Chapter 24: Getting ready to go
"Madam President?" Duella looked up. "The Heart of Picon reports they'll be ready to jump in half an hour."
"What's wrong?" Commander Adama asked Tamsin, who was listening to hear earpiece again and looking miserable.
"Avarin Three just dropped out of communications after a burst of encrypted transmissions. Odds are the Cylons destroyed the colony." Tamsin looked furious as well as miserable now.
"Were you there long?" Roslyn asked. No one seemed to know what to say.
"Five and a half years," Tamsin said. "A nice quiet posting, after the war. Trace getting stationed there as well was just a bonus. There was a very nice orthodontist at the hospital planetside who kept trying to ask me out, and one of the orderlies on the Alabama was a thirty-seventh generation military medic and proud of it. I'd served with six of the preceding generations. When Admiral Fenway was a little girl, I baby-sat for her. Her great-great-grandmother Inola Fenway was one of the best platoon sergeants I ever had in the Marine Corps, and she died at Yaruna Six saving my life. Her daughter Needra, Istia's aunt, saved my life at El Alamo, and lost both legs in the process. It took seven surgeons to put them back after we'd cloned her new ones. Istia had a daughter and two granddaughters on Avarin. Her daughter settled there after she mustered out of the Logistics Corps. Istia was going to retire there in a few years when her twenty years service were up, and spend her time training dogs and horses and spoiling her grandchildren rotten." Reece was totally still and remote. "Every time I think I've hit the limit for how many friends I can stand to lose and still stay sane, something comes along to prove me wrong. I'm getting very, very sick of it."
Roslyn had no idea what to say to that, but she had to do something. "Will they be here in half an hour?"
"If they're anything like the Kangas, they'll take the time to totally pulverise the planet and make sure there are no survivors. If they're not, or if they want to split their forces, they'll come after us at top speed. How fast is that, exactly?"
"They'll be here in less than half an hour," Adama said without bothering to figure it.
"Alright," Tamsin said. "Here's what we do. We split the fleet. All the ships ready to go jump out right now, and our fighters go with them. I'll give Trace recognition codes for each ship to broadcast so our ships won't regard them as hostile invaders and shoot before asking questions. The ones that can't jump stay here with the Galactica, and join the rest of the fleet when they can."
"I don't know if all the ships have enough engine power to make it to Gurconda," Gaida said.
"We can do it in leaps. Can you work out a sequence of jumps they can handle?"
"Yes, but..."
"Do it. I'll tell Trace to hurry up and get that mess out of your landing bay, then President Roslyn and I can give your reporters the run-down, I'll have it broadcast to all your ships so everyone knows what's up. The Galactica and the ships that need repairs can follow along as soon as possible. It's the best way to get as many people as possible to safety as fast as possible while not causing a shitload of panic and upheaval."
Roslyn raised an eyebrow. "Did you ever think of running for office?"
"I have some dignity, thank you," Tamsin said briskly. "Let's get going. I'll go have a word with Trace and tell her to hurry up."
"One, ah, one question," Baltar said. "You said your fighters don't, don't travel in space the way our ships do..."
"No, but this is the best we can do. If the jumps are the right length…" She grabbed Gaida's charts out of his hand and marked two points. "About this length… we should be able to catch up within a few minutes."
"In a few minutes the Cylons could massacre the entire fleet," he said.
"Well, they almost certainly will if they catch us here," Tamsin said. "There's only so many fighters, even counting yours, and our fighters aren't designed or equipped for holding a blockade or even a defensive perimeter of this size. We can take out some of the capital ships, maybe all of them if we're superbly lucky, but we can't keep the fighters off your backs, we can't stop their ordinance getting through, we can't even guarantee we'll survive the experience ourselves. Quantity has a quality all of its own." She looked around. "Anyone got a better idea? Please, no cracks about last stands. I've been in a few and they suck."
"You're alive, aren't you?" Gaita asked.
"Yeah, but I wasn't on the losing side," she said. "Last stands are just a way of dying dramatically. I prefer living, dramatically or otherwise."
Roslyn and Adama looked at each other. "I'll go with the first wave of the fleet," she said. "One of us has to."
Reece nodded. "Which group do you want me with?"
"This one," Adama said.
"You think we might betray you? Well, fair enough, you don't even know us. But where's this press conference?"
"Colonial One," Roslyn said. "One of the passenger ships in the fleet."
"Guess I'm in for a few shuttle rides, huh?" Reece said. "Or I can just hop out an airlock and use suit jets on the way back. Wouldn't be the first time I've done something like that. Whatever works best."
"We'll sort something out," Roslyn said. "But my people will want to know what's going on."
"Yes, and God knows what sort of chaos we'll get if someone does something stupid. I certainly don't want to."
Adama looked at her. "How good are your fighter squadron? The people, not the ships.
"
"Maybe a third rookies, little or no combat experience but good training, since towards the end of the war and the last few years the training program wasn't compressed. The rest are combat veterans looking for somewhere quiet to finish out their terms. Trace knows how to assign wingmen to protect the newbies until they've learned how to survive, and how to keep them steady. She's hopeless past squadron level, but at squadron level she's good and slightly short of brilliant. As a pilot herself, she is brilliant. No question. All the crews have been in the squadron long enough to have practiced working together, and the interceptors themselves are solid, if a little out of date. To be honest, I'm more worried about her attitude towards civilians than I am about her command ability. Like I said, she's really bad at tact. But if anyone can manage this battle with what we've got, she can. They'll do their jobs."
Adama nodded slowly. "Go."
"Right." Roslyn set a pace down to the shuttle bay that had Billy scurrying along behind, and Tamsin fumbling to get Trace moving and the missiles restowed ready to use while searching for things in her bag.
"Something wrong?"
"I've only got everyday uniforms and surgical scrubs that are fit to wear. My dress uniform looks like it got stored underneath an earthquake."
"Go with what you've got," Roslyn said. "I hold press conferences dressed like this."
"How'd you end up with this job?" Reece asked. "Most politicians I've met are a lot less pleasant than you."
"After the attack on the Colonies, I became first in line of succession." Roslyn tried not to think about what would happen when she died. There was no real line of succession after her.
"Where did you start?"
"I was the secretary of education," she said after a moment. "Forty-third in line."
"I've seen worse. When America got nuked when the Kangas first attacked, the entire cabinet, the vice president and the joint chiefs of staff were all in military bases that got bombed. The president died when the small town he had been evacuated to got swamped by a tidal wave from a Kanga warship that crashed into the sea close to that coastline, and all six of the surviving senators out of the hundred they had to start with were in areas with no means of long-distance communication for several days. The White House and the Capitol, not to mention the entire city of Washington, became one big crater which took out most of the elected representatives and the executive staff. The presidency fell to the chief of staff of the President's wife, who was in a hospital in Bethesda on maternity leave. Oddly enough, she turned out to be phenomenal at it. Her name was Ellen Richards. Without her, America would have fallen to pieces in a day. She's generally acknowledged as the greatest president America ever had. She ended up directing a major recovery initiative while giving birth, which is great devotion to duty in the book of anyone who's ever had children." She paused. "You ever had children?"
"No. Never."
"Pity. Mine are some of the best things that ever happened to me."
Roslyn opened her mouth to ask a question and the sirens went off.
"Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship."
The two women swapped looks and ran for the bridge. Billy was left struggling to keep up amid the throngs of people bolting to their posts.