CHAPTER 35

MAELSTROM

"Oh, for gods sakes," Baltar whined; "I can't believe that we are even having this conversation. I am the President of the Colonies, and you … you … are one of my advisors. Surely, Mr. Adama, you can do better than this!"

Gaius rose from his chair and leaned forward, his hands flat on the desktop, invading Apollo's space. "In the public imagination," he continued, "Colonial One is more than just the seat of government. It is a symbol, like the Opera House on Kobol. It is a tangible link to our past and to all that we have lost. We are not going to sever this connection by moving the government to an underground bunker, which is what you seem to be suggesting. Nor are we going to sacrifice Tory and Sharon on the altar of your incompetence. If there's a problem here, I expect you to fix it. But bring me a practical solution, not some harebrained scheme that simply papers over the problem!"

"Mr. President, I have discussed this matter with the Admiral, and I've done some research on my own. The security protocol that was in place during the Adar administration called for evacuation of the President, the Vice-President, members of the cabinet, and other key personnel. This is the Case Orange protocol, under which then Secretary of Education Laura Roslin became President. Case Orange did not extend to family members …"

"Then think of Sharon and Tory as key government officials," Baltar cut in. "I ask you: would you really want either of them to fall into Cavil's hands?" The President waved his arms in the air in frustration. "Tory is my senior political advisor, and Sharon spends more time sitting behind this desk than I do. I try not to delude myself about such things, Mr. Adama. I am a scientist; frankly, politics bores me. But Sharon and Tory are both political animals. If you are truly worried about keeping the government up and running after another apocalypse, you should concentrate on them because from one day to the next they are the ones who keep this government working."

"Perhaps we can arrive at a compromise," Lee suggested. "Suppose you remain on Colonial One, and we set up office space for your wives closer to …"

"Excuse me, Mr. President, but you need to see this." Billy Keikeya had rushed into the President's office, and the expression on his face was grim. He handed a single sheet of paper to Baltar, who scanned its contents in a single glance.

"Oh, not again," he complained. "I simply don't believe it." He passed the sheet to Lee.

CYLON ATTACK IMMINENT. THIS IS NO DRILL. REPEAT THIS IS NO DRILL.

Apollo looked hard at Billy Keikeya. "This is from Galactica?"

"It came in on a scrambled channel. The authentication is correct. It's from the Admiral."

"How long …?"

"Abut ninety seconds."

"Get the President to shelter, Billy; do it now! I'll make the announcement."

"We need to move, Mr. President," Billy urged.

"What? Twice in one day? This is preposterous." Gaius settled back in his chair. Enough is enough, he thought; I'm not going anywhere.

"It's not my father's job to conduct evacuation exercises," Lee pointedly remarked. "This is the real thing."

Baltar's face turned pale, but Lee was no longer there to see it. He rushed out of the chamber and made straight for Colonial One's bridge. The ship's communications console doubled as a public address system. Loudspeakers would carry Apollo's voice to every corner of the settlement.

"Attention … your attention, please; this is Lee Adama. A cylon attack on New Caprica is underway. This is not a drill. I say again: this is not a drill. All personnel are to report to their assigned shelters or duty stations."

A siren began to blare, but he paid it no attention. Lee switched to a scrambled frequency, and attempted to make contact with Galactica's CIC.

There was no answer.

. . .

Cavil looked up from the stream. "The Raiders have returned," he announced.

"Well, don't keep us in suspense," Cavil sourly responded. "What did they find?"

"One flight traversed the fleet without incident. The second wing overflew what appears to be the only settlement on the planet. They were not challenged; we experienced no losses."

"Really? Adama must have been taking a nap." Cavil was pacing around the control center, deep in thought. Everything was going as planned, and that made him doubly suspicious. "No matter. Did they make the broadcast?"

"Yes … on the prearranged frequency. By now, the transmission should have activated the Eights and that lunatic hybrid. With any luck, they should be making a real mess of Adama's day."

"Luck has nothing to do with it," Cavil snorted. "Recall the Raiders," he ordered; "let's get this show on the road."

. . .

From her vantage point on the fringes of the asteroid belt, Angela Eight watched the Raiders stream back to their nests. Now, it was only a matter of time. She waited and she watched as, one by one, the ships in Cavil's fleet winked out of existence. She knew exactly where they would come out of jump, and she fired up her engines to carry the bad news back to Natalie and John.

. . .

"Admiral, the baseship is launching missiles!" At the tactical desk, Amy Eight couldn't credit what the sensor feed was telling her.

