On December 12th, 1951, four squadrons of Banshees, Grumman Panthers, Corsairs and Skyraiders flew off the deck of the USS Essex to bomb a series of narrow gauge railroad bridges near Majonne, a village in the central area of North Korea. The night before the strike, the four squadron commanders sat down to dinner with the novelist James Michener. He made the events of 12/12/51 the centerpiece of one of his most textured novels, which later appeared on the screen as The Bridges of Toko-Ri. The Battle of the Boneyard, which takes place on day 355, is my salute to the pilots of Air Group 5, and to the deck crews who kept them flying in that most bitter of winters on the Sea of Japan.

CHAPTER NINE

THE BONEYARD

"Multiple DRADIS contacts," Ponytail yelled from her seat at the navigation console. "They're cylon Raiders, and they're not ours!"

"Sam, go find Kara, and get her up here now!" Luke Hammond was the OOD on this watch, but Kara was the one who would have to decide whether they would flee or fight.

"How many, and where are they?" Miriam was standing over Deitra Symonds' shoulder, but the Six couldn't pick out the targets. The Adriatic had jumped deep into a star system whose asteroid belt was rich in nickel and iron. They were skirting the inner edge of the belt, but electromagnetic interference from the nearest of the system's two gas giants had muddied the DRADIS image.

"I've confirmed three so far, but they're at extreme range … on the other side of the belt."

"Are you certain they're not ghosts," Luke asked as he came up to stand alongside the Cylon. "I don't have to remind you that the DRADIS has been acting up all day."

"Somehow, I don't think that we're gonna get that lucky." Deitra tapped the screen. "They're closing on a constant bearing."

"But they're not heading straight for us," Miriam said optimistically. "They're probably scouts, exploring systems in advance of the main fleet. If they're here to look for resources, the asteroid belt would be the logical place to begin. Once they discover that there's no tylium around here, they'll probably move on."

"Ponytail, what have we got," Kara said as she rushed into the ship's small control room.

"Three Raiders, CBDR, and closing fast. They should reach the belt in less than four minutes."

"Mom, what do you think?"

"Right now, our power emissions are minimal, so they may miss us. But if we launch Vipers or spool up the FTL's, they'll know we're here."

"Frak! All the fuel that we're carrying in the auxiliary tanks makes us sitting ducks. One round in the wrong place, and they'd need tweezers to pick up the pieces."

Kara studied the screen, praying that the cylon fighters would change their heading and put more distance between them. In the three weeks since departing New Caprica, she had jumped the Adriatic into nineteen different systems. They had yet to find water or tylium, and only twice had they stumbled upon a planet in the CHZ. Both had possessed methane atmospheres—with trace elements of still deadlier toxins.

"Three minutes," Deitra warned.

"Kara, I need two to spin up the drives," Sam reminded her. He had resumed his seat, and was double-checking the emergency jump coordinates.

Kara thought about her options. She had two missile batteries at her disposal, and there were three Vipers, two Raiders, and one Heavy Raider magnetically sealed to the hull. She could hear Starbuck whispering seductively in her ear, urging her to stand her ground and blow the frakkers out of the sky. But Kara Thrace Six knew better.

"Right," she said decisively, "we're getting out of here. Sam, spool up the FTL's."

"I'm on it."

Kara's eyes were glued to the DRADIS, but in her mind she was silently ticking off the seconds. Just how quickly would the Raiders respond? How accurate were their electronic sweeps?

It took less than thirty seconds. On the DRADIS, the three enemy craft abruptly shifted course. They were now heading straight for the Adriatic.

"The drive's spun up," Sam shouted; "we're at one hundred percent and stable."

"Swordsman, take us around the horn."

"Sublight," Luke called out.

"Go."

"Helm."

"Go."

"Nav."

"Jump solution checks," Ponytail confirmed. Nav is a go."

"Tactical."

"Go."

"FTL"

"Good to go," Sam barked.

"Colonel, the board is green," Hammond reported.

"Then execute jump," Kara intoned, "in five … four … three … two … one …"

"Jump!"

"Maybe next time," Luke muttered to himself; "maybe next time." But Swordsman had been flying Raptors for a long time, and he knew the odds. The galaxy was an inhospitable desert, and the few oases were scattered far apart. Running into the cylons was a hundred times more likely than finding a world that could support human life.

. . .

Bill Adama walked slowly down the darkened and deserted corridor. Once, it had been littered with crates—supplies too urgently needed to warrant housing them in the deserted storerooms on the lower decks. But the supplies had been just as badly needed on the surface of New Caprica: with the passage of time, the old battlestar and the baseship had both been picked clean.

The admiral paused, and bent down to pick up a wad of discarded paper. Curious, he opened it up, and walked over to stand under one of the working fluorescent lamps. Several weeks earlier, he had ordered two out of every three lights on the ship to be turned off, not to conserve energy but to extend the life of the bulbs themselves. The ship still had spares in store, but the number was finite, and there would come a day when the last bulb would blow. Manufacturing replacements was not exactly high on the beleaguered government's to-do list.

Adama snorted involuntarily. It was an old laundry list, and how after all this time it had ended up in the middle of one of Galactica's corridors was one of those questions for which there would never be an answer.

He studied the sheet, and noted with a smile that the duty had fallen on this particular day to Diana Seelix. He remembered one of the more outspoken knuckle-draggers bitching and moaning that Seelix had it in for him … that she had somehow bribed the laundry detail to add so much starch to his underpants that they could stand on their own.

And now Seelix and Figurski are both serving on Natalie's baseship. I wonder how that's working out …

The admiral resumed walking, and when he went round the bend in the corridor, he saw one of the Eights up on a ladder. The strip lamp was flickering on and off, and he could see that she was trying to isolate the problem.

