17 Years before cylon attack
William Adama age 47
Location: Leonis Regional Space – Cerberus En Route to Picon
-x-
"Move! Move! Move!"
"He's on my six! Get him off!"
"No Joy! I can't get a lock! There's too much cloud cover."
"Tally! One high! CBDR!"
"I got him! I got him!"
"I'm hit! Krypter! Krypter! Kryp—"
"Red four, watch your nine!"
"They're baiting. Reverse course!"
"Inbound ordinance bearing on Leonis! Frak! Target's a Tylium mine."
"It'll be Troy all over again—"
"Red two moving to intercept."
"I've got it. What are you doing? Red two abort!"
"You have a family."
"So do you! Abort! Frak—I said abort! Get back here!"
"There is no victory without sacrifice."
"FRAK! Everyone break! Break! Break!"
A white flash seared across William's vision and he yanked his head away as the canopy of his Viper shattered around him. He felt something strike his left shoulder but there was only one thought in his mind—Eject. He couldn't reach the handle. The howling wind of Leonis' lower atmosphere drowned out the alarms. Eject. There was flare of pain in his shoulder as his hand wrapped around the ejection handle and he pulled. From the darkness you must fall…
-x-
"Captain Adama, sir, what a surprise meeting you here," said Tobias. The senior lieutenant was still the embodiment of military perfection in his dress grays and his roguish grin still ruined the entire impression of stiff discipline.
"It's Colonial Day where else would I be?" responded Adama with a glance back at the Mk II his sons were presently crawling all over. "What are you doing on Caprica?"
"My brothers are part of the honor guard in the parade and I'm the only one in the family who can handle a camera." He nodded toward Lee and Zak. "Those two rascals yours?"
"Yeah. Hey boys come over a second." Lee dutifully climbed down the ladder and jumped from the last rung onto the ground. After several prompts from his brother, Zak scrambled out of the cockpit and down the ladder with Lee watching to be sure he didn't fall. They trotted over and William introduced Tobias.
Tobias smiled again, tousled Lee's sun bleached hair, and insisted on a picture. Zak had responded impertinently and scrunched his face up for the camera, but when Tobias had asked him if he was going to be a Viper pilot just like his dad Zak had answered with an exuberant yes.
-x-
His parachute deployed just time to save him, but he still landed hard. Very hard. William cried out as the shock of his impact with the ground sent a fresh wave of agony tearing up his right leg before he collapsed onto his back.
"Son of—bitch—" He gasped for air, but it wasn't enough. He forced down his rising panic and fought to steady himself where he lay despite the insistence from his body that he was suffocating. His heart still raced and he was too dizzy to see straight so he felt around with his uninjured right hand. The rough fabric of his glove brushed his cheek and nose. The face shield of his helmet had broken. His oxygen supply had been dispersed into the thin atmosphere.
Pain. It was a persistent sensation, from the throbbing of his leg, to the sharp pain in his shoulder that intensified when he inhaled, and the headache that pulsed with every heartbeat. He clamped his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as he yanked a long shard of glass out of his shoulder.
"AH!—Ah, damn." He thrashed a moment and pounded his fist on the dirt, but he had to stop when his breath caught in his lungs and he started to cough. He tried to apply pressure to his wound, but he didn't have the strength to maintain it. Nausea and fatigue had set in. He knew in the back of his mind what it all meant, the headache, the shortness of breath, the sudden weakness in his body. He was hypoxic and wouldn't be able to remain conscious much longer.
Failed and weak…
-x-
"You guys should have seen our fearless leader in the airshow on Caprica yesterday," said Tobias while he tossed a few cubits into the growing pile at the center of the table. "He pulled this really wicked tailside during the tactical demo for the Mark Two."
"I was just going to go for a stall turn, but my boys were watching," said William. "Thirty. Bet's to you Kalypso."
"I'm in for fifty." Alexa peered over the top of her cards with her brown eyes focused on Tobias as if she was about to make him her next battle trophy.
"Too high for me." Danny folded.
"Where are Nia and Xander?" asked William. He put in sixty cubits.
"Probably in the frakking tool room or something," replied Alexa with a snort of derision as she matched William's bet. "Or is it frakking in the tool room?"
"It doesn't matter," said Tobias. "This game's over—Full colors!"
"Frakker." Alexa slammed her cards down.
"Got a light?" asked Tobias with a wide grin. William tossed over his lighter. Tobias pulled out a cigar and leaned back in his chair with his feet propped up on the table, but he had miscalculated his balance and fell backwards onto the floor. Everyone nearby broke out in roaring laughter, but Tobias took his fall with dignity. "Anyone up for another round then?"
Their replies were cut short by the blare of alarms.
"Action stations. Actions stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill."
-x-
William looked up into the sky and high above he could see flashes from thermobaric explosives meant to destroy or prevent pursuit as the rogue ships scrambled to leave. He still couldn't understand where it had all gone wrong.
It had started as a standard ship-to-ship engagement between Cerberus and a rogue vessel called Zopyros. The large frigate normally wouldn't have stood a chance against Cerberus, but Zopyros had been outfitted with the best that money could buy—weaponry that had likely been smuggled out of Colonial anchorages and she had a compliment of Vipers all her own that had probably been hijacked fresh off the line from Scorpion Shipyards.
The Colonials pilots had had no choice but to scatter and pursue the rogue Vipers into Leonis' atmosphere. Somewhere in all that mess they had lost control of the situation and now at least one of his pilots was dead and he was slipping the edges of his vision started to fade the words, no victory without sacrifice echoed in his ears. Those words had been a favorite of the Colonial Fleet commanders at funerals during the Cylon War. Tom Zarek had used those words once too. And now so had Tobias Cain.
To darkness all—
-x-
In the dark was where William Adama woke from his nightmare. It was the third time he had woken from the same nightmare since Cerberus' SAR team had recovered him. The slowly intensifying ache in his shoulder and leg reminded him that it wasn't just a dream, no matter how much he wished it were. It took him a few seconds to orient himself, but he recognized the various shadows of the equipment in sickbay, except for one vaguely person-shaped shadow by the wall just off to his left. He squinted to make out who it was and automatically tensed when the shadow moved.
"Sir?" Her voice sounded softer than normal, but familiar.
"Alexa?" He heard a faint "yes sir." He did his best to ease himself up into a reclining position. "What—ah, fr—what are you doing here?"
"I uh—I was just keeping an eye on—Honestly, I don't know, sir. I—couldn't sleep." William's eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting and he could see her a bit more clearly. But he didn't need to see her to know that the Alexa that had been sitting watch over him tonight was not the Picon born and bred gung-ho militant that he knew. He could hear it in her hesitance and gentler tone; this Alexa was nothing more than a scared junior officer who was probably suffering from the same kind of nightmares he did and who had, just yesterday, lost not one, but two comrades. Nia's Viper had taken a missile to the right wing and fragmented over Leonis' upper atmosphere. No one knew if it had been friendly fire or not. "I'm hit! Krypter! Krypter! Kryp—"
"I'm not gonna die," he said. He tried to add that everything was going to be okay, but a resurgence of pain in his shoulder cut him short. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was good to be able to breathe. Even if it stung. At least that way he knew he was still alive.
"I know, sir." She didn't sound very convinced. To be honest, he wasn't either.
"I lost a lot of friends in the Cylon War and it doesn't get any easier, but—" William couldn't think of anything inspiring to say. "Well—it doesn't get any easier." It gets so much harder. "You just learn to live with it. Every day."
"What's going to happen to us all now?"
"I don't know."
AN: Again apologies on the long wait. Thanks for your patience and hope you wait around for the next part. -SVR