CHAPTER FOUR: Battle
Within the Cylon Minefield
Blanke noticed the raider coming closer and closer. He looked out of his cockpit window and saw the sinister-looking shape of the craft - looking like a large scimitar with a helmet in the middle. He noticed the scanning red light going back and forth from the 'helmet'. Blanke had read the intelligence reports and communications intercepts from the recent war that indicated that these new raiders were un-piloted: self-aware automatons in their own right. He found it a little hard to believe. Now, looking at it approaching, he knew it to be true. What would it do when it found him? Destroy him, or capture him? Remembering the academy lectures, he knew that the former would be the better fate.
His cockpit was suddenly illuminated with a red light. He knew that the raider had detected him. He noticed it coming closer, the red light still bathing Blanke and his fighter. The Raider was in a perfect firing position, but it was not firing! He saw it move above him, then stop. The Blanke saw a hatch open under the raider and then it started lowering a clamp on a cable. It was moving in to latch onto him.
Rescue Raptor One
At that moment, outside the minefield, the raptor was drifting closer. The countdown chronometer at last reached zero, in which Tricia ordered Gorde, "Power up the missiles and take it out!"
As Tricia activated the communications jammer, stopping the raiders from talking to each other, Gorde immediately hit the activation control on the weapons panel. It immediately came up and started to acquire the raider. A green flashing light indicated weapons lock. He pressed another switch.
"On the way!" he shouted as the first scarab thundered off the missile rack and streaked in towards the sentinel raider. The raider suddenly powered up and turned in order to bear its weapons onto the incoming missile. It fired a burst of bullets, but the missile went into automatic evasive mode, moving out of the arc of fire. The raider started accelerating, but it was too late. The scarab hit the raider on the underside, between the two engines. The raider disintegrated as the missile warhead detonated.
"We got him!", Gorde shouted. Tricia nodded, accelerating towards the minefield. This was now going to get rather hairy as her palms started sweating on the control column. She also activated her emergency transmitter.
"Cooler, this is Sheba. Are you there?" she communicated as she started flying evasive through the minefield. Gorde was strapped tightly in as the raptor yawed, pitched, and rolled past the mines.
Blanke's Viper
The raider's clamp had just latched onto the nose of Blanke's viper when his PSB beeped, indicating an incoming transmission from a friendly close by. He then heard Tricia's voice.
"Sheba, this is Cooler", he replied, simultaneously switching his PSB to transmit, "I'm getting reeled in by a toaster. I need your help and I need it now!"
Rescue Raptor One
Gorde was now using his active sensors as the raptor was careening through the minefield, deftly avoiding boulders and debris in the way. He saw that the raider had latched onto Blanke's viper and was preparing to move out.
"How are you for acquisition, Newguy?" Tricia demanded from Gorde?
"All right, I've got a weapons lock on the hostile", he reported, "Cooler is about twenty meters below the toaster, but it's getting reeled in".
"Fire the missile, we're out of time", Tricia ordered. Gorde complied, crossing his fingers. The last scarab roared away from the raptor and started homing in on the raider.
Gorde saw on his screens that the raider had suddenly changed its attitude, pulling Blanke's viper along with it. The raider had detected the incoming missile, and started firing its guns at it. The scarab's homing computer detected the firing and went into evasive mode... which put it straight into the path of a piece of debris - a mine.
With a brilliant flash marking the detonation, both the missile warhead and the disguised mine combusted. The blast radius however did not reach either the raider or the raptor. As the blast diminished, Gorde saw that the raider was untouched.
"We frakking missed!" Gorde blurted out.
Tricia was shocked and dismayed. There were no more missiles and there was no more armament that the raptor could use - just missile decoys. Her mission had failed!
"We're out of missiles!" Tricia blurted into the communicator at Blanke
Blanke's Viper
Blanke listened to Tricia and now realized that it was indeed the end of the line. He knew that she could no longer help him, and the raider had now reeled him in to within five meters of the raider's underside. Now it was preparing to move out, taking him to Cylon captivity and certain torture and death. He knew that he would end up telling the Cylons everything that he knew if that happened... and then he remembered what his flight instructor had said to him when he had gotten his wings.