"Good morning, Amy; what do you hear?"

"Nothing but the rain," the Eight grinned; "but today, we've got lightning to go with the thunder."

"So I see. What's the latest disaster?"

"Corrosion," she replied simply. "Admiral, it's like this all over the ship. The filters didn't get changed out regularly, so humidity and dust have been attacking the electrical circuitry from one end of the bucket to the other. I've got enough fingernail files and sandpaper to get on top of the problem, but it's going to take me several more weeks to get the job done."

"You're not doing this by yourself, are you?" Adama had let a lot of regulations go by the boards, but he had also instituted a few new ones. Routine maintenance was supposed to be performed by cylon and human crew working together—and to this rule he was not prepared to tolerate exceptions.

"No, sir; there's six of us hard at it. But it's a big ship."

"Galactica's a grand old lady," Bill proudly remarked. "There's a lot of history on these decks, Amy … a lot of history … and a lot of ghosts."

"Ghosts, sir?"

"Yeah … ghosts. There are times when I'm certain that Commander Nash is staring over my shoulder. And Lieutenant McGavin … every time I see a pair of boots sitting outside a hatchway combing, I think of Jaycie."

"Did you serve with them, sir? In the War of Independence?"

Adama nodded. "I'm Nash's replacement … several times removed. And Jaycie … she was a Raptor pilot. She was severely wounded on the last day of the war. She didn't make it."

Amy looked sympathetically at the Old Man. She now knew where some of the many lines on his face had come from.

"The War of Independence," the admiral added. "Is that what you call the first war … the War of Independence?"

"Yes, sir."

Bill nodded a second time. "And with good reason," he went on. "Back then, we were all so sure of ourselves … so self-righteous. We shouted down the few civilian voices that dared to question, dared to doubt. You were machines, so how could you possibly think of yourselves as slaves? I was so consumed by hate that I never questioned the justice of our cause for one second. Now, when I look back … it's humiliating to realize that none of us were willing to stand up and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Graystone and Vergis … the big conglomerates made such convenient scapegoats."

"You were fighting for your survival, Admiral … just like us. Ours may have been the more just cause, but in war … does it really matter?"

"I suppose not, but I'm glad that I lived long enough for us to have this conversation, Amy … and I'm glad that you're on this ship. Maybe now, we can finally put the ghosts to rest."

"I hope so, Admiral. Every day, I pray to the One True God for a world at peace. It's the only legacy that any of us want to leave our children."

"Do you want me to talk to Chief Laird … get you some more help?"

"No, Admiral; that's okay."

"Well, why don't I grab a ladder and help you myself? It's not like I have a lot to do these days."

The smile that lit up the Eight's face was genuine and deep. The Old Man's love for his ship was something that the Cylons talked about among themselves. The admiral had taught them all that love wore many faces.

"Admiral, your wife is waiting for you in the CIC," Amy obliquely replied.

Adama smiled yet again. In her own very gentle way, Amy had just reminded him that he was going to be busy for the rest of his life.

. . .

Only the Cylons would mothball a fleet in such a godforsaken hellhole!

Captain Louanne Katraine snorted derisively as she continued to study the reconnaissance photos that Angela Eight had amassed on her fly-by through the Acheron system. This was the unofficial designation for an A class star in NCD 382, a desolate region of space on the fringes of the Prolmar sector. The blue giant had such an intense heat signature that only one planet had managed to form inside its gravity well—a tiny, rust red ball whose most noteworthy feature were the craters carved out by the thousands of meteors that had impacted its surface. The Cylons had discovered the planet some twenty-five years before the attacks, and they had quickly begun to mine the huge deposits of iron ore that lay so readily to hand. A huge, heavily automated manufacturing and processing center had followed in short order. It was situated on the south rim of one of the deepest craters, and Kat reckoned that any facility large enough to require two entire battalions of centurions was going to be bristling with anti-aircraft missile batteries. Her squadrons would take them out before leveling the target, which would clear the way for the second and more critical phase of the operation to get under way. The Cavils had parked all of the FTL capable craft that the Cylons had captured during the first war at the bottom of the crater. Most of the ships were antiquated relics, but there was an Aesculapius class hospital ship in the mix that would nicely complement the Rising Star, and it was well worth the time and effort that would be needed to recapture it.

The Delos was the centerpiece of the entire mission, but Louanne knew that there was a second ship down on the surface that, for personal reasons, Adama wanted very badly. The Cylons had taken the Diana in the last days of the war, and they had set the passengers and crew of the moldering old Gemenese freighter aside for the medical experiments that had eventually yielded the first generation hybrid known as the Guardian. Taking the Diana back to New Caprica and handing it over to the civilian government would powerfully remind everyone that the men and women of the Colonial fleet never forgot those whom they were sometimes forced to leave behind … and never gave up on a mission.

. . .

"Jump complete," Ponytail called out; "and we're right on the money. There's a dwarf planet one light minute off the bow. The composition reads … well, well, well …"

Deitra Symonds swiveled around to face Kara and Luke, and she had a big grin on her face. "Ladies and gentlemen, break out your swimsuits because … we have just found water! The dwarf is one giant ice cube!"

"Sweet mother of Artemis," Melania protested from her seat at the tactical station; "how did we get so lucky? What do you think, Sam? Did you expect to find an iceberg only twenty systems coreward of the nebula?"