"Confirmed," Dionysia Six reported. "I'm tracking twenty-three missiles inbound."

"Inbound?" Adama shook his head in confusion. "What is the target?"

"The civilian ships," Dionysia softly replied. In a matter of seconds, the fleet was going to be eviscerated, and there was nothing that she or anyone else could do about it. "Admiral, the radiological alarm … the missiles are armed with nukes."

"Gods in heaven," Adama cursed. He had absolutely no idea what was happening, but ultimately, it didn't matter: Admiral William Adama had been taken as completely by surprise as the deskbound admirals who had overseen the destruction of the Colonies little more than a year before. He could only hope that, this time, the outcome would be different.

"Helm," Adama barked, "bring us about. Plot a course that will bring our port batteries into play. Don't worry about the heading … we'll take them ship to ship!"

Galactica instantly turned hard to starboard. The two warships were less than five hundred kilometers apart, and the ancient battlestar began rapidly to close the range.

"Admiral," Sonja hesitantly pointed out, "more than half of the gunnery officers are currently down on the planet. I suggest that we cycle to auto fire, and use the centurions to feed the guns."

"Do it," Adama grimaced. Even with its cylon contingent, Galactica was badly undermanned. Bill was acutely aware of the fact that he had been playing with fire for the last couple of months. To boost morale, and to slow down the alarming stream of retirement papers that had been crossing his desk, he had made a calculated decision to grant shore leave generously. The tactic had worked, but now it had come back to bite him in the ass.

The XO nodded to Amy. It would be up to the Eight to deploy their cannon for maximum effect—and Amy had come to them from the resurrection ship. Whatever virus the Ones had unleashed, she was not a carrier.

"Cloud Nine is gone," Dionysia announced in an absolutely wooden voice. The icon on her DRADIS screen vanished as the transponder on the ship ceased to broadcast. "The detonation also took out freighter 212, that Colonial Movers vessel, and … Diana."

Adama winced with a pain so terrible that it almost doubled him over. Gaeta, he thought; Gaeta was in command of Diana …

Wordlessly, Sonja walked over to D'Anna's station. The Three was in charge of internal security, and if the Six's suspicions proved correct, D'Anna was also going to have a battle to manage.

"Three, I want you to deploy the centurions. They are to secure the CIC, the hangar deck, the medical bay, Aft Damage Control, and Auxiliary Fire Control. I also want squads to sweep our decks … every causeway, every compartment … have them look everywhere. Any Eight whom they encounter with a weapon in hand is to be shot on sight."

D'Anna's eyes went wide. "Six," she whispered, "I'm not sure that the centurions will obey such an order. What is happening?"

"The Eights control the baseship, and until I am proven wrong, we shall proceed on the assumption that Cavil implanted a virus that would turn them against us. That virus has now been activated. Any Eight who transferred to Galactica from the baseship has been similarly infected, and now constitutes a threat."

"But there are thousands of Eights in the settlement, Six … thousands!"

"I know," Sonja shrugged, "and one of them is the de facto President of the Colonies. But right now, that's not our problem. Three, make sure that the centurions understand: the Eights will destroy us, if they can."

Sonja turned away, and glanced up at the DRADIS screen overhead. There were noticeably fewer icons than there had been thirty seconds earlier.

"What else have we lost," she quietly asked.

"The Baah Pakal, the McConnell, the Tora Bashiri, the Ziusudra ..." Adama was also staring hypnotically at the DRADIS display, which was now updating by the second. In his mind's eye, he saw the ships out in space … watched them explode … watched them die.

. . .

Philista Liu audibly groaned when she heard the siren, and then she began pounding the pillow in frustration.

"Not again," she exclaimed. "It's not fair! Why do they have to hold one of these frakking exercises every time we try to make love? Aargh!" She returned to pounding the pillow.

Sharon climbed out of bed, and with the mechanical steps of someone in a deep trance, walked to the dresser. She opened the top drawer, and removed her sidearm. She turned around.

Philista had just gotten out of bed. She started to cross the room, but she paused in mid-stride when she saw the expression on Sharon's face. Her beautiful features were waxen, and her eyes, normally so expressive, were dead.

"Sharon?"

The Eight's only response was to pull the trigger, and blood geysered from Philista's chest. She fell backwards, collapsing onto the bed.

Sharon walked to the side of the bed and looked down, her face devoid of all emotion. She took aim, and pulled the trigger again. A second bullet exploded near Philista's heart, but the pain was little more than a vague sensation. The darkness was already closing in, and she was spiraling down—spiraling down into forever.

