Thirteen

Chapter Ninety-Four

Kicking Down The Door

One hundred basestars confronted them when they finally arrived into the orbit of the Cylon homeworld. Cylon heavy raiders numbered into the hundreds and raiders numbered into the tens of thousands. But the rush to prepare a defense was apparent, as a good many basestars looked to have been partially completed, while others looked to still be heavily damaged from previous encounters.

It mattered little, as the Whitestars under Starbuck's command tore into the basestars, leaving the Cylon fighters and their heavy raiders to the Whitestars, Vipers, and other assorted allied fighters from a plethora of worlds. What the allied fighters didn't get, the capital ships mopped up the rest.

The basestars launched a massive spread of nuclear missiles at the approaching fleet, but they never even came close as Starbuck had anticipated such a tactic and had her Whitestars take them out before they even had the chance to get through their own wave of raiders. The Cylons shot off all the rest of their missiles in a vain attempt to hold back the invaders, but it was far too little, far too late.

It took the better part of a day to wipe out the hundred basestars. Many had tried to speed towards the capital ships and breech their reactors in a vain attempt to weaken the fleet, but the kamikaze runs were for naught, as Starbuck had also anticipated this tactic and conducted their destruction in a symphony of plasma discharges and particle beams that eventually resulted in the last basestars turned into burning husks in space, their flames eventually snuffed out by the vacuum of space.

Many of the raiders and heavy raiders fled the battle and headed down to the planet to save what they could for the invasion to come. All this did was allow Starbuck and the others in command a time to rest up before the landings were to begin. Vacit and his Cylon allies had made the mistake of allowing the enemy to bring the battle to them, which, in modern warfare, was almost asking for defeat. The allies didn't intend them to get the chance to even ask for that.

Two days later, the invasion forces were ready. The remaining Colonial battlestars prepped their Raptors, while the other ships readied their atmospheric shuttles and the Whitestars got into position to make their descent onto the planet. Admiral Adama asked the communications officer to patch him through to the entire fleet for one last message.

"This is Admiral Adama to the entire fleet. Today, we finish this long war against the Cylons, once and for all. I just wanted to take this time to thank all of you for your efforts to bring us to this day. Some of you won't make it through the coming battle, but know that your sacrifice will not be in vain. May the Gods go with you and protect you from harm. So say we all!"

There was silence for a moment as the words sunk into everyone inside the Command Information Center on board Galactica, then Adama turned to his communications officer and said to her, "Order the alert Vipers to launch. Once they're away, launch the Raptors as well as the standby Vipers."

When the last of the reserve Vipers had finally been launched from Galactica, deck chief Galen Tyrol walked over and sat down on a nearby bench and waited with the others for news of the battle. "I'm getting too old for this!" he said to those who were part of the deck crew. Many of them were from Earth, but a precious few Galactica originals were still around. To them, this day was extra special, because it was a day that they had dared not dream of when the Cylons attacked their homeworlds eight years before.

Tyrol's wife Fabby was at home with their kids, and he felt guilty about leaving her to come on this mission. She had understood, though, saying to him, "The admiral needs you, and you need this too. Go with God and may He protect you from harm!" Fabby still practiced her Catholicism, and the two had decided to raise their children in both religions and allow them to decide for themselves when they grew up which faith they would follow.

Starbuck's Whitestar began its descent into the atmosphere of the Cylon homeworld, and the ride was still rough despite all the inertial dampeners that her ship had. She had left command of the Neroon to another, because David Sheridan had insisted upon being her second on this mission. Once they were through the atmosphere, he guided their ship towards the central continent on this world, where the Cylon colony was sited.

The strafing runs were designed to paralyze the enemy and did just that. Despite the massive amounts of anti-aircraft fire in the skies, the attacks went smoothly with little damage done to the Whitestars. After passing over the colony three times, they landed just over the ridge of some small hills about ten kilometers away from the defensive perimeter of the Cylon colony. The Marines and other ground troops hustled off the landing Whitestars to set up their own perimeter and establish their own base in which to launch their own attacks.