The moment she had learned that Sam Anders would be leading Kara Thrace's expedition to cylon Earth, Melania Peripolides had rushed to secure a billet on the Adriatic. Back in the Colonies, she had been attracted to the photogenic pyramid star turned resistance fighter at their first encounter. Sam's cylon nature had not discouraged her, nor had she shied away from competing openly with Caprica Six for his affections. A rather plain brunette, Melania would have been the first to admit that the angelically beautiful Cylon would easily eclipse any human rival—but only if she was stupid enough to fight on the statuesque blond's home turf. Melania had no such intention. Sam treasured family, and he wanted children. In this arena, Melania had all the advantages.

"Yeah, well … try not to get too excited," Kara remarked. "The Cylons will probably be crawling all over this system before the day is out—if they're not here already. Mom," she said to Miriam Six, "I want Spot and Rover to check out the neighborhood. Ponytail, let's catalog the coordinates for this ice ball, and store them in an encrypted file."

Miriam acknowledged her daughter's orders with a nod, and headed for the landing bay. Without a data stream or hybrid to fall back upon, the Cylons on the Adriatic had to issue orders to the two Raiders manually. It was an awkward arrangement, but the Raiders' ability to blend in made them the ideal tools with which to scout a potentially hostile system.

"Deitra, put us in an elliptical orbit …. Say, twenty klicks above the surface. We might as well take a good, close look while we're here."

"Colonel, do you want to send the Heavy Raider out to collect samples?" Luke Hammond made it sound like a suggestion, but he knew that Kara Thrace was still new at this game; as her XO, it was his job to fill in the gaps.

"We'll wait for the Raiders to report in, but … yeah. If the system's clean, Rachel and Elektra can take a couple of the centurions down. They can use the exercise."

"Consider it done," Luke said as he picked up the phone. The two Sixes were camped out in the landing bay, which was where the two squads of centurions that they had brought along were permanently stationed. Unless a boarder chose to cut through the hull, there were only three ways onto the Adriatic—the landing bay, and two emergency exits. The ship's designers had also woven a number of choke points into the network of corridors that linked the cockpit with the engine room. The vessel had teeth, and it had been engineered to withstand a direct assault by the U-87's and series 5000 centurions.

We may be the oddest exploratory force in the history of the universe, Luke thought to himself, but we're getting there. Our people have taken one another's measure, and the command routine is becoming more and more relaxed. Kara deserves a lot of the credit: thank the gods that Starbuck didn't make this trip!

. . .

"All right, people! Settle down, and let's get to it!" Kat glared at the mix of human and Cylon pilots that made up her command, while she wondered yet again if her advancing pregnancy was responsible for her inability to impose some sense of military discipline upon their unruly ranks. A pregnant CAG was obviously an incongruous sight, and in her twenty-second week Louanne could no longer hide the dramatic bulge in her midsection.

Leoben put his hand in the stream, and the normally intense light on the hangar deck instantly dimmed.

"Caveman made one low level pass over the target. It was strictly a photo recon mission, and this was the result. Lieutenant, roll the film."

The pilots watched quietly as the Viper hugged the undulating surface of Tartarus. This was the name that one of the ECO's had given the hellishly red planet. It had caught on fast.

"I'm approaching from the north," Lieutenant Moore pointed out.

Suddenly, the Viper overflew an enormous crater, and the fighter's nose dipped dramatically. Dozens of colonial transports suddenly swam into view.

"Stop the film," Kat ordered.

She used a pointer to draw everyone's attention to one particular ship.

"We believe that this is the Delos," she commented; "a state-of-the-art hospital ship captured during the eighth year of the war. Recovering her intact is the primary objective of this mission. But somewhere down there we're also going to find an old freighter called the Diana. If we can fly her out of there, it will make the admiral one very happy man."

"Resume," she barked.

The Viper leveled off, and then began to climb. As it drew closer to the south wall of the crater, tracer fire began to streak out from dozens of emplacements deeply embedded in the cliff face. The pilot successfully evaded the antiaircraft barrage, only to run into a hornet's nest of missile batteries as he approached a large manufacturing plant on the south rim.

"It was at this point that the Cylons launched two surface-to-air missiles," Caveman calmly remarked. On the screen, the imagery began to twist and turn in violent contortions as the fighter went through a rapid series of gut-wrenching evasive maneuvers. "If they have Raiders, they didn't get involved."

"And that's the X factor in this mission," Louanne concluded. "So, here's what we're gonna do. A hundred Raiders will lead off. Their job is flak suppression. They will use missiles to try and take out every antiaircraft battery below the rim. Three Raptors will go in behind them, and finish off anything that escapes the first wave. Chinstrap … Tough Guy … Playboy … you've got the duty."

Rufus Ayers and Jared Dalton exchanged high fives. Hog's Breath may have been cursed with a hideous Aerilon accent, but Chinstrap's ECO reckoned that he could park a missile on a cubit. Both of them were eagerly looking forward to this mission.

"The Raiders will continue on to attack the processing plant. The rock has an atmosphere, so it's also got gravity, and we're gonna make it work for us. Our birds will make glide bombing runs against the missile batteries screening the installation. We'll be using proximity fuses set to detonate fifty feet in the air. The shrapnel should take out the DRADIS dishes; the Raiders will then engage what's left of the batteries themselves at point blank range, and neutralize them. At this point, they'll begin to carpet bomb the facility proper."

"Buster, I want you to take Red Team and patrol overhead. If the enemy does have Raiders down there, it will be your job to take them out. Stingray, Blue Team will provide close air support to the Raptors, and to the Heavy Raiders. Because of their superior armor and greater weight allowance, we're using the latter to ferry centurions down to the surface. They'll tag the two high value targets, and check them for booby traps. If time permits, the centurions will go through the whole boneyard and see what's of interest. The Sixes and Eights will fly our prizes out of the crater, and when we're done, a Raider will stand off and nuke whatever's left behind. Are there any questions?"