Sharon retreated to the living room, and settled into a comfortable chair. She would wait, now—wait for Marc to come home.

. . .

"Damn it, Sharon, quit fidgeting! How am I supposed to see what's going on in there if you won't keep still?"

Sharon and Tory had come early to the hospital for another round of prenatal checkups. Despite Doc Cottle's gruff manner and the cigarette that inevitably dangled from his fingers, Sharon normally enjoyed these outings. The fetal monitor showed the twins growing inside of her in such rich detail, and cylon pregnancies were still so rare that she treasured every moment, and committed it all to memory.

But not today.

"Something's wrong," she said to Tory; "I can feel it."

"Nonsense," Cottle growled. "I swear, you cylons are even worse hypochondriacs than your average human, and that's saying something! There's nothing going on that should concern you. The twins are doing fine."

"It's not the twins," Sharon murmured. Her eyes were closed, and she was frowning, concentrating on the feeling, trying to pinpoint the source. "It's me … there's something wrong with me."

"Oh, for the …"

"What is it?" Tory cut Cottle off in mid-complaint. She knew Sharon far better than the elderly physician ever would.

"There's a binary code that's just been triggered in one of the synaptic relays that links the organic and inorganic parts of my brain." Sharon winced, and reached up to press her fingers hard into her scalp: this was the first time that she had ever experienced a headache. "It's muddled; I think the hormones that my pregnancy has stimulated are slicing it up … deleting some of it …"

Sharon suddenly looked at Tory with something approaching horror in her eyes. "It's ordering me to pick up a gun and kill you. Then, I'm supposed to kill every other human female within reach."

"Is that all?" Cottle breathed a sigh of relief. "Sharon, this sort of emotional explosion normally follows the delivery. It's rare for it to happen before the birth, but it's not unknown."

"You don't understand, Doctor. It's a virus … a computer virus. It's been lying dormant inside of me, but now …"

"Cavil," Tory swore. "It's got to be Cavil!"

In the distance, a siren began to blare.

. . .

"Dee," Adama blared, "send the following to all ships: 'execute jump to emergency standby coordinates. Galactica will cover your withdrawal'."

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

On the DRADIS screen above his head, the admiral could only watch numbly as more and more icons flared and died. Rhadamanthys, Kara Nixal, and Tauranian Traveller were gone now, just so much radiated debris …

"They're not shooting at us," Bill murmured out loud; "why aren't they shooting at us?"

"They're trying to pin the population on the planet by eliminating as much of our transport capacity as they can," Sonja surmised. She was hovering over Amy's shoulder at the tactical desk, one eye fixed on the DRADIS display while the other evaluated the Eight's work.

With most of the trained gunnery officers absent from their stations, Amy was drawing fully upon her cylon computational skills to cobble together an impromptu battle plan that relied heavily upon the speed and durability of the centurions under Adama's command. She had already decided to ignore the missile batteries and throw everything they had at the baseship's central pylon. Taking out the control center and killing the hybrid would be the quickest way to end this.

"Admiral, I have a firing solution," Amy called out. "Targeting all guns on the central pylon," she added.

"Fire at will," Adama ordered. He was desperate to get Galactica into the fight, to buy time for the civvies to power up their engines … to end the carnage.

"Auto fire selected," Amy acknowledged, and … "port batteries are fully engaged!" The centurions, she thought, without the centurions, we couldn't do this…

"Helm," Bill ordered, "come to course 090, but stay on their negative axis." He hadn't been able to stop the first wave of missiles, but maybe he could do something about the second. He knew that the basestar's massive arms would continue to rotate on the ship's central axis, and that each would launch a single, coordinated salvo against the civilian fleet, then pause to reload. This was now a race against time—time that was to be measured in seconds.

"Course 090, Admiral."

"Very good … steady as she goes."

"Admiral," the XO felt obliged to note, "this course … the baseship won't be able to ignore us. We'll be in the middle of their firing solution."

"That's the general idea," Adama retorted. "We can take the hits; the civvies can't. We have to buy them some time."

Galactica and the baseship were squaring off at less than two hundred kilometers, and in the vacuum of space there was nothing to absorb the kinetic energy of Galactia's projectile weapons. The battlestar shuddered as Amy steadily fired the portside guns, the salvos repeatedly ripping into the baseship's vulnerable hide.

Adama studied the DRADIS, focusing now on the battle at hand rather than the casualties that his command had already suffered. The baseship had not launched its Raiders, and without them it was essentially defenseless. It was only a matter of time before the cylon vessel was reduced to slag.

