CHAPTER SIX
Down to Earth

Fate's Embrace civilian vessel
The dark side of the moon

"My name is Laura Roslin. I am the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We've come to Earth seeking... no, no, no..."

Laura Roslin sighed, steadied herself, and looked into her own eyes in the mirror. "My name is Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We have been seeking Earth for... frak."

She sighed again, this time with significantly more exasperation, then began again. "My name is Laura Roslin, and I am the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Four years ago, our worlds were destroyed, and... no..."

She stopped, swore, and began again. "My name is Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Our legends speak of a thirteenth tribe, living on a distant planet called Earth, and when our homes were destroyed, we... we took off in search of a place where we can park our asses already with our president who can't think of anything to say in one of humanity's most important moments!"

She slammed her right fist against the counter. "Frak!"

It came down so hard, she ended up splitting the skin on her knuckles, and repeated the expletive even more forcefully. Scowling, she brought her hand up to her mouth and covered the wound with her lips until the stinging subsided. She pulled it away; it was bleeding, but not bad. It would clot and stop long before they got down to Earth.

The head of Lee Adama appeared in the doorway. "Madam President, are you all right?"

She was startled at first by the interruption, but relaxed when she saw who it was. "Captain Apollo," she said with a grin, hearkening back to her old nickname for him. "Yes, I'm fine; just at a loss for words."

"Sounds to me like you had some choice words just now," the young man teased, returning the smile. He held out his arm in offering. "The Mariner is almost ready to depart. I figured you would want to minimize the amount of time you spent on this ship."

The president cleared her throat, straightened her posture, and smoothed out a fold on her dress. "Yes, thank you," she said, accepting his arm as they started to walk. She was on edge even without the unnerving sensations the ship gave.

"You look nice," Lee said encouragingly.

He hoped the compliment would calm her down, but he didn't make it solely for that reason. She did look good. Her hair was down, but pulled off her face with hairpins for a neat, polished look. Her clothing had been a gift from Tory Foster, shortly after Zarek turned the presidency over following the exodus from New Caprica. Tory thought she might like to have something of a more traditional, ceremonial design to wear when meeting Earth's leaders, so she crafted this ensemble: a floor-length black dress, sleeveless, with an A-line cut and a combination sash and train in bright red fabric – the very same bright red fabric that Roslin wore at Baltar's inauguration ceremony on New Caprica that she remembered Bill Adama saying looked good on her. She was trying to look good, but as the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, not as Laura Roslin. However, she wouldn't mind if she happened to elicit a double-take from a certain admiral in the process.

Roslin smiled warmly at her companion, grateful for his words and fully aware of his intentions behind the comment. "Thank you."

They reached the hangar deck in little time, their pace quickened by their desire to get off the Embrace. The luxury liner Celestial Mariner took up most of the large room, and the tail end of a Raptor was visible just behind it. The Mariner was designed to hold a hundred and fifty people comfortably, but after the attack on the Colonies, had been modified so it could accommodate up to four hundred. The three hundred seventy-one souls they had to displace for this mission were aboard Galactica, and had received fair compensation for the inconvenience. About fifteen people were hovering around the Mariner, getting it, and themselves, ready for departure. Tom Zarek, and Roslin's aid, Olivia, were the only ones not wearing a military uniform until Lee and Laura joined the group. Zarek had been talking with Sharon Agathon, and excused himself from that conversation to relay its topic back to the president and the Caprican Quorum delegate.

"Lieutenant Agathon agreed to stay here with the Fate's Embrace," Zarek said. He looked how they all felt: a bit harried, but excited. "It responds well to her, so we shouldn't have any problems. Lieutenant Edmondson over there volunteered to take a gun since you don't have another Raptor-qualified pilot here."

Lee glanced over at a group of half a dozen Marines, who were sorting through a box of ammunition near the ramp leading up to the cargo hold of the Mariner. Among them was Lieutenant Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson, who saw him and waved at her former CAG. He waved back, feeling a little uneasy about the situation, but not saying anything. Edmondson was a decent shot, but she'd been trained as a pilot, not a Marine.

"Where's my father?" Lee inquired, not seeing the elder Adama among those present.

Roslin was glad Lee asked the question so she didn't have to.