Kat looked around, but all she saw was a sea of expectant faces. This was a big step up from the steady diet of lightly defended comm relays that Natalie had fed them over the last three weeks. So far, they had been an irritant; today, however, they would prove that they were a force to be taken seriously.

"Skids up in sixty," the CAG yelled. She smiled wistfully at her husband; for his part, Leoben knew how badly his very determined human wife wanted to lead this particular charge herself. But it was not to be, and they both knew it.

. . .

"What's the matter, baby? Can't sleep?"

Sharon sat down on the couch, and leaned in to rest her head on Helo's shoulder. It was coming up on three in the morning.

"You should be in bed, not sitting out here wrestling with medical logs and police reports." The coffee table was buried under a sea of official paper.

"Did I wake you? If I did, I'm sorry."

"No … no … you were quiet. But when I sensed you were gone, I woke up instantly. The subroutines that respond to Hera's cries, or to you having a bad night, are pretty easy to trigger. So, what's up?"

"I don't like where this investigation is heading," Karl admitted. "Sergeant Hadrian is meticulous, and she went through the inventory of the drugs that are supposed to be under lock and key with a fine toothed comb. We're missing a lot of stuff, and I don't just mean the biophosphonate that was used to murder Cyrus Alyattes. Antibiotics, pain killers … Hadrian can't reconcile the paper trail with the contents of the medical stores lockers on either Galactica or the Inchon Velle. In both cases, security was a joke. A dozen different people on Galactica had the combination to the safe, and on the Inchon Velle? The number's almost four times greater."

"Turn your shoulders," Sharon commanded when she sat up. When Karl obeyed, she began to knead his shoulders. He began to moan with pleasure, and he bent his head back as far as it would go.

"God, but you have the magic touch," Helo sighed. "Have you been taking lessons from the Six who runs the massage parlor, or do all Cylons have such knowing fingers?"

"It's a special program," Sharon said with an impish smile. "The Cavils restricted access to those of us who were tasked to seduce handsome, young fleet officers, and get ourselves pregnant in the process."

"Can't be a lot of those floating around the premises," Karl softly observed. His eyes were closed, and his shoulders were swaying back and forth as Sharon began to attack the knotted muscles at the base of her husband's neck.

"So, I guess we know why the black market was awash with prescription drugs," Sharon added. "Eric Phelan had at least one person on each ship in his back pocket. Have you talked to Six, or her people?"

"Yeah … I had a nice chat with Dino Panattes. He admitted that he had a pipeline into both civilian and military stores, but when I pressed him, he shut up fast. All I really got out of him was that he'd conducted an investigation of his own. He seems confident that none of his sources had anything to do with the Alyattes murder."

"Do you believe him?"

"I do, actually. The Six doesn't like it when people go around bumping off Sagittaron Elders. It's bad for business because it forces the authorities to shine a very bright light on her activities."

"So, crime lords … even cylon crime lords … don't like publicity?"

"Let's put it this way: I wouldn't expect Playa Palacios to have much luck trying to interview Six."

"All right, Shamus," Sharon growled into her husband's ear, "then give it to me straight: whodunit?"

"What?" Karl twisted around to stare into Sharon's eyes, which were filled with merriment.

"Laura Roslin loaned me her copy of A Murder on Picon. Helo, nothing beats a really good mystery when you're walking the floor with a cranky three month old … and Niles Archer really brings the docks of Penrose Harbor to life. I swear, you can almost taste the salt air, and his characters are so delightfully sinister. Noel Cairo is priceless!"

"Well, I sure wouldn't object to a little professional advice from Nick Taylo …"

"Love and Bullets," Sharon happily exclaimed. "I read it last week," she elaborated when she saw the confused look on Karl's face. "And maybe your perp read it too. You fished Cyrus Alyattes out of the river, and that's how Love and Bullets begins—with a body fished out of Caprican Bay. Remember?"

"Dear God on high, I married a gumshoe!"

"I prefer the term 'amateur sleuth'. It sounds so much more dignified. Anyway, what are we dealing with here?" Sharon picked up one of the log books that Helo had deposited on the coffee table, and began idly to flip through the pages.

"I've been reviewing the old autopsy reports and medical logs … just looking for patterns. Some things leap right off the page, like the number of people that we've lost to cancers brought on by exposure to radiation. Then we have all the obvious homicides, which peaked when Demand Peace tried to overthrow the government and half the fleet went temporarily crazy. Sharon, we've lost a lot of people. The problem isn't the absence of patterns. The problem is that there are so damned many of them."

"Well, I don't think you're going to find the answer at three in the morning," she retorted. Suddenly, Sharon leaned in to kiss her husband softly on the lips. "Are you hungry," she whispered as she began to pull her top over her head.

Karl's eyes went wide with sudden understanding.

"Hera was in one of her moods tonight." Sharon's own eyes were wide and innocent. "She refused to latch on, and now I'm so heavy that I feel like I'm going to burst."

"We can't have that," Karl murmured as he threw off his tanks. He picked Sharon up, and carried her back to bed. He laid her out gently, and then crawled in beside her, their eyes never breaking contact.

Helo tenderly kissed his wife, and then his head drifted down to her full breasts. Her scent reminded him of buttermilk, which he vaguely remembered liking as a child. He strongly doubted, however, if it had ever tasted this good …

. . .

One hundred Raiders dropped out of their nests, took a few moments to get their bearings and form a wall, and then they charged off in the direction of the crater. The baseship had come out of jump a bare eight kilometers above the surface of Tartarus, and when Kat and Leoben emerged in their Raptor, they could clearly see the immense manufacturing plant in the distance.