What the hell is going on, Adama asked himself yet again. And why aren't the frakkers following standard cylon battle doctrine? Why haven't they deployed their Raiders to attack us and defend their ship? What the hell is going on?

"Incoming nukes," Dionysia yelled.

Adama calmly picked up the telephone, and keyed for a shipwide broadcast.

"Attention, all hands; we have nukes inbound. Brace for impact."

. . .

Apollo quickly gave up trying to contact Galactica. He had very little time; the Cavils would have Colonial One in their sights, so he had to get clear before their centurions attacked. He hastily switched frequencies.

"This is Artemis Six; authenticate."

"This is Charioteer," Apollo replied. "Maelstrom; I repeat, Maelstrom."

"Acknowledged; what is the protocol?"

"Harvest moon; I repeat, Harvest moon."

"Harvest moon acknowledged." Artemis closed the connection, and returned to the kitchen. Apollo had caught the unlikely trio who controlled an entire army of centurions and Raiders at a leisurely breakfast.

"The Cavils have found us," she informed Hephaestus and Aphrodite in a matter-of-fact tone. "For the time being, we hold our forces in reserve."

. . .

"Attention all hands, we have nukes inbound. Brace for impact."

Shelly's eyes went wide, and she wrapped her arms protectively around her newborn daughter. She looked at Creusa with an expression that mingled regret with resignation. "The Ones have found us," she simply remarked.

"They might have waited until Cyrene finished her breakfast," the Six caustically replied. Her daughter was suckling hungrily at her breast, and she didn't seem likely to finish anytime soon.

"Lee's on the surface," Shelly gently reminded her.

"I know," Creusa softly answered. "He has a job to do, and he'll do it. He'll be fine."

"He may need our help."

"He'll be fine," Creusa repeated more firmly. "But if he does get into trouble, I'll find a way to rescue him."

"You were always our finest warrior …"

"A veritable Amazon," Creusa smiled, "although I'm not about to cut off one of my breasts. Cyrene wouldn't like that … she wouldn't like it at all!"

Lee has never seen me at my worst, Creusa reflected. He doesn't know the lengths to which I am capable of going. But if it comes to it, I will tear that planet apart to save my husband!

. . .

Angela raced back to the fleet, and as soon as she was within wireless range signaled the baseship.

"The Ones got her ahead of us," she reported. "Their forces were concentrated in the rift, but they've now jumped."

"Eight," D'Anna queried in return, "were they scattering to continue the search for our fleet?"

"Negative," Angela sadly replied. "They recalled all of their Raiders, and they jumped as a coherent unit. They've found New Caprica."

"Did they post a rear guard?" Natalie held her breath waiting for the answer.

"Negative … no rear guard."

"Then get back here as fast as you can! We can reach New Caprica in two jumps."

Natalie turned to D'Anna, who controlled communications with the rest of the fleet.

"Three, notify the others. We are jumping to New Caprica, and the Ones will be waiting for us. We are going into battle."

. . .

Apollo dashed out of Colonial One. He looked up into the sky, fully expecting to see an armada of enemy Raiders overhead, but there was nothing in the air. So, Lee had time—how best to use it? He quickly ran through his options. Billy Keikeya would see the President safely to the command bunker, but what about Tom Zarek? Lee briefly toyed with the idea of going off to find the Vice-President, but instantly dismissed it. Zarek had refused the traditional security team, relying instead upon his buddies in the Sons of Ares to protect him from the admittedly long list of people who wanted to see the former Sagittaron terrorist dead. He would just have to go to ground on his own—and Lee had no doubt that he would never be found unless he wanted to be.

"What in the name of the gods …"

Lee turned around, to see Wallace Gray exiting the ship. But New Caprica's finance and industrial minister wasn't looking at Lee Adama. He was looking past him.

Lee turned around, expecting to see centurions charging their way. But the area surrounding Colonial One was empty and silent.

Except that, in the distance, there were bodies scattered on the ground. Lee focused on them for the first time, and then he noticed something else that sent a chill up his spine.

All of the bodies were human. And with but one exception, they were female.

In the distance, he heard gunfire—not the heavy thud of the centurions' rounds but the snap, crackle, pop of small arms fire.

He suddenly realized that the fighting was already underway, but it was occurring inside the settlement, not overhead. And that could mean only one thing: some or all of the Cylons had turned against them.

. . .

"Admiral, our Vipers are in the tubes, and the Raiders and Heavy Raiders are ready to launch. What are your orders?"