"He and... Starbuck, is that her name? They're prepping their Vipers. I thought they'd be back by now."

"'Their Vipers'?" Lee repeated.

Zarek didn't get a chance to respond; Kara Thrace and Bill Adama had arrived on the scene, each wearing a flight suit and holding a helmet. Adama looked serious and pensive, a stark contrast from Kara, who was grinning from ear to ear and carrying something that looked like a camera in her other hand. The identity of the object was confirmed when she flashed it in Lee's face, startling him so much that he stumbled backwards and became slightly disoriented.

"Come on, Lee, smile!" the hotshot young pilot exclaimed after she'd taken the picture. "This is one of the biggest days of our life!"

"Take it easy, Kara," Lee responded, but couldn't help smiling a little himself. Her mood was contagious.

Kara pulled Lee over to the group of Marines and insisted upon taking pictures with them. In the hustle and bustle, Roslin discreetly inched closer to Adama, and once she was within whispering range, commented, "I like the flight suit. It looks good on you."

A warm glow of pride surged inside Adama at the compliment. It had been a long time since he felt he needed to impress anyone with what he wore, and though that was certainly not his intention, it was a welcome consequence. And as far as she went... he didn't think he'd ever seen her look so good. She'd always been a well-dressed, classy woman, but this took it to the next level. The fact that he'd been noticing her more and more lately, not as the president, but as Laura, only added to the effect. She would grab any of their attention – and did – but it was Adama who would have the hardest time looking away.

He gazed longingly at her, aching to tell her everything he felt inside, but even if that was the smartest thing to do right now, he couldn't have formed thoughts into words. She dealt him a paralyzing blow with that enchanting smile, captivating him with her presence. Perhaps it was because of all they'd faced together, but no woman ever had the same effect on him, and he didn't think any other ever would.

Adama knew he had to break away from that smile, or he'd be standing there, dumbstruck and useless, for the rest of the day. He looked down, and promptly noticed the state of her right hand. "You're bleeding!"

Not exactly the reaction she wanted. "Oh, yes," she said absentmindedly. "I was a little frustrated a few minutes ago when I couldn't think of the right thing to say when we get down to Earth, and I took it out on the sink."

"I think I have something..." He set his helmet down and fumbled around with the pockets on his flight suit, finally locating and retrieving a handkerchief. He wet a corner with his tongue, then took her hand and began dabbing around the perimeter of the wound to clean up the blood. She chuckled softly, and he found himself grinning, too. They both knew this simple interaction had very little to do with her injury.

"Aww, look at you two," teased an upbeat female voice. Kara and her camera had returned, with Lee in tow. "Let's see some smiles. Admiral and president – come on, give us one for the ages!"

The two leaders affectionately embraced and cast genuine smiles at Kara, grateful for her antics in spite of the serious nature of the mission. Each one of them was uptight and nervous, and having someone running around smiling and laughing did a lot to bring relief. This was exactly what they needed.

"All right, that's enough," said Adama after a good ten or eleven flashes from the camera, noticing that the Mariner looked ready to go. Her captain was by the loading bay doors, ushering in the last of the Marines. "Kara, we've got to get to the Vipers."

"So why are you flying a Viper, Bill?" Roslin asked as she and the admiral released their hold on each other.

"Kara's the best pilot in the fleet, hands-down," Adama answered, "so that was an easy pick, but when it came to finding someone to fill the other spot, I knew how I wanted things done, and finally realized the only way I'd keep my sanity was to do it myself."

She would have liked the comfort of his company on the Mariner in the estimated two hours it would take them to reach the city, but it was also reassuring to know he'd be actively watching out for them. "Mmm hmm. Well, be careful out there." She kissed him on the cheek, then quickly explained, "For luck."

He kissed her hand in return. "You, too."

Adama and the ship's captain exchanged a few words as the last of the passengers boarded the luxury liner, and then he and Kara left in the direction they arrived. Once aboard, the captain explained that they would be taking off once he got word from Adama that the Vipers were ready. Sharon Agathon waved to them from the hangar deck, then retreated back into the interior of the Fate's Embrace so the Celestial Mariner could launch. Five minutes to the outside, but an anxious eternity to those inside, passed before the announcement came: they were leaving.