He had said to him, after the graduation ceremony when answering a question about confronting death in combat, "Someday, if it happens, you'll know when your last flight will come, and when it does, don't complain. Just look the Lords of Kobol square in the eye and you tell them that it's been a wonderful ride...and you thank them for it! That's the way you have to live, that's the way to fly in combat". He suddenly knew what he had meant.
"Thanks for the ride", he mouthed silently, clutching his viper pilot's wings with one hand as he activated his engine controls with the other, then punched them up to full thrust.
Blanke's viper suddenly leapt forward. The raider, unprepared for the sudden thrust from a supposedly derelict human fighter, was dragged along with it. Because the viper had thrusted forward suddenly, the raider could not unlatch from the viper - the clamp had been twisted out of shape as a result of the abrupt acceleration.
Without any directional control, the viper hurtled through the minefield, dragging the Cylon with it - who was trying desperately to use its engines to retard the speed - which only succeeded in further wrenching the clamp into an immovable mess. Blanke was grinning like a maniac as he saw the clamp now permanently holding both ships together. Blanke saw a large boulder ahead of him; his ship was heading straight for it.
"Silver Spar Forever!" Blanke shouted into his communicator as the viper slammed right into the boulder, which was a disguised mine. The impact destroyed the viper, and the mine's detonation took the raider with it in a spectacular explosion.
Rescue Raptor One
In the raptor, Tricia and Gorde looked at their viewscreens in stunned silence. The mine had completely demolished both ships. They had heard Blanke's last transmission just before the impact. For a long time, well after the glow of the explosion had dissipated, no-one spoke, then Gorde said quietly, "Sheba, we'd better retrieve what viper wreckage we can and get back to the Pegasus".
Tricia nodded. There could be other Cylon patrols out there alerted to the latest explosions. She numbly maneuvered the raptor over toward the mass of debris. Gorde would use the magna grab in order to pick up what was left of Lyle Blanke and his ship.
It was an unpleasant task. The magna clamp had latched onto the identifiable pieces of viper wreckage. Gorde tried not to think about what Blanke's remains must look like, but it was imperative that nothing recognizable be left behind for the Cylons to find. At last, the task was completed, and with the viper debris collected, Tricia gently maneuvered the raptor out of the minefield and headed back to the Pegasus. For the next two hours, both of them tried not to think of what they were bringing back with them…
Battlestar Pegasus – Combat Information Center
As the raptor got within instant wireless range of the Pegasus, Tricia keyed her wireless to the CIC frequency.
"Rescue One to Home Plate, Rescue One to Home Plate, Do you copy?" she communicated.
"Go ahead, Rescue One", a voice came back. Tricia recognized the voice as that of Sanders. Tricia decided to use code phrases as she could not bring herself to say what had happened out loud.
"Comms, this is Sheba", she replied, "Rescue One reports Lame Duck has been...has been put out of its misery. Acknowledge".
The CIC went silent. Everyone who was listening knew precisely what it meant. Sanders keyed the communicator again.
"Confirm status of Lame Duck, Rescue One", Sanders asked.
"Lame Duck is no more", Tricia confirmed in a choked voice, "but he took a bad guy with him", she finished. Sanders sighed. Sitting beside him, Ginnie Annan started to softly cry.
"Did the poachers get wind?" he asked.
"Negative", Tricia replied. "Please alert ground crews to receive Lame Duck. ETA is in fifteen minutes".
"Understood, Rescue One. Home Plate clears you for immediate landing. We'll be on hand to receive Lame Duck. Home Plate out".
Sanders put down the communicator and directed Annan to ready the landing bay. Annan dried her eyes and nodded. Next, after getting a nod from Tolen, he contacted Commander Cain, who was down in engineering conferring with Chief Engineer Thyssen.
"Commander", Sanders communicated, "Rescue One is coming in. Their ETA is in fourteen minutes. They are reporting that Cooler didn't make it, but also that the toasters didn't get wind of what happened".
"You'd better let CAG know", Cain communicated back with a sigh. Lyle Blanke was a well-liked officer and he would be sorely missed, "Stand down from Condition One and plot us a jump to the next sector. Cain out".