Sonja Six look expectantly at Adama. She was the CAG as well as the XO, and left to her own devices she would already have given the order to launch. She did not understand why the admiral was hesitating.

Bill continued to study the DRADIS display while he ran his options through his mind. How many times had he delivered this particular sermon: when you're in over your head, follow your instincts … go with what you know. Not a single Raider had sortied from the baseship, so their point defense was non-existent. Whoever was in command over there was virtually begging him to launch his own fighters in an all-out attack.

The admiral shook his head. "They're baiting us," he said to Sonja. "They want us to commit our forces before they put theirs on the battlefield. It's Kobol all over again."

Bill was thinking of the way Cynthia Six had deftly outfoxed him in that engagement, springing a well-conceived trap only after he had committed the last of his reserves. If Kara hadn't shown up with her baseship, Galactica would have been lost with all hands.

"You think that the Ones are out there, and that they'll sacrifice the baseship in order to draw us out?" Sonja pondered the admiral's reasoning, and then she thought about the Cavils' infatuation with convoluted schemes. "You may well be right," she concluded.

A warhead struck home, frying still more of Galactica's much abused armor plating. The tactical display in the CIC shattered, sending wicked shards of glass flying outward. Electrical fires erupted at several stations, and Dualla was hurled violently from her chair as her entire console exploded. Her head bounced hard off the deck.

Adama rushed to her side. Dee was bleeding steadily from a deep gash in her right temple.

"I'm … I'm all right, Sir," she managed to stutter.

"Get medical and damage control teams up here on the double," Adama ordered without turning around. Dee's eyes refused to focus; in all likelihood, she had suffered a concussion.

Galactica's port batteries continued to fire, every round now finding its target. Slowly, the baseship was starting to come apart.

. . .

Lieutenant Marc Jacobs of the 3654th Colonial Marines looked questionably at Peter Terence. The two young officers were hard at work, Terence on the conduits that would carry the electrical wiring throughout the structure, and Jacobs on the piping that would connect the communal toilets to the nearby sewer. Even with a team of skilled enlisted personnel to do much of the grunt work, they had been at it for hours.

In the background, the siren continued to blare. Lieutenant Terence replayed Apollo's announcement in his mind, trying to get a feel for the tone of his voice. "This isn't a drill, is it?" He desperately hoped that he was wrong, but Terence had been through enough alerts to sense the difference between exercise and the real thing.

"No, I don't think so," Marc agreed. He eased his tool belt to the rough concrete floor; Terence was doing the same.

"Then, we need to get to our duty stations," Peter concluded. He dismissed the work party, and the two engineering officers pulled themselves out of the partially finished basement and rushed off in different directions. Marc Jacobs would have to cross virtually the whole of the settlement, and then the open fields that surrounded so much of it. He had to get to the forest, but first, he had to get home.

. . .

Sharon surveyed the group gathered around her. They had come in singly and in pairs, most of them more bewildered than afraid. It wasn't hard to assess the prevailing sentiment: even for Apollo, two alerts in a matter of hours was way over the top.

"Where are the Lius," she asked of no one in particular.

"At this time of the day," another Eight smirked; "where do you think?"

That brought a round of knowing chuckles.

"Marc's in the settlement," Helo explained. He was holding Hera comfortably in his arms. "He told me last night that he needed to make an early start on a construction project that's been eating up all of his time. He may not be able to reach us."

"So, you think that this is the real thing?" Esther Cohen was talking to the lanky ECO, but her eyes were scanning what little sky peeked through the dense canopy of leaves overhead. There was absolutely no sign of enemy activity, and she was personally convinced that Lee Adama was once again taking his duties far too seriously.

"Yeah," Karl said, "I do."

"Well, where are they," Esther demanded. She passed David to one of the Eights, who spent so much time looking after the hybrid baby that she could have qualified as a nanny. Esther put both hands on her hips, and speared Helo with an angry glare. If this was still another evacuation exercise, she was prepared to get seriously pissed.

"Right now," one of Galactica's former Viper pilots surmised, "there's probably a battle going on in orbit. We'll find out soon enough who's won, but everyone here knows that our job is to prepare for the worst." He looked meaningfully at Sharon Agathon.

"I agree," Sharon decisively remarked. She took out a key, opened the shed door, and began passing out handguns. The bulky weapons were automatics, and everyone removed their clips to double check the load.