Laura hadn't sat still since boarding, but she wasn't the only one with a visible nervous edge. All thirteen passengers – herself, Lee, Olivia, Zarek, Racetrack, and eight Marines – were together in the ship's forward observation lounge. It spanned the width of the ship, with glass walls on each side, and was about a third long as it was wide. Two large, U-shaped sections of couches faced the windows, and the middle of the room had a table running nearly the length of the room with sixteen chairs, eight on each side. Five of the Marines were sitting at the table, playing a card game, but none of them were really paying attention. Racetrack and the other three were sitting on the couch near the portside window, gazing at the blue-green planet in the distance that was growing larger, slowly but surely, as the Mariner gained speed. Lee, Zarek, and Olivia were also at the table, at the end opposite from the Marines, with a pile of papers spread out between them. Lee was fidgeting with the papers, arranging them into piles and obsessively straightening them, and Olivia was caught up in reading something. Zarek seemed to bear no interest in them at all, choosing instead to watch the president as she walked back and forth, with the Fate's Embrace growing smaller in the window behind her.

Zarek eventually abandoned the papers that failed to serve as an adequate distraction, and walked over to join the one who had captured his attention from the moment he saw her walk onto the hangar deck. "You want to sit down, Laura? I'm getting dizzy watching you." He neglected to clarify that the dizziness had nothing to do with her pacing.

Roslin smiled nervously at him and hugged herself tightly. "I don't think I could sit still, Tom. I haven't been able to since we left the fleet. I think I've given myself some gray hairs."

Zarek reached toward her, gently stroking the hairline above her left temple, looking for the alleged gray hairs. His fingers grazed against the side of her face as he tucked a stray hair behind her ear and slowly pulled his hand away. "I thought that was a wig."

Her smile became less forced. "It is."

He laughed and squeezed her shoulder. "Come on. Sit down."

They walked over to the couch, and once seated, Zarek guided Roslin to angle where she was facing away from him, and then began to massage her shoulders. "Tell me what you're going to say."

She didn't read too deeply into his touch; in the last few months, he'd managed to become something that resembled a friend, and the massage did feel good. His hands were rough and calloused, and very strong. It wasn't the sort of touch one would expect from someone who filled a more traditional perspective on what sort of man a vice-president should be, but then again, Tom Zarek was already so far removed from that mold that his working-class hands were not even close to being the largest factor that separated him from those who came before. Laura surrendered herself to his grip, disconnecting her thoughts from everything except the hands that bore harder and deeper into the tissue so tight it could barely be distinguished from bone.

"You have magic hands," she moaned softly.

"Well, thank you, but I'm not sure that's the first thing Earth should hear from the Colonial government."

Laura then remembered herself, and their mission. "I don't know, Tom," she sighed. "When I try to think of something, my mind just goes blank and everything comes out sounding so stupid..."

"Just relax. Don't think about anything but how good it is to finally be here. We're done, Laura. It's over. It's time to reap the rewards of our suffering. This is the end."

She wished it was that simple. There was no telling what they would encounter down on Earth. Would they know about the Twelve Tribes of Kobol, or would they have faded into legend and obscurity, as Earth did for them? Would they be able to communicate? What if they were hostile? How did the Colonists know they would be accepted? If this was the end, what – or whose – end would it be?


Olympus international space station
Low Earth orbit

Katalin Li was ready to go home. Being on the space station was starting to give her the creeps. NASA was being even more cryptic than usual in the aftermath of the unusual reading she'd picked up four days earlier, and she didn't buy for one second the excuse Dinakar Tempas gave them. She knew Tempas personally from the time she spent developing the quantum computer; they weren't written into each others' wills or anything, but he'd be receiving an invitation to her wedding, and they had a friendly chat over the phone and met for dinner every once in a while. If nothing else, their relationship was established well enough for her to know that he'd never give an inconsequential, manufactured explanation, even in a situation that called for one. She remained convinced that the alleged glitch hadn't been a glitch at all, but so far, the only ones siding with her on this were Diego Swan and Yuri Chekhov. She felt like a sitting duck, trapped helplessly aboard their tiny floating laboratory, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide if something should come after them. Was it simple paranoia? Perhaps. Nevertheless, she couldn't wait to get her feet safely back on the ground.

