Thirteen

Chapter Eighty-Five

Cain's Discovery

The mission that General Nelena Cain was leading to Sagittaron was personal. Sheba, her daughter, had died here, and she wanted revenge. Over the course of eight years, whenever doubts would creep up about accomplishing the task of freeing the Colonial worlds, she would take out the picture of her daughter and look at it. She was on the verge of being a bride and having a family, which meant the world to her. All Sheba wanted was the kind of stable life that Nelena and Sheba's father couldn't give her. Cain felt guilty sometimes about choosing the military over her family, but always seemed to feel that it was for the best. Sometimes she wished she'd have been vaporized along with Sheba and the rest, but she would always come back to the notion that the gods had placed her here for a reason, that being to help liberate the Colonies of Kobol.

The shipyards where her former ship, the Pegasus, had been stationed when the attacks took place were still around and in use. The quick striking Whitestars attacked it and launched boarding parties to take it away from the Cylons. The battle had been intense and violent, and they had paid a high price in casualties for the boarding, but, in the end, it had been successful.

Cain and Entil'zha Susan Ivanova sat in the conference room, going over the intelligence reports and plotting where they would make the landings for the invasion of the planet. From what the probes that the technomages had planted all over the world showed, the Cylons were held up in the five major cities of the planet. Ivanova would lead the assault on the capital, Sagittaron City, while Cain would lead the forces that would try to liberate the coastal city of Ascella, where Sheba had lived before the attacks.

"Those mountains will be difficult to get around." Ivanova said to Cain, pointing to the topographical map of the planet. "And for getting through them during this winter!" Ivanova said as she shook her head, "It looks more the Alps back on Earth!"

"Trust me, I know of a path that'll get us through. It's one that's only known to hikers, so it's quite possible that the Cylons haven't discovered it yet. Even if they do, it's worth the risk of ambushes, because it'll bring us out into Rukbat Forest, which abutts the city and should give us good cover from the Cylons." Cain replied.

"How sure are you that the Cylons aren't there as well?" Ivanova asked.

"I'm not, but it seems to be the best way to get in there with the bulk of my forces. I'm sending two smaller flanking forces around the mountains to draw the enemy away, as well as hitting the city with fighters coming in from the Nunki Sea. It won't be easy, considering how spread out the city is along the coastline, but I know the general layout of the city from my visits to see Sheba."

Ivanova nodded uneasily, but still couldn't get the worried look off of her face. Cain noticed that and asked, "Something bothering you, Susan?"

She visibly gulped, looking clearly nervous. To Cain, it had the look of 'Oh frak! I don't think I want to have this conversation right now!'. "Come on, Susan! You can tell me! We've been friends for years!"

Ivanova rallied her courage and said, "I just don't want anything to happen to you, Nelena! It's just…how I feel about you!"

Now it was Cain who felt nervous. They were close friends, but several times over the years it had seemed like that they were very close to going beyond that, but one or the other would retreat ever so slightly back. "I know. It's just…it's just that, right now…it's not the right time. When this is over…"

Ivanova said, "I understand. I…uh...I need to go see Sgt. Ramirez to discuss the plans for the capital. I'll see you later, Nelena!" Ivanova managed to walk out of the room with some decorum, but Cain could see that she was barely able to avoid bolting from the room because of her fears. When she departed, Cain sat down in her chair again and exhaled a long-held breath, but the butterflies in her stomach refused to settle down.

Ivanova and Cain both had bad track records when it came to relationships. Cain's marriage had been good at first, but it was clear that her husband couldn't handle having his wife away for months at a time. Looking back, Cain realized that it was almost inevitable that her husband would look to someone else for affection. Sierra Dolus hadn't known that Gregory Cain was married to Cain, so she didn't know that she was helping him commit adultry.

When she did find out, she ended the affair, saying she couldn't stomach being someone's mistress. Gregory yelled at Cain for finding out, and Cain yelled back at him for lying. Cain had tried her best to keep Sheba out of it, but Gregory wanted to use their daughter as a weapon against her.

It inevitably backfired on him in the custody battle. Cain won it despite being in the military, and asked her mom to watch over Sheba while she was away on duty. Norman tried to go back to Sierra, but she didn't want anything to do with him anymore.

Things went from bad to worse when Gregory snapped due to the rejection from his mistress. One night, he broke into her house and killed Sierra, then took his own life. The incident made the tabloid headlines and caused young Sheba, who was in middle school at the time, considerable grief.

As if things couldn't get any worse, she was ambushed by some female thugs while walking home from school one day. They demanded her gold necklace that she wore around her neck. When she refused to give up the family heirloom, the thugs proceeded to beat her up so badly that she almost died from the attack. Had it not been for a couple of male pyramid players intervening as they turned the corner and onto the street, Sheba might very well have expired from the savagry.

Cain was rushed from her assignment to be with her daughter, who had to undergo surgery to relieve pressure on the brain. It had been a miracle from the Gods that Sheba hadn't suffered any permanent damage to her brain, but it would take years of therapy for her to overcome the psychological trauma she had suffered that day.