One of the Eights, moving with the exaggerated slowness of a sleepwalker, flicked off the safety and chambered a load. Wordlessly, she turned to face Esther Cohen, and stretched out her arm. She fired once, and against a stationary target at such close range, she could hardly miss. The round exploded in Esther's brain.

. . .

It had begun with isolated shots … echoes that travelled up and down Galactica's deserted corridors. Shelly Adama walked to her husband's desk, and buzzed the CIC. One of the privileges of being the Admiral's wife and living in his quarters was that she had total access to communications.

"CIC … Rhodope," one of the Sixes tersely announced.

"Sister, this is Shelly. What is happening?"

"We are under attack; the baseship has turned against us."

Shelly took a moment to digest the news, and she looked meaningfully at Creusa. "I see," she hesitantly replied. And what is …"

A volley of gunfire erupted outside the hatch—the thunderous roar of the heavy cannons built into the arms of every centurion. Two of them were permanently stationed just beyond the hatchway.

"And what is happening on this ship" she calmly continued when the firing subsided.

"We are receiving reports that the Eights who came to us from the baseship are attacking the human crew. The other Eights are unaffected, so we have concluded that we are dealing with a computer virus that the Cavils planted before allowing Hoshi and Baltar to capture the ship. Just a moment; the Admiral wishes to speak with you."

"Are you all right," Bill anxiously inquired.

"We seem to be under attack, but the centurions have the situation under control. Do you want us to make our way to the CIC?"

"No," Bill said in hushed tones as he continued to watch the DRADIS overhead. "They're hitting us with nukes, so it's not safe to wander around the ship. Stay there, and get the children down on the floor. I'll send more centurions to reinforce you … but what … why are they attacking you?"

"The Cavils would prefer to capture us, but if all else fails …"

"They'll settle for seeing you dead." Bill finished the sentence for her. Shelly and Creusa would resurrect, but they would be cut off from Galactica, separated from their babies. Callista and Cyrene were the real targets.

"Do you remember the code for the weapons locker," he finally asked. When he had first assumed command, Adama had cached weapons in his quarters—two handguns, and a marine assault rifle with a half dozen spare clips. He knew how badly the Cavils wanted to get their hands on Shelly, and he was determined not to let that happen.

"Yes," Shelly said.

"If it comes to it, let Creusa do the fighting. But you cannot allow the Eights to take the children—not under any circumstances. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," Shelly again replied, and there was ice in her voice. She had long ago steeled herself against this moment. She would kill her child before she would let the Ones have her.

Shelly hung up. "The baseship was a stalking horse," she explained to Creusa, "and we let it inside our defenses. The Eights are trying to kill us." She laid Callista gently on the carpeted floor, and walked directly to the weapons locker. She entered the combination, and began awkwardly passing the contents to her sister. Creusa seemed completely unaware of the fact that she was still nursing her daughter at her breast.

Creusa's eyes glittered when she spotted the assault rifle. "All the Eights," she pressed. Creusa was thinking of Amy. Adama's affection for that particular copy was written all over his aged face, and Amy was a critical part of the CIC staff. The Admiral was alive, but was Amy? How many betrayals could one human survive?

Shelly passed the rifle to her sister, who in turn passed Cyrene to Shelly. The baby instantly started crying, while Creusa slapped a clip into place. She was good to go.

"Just the Eights from the baseship," Shelly stressed. She was also thinking of Amy, who idolized her husband. With Saul Tigh down on the planet, Bill had become a surrogate father to many of the female cylons aboard Galactica. His ability to love them all, and to do so without conditions or reservations, never ceased to amaze her. If the aging battlestar was a family, it was the nobility of Bill Adama's spirit that knitted that family together.

"Sorry, sweetheart," Creusa murmured as she bent over to kiss her daughter's tiny forehead. "I know you're still hungry, but mommy's got to go kill some people."

"What? No," Shelly blurted out. "Bill wants us to remain here and guard the children!"

"That's a job for one, sister." The lust for battle, so long suppressed, was welling up inside Creusa Adama. This was her true purpose in life. "It has never been our philosophy to wait for others to attack us: we carry the battle to them!" And without another word, Creusa opened the hatch and went to war.

. . .

The siren continued to wail, its shrill tone somehow plaintive in the dim morning light. Ellen Tigh knew that she had to move, but her feet were rooted to the ground.

"Damn it, Ellen … MOVE!"

Saul was in her face, furious, the spittle flying off his lips. She had never seen him so agitated, not even back on Earth, when it was all falling apart …

"Damn you, woman … MOVE!"

He was wild-eyed, the gun fluttering uselessly in his hand. He looked at the bodies.