Just one more day, she kept telling herself. This time tomorrow, you'll be home.

Fortunately, there was always something to do on the space station, and Kate found plenty to keep her mind off the possibility of impending doom. Currently, she was occupied with finishing up a program that would allow certain functions of the quantum computer to be accessed remotely, mostly for ground-based data storage. For all the research and development that had gone into making the fastest computer in existence, it didn't yet have a hard drive that could go along with it. Theoretically, when operating at full capacity, the quantum computer could churn out terabytes of information every hour. Though the industry made advances every day, it was expected that it would still be several years before a hard drive network existed that could both accommodate their computer's capabilities and fit aboard a space station. By that time, they may have figured out how to operate the damned thing outside of zero gravity. No one knew for sure. Only time would tell.

Diego Swan was helping her, although it was really more of a one-person job. His resident computer-engineer-turned-astronaut had him doing the busywork task of making sure her codes had no errors; once she finished a section, she had him run it through Matlab, and if there was a conflict, he corrected it. It was almost painfully simple. Kate's programs had few errors to begin with, and Matlab indicated exactly where they were, if and when there were any at all. Still, he much preferred filling the role for which he was far overqualified than playing babysitter to the dynamic duo of Holloman and Keck, who were making every task aboard the Olympus a competition. Swan thought if he had to hear Keck gloat one more time about how he was able to calculate their projected path by hand with less than three percent error, he'd throw the little nerd out the nearest hatch.

Not that Kate Li was really a much better companion, when it came right down to it. She was losing her edge, and it showed. She told him how she felt about the unusual radar reading the other day, and he agreed with her, but Swan didn't let it consume him. She was anxious, paranoid, jumping at every squeak and shadow. If she didn't get control of herself, she was a potential danger to all of them.

"So, I've got a question," Swan said after a time, trying to relax his companion by making conversation.

"Shoot," she said, only half paying attention.

"Are you really going to marry Rex Wolfram?"

Kate laughed and tapped out a few more bits of code before answering. She knew Swan was trying to get her to relax, and bringing up a topic she was so excited about was one of the few things that could have worked. "Yes, I am. We'll send out invitations when I get back. Don't worry, you'll get one, and you can bring Jacqueline and the kids. We'll have plenty of room; I think the only one Rex plans on inviting so far is that Xanatos kid..."

"You set a date?" Swan smiled. Mission accomplished.

"We've set a timeline. Rex will have an exact date picked by the time we land. We want to get married before I come up here again; it'll probably be in that week, the more I think about it." She noticed the incredulous look he was giving her, then said, "What?"

"I'm just... trying to figure out how you two would even meet, or how it's possible that he didn't get his ass handed to him on a plate when he came into the US."

"He's a good man; you just have to give him a chance." She struck a sequence of keys on keyboard and closed out the open window on her screen. "He had to give himself a chance... and meet a girl who more or less forced him to be the man she knew was in him somewhere."

"My guess is it was just you in and of yourself, Katie. You'd be surprised what a man will do for the favor of a pretty face. I was completely different before I met my wife, and I've never looked back. The right person will change your life forever."

"He already has. It finally hit me the other day that I'm really engaged to him, and all I could do was smile and think... what the hell?"

Her tone changed in the latter part of her statement, and while that was Swan's first reaction when he found out about Kate's engagement, he didn't think that was how she felt. "What do you mean?"

A look of horror had worked its way across the woman's face as she stared at the screen in front of her, an expression that her commander shared as he noticed it, too. "We've got incoming!" she shouted. "It's huge... and it's coming right at us!"


NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC

It was times like this when Dinakar Tempas hated his job. As per the president's orders, he diligently monitored the mysterious fleet of ships near gas giant at the heart of their solar system, feeding a live stream from both NASA's Palenque and Northrop Grumman's Archon directly to his office. At first, he was fascinated by the fleet, but now, he was just bored. They seemed much more interested in Jupiter than in Earth or anything else in the solar system, since they'd been there nearly a week now and had nothing to do with them except for the ruckus with the Olympus and in Japan – and they didn't even know if that was related! Tempas knew he had much better things to do than stare at these ships, waiting for something to happen. They had a shuttle launch scheduled for tomorrow, and that was where his energy should be focused; with all the attention he had to direct elsewhere, they were lucky it would happen at all.