It was all the more heartbreaking that her daughter was taken from her after she had finally found love with Norman Abel and was about to get married when the attacks happened. All that hard work to help Sheba find happiness had been wiped out in the nuclear holocaust.

When the day came to head down to the planet, Cain put away her sorrows and got to the shuttle. The landing site was on a plateau on the other side of the mountains from Ascella. The Cylons managed to sneak out some anti-aircraft armaments and fired them at the approaching ships, but the Thunderbolts and Vipers took out the missiles before they came close, then proceeded to put paid to the batteries that had fired them.

After strengthening their defensive perimeter around the landing site, Cain and her forces moved out two days later. Two smaller task forces moved away to flank the city from the north and south, while the force Cain would lead would come into the city from the west, through the mountains and the forest. They would be advancing in early spring, where the mountains were still threatened with the occasional snowstorm if the air stayed cold.

Fortunately for them, the weather held off, so the worst that they had to deal with was freezing temperatures overnight. That and a few ambushes set up by the Centurions, one of which produced a flesh wound on Cain's left shoulder. After the firefight ended, the medic stitched her up without local anesthicia and she kept going along with her troops.

Once out of the mountains, things eased up a bit. Cain reckoned that the Cylons decided against attacking in the forest because the leaves had not grown back fully enough yet to provide adequate cover. She judged that they were waiting for them inside the city, so she broke up her forces into smaller groups to enter the city from several different areas of the forest, using smaller hiking trails that she had known about from her daughter, who loved to hike.

By the time they had advanced fifty yards into Ascella, the Centurions opened up on them. Cain's advance towards a medical center in the western part of the city was blunted but not stopped. Using thermal grenades and PPG bazookas, they took out position after position that the enemy used to hold them back. Still, as the sun set on the first day inside the city, they were still a good four hundred yards away from the hospital.

The second day saw more considerable progress achieved by Cain's forces. The troops that she had sent out to flank the city had finally arrived and the Centurions had no choice but to thin out their forces to meet the new attacks. Cain made a bold move by calling in fighters to bomb a main thoroughfare leading to the medical center, giving them a chance to run around the Centurions through some side streets and make their way to the entrance of the center.

Inside the building, the fight was especially grueling as it went from room to room. Apparently the Cylons had gotten wise to the attacks on their farms, because the Cylon drones and their IL-series masters were now equiped with weapons. It did them no good though, as they were quickly dispatched once their Centurion bodyguards had been taken out.

One of the sergeants came up to Cain and informed her that they had found a harvesting facility in the basement of the hospital. Cain followed the burly soldier down the stairwell and into the room. She was about to turn back and order the sergeant to bring in the medics to help take them out of the machines when she spotted her out of the corner of her eye.

She had gotten considerably older and thinner in the years she had been hooked up to the machine, but she recognized her daughter nevertheless. Cain rushed over to her and looked down at her daughter, brushing her hair back and gently asking, "Sheba?"

The woman's eyes opened and she was clearly straining to focus them on the person standing over her. She struggled to say something, managing to grunt out, "Mother?" before she gave up.

Cain called for the medics to rush over and try to help free her daughter. It didn't look good from what she could see for Sheba, who looked so thin that her skin looked like a cover for her bones, a stark contrast to the shapely beauty she had once been.

The medic, a Dutchwoman named Monica van Hoorsten, scanned Sheba with her medical scanner and said to Cain, "We need to get her out now! She's extremely malnourished and dehydrated. We might be able to save her though." Cain assisted and helped free her from the machine, then held her daughter's hand as van Hoorsten inserted an IV line into her.

Two days later, things took a turn for the worse for Sheba. Despite everything they did, she got an infection and a fever raced through her. Cain prayed and prayed that they could save her daughter, and the medical teams went above and beyond to save her, but it was for naught.

When Sheba finally passed away, her mom was at her bedside, crying and hoping the Gods would welcome Sheba into the afterlife. The medics gently escorted the general out of the room after some time and brought her to the room she had selected for her quarters. They gave her sedatives to help her sleep, which she gratefully accepted. As she dozed off, the sorrow turned to anger, and, in her dreams, she dreampt of ripping the heads of Centurions off, one by one. All the progress that she had made in dealing with what she had thought was her daughter's passing had been destroyed on this day, but she made a promise to herself and to Sheba that she would stay strong and bring justice to the Cylons for Sheba and the others.

The next day, Sgt. Arturo Romario walked into her room at her invitation and asked, "Ma'am, we're ready when you are to move out! Are you sure you are up to this?"

Cain understood why he had to ask, and she reassured him by saying, "I'm fine, Sergeant, or as fine as you can be given the circumstances. Time to pay these bastards back, don't you think?"

Romario replied, "The troops are ready when you are! We're ready to move towards the town center at your discretion, general!"

Cain nodded and said, "Then let's go! The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can move onto Caprica and rid this system of these bastards!" She picked up her pack and rifle and told the soldier, "C'mon! Let's go!" They left the room and were soon leaving the center and heading east towards the center of the city. Even if it cost Cain her life, she was resolved to make them pay for taking her daughter away from her.