "That bastard! He found a way to use the virus against us!" Vacit yelled, and he turned away towards another door. Winters followed as well as Bester, and they headed towards an escape ship built into the mothership. Vacit had made sure that it was of a different design from the Cylon technology, so the virus didn't affect it.

As they escaped the turning battle, the Alliance ships pulled back and allowed the Cylon basestars to take down the Drakh ships. The Drakh were caught unaware of what was happening, and they barely had a chance to fight back against the Cylons. They managed to take down a couple of basestars, but the Drakh ships had to flee before they were completely wiped out.

Adama couldn't believe it. The Cylon raiders had turned against their Drakh allies and had shot them down. When the Drakh fled, they had returned to their Cylon basestars. The basestars were still in orbit of Earth, and an uneasy peace settled down in CIC,

"Any news from Earthforce command?" he asked Mortimer.

"No sir!" she replied.

"Let me know the second you hear something!" Adama told Matheson, who nodded. The admiral made his way out of CIC and down to the medical bay, and all those in his way parted to let him through.

Dr. Cottle had just finished up the operation and was cleaning up when Adama came into the bay. "You have a strong son, Admiral. Either that or a damned stubborn one!"

"How is he?" Adama asked.

"He'll live, and all his body parts will still work for him. He lost a lot of blood, but the shrapnel didn't go too deep into him, so he'll have a bunch of scars that'll need to be taken care of, but he should be okay, given time."

Adama's eyes were filled with tears and he said solemnly, "Thank the Gods!"

Cottle snorted and said sarcastically, "I helped a little, after all. Reckon you could thank me?"

Hollifield released the hand of his friend and opened his eyes. "Mr. President! Why are you bleeding from your eyes?" Baltar said, shocked at the sight.

Andromeda handed him a towel she had brought at his request, and he used it to wipe his eyes. Once he had cleaned them, he replied, "What I was doing required an intense amount of concentration and effort, Doctor." His legs started to buckle a bit, and Andromeda helped him to a nearby seat, where he sat down.

He looked up at Six and asked, "Did it work?"

Six said, with a smile on her face, "It did, Mr. President! It did indeed!"