Tempas' watch alarm went off, and he sighed. Seven PM: time to take attendance and make sure these ships were all present and accounted for. He took the printout of the last checkup and started comparing it to the images on his screens, crossing off each ship as they were identified.

This time, however, he knew right away that something was wrong.

The surprise was so great that Tempas jumped out of his chair and didn't even notice it crash to the floor behind him. One of the ships was missing, a large and very distinct one. He maximized the full-field view given by Archon to get a view of the entire fleet at once; many of the small ships disappeared, unable to be resolved, but the larger ones remained. They were all grouped together. There were no strays, and no natural satellites obscuring the probe's view. He would recognize that ship anywhere, and it was nowhere to be seen. It had been there the last time, though – what happened to it between now and four hours ago?

Tempas switched back to Palenque and started to turn back the clock. Everything the two space telescopes sent to him had been stored, and the answer had to be in there. When he found what he was looking for a few minutes later, it did little to curb his panic: ninety-seven minutes earlier, their missing ship had vanished in a flash of light.

He seized his phone, and with shaking fingers, dialed the number that would connect him directly to the president. Vincent Powers' baritone voice came through after the second ring. "This is Powers. Go ahead, Dinakar."

"Vince, we have a serious problem," Tempas frantically declared, dispensing with all formality. "One of the ships has vanished, a big one. I don't know where it went."

"When?" Powers asked, his voice rising with concern.

"About an hour and a half ago. I noticed it when I started the scheduled update just now."

"Which ship?"

"The big star-shaped one; you know, the one that looked kind of like two Y's on top of each other."

The president responded, but Tempas didn't get the chance to hear it. His office door had burst open, and in came the deputy administrator, Elliot Bertruger, panting hard and looking as though he'd just seen a ghost... or an alien, given the circumstances. "Dinakar, incoming call and data stream from the Olympus. You'd better take it."

"Elliot, I'm on the phone with the president!" Tempas said. "I don't have time for this!"

Bertruger determinately walked over to Tempas' desk and hit a button on the underside, causing a panel on the wall to slide aside and reveal the screen for his video line. For a moment, all that was visible on it was static, but as the image cleared, the reason for Bertruger's intrusion became apparent. An external camera from the Olympus had captured an image that was not comforting at all: a sleek, submarine-sized spacecraft with two small ones alongside it, heading straight for Earth.

The deputy administrator looked at Tempas squarely and said, "Yes, you do."

Tempas stared at the screen, mouth open and eyes wide. He tried to speak to the president, but his throat had gone dry. He swallowed, with extreme difficulty, and tried again. "Vince," he managed to squeak, "meet me at the Pentagon in thirty minutes."


Kadena Air Base
Okinawa, Japan

United States Air Force pilot Benton Kovolsky couldn't have asked for a better day. Even late November mornings like this one usually dawned clear and comfortable in Okinawa, and warmed up later in the day. The weatherman giving the report that came during Ben's traditional sunrise jog around the base said they could expect highs in the mid-seventies. When he got off-duty at six, he imagined the weather would be perfect for sitting down on the beach with his buddies and his birthday present: a bottle of tequila from his grandfather's distillery. Now he just had to hope Puchantey wouldn't have another epic hangover, like he did at his birthday back in July. As far as Ben was concerned, his team was the best group of pilots on the base. Off-duty antics were necessary to take the edge off, and he encouraged them – hell, he was usually at the center of them – but he always drew the line before they ran the risk of negatively affecting the way they performed in the cockpit the next day.

Ben didn't go on duty until ten, but he was in the locker room at nine thirty. Several of his friends were, too, including Nathan Puchantey, who had been his wingman ever since they graduated from the Academy. "And look who it is!" the towel-clad Nate announced when Ben appeared. "They still letting you fly, old man?"

Ben laughed and began fiddling with the combination on his locker. "I'm only twenty-nine, dumb ass, and they'll let me fly until I'm eighty as long as I can keep kicking your sorry butt."