While they watched, another fifty Raiders detached themselves from the ship, and circled around to shield the FTL's. Simultaneously, the ten Vipers that made up Buster Bayer's Red Team began to emerge from the hangar deck. They quickly formed up, and raced off to keep station directly above the enemy installation. In their wake, the three Raptors that had been tasked with mopping up whatever the Raiders missed headed towards the crater at a more leisurely pace.

"Louanne, you must be pleased with what you've accomplished," Leoben remarked as the various units went efficiently about their business. The deployment was once again proceeding with the precision of fine clockwork.

"I am," Kat agreed. "The Raiders work well with our pilots, but it's more than that. The deck crews are the finest I've ever seen. Day in and day out, Galen and Naomi … Jammer and Six … they keep everything flying. They have yet to miss a beat."

"You and Racetrack have trained us well," the Two observed. "And morale is very high."

"There they go," Chinstrap gleefully announced. Fifty of the Raiders plunged into the crater, with their transponders broadcasting Colonial recognition codes.

"Now comes the IFF challenge," Kat murmured more or less to herself. "And in another second or two …"

Tracer fire suddenly began to emerge from the heavy weapons embedded in the crater's south wall. The Raiders darted forward and danced away, playing an intricate game that not all of them managed to win. As Kat watched the battle unfold on her onboard DRADIS, three icons bloomed, and then vanished from her screen.

Standing off above the north rim, the second flight of fifty Raiders patiently scanned the cliff face. They were tracking the heat signatures of the various guns in the infrared, and once they had their locations pinpointed, they rushed to join the fray. As they dropped into the crater and brought their missiles on line, the surviving fighters from the first wave executed a steep vertical climb that left them several thousand feet above the cylon factory and its surrounding missile batteries. The two elements of Kat's alpha wing advanced on both targets simultaneously—and then they fired.

. . .

"Frak," Deitra shouted. "Multiple DRADIS contacts, extreme range, bearing 183, carom 014 … plot puts them dead on the ecliptic." Everyone in the control room could hear the frustration in Ponytail's voice.

"These guys just won't take 'no' for an answer, Melania laughed. "Colonel, be advised that the sublights are set for station keeping. Our power emissions are minimal, but we are not invisible."

"Nav," Kara snapped, "are we still coasting in the planetary shadow?"

"Confirmed," Ponytail answered after she quickly double checked Adriatic's orbital track. "Our nose is just peeking out, but the forward sensor array is hot. If nothing else, we're probably going to arouse their curiosity."

Kara nodded sharply in response, and then thumbed her mike button. "Mom, we've got more uninvited company." She waited for Rachel to acknowledge. "That's right," she continued; "it's another scouting party. Hell, for all we know, it's the same three mother frakkers that we ran into in the last system."

"Are you going to fight, or do you want us to pack it up down here?"

I want to fight … you don't know how badly I want to take it to these assholes!

Kara took a deep breath, willing herself to remain calm. When she had accepted the responsibility of command, she had also accepted the many layers of frustration that went with the job. Over the past several hours, she had developed a healthy appreciation for what Adama had been going through day in and day out since the flight from the Colonies. Husker still lived inside the Admiral in the same way that Starbuck still lived inside Kara Thrace Six. The warrior wanted blood—but a commander had to weigh other priorities.

"Pack it up," she sighed. "Get back to the barn ASAP, but don't drift beyond the planetary mass. They haven't found us yet, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Do you want me to bring the missile batteries on line," the Sharon who was currently working the tactical station inquired.

"No," Kara reluctantly answered. "If they spot us, Cavil will know that we were here. But if we take out his birds, they'll download … and we get the same result. The fleet won't be able to use this water hole if the bastards stake it out, which is a given if they find us in the system. So, we tiptoe out of here, and hope for the best."

"Deitra, lock in the next set of jump coordinates," Luke ordered. "Confirm that nav is a go."

Ponytail's fingers danced across the keys on the nav computer; the young ECO didn't need to be reminded that one misplaced digit in the twelve string code could land them inside a nearby sun. Fleet lore was filled with tales of marooned pilots and ships long vanished.

"Jump solution checks," she said for the second time this day. "Nav is a go."

"Six, what's your ETA," Luke asked as he cut into the comm channel.

"Ninety seconds to clear the surface, but we need four minutes to make hard seal."

"Rachel, we may not have five minutes. Stand by … nav is forwarding the updated jump coordinates now."

"I'm on it," Ponytail yelled. She brought up the file, and transmitted it directly to the Heavy Raider's own nav computer. Without turning away from her screens, she waved one hand in the air to signal a successful download.

"Confirm receipt of jump coordinates," Swordsman whispered. He never took the interface between the Adriatic's computer systems and their predominately organic cylon counterparts for granted.

"Jump coordinates are punched in," Elektra replied a few moments later. "The centurions are closing the ramp now."

In his mind, Luke Hammond ran the sequence. The centurions would batten down the hatch, and then they would step into niches designed to cushion their frame during lift off. It would only take a few seconds …

"ETA two minutes," Elektra called out.

"Hard seal in three minutes," Luke announced. The XO was talking to Sam Anders, but he was staring at Kara's back. The hybrid was standing over Ponytail's shoulder; they were both tracking the enemy scouts as they advanced deeper into the system.

"They're not changing course," Deitra murmured. "It looks like they're going to stay on the solar plane, and follow it right down into the CHZ."

"Scanning us on the way by?" Kara pondered her options. "Luke, tell Rachel to hug the surface, and to move with us as we go. Helm, ease us forward one-third; I want to keep this overgrown ice cube between us and the Raiders."

