Chapter 7
Defining Moment
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Dead Space (Colonial Fleet)**
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
Commander Adama looked over the DRADIS table with a practiced eye and watched the Vipers flying their routes. He also kept an eye on the barely readable blip that is the Odyssey, ever weary of betrayal from the unknowns. They spoke Colonial Standard and they helped save the fleet from the Cylons, but who were they? Why were they here? Where did they come from? He had questions for the delegates that were scheduled to arrive shortly, but that would have to wait until they arrived. For now, he had repairs to oversee.
"What's our status?" Adama asked the room at large.
"We've sealed the damaged areas of all the ships in the fleet and repairs to Galactica's hull should be completed within a week. We're space worthy, but we're not battle ready," Lieutenant Gaeta replied.
"President Roslin is still preparing her speech and is scheduled to give the memorial service after we make the next two jumps or so," Dee added.
"We've taken full stock of the now missing supplies and determined that we're in desperate need of a new source of food or we're going to run out in less than five months," a third officer continued.
"Our Tylium reserves are also getting low. We have enough to last the entire fleet approximately six more weeks of constant jumping. If the Cylons would ease off and let us look around, I'm sure that there are untapped reserves out here, but we all know that that isn't going to happen."
"Our water supplies are currently being cycled throughout the fleet. We've set up a system to have the civilians give us their dirty water so we can run it through Galactica's filters before distributing it to the next ship. We have plenty of filters and cleaners for the filters so there's some good news."
"Our ammo count is looking good, but, let's face it, that could change at any given moment in time."
The next officer was about to begin their report when Dee interrupted. "Sir, we're being hailed by the Odyssey. Priority-one channel."
"Patch them through," Adama ordered.
The Commander didn't even have the chance to give a greeting before Colonel Davidson's voice came over the line. "They're back," the Colonel said matter-of-factly, the sounds crossing the channel from the Bridge of the smaller ship those of soldiers preparing for battle.
"Who is?" Adama asked.
"The Cylons," Davidson replied. "Unless you have more enemies you haven't told us about."
"We're not…" Adama began before five new signals appeared on the DRADIS screen.
"DRADIS contacts," Gaeta said as he manned his station. "Five Cylon Baseships bearing down off the Starboard side of the fleet."
"Actions Stations!" Adama called out. "Set Condition One throughout the fleet. Saul, I need the jump coordinates distributed to the civvies." The CIC was an instant hive of activity as the Galactica shifted in space to put her undamaged Port side towards the Cylon fleet and her guns swiveled into position. Already the Odyssey's guns were tearing into the nearest Baseship and gunning down Raiders. It was time for them to join the fight.
The Commander turned to his radio and was readying to thank the Colonel for his advanced warning when he was, once again, interrupted. "They what!?" the Colonel asked in a concerned tone that neared a shout. His next words had Adama in an instant mood of suspicion. "Take us out, target the fleet, and fire at will."
Adama didn't even have the chance to ask what the Colonel meant by his orders. Already the Odyssey had shot forward and pulled into a hard loop. Their trajectory brought them straight through Galactica's line of fire and several of the flak shells impacted the small ship, but the Odyssey ignored the hits the way most people ignored flies. The ship finished its maneuver and almost immediately opened fire at the ships in the civilian fleet, orange streams of hyper-accelerated rounds flying into the thickest clusters of ships. This was exactly what Adama had feared; the whole thing was a trap and he had fallen for it.
*USS Odyssey (Bridge) [a few minutes earlier]*
Colonel Davidson walked back onto the Bridge of his ship just as Marks was starting to speak into the ship-wide comms. "Colonel Davidson to the…" the Major began before stopping midsentence as he noticed the Colonel standing beside him.
"What's the situation, Major?" Davidson asked in a level tone.
"We've detected a group of ships at the edge of our sensors range," Marks reported as he indicated the blips. "They're moving closer in a set pattern. They move about twenty light-years in a 'hop,' stop for two seconds, then repeat the hop two more times. After that they stop for five minutes then start moving again."
"I've focused the sensors and enhanced the signal quality as much as I possibly can without frying the system," Doctor Naco added. "It's a fleet of Cylon Baseships numbering roughly fifteen, pulse an unknown ship. We're assuming that it's also of Cylon make since it is traveling with them and they aren't attacking it."
"Just before you arrived, the fleet broke into two groups. Ten of the Baseships are continuing on a set course with an obvious destination, the Colonial Fleet. The other group of ships is moving slightly off course, but more to avoid the fighting than to break up their forces," Marks picked up.
"It's not a flanking maneuver?" Davidson asked.
"They're not in hyperspace," Doctor Naco explained. "If they wanted to flank us, all they'd have to do is hop a little farther than the other ships and they'd achieve that goal. I think that the ship we can't identify isn't combat capable, or serves as a lighter class. I think they're escorting it."
"Give me Galactica Actual, we need to warn the Commander," Davidson ordered. The moment the line was confirmed as connected, Davidson said, "They're back."
"Who is?" Commander Adama asked, clearly confused.
"The Cylons," Colonel Davidson replied. "Unless you have more enemies you haven't told us about."
"We're not…" the Commander began before someone else interrupted him.
