Chapter 20: You expect to die
Baltar was giving a stuttering recital of his conclusions about the Cylons infiltrating the defence network that was making Tamsin very suspicious when Duella noticed something on her screen. "Unknown signal approaching," she said.
Baltar broke off his rambling dissertation as Adama and Reece darted over to look. Tigh reached for a ship-phone in case they needed to declare an alert. "What is that?" Adama asked. The signature was barely detectible, strangely skewed… nothing he'd ever seen before.
"Wait a moment." Reece fished in her bag and pulled out a one-piece microphone and earpiece with several buttons along the edge. She tapped one. "Reece to…" She broke off mid-sentence. "How many and where?" Roslyn and Adama swapped looks. "Are they definitely… Right. What about… oh. How bad?" Whatever she heard made her face tighten. "Alright. I'll pass that along. Guess that sorts out which side we're on. How long?" She nodded to herself. "I'll tell them. Wait a moment." She pulled the earpiece out and held it in one hand. "The Cylons hit one of our terraforming outposts in the Valandis system. There's nothing left. There's a large fleet of them heading this way from out-system, probably about fifty big ships and all their support groups. The Admiral wants your fleet to accompany the fighter escort she's sending us to get you away from Avarin. She's going to call for battleship support to rendezvous with us at Gurconda Prime. That strange signal is our interceptor squadron. They'll be here in a few minutes."
"Why should we move? We're still low on supplies," Roslyn said.
"What Admiral Fenway is trying to do is get you away from Avarin. She's assigned to protect the colony - and she will, but the Cylons are after you. And you have more information about them than we do, far more information. We need to preserve that information." Reece paused for a moment. "Besides, Gurconda Prime can accommodate fifty thousand new arrivals overnight - it's a major military training post for these five sectors, and they're used to shuffling entire brigades through retraining on short notice. It's also the most heavily defended position in the sector. If you're not safe there, then we can't keep you safe anywhere you can go."
"Not even at Earth?" Adama asked.
"You'd never get there," Reece said. "Not unless your ships all have far better engines than I expect they do. You've been on the run for months, maybe a year or two by our clock, running hard - I know what that does to ships without a chance for proper maintenance, and we build even our civilian cargo ships to take the kind of strain war puts on engines. We've been at this longer than you, after all." There was no sting in her voice; she was all business. "And Earth is a long way off. I guess it boils down to whether you want to live, or not."
"You can't fight the Cylons?" Tigh asked heavily.
Reece snorted humourlessly. "Oh, sure. And two destroyers against fifty of those base-stars, we'd last maybe twenty minutes. The colony would be gone long before then. Oh, and you'd be debris as well, of course."
"Fifty big ships? You're sure about that figure?" Adama asked. The ships certainly weren't on the Galactica's scopes.
"They are," Reece said grimly, meaning her comrades in arms. "Now, are you going to get moving, or not? I've got a very grumpy admiral waiting to hear your verdict."
Adama and Roslyn locked gazes across the length of the bridge.
"We go," she decided.
He nodded. "We go."
Reece put the earpiece back in. "That's a go, Admiral. We'll get moving as fast as we can. You hang on out here." There was silence for a moment. "Well, it's in the lap of fate now. Pleasure serving with you, Istia." She listened for a moment. "Thanks, sir. Good luck. Reece out."
"That sounded like a good-bye," Roslyn said.
Reece snorted. "I've known Istia most of her life. Served with her for years. That's how we always used to part when things were at war, when life spans were short - you always said that it had been a pleasure serving with your friends, when you parted. In case you never met again. Occasionally you said other things - but that's the tradition."
"You expect to die?" Tigh asked. They did not need a suicidal foreign diplomat.
"No, I expect Admiral Fenway to die. And she knows it. She also knows we're back in a war, and most of the crews will have been listening to that conversation because it's about the only entertainment going. They'll have heard that, and all but the youngest will remember. Gets them thinking the right way. So will anyone who picks up the recordings we're broadcasting back to the inner colonies. We'll need that. A lot of people just won't want to admit how serious this is. There's too many people who don't want another war."
Author's note: No offense intended to Australians. I'm related to some, they'd take it very badly if I insulted their nation. I certainly prefer the Australian sense of humour to the American one.
More chapters soon, I promise.