As the three enemy fighters continued to drop down the gravity well, the Adriatic and its Heavy Raider hatchling carried out one minor course correction after another, all of them designed to keep the planetoid's bulk between the two forces. Ten long minutes passed before Kara finally signaled Rachel and Elektra to bring their ship home.

"I've had it with this crap," Kara announced. Arms folded, she was wandering around the control room, waiting impatiently for Rachel to announce hard seal. She looked over at Luke Hammond. "When we come out of jump, we'll return to our base course. No matter how promising, I've decided to skip the next dozen systems."

Sam Anders, who had been listening closely, swiveled around to look thoughtfully at his granddaughter. "Kara, there's another nebula a thousand or so light years ahead of us. The shape reminded us of a lion's head, so that's what we called it … the Lion's Head Nebula. It has an eye …"

"Of course," Miriam exclaimed. "And the caravan of the heavens was watched over by a great lion with a mighty blinking eye."

"The Book of Pythia," the Six added by way of explanation. She knew that Kara had never shown much interest in scripture. "The scrolls tell us that the thirteenth tribe used the lion's head as a navigational marker on the journey to what became cylon Earth."

"In reality," Sam interjected, "the 'mighty blinking eye' is a system of red and blue eclipsing binary pulsars. They're easy to spot, which is undoubtedly why my forebears left a beacon there."

"A beacon … for what?" Kara couldn't see the point.

"There's a data storage unit inside the buoy. Think of it as an annotated roadmap, Kara. Once you access it, it tells you how to reach Kobol, and what resources can be found along the way."

"And going the other way?"

Sam smiled knowingly. "Let's just say that it lays out quite precisely the course that the thirteenth proposed to follow … a course that leads straight to the Lagoon Nebula."

"So, if the Cavils were to discover the beacon and unlock its secrets …"

"They would have a roadmap that would take them eighty-five percent of the way to our home world."

"Well, we can't have that, can we," Kara said brightly. "So … I guess that we'd better find this beacon of yours, and let Rover and Spot use it for target practice!"

. . .

"Rufus, do you know what this kinda reminds me of?" Hog's Breath gestured expansively out the canopy of their Raptor. The two humans were hovering above the north rim of the crater, and they had a bird's eye view of the battle raging in its depths. The Raiders had fired hundreds of missiles at the anti-aircraft guns embedded in the south wall. Enemy ordnance had initially taken them out by the dozens, but the Raiders were relentless, and they kept pounding away at their chosen targets.

Chinstrap was studying the battle so intently that he did not even hear his ECO's question. His overall impression was that the Raiders were getting the job done, but with hundreds of missile contrails obscuring his view, it was hard to be sure.

"Well, do you?"

"No, Jared," the lieutenant finally sighed. He stole a glance at his ECO, and noted the pensive look on his face. "What does this call to mind?"

"Back on Aerilon, we had a big, old barn out behind the house. And it was overrun with rats. Not those little, itty bitty field mice, mind you … I'm talking about rats! Anyways, daddy finally got fed up 'cause they were gobbling up all the feed … nipping at the hogs … know what I mean?"

"Sure," Chinstrap smiled. "So, what did your dad do?"

"He went into town … to the animal shelter. And he come back with this little rat terrier. Didn't look like much, but daddy swore that he'd get the job done. Anyways, daddy … he took this little rat terrier out to the barn, shoved him inside, and closed the door. When he came back two hours later, the whole center of the barn was covered with dead rats. It was like a carpet—a big, furry carpet. Being kind of curious about this sort of thing, daddy … he counted them up one by one. Turns out that little dog … he was just a regular rat killing machine."

"How many did he catch?"

"915 or thereabouts … sometimes, with all the blood and gore, it was a wee bit hard to tell. Anyways, the Raiders kind of remind me of that little ol' rat terrier. Once they get you in their sights, they don't never let go. So, it may take a while, but by the time our birds get done, that crater's gonna be pretty much rat free."

Rufus Ayres chuckled, and then, unable to help himself, he started to shake with laughter. Jared Dalton's homespun wisdom was vintage Aerilon, and it amused every human on the ship that the Eights now hung on his every word. Sharon Giffords had grown up on an Aerilon dairy farm, and Ellen Tigh had manipulated Sharon's DNA to create the last of her children. The discovery had struck a deeply responsive chord in their collective psyche, and in the aftermath hundreds if not thousands of Eights had developed an obsessive interest in what they now thought of as their home world. There were no dairy farmers in the fleet, but a hog farmer came awfully close—especially an awkward and gangly farm boy with an accent so thick that you could cut it with a knife. The Eights adored Jared Dalton.

"You should tell that story to the Eights," Chinstrap urged. "They'll eat it up."

"Oh, I intend to. I thought tonight, when we're beddin' down the Raiders and sampling a wee drab of the Chief's moonshine, that the lasses might enjoy hearing about daddy and his terrier."

Rufus turned his full attention back to the battle. Inside the crater, the Raiders had definitely got the upper hand. As he watched, in the distance a giant fireball rose into the orange sky. One of the lead flight's missiles had just struck home.

Jared Dalton nodded approvingly. "I'd say that sumthin inside that thar manufacturing plant just went … boom!"

. . .

"Order," Zarek shouted as he repeatedly pounded the gavel on the conference table. He was sitting to the President's immediate right, and making still another heroic attempt to get the Quorum delegates to settle down. It was like this at every meeting in the narrow conference room that served as the seat of government on Colonial One. Shelly Godfrey always politely waited her turn to speak, and the centurion was forever mute, but the human participants never ceased to embarrass themselves. When they weren't yelling at the President, they were yelling at one another. Indeed, the only thing that ever seemed to unite the quarrelsome delegates was their shared conviction that whoever could shout the loudest would eventually carry the day.