Ellen was transfixed. A woman- one of the human females- had been hurrying towards them, a baby in one arm while she brutally pulled a little girl along at her side. An Eight had stepped out of the shadows. She had shot the woman in the side of the head. She couldn't have felt anything, a tiny voice had cried out inside Ellen's brain; couldn't have suffered!

But the nightmare wasn't over. The Eight had shot the little girl, and like a broken doll, she had crumpled into the dirt at her mother's side. Then she had shot the baby.

The Cylon had turned to look at her parents.

And Saul had pumped four rounds into her chest.

"Would somebody please turn off that frakking siren," Ellen screamed. The sounds of gunfire were arrhythmic, but they never went completely away. It was a futile gesture, but she pressed the palms of her hands hard against her ears. She just wanted it all to stop.

"Frakkin' cylons" Saul muttered. "I knew it all along … never trusted the bastards … knew they'd turn on us …"

"Saul, they're our daughters," Ellen protested, "our children!"

"They're the enemy," Saul screamed in return; "they're the frakking enemy! Now, move it, gods damn it, or I swear to all that's holy that I'll shoot you myself!"

Saul Tigh grabbed his wife's arm, and began brutally to drag her down the street. Like a puppet whose strings had been partially severed, the marionette that had once been Dr. Ellen Tigh stumbled along in his wake.

. . .

Sharon Agathon didn't pause to ask questions. She didn't hesitate at all. She simply pointed the gun at her sister and pulled the trigger. Twice.

Still holding Hera, Karl Agathon gaped at his wife. There was a Three standing next to Sharon, and the way she was staring …

Karl looked down at the body, and then back up at Sharon. She's carrying my child …

It was the only thought that his dazed brain could manage. At this point, it wouldn't have surprised him in the least if his wife had sprouted wings, or maybe a second head …

"Well, there goes my theory that one Eight is the same as another," the Three smirked as she gingerly poked at the corpse with her toe. She was the first to recover her senses.

"Wha … what … Sharon?" Helo had to struggle to get the words out. "Why did she … why aren't you …"

The dead Eight had been in their home, had played with his daughter. She had held Hera in her arms …

"She came here on the baseship," Eight commented. She was looking at the Three, seeking confirmation. She pressed David tightly against her chest, and there was a feral look in her eyes. David was her child now, and she would kill anyone who even remotely seemed to threaten her baby.

"The baseship," the Three sighed as the truth began to dawn.

"Would someone like to lay it out for those of us who are too stupid to figure it out on our own," the Viper pilot raged.

Karl looked at him, trying to remember his name. He had known it once. Why couldn't he remember it now?

"Were machines, Xander … programmable machines." There was a pitying look in the Three's eyes. She liked the young human with his engaging smile and chiseled good looks. There was so much potential in him, and he was resilient. She knew that he would bounce back. In time, he would make an excellent mate.

Xander … Xander Gage, that's his name; Xander's short for Alexander …

Helo shook his head, trying to break free of the trance. "The Cavils controlled that baseship until Hoshi and the Eights took it away from them," he explained. "Or so we thought, but it was all a ruse … a trap."

"Then what are we supposed to do," Gage fumed, frustration as well as anger overwhelming him. "Do we shoot every Eight just on general principles?"

The Three laughed. The sound of it was incredibly bitter.

He ignored her. "Or maybe just the ones carrying guns? Or do we have to wait for them to start shooting at us? How in the name of the gods are we supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys?"

A high-pitched, keening sound caused Karl to look up. A flight of Raiders passed directly overhead, on a bearing that would position the fighters above the nearby settlement.

"Ours? Theirs?" Helo directed the question to everyone and no one.

Sharon shrugged her shoulders, and reached for Hera. There was no way to tell, but Gage was right: assume the worst.

Sharon Agathon turned away, and began to walk into the welcoming embrace of the shadowy forest.

. . .

Another missile slammed into Galactica's hull, and an alarm began to blare, but Adama's eyes never left the DRADIS display. More icons were disappearing as he watched. The Picon Princess was gone now, and with her Hexare and Swordfish. Under his breath, Bill began praying fervently to gods in whom he had never believed, seeking divine deliverance for the souls on board all their ships.

They must have jumped, he kept telling himself. We've ruptured the baseship's hull in a thousand places … the damn ship's coming apart at the seams …

Gigantic fireballs engulfed two of the cylon vessel's massive arms, and bodies were being methodically spewed out into space through the holes that gutted the connecting pylon. Though Adama could not know it, the enemy's control room was a sheet of flames and the hybrid already dead, the atmosphere sucked out of her chamber less than a minute before.