As Starbuck and her forces prepared for their march onto the colony, Vipers and Thunderbolts sortied over the Cylon stronghold, attacking the city at will despite the massive amounts of bullets and missiles thrown up by the enemy. It was far from a cakewalk, as they lost six Thunderbolts and four Vipers in the attacks.

From his bunker deep under the ground, Vacit watched the attacks take place. He had ordered the underground complex built years ago when it became apparent as to what the enemy was plotting. He dismissed his own comparisons of his plight with Hitler's back three hundred and forty years before, because he didn't see himself in the same light. He didn't want to wipe out the mundanes, just subjugate them. However, if they refused to bow down to the rule of their telepathic masters, it would have been out of his hands.

Vacit realized that futility of those dreams now. The Cylons were in panic mode now, thinking only of their own survival and not of his greater vision for them. Dissention had begun to break out among many of the IL-series robots, and Vacit had ruthlessly quashed it, having his detractors ripped apart in front of the shocked metallic onlookers.

The room shook as the building above them shook from yet another strafing sortie by the allies. Vacit was in his office with only Talia Winters as his company, and he tried to not let his growing anger and frustration show to the one person he felt he could count on with everything falling around him.

"It won't be long now." Vacit said soberly before drinking some water from a glass.

"Can I ask you something?" Winters asked cautiously.

"You've been my assistant for years. You have the right to do that, Talia." Vacit said as warmly as he could.

She smiled briefly, but it slipped when she asked the question that was on her mind. "What will we do should they come into the city and find the bunker?"

"We can't run, Talia. Even if we could, where would we go? The Drakh are close to defeat. We can't trust the Cylons anymore. We can't go home again, much as it pains me. No, we have to make a stand here."

"If they find us, they'll kill us, won't they?"

Vacit sighed and said, "I'm afraid they won't let us off that easy, Talia. Hollifield wants us alive, that I know for sure. I can feel the presence of the Psi Cops and the bloodhounds that used to be in the Corps and betrayed their fellow telepaths by siding with him. If he wanted us dead, he wouldn't have bothered bringing them here. No, he wants us alive so he can do what he wants with us."

Vacit could see that a chill had run down the spine of Talia Winters. She had been through the ringer before she was liberated from the part of the Psi Corps that had been allied with the Shadows. They had wanted to dissect her and find out the secrets to the gift she'd gotten from Jason Ironhart, but Vacit and the Vorlons had beaten them to the punch, and Vacit had found out what made Winters more than just a P5 telepath.

"I'll protect you, Talia. I won't let them harm you!" he said gently to her. Talia was all he had left, after all, and she had done too much for him to have him lash out at her as the tide of battle went against them.

Day broke over the base camp and Starbuck, Helo, Boomer, and Anders were already assembled in the command center tent, going over the plan for the assault one last time. "We're as ready as we can be." Starbuck said to the others after finishing her briefing.

She was about to dismiss the briefing, but Anders stood up and asked to say something. "I figured since it's just the four of us here, I would go ahead and do this." Anders said as he walked up to Starbuck.

Starbuck looked over at Boomer and Helo and began to get an idea of what might be up by the beaming smiles and glistening moisture in the eyes of her two friends. It was confirmed when Anders stood in front of her, then went down on one knee. "Will you marry me, Kara?"

"Now you ask me?" Starbuck said with a laugh, disbelieving what she was seeing before her eyes. "I was hoping you would wait until after we won before doing this!"

Anders shrugged and said, "I've waited too long as it is. So what will it be, Kara?"

"You bet your ass I'll marry you! Now slip that ring on my finger so you can get up and kiss me!" Starbuck said, and the four of them chuckled as Anders slipped on the ring, then got to his feet and kissed his intended. After their liplock ended, she said, "Now that's over with, can we get on with the war now? I'd like to get this over with so I can get busy with planning nuptials!"

Anders hugged her and kissed her again, then went over to his pack and put it on, then grabbed his rifle as the others did likewise. They assembled in the ground between the base camp and hastily assembled spaceport with the others. With little ceremony, they departed with their forces and began to move out and towards the enemy.