"The chair recognizes the delegate from Virgon," Baltar announced. "Mr. Bagot, you have the floor."

"Order," Zarek continued; "we must have order!"

Marshall Bagot climbed to his feet, and stared slowly around the table at his fellow delegates. But he paused when he came to Quentin Margus, the new Sagittaron representative, and speared him with the full measure of his contempt.

"Mr. President, why are we still having this discussion? Why are we still dithering? People are losing confidence in their government, and with good reason! The rats have found their way into the warehouse. They've eaten more than half the available food stock, and what they haven't eaten they've contaminated with their droppings …"

"At least now we know why no one's been bitten over the last four days," Sarah Porter cut in. She was fuming with rage. "They've been eating their fill, leaving us to starve …"

"Everyone except the Sagittarons," another delegate yelled out.

"Except for the Sagittarons," Bagot agreed as he reclaimed the floor. "They've cut themselves off from the rest of the settlement, and so far they've managed to keep the rats at bay. There's hunger in the streets, Mr. President … hunger, and fear. If we don't act quickly and decisively, I fear that a desperate people will soon take matters into their own hands!"

Quentin Margus jumped quickly to his feet, the protest already forming on his lips.

"Need I remind you, Mr. Bagot? My people did not, as you so quaintly put it, 'cut themselves off from the rest of the settlement'. You expelled us … forced us into a ghetto … in order to limit your own exposure to the Mellorak sickness. Have any of you shown sympathy for our plight? Hardly! You have treated us as outcasts … pariahs … plague carriers. We have done everything that the doctors have asked us to do, but our people are still dying. Do any of you even care?"

"I suspect not," Quentin snorted as he glanced around at the sea of upturned faces. "It would be so much more convenient for the rest of you if our people simply died. Then, you could help yourselves to our food supplies without going through the obviously tiresome exercise of putting a constitutional face on mob rule!"

Shelly Godfrey raised her hand.

"The chair recognizes the cylon delegate," Gaius hastily remarked.

"Thank you, Mr. President." Shelly rose awkwardly to her feet, and waited for the hubbub to die down. She did not have to wait long; everyone present knew that a woman entering the eighth month of her pregnancy, even a cylon woman, tired easily. "Mr. Bagot, you exaggerate the seriousness of our plight. While it is true that our stock of fruit, vegetables, and grains have been ruined, we have ample supplies of meat, fish, and eggs to hand. No one is in imminent danger of starving to death. Nor is it true that the government has been idly sitting on its hands during this crisis. We have attacked the problem of garbage in the streets aggressively, and we have resolved it successfully: that is why the rats have moved on to find new sources of food. It is unfortunate that we do not have enough animals on hand to make significant inroads on the rodent population, and it is doubly unfortunate that the rodents face no threat from the few indigenous quadrupeds on this planet, but this is the reality that not only the government but the people at large must face. Now is not, therefore, the time for recriminations. Instead of rebuking the Sagittarons, we should ask them to tutor us, so that in future we may safeguard our resources more carefully. And instead of threatening them, we should listen to their concerns, and do our best to redress them."

"Shelly, all of your points are well taken," Sharon Baltar commented. Her hands were resting on her belly, and even without the maternity clothes that she now sported, in the eighteenth week Sharon's own pregnancy was now obvious. She had moved past the nausea that had plagued her in the first months, and her appetite was approaching the insatiable. The twins had already begun to move about, and their movements seemed increasingly coordinated. She was convinced that each was already aware of the other's presence.

"I'm eating for three," she gently observed, "and Tory is eating for two." She reached over and patted the arm of the woman sitting beside her—the woman with whom she now shared Gaius' bed. She had not yet completely broken the presidential advisor to her will, but Sharon was satisfied that Tory now saw herself as a member of the family, and would do nothing to undermine her husband's political standing.

"So," she went on, "you will all understand that food is a matter of great concern to the both of us." Sharon's self-deprecating display of humor elicited chuckles throughout the room. The tension didn't completely melt away, but it did dissipate.

"We need to remain calm," she said as she looked pointedly at Marshall Bagot. "And when this meeting adjourns and we go out to talk with our constituents, we all need to make it clear that the food shortage does not pose an immediate danger to the community. But at the same time, we also need to assure our people that the government is aware of the looming population explosion, and is taking steps today to insure that we have enough food to feed our children tomorrow. Mr. Margus, it would be helpful if the Sagittaron elders would make a public announcement to this effect. We must set aside a larger volume of seed grain for planting purposes in order to guarantee the much larger harvests that twenty thousand additional mouths will require one and two years out."

"That's a reasonable suggestion," Quentin agreed. "I will bring it before the Council of the Elders at the next meeting, which is the day after tomorrow. But," he stressed, "I want it to be publicly acknowledged that Sagittaron food stocks are ours to dispose of as we see fit. We have nothing else with which to barter. You can deny it all you want, but we are outcasts!"

"I can make no such public admission," Gaius instantly countered. "Shelly and Sharon are right … at the moment, there is no real cause for alarm, but the rats aren't exactly cooperating with our efforts to exterminate them, and none of us can predict the future with certainty. If the situation continues to deteriorate, I will have no choice but to revisit this issue—and if it comes to it, I am prepared to declare a formal state of emergency."

"Is that a threat, Mr. President?"