"Oh, I'm sorry; who saved whose ass in the last training maneuver over Nakayiri?" Nate retorted. "Certainly wasn't your momma!"

"Don't you even bring my mother into this," Ben replied. "She'd have both of us peeling potatoes for the rest of our deployment if she knew about the last birthday party this squad had."

Nate dropped down onto the bench by Ben's locker group, as did a few others who had gotten caught up in the banter between Kadena's two top guns. "Speaking of which, did you get the goods?"

"It's your birthday, Kovolsky?" inquired a pilot named Dobbs.

"Nope. They just sent me this 'cause they love me." Ben pulled a bottle of golden liquor out of his locker, and a chorus of "ooh" and "aah" went through the immediate vicinity. He smiled triumphantly. "Dos Hermanos Espinoza añejo, straight from my grandfather's distillery in Ixtlahuacán del Rio. You won't ever find a bottle of this for less than two hundred dollars."

"Why is your twenty-ninth birthday such a big deal?" asked another pilot, Burke. "Seems kind of a weird occasion for a two hundred dollar bottle of tequila."

"I'm Mexican. We don't need 'occasions.' We always know how to celebrate."

"How can you possibly be Mexican?" asked a pilot named Callahan over the laughter resulting from Ben's pride in his heritage. "Isn't 'Kovolsky' a Russian name?"

"Kazakh, actually," Ben clarified, "and I'm a quarter Mexican, thank you very much. Kovolsky is probably Russian, originally, but my dad's family has been in Kazakhstan for like ten generations, so it's Kazakh now. I'm not sure, and honestly, I don't really care. I've only seen the guy three times in my entire life."

He was unable to hide the contempt in his voice, and changed the subject before thinking too much about his mother's sperm donor ruined his day. He might only be a quarter Mexican by blood, but his Latin relatives were the family he was closest to in spirit. Ben hoisted the bottle above his head and climbed onto the bench. "Gents, when we're done for the day, you are all invited to the fiesta!"

The locker room erupted in cheers, but they were quickly drowned out by the sound of an alarm, with an accompanying call to action stations. Ben shoved the tequila bottle back into his locker and donned his flight suit as quickly as he could. He liked to joke around, but when the call of duty sounded, he took it very seriously.

"Let's go, guys!" he shouted. "Sixty-seventh, get to the hangars!" He wasn't officially on duty yet, but if this was an emergency, that didn't matter. With the previous shift just about to go off duty, Ben and any of his pilots that were here early would get into a fighter the fastest. It was probably a drill – they'd been running them like mad lately – but whether it was or wasn't, wasting time was unacceptable.

The dozen or so pilots who were able to respond most quickly to the alert were met at the base's central F-15 hangar by Colonel Brian House, the base's vice commander. House's presence and grim expression removed any lingering questions about whether or not this was a drill. "Incoming bogey, ladies and gentlemen," the colonel informed them. "Kovolsky, Burke, and Puchantey: you get to go chase it down. Kovolsky, you're on point. You'll receive more information as we get it, but right now, it looks like it's heading for mainland Japan. That cannot happen. Intercept, and escort it back here. Do not engage unless you are fired upon or receive direct orders from myself."

Burke and Nate rushed for their fighters, which had already been pulled out onto the runway and were ready to taxi, but Ben wanted answers before he took to the air. "Colonel House!" he called, fighting his way through the commotion. When he had the colonel's attention, he asked, "Sir, what are we looking for?"

House shook his head apologetically. "I don't know, Captain. General Bagalayos received the order to launch fighters straight from the president, and all we were told was that we'd know it when we saw it. The Pentagon is calculating intercept coordinates, and we should have them by the time you're in the air."

Ben knew he shouldn't be thinking twice about getting in his plane – he'd flown dozens of combat missions – but something about this one didn't feel right. Why would they get a direct order from the president himself, but have so little information to supplement it?

There was no time to ponder the unusual circumstances; he had an order, and his only directive was to see it executed. He saluted House, then followed Burke and Nate over to the three F-15s that were prepped for takeoff. As he climbed into the cockpit, he thought about the bottle of tequila in his locker, and had the strangest feeling that it would be a long time before he got to open it.