Secondary explosions began to consume the remaining arms as the baseship's missile batteries were finally silenced.

"New DRADIS contacts," Dionysia screamed. "Two … no, make that three … baseships, and a resurrection ship …"

It's got to be Natalie, Adama swore to himself. Zeus Almighty, let it be Natalie …

"The baseships are launching Raiders," Dionysia announced as she struggled to contain her excitement.

"Missiles inbound," Amy yelled. "All three baseships have fired, and they have good tracks on both us and the remaining civilian ships."

"Helm," Adama ordered, "come hard right, and bring us up thirty degrees. Gunnery officer, prepare to engage!"

"Admiral, this is suicide." Sonja Six was blunt. One look at the DRADIS display had been enough to convince her that their tactical situation was untenable. "The enemy baseships are in staggered orbits, both above and below us. We can't go after one without leaving Galactica fully exposed to the firepower of the other two. It's time for us to get out of here."

"Abandon the planet," Adama growled; "abandon the civvies!"

"Sir, we can't help them if we're dead."

"Admiral," Dionysia interrupted, "DRADIS can't keep up with the traffic, but I'm estimating more than a thousand Raiders heading for the surface, and at least as many bearing down on the fleet. There are Heavy Raiders in both complements."

Adama looked at his cylon XO. "Centurions," he quietly asked.

Sonja nodded in agreement, but her eyes never left the Admiral's. "Boarding parties to try and capture Galactica, and an all-out invasion of the planet."

"There are so few civilian ships left out there," Adama protested. "We can't afford to lose more … we've got to buy them some time."

Sonja stole another quick glance at the DRADIS overhead before once more staring hard into the Admiral's eyes. "Sir, there's no more time. We have to go."

. . .

Laura Roslin stood in the doorway of her school and stared fixedly up into the sky. It was teeming with Raiders, but they were high above. It was the Heavy Raiders dropping rapidly towards the surface that caused her heart to leap into her throat. She turned away, and began urging the students and teachers to return to their classrooms. The settlement's streets had become a charnel pit. Even from her limited vantage point, she could see that there were bodies everywhere.

The cylons are back, she thought to herself, but they're not using nukes. They want something else.

She thought about the breeding farms that the resistance had uncovered back on Caprica, and her blood ran cold.

. . .

Marc Jacobs stumbled through the door and almost fell as he entered his house. The Heavy Raiders approaching the surface could mean one thing and one thing only: the Cavils were deploying their mechanical troops in an all-out invasion—conquest rather than annihilation.

"Marc?" It was Sharon's voice, coming out of the shadows in the living room.

"Sharon? Sharon, what are you doing here? Why haven't you and Phi followed the evacuation plan? Why aren't you at the rendezvous point?"

Sharon stepped out of the shadows, and a cold chill worked its way up and down Marc's spine. This was Sharon, all right; this was his Sharon. But there was something wrong- something in the way she was moving.

"Marc, I want to have a baby," she said in a wooden voice that caused the hairs on the back of Marc's neck literally to stand on end.

The Eight raised her arms to embrace him, and instinctively, Marc backed away.

"Won't you give me a baby?" As he continued slowly to retreat, she continued remorselessly to advance, her arms still outstretched, still trying to …

. . .

"Spool up the FTL's," Adama reluctantly commanded. "And Dionysia … double check the coordinates. In this soup, we'll never find what's left of the fleet if we get them wrong."

The Admiral looked around his command. There were other humans in the room, but they no longer constituted the majority of his senior staff. Somewhere along the way, and without really thinking through the consequences of his actions, he had delivered all of his people into the hands of their one-time enemies. But it was far too late to retreat from that decision. All of a sudden it came to him that, deep down inside, he had agreed with John Bierns from the beginning: it wasn't enough simply to end the war between man and machine. Humanity could not survive without the cylons. If human beings could not nurture and protect their children- all of their children- then what was the point of surviving?

Bill Adama thought about his wife and daughter, and he thought about his larger family, the men and women of Galactica. He no longer cared whether they had been born, or stepped out of a vat. It just didn't matter. He thought about the people now trapped on the surface below, and he wasn't sure whether the occupation would prove harder for man or machine. It would be difficult for both. It might even prove unendurable.

"We're leaving," he said as his eyes tracked from one cylon or human face to the next. "But we'll be back." There was absolute conviction in his voice. "We're going to bring our people home."