"No, Mr. Margus … it's a statement of fact. And you might want to remind your elders that we also face chronic shortages of certain medicines, which we may have to triage even in the presence of highly communicable diseases such as Mellorak infection." The look on Gaius' face was grim. "You might also want to inform them that Lieutenant Agathon is making progress in his investigation of Cyrus Dalyattes' murder. It would be a shame if he were unable to get to the bottom of this matter because his services were urgently required elsewhere. But starving people have been known to riot, Mr. Margus, and maintaining public order is one of the most basic duties of government."

"Cyrus Uri doesn't respond well to threats, Mr. President." The Sagittaron's tone was harsh.

"And I don't respond well to extortion," Baltar shot back. "Make it clear to the elders that Sagittarons are a part of this community, and that we expect them to be as public spirited as every other colonist."

. . .

The Raider dashed forward, its animal brain fully geared to the hunt. The air was thick with missiles, identical in every way to its own arms. It had glided left and right, up and down, relying on speed and agility to evade the killing stroke. Once the threat receded, it could be ignored; the younger and less experienced members of the pack prowled the perimeter of the hunting ground, honing their skills against the prey's feeble weapons.

Once, the hunt had been straightforward: find the prey, and kill it. But the predator had evolved, and its tactics had grown more sophisticated. It could discriminate now between the deadly talons and the still more deadly brain that directed them. The Raider was intent upon killing the brain, and so its sensors scanned the surface beyond the crater's rim, seeking out the electronic signature of a DRADIS dish.

There!

Falcon squealed in triumph, and climbed still higher into the planetoid's thin atmosphere. The humans who cared for the nest had given him the name, and had patiently repeated it until he identified it as his own. And they had taught him a new trick. It was no longer necessary to take the fight directly to the prey, for it could just as easily be killed from above.

Falcon swooped ahead, once more dodging the sharply pointed claws that reached out to rake him. He fastened his own electronic gaze upon an imaginary spot fifty feet above the DRADIS dish, and unleashed two of the missiles hidden within his wings.

The electronic chatter suddenly ceased, and Falcon purred with contentment. Now, he was free to soar, free to attack the prey's nest.

Eagle slid up to his left, and sent a terse electronic query to his older brother. Other members of the pack moved in as well, gathering around their leader. Falcon was old, and he had fought many times against prey both worthy and unworthy. He would lead, and they would follow. Such was the order of things.

The younglings spread out, and dropped toward the rust red planetary surface. They would test their skills against the now helpless missile batteries; some were easy prey, but others had been cunningly concealed in the shadowy crevices that everywhere scarred the landscape. Falcon hovered patiently, waiting for the younglings to depart. Finally, he armed two more of his missiles, and surged forward. The nest was huge, but it was no longer protected, and so he and his brothers would feast. . . .

Directing the battle from a safe distance, Kat couldn't help but admire the grace with which her metallic flock moved from one target to the next. Suddenly, she was warmed by an enormous surge of gratitude. John Bierns and Kara Thrace … she didn't care whether they were real, honest-to-gods angels or not. She gently patted her stomach.

Without you, this baby wouldn't even exist … you've given all of us a chance to live …

As Louanne and Leoben watched, in the distance a giant fireball rose into the orange sky. One of the lead flight's missiles had just struck home.

. . .

"Missile lock," Hog's Breath squeaked. "And they're coming from inside the crater!"

Rufus Ayres didn't pause to think. He slammed the rudder hard to the left, moving on pure instinct as the adrenaline surge spiked through his body. He sensed the missile dart through the air that, a bare two seconds earlier, his Raptor had occupied.

"Oh, frak," Jared wailed; "Playboy's gone … he's gone!"

But Chinstrap had no time to mourn. He continued to roll his bird hard to the left, and then he took it straight down, seeking the shelter of the derelicts on the crater floor. The two pilots were fish trapped in a fishbowl, and he reckoned that all the chaff and decoys in the world wouldn't get them out of this particular fix.

"They suckered us, Rufus … by all the gods … they suckered us real good!" The ECO's voice was laced with surprise, but then the proximity alarm sounded, drowning out every other sound inside the tiny reconnaissance craft.

Rufus Ayres leveled off so close to the surface that the Raptor was raising a dust storm in its wake. He turned into an aisle and pushed the throttle forward, the abandoned hulks now flying by on both sides in one, unending blur. He was desperately searching for a gap in the ranks, someplace where he could duck in, sit down, and hide …

Something slammed into the hull, and Chinstrap had to fight for control of his bird, which was suddenly sluing dangerously to the right. There was an explosion in the cabin behind him, and Jared was screaming. But Rufus Ayres couldn't tell whether it was from pain or fear, and he didn't dare turn his head to look.

He didn't have to. The air was suddenly thick with the acrid smell of burnt wiring, and he knew that Jared's console had exploded. It was every pilot's worse nightmare … the shower of sparks that rarely killed, but often left the ECO covered with third degree burns that made death seem like an act of divine grace. It was far better to die than to face reconstructive surgery that could never restore the sight to blinded eyes.

I guess maybe it's time to call it a day, Rufus wearily thought.

. . .

"Blue team … commit … commit," Kat screeched. She could only watch in horror as a heat-seeking missile suddenly came out of nowhere and slammed into the engine mount on Playboy's Raptor. The ship blew apart, taking Playboy and City Slicker with it. Less than five seconds later, a second missile claimed the lives of Tough Guy and Carousel, pilots with whom she had bunked in her nugget days back on Galactica. A creeping numbness settled over Kat's limbs as Chinstrap dove for the deck, passing rapidly out of her line of sight.

"They suckered us, Rufus … by all the gods … they suckered us real good!"

Hearing the unmistakable sound of Jared Dalton's voice over the wireless, the CAG let out a shaky laugh. They're still alive, she marveled. And then she heard a scream that made her blood run cold.