"DRADIS contacts. Five Cylon Baseships bearing down off the Starboard side of the fleet."
"Actions Stations!" Adama ordered as he smoothly slide from confusion to action. "Set Condition One throughout the fleet. Saul, I need the jump coordinates distributed to the civvies."
"Oh, that's not good," Doctor Naco said as she darted from the navigational station to one of the terminals in the back of the Bridge.
"What is it?" Davidson asked.
"Remember what I was saying about how they'd flank us if they wanted to? Well… they split the fleet," Doctor Naco replied as she started crunching numbers in the ship's super computer. "Five of the Baseships are attacking the forward flank, and the other five will be attacking from our rear in a matter of seconds judging by the power build up. To make matters worse, they launched their fighters ahead of time which is the only reason why they're not here yet. If I'm reading this right, and, unfortunately, I am, they're about to jump a bunch of nuke-carrying fighters directly past our defenses and into the heart of the Colonial Fleet."
"They what!?" Davidson asked in a panic.
"If we're going to save them, we need to move now!" Gabi insisted.
"Take us out, target the fleet, and fire at will," Davidson ordered and Marks immediately threw the accelerator forward while pulling back on the controls.
Normally Marks would take it slow. This was not one of those times. Instead, he quite literally grabbed the accelerator lever and slammed it forward until it hit its max. He pulled the Odyssey into a tight loop and completely disregarded Galactica's flak field. Going around them would take time. Time they didn't have. He pushed the ship past what the damaged dampeners could handle and the Odyssey's hull groaned in protest, forcing Marks to ease off the throttle as they came out of their turn. He was sure to get quite the earful from Sam later for stressing the hull when the dampeners weren't prepared to resist the strain.
"Predictive targeting solutions loading up now," Gabi said from her place in the back of the Bridge, and the forward viewport's tactical display shifted to project outlines predicting where the hostiles would appear when they dropped out of their strange form of FTL. "Judging by the buildup in their power cores, the second wave is jumping in three… two… one…"
"Open fire!" Davidson ordered.
Immediately the Tactical Officer, Major Donnelley, armed the point defense cannons and let loose while using the railguns to target the outlines of the Baseships where the computer said they would materialize. Less than a second after pulling out of their turn, they were firing at targets that weren't there… yet. True to the outlined symbols on the tactical display, by the time the Odyssey's weapons fire reached the targeted areas, empty space had been filled by a swarm of Cylon Raiders. Normally their maneuverability would allow them to dodge the Odyssey's fire, but, with the bullets already flying before the fighters had even arrived, there was no time for the pilots to register that they were being shot at. Twenty of the Raiders died in briefly lived balls of fire as the Odyssey plowed through space, her railguns blazing and point defenses roaring.
The forward viewport lit up like the Fourth of July as the small ship continued forward and rammed into nearly fifty Raiders exiting their strange form of FTL at full speed. One of them flew over the Odyssey's Bridge and impacted the rear of the shield, the fireball trapped by the bubble that had destroyed the fighter in question.
"What the hell?" Davidson exclaimed.
"Wow," Doctor Naco replied in an awed tone. "It's their FTL drives," she explained. "It's like the Stargate, but without the Gate. They jumped past the shield when we flew through an area that they hadn't occupied yet."
"They can bypass our shields?" Davidson asked, clearly concerned.
"Only if they time their FTL jumps just right," she replied while looking down at her tablet. Her eyes rose to meet his and she quickly added, "It was a fluke, one that was half our fault. Don't worry, I'm sure that they don't even realize that we have shields. The Colonials haven't figured it out yet either."
Davidson nodded once before turning back to the battle. The Raiders were swarming the Odyssey to no avail and the small ship was still rocketing through the Colonial Fleet in an attempt to close with the Baseships that had launched them. Already Donnelly had managed to blast a whole into one of the Baseships, but they weren't in missile range yet, and these Raiders, like the Wraith Darts, were likely to intercept them if they fired too soon. Still the Odyssey closed with the larger ships, sowing death in every direction as she went, though Davidson did have to admit that most of their fighter kills were from ramming into them.
"Is that thing… spinning?" Colonel Mitchell asked as he ran onto the Bridge in time to see the damaged Baseship's lower half rotating so that the damaged portion was out of their line of fire while the upper half remained stationary.
"What a waste of space!" Doctor Naco scuffed. "Why not just rotate the whole ship when it's damaged? That's what Galactica did. Putting the mechanisms into the core of the ship needed to rotate the arms is a waste of power and space, a structural weakness, and just plain stupid!"
"It worked," Cameron argued.
"So would simply turning the ship," Doctor Naco countered in a matter-of-fact tone before returning to her work… whatever that happened to be.
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
"Frak!" Gaeta exclaimed. "Five more Basestars just exited FTL on our rear flank."
"They saw it coming," Adama said with a strange sense of relief.
"How?" Saul asked, his tone indicating that he still didn't trust these people.
"They saw it coming," Adama repeated. "They knew the Cylons were coming before we did. They can track FTL jumps."
"That's impossible!" Saul protested. "Not even the Cylons can track an FTL jump."
"How do we know that, Saul?" Bill asked. "They've followed us this far. Do you honestly think it's because they're just that lucky?"
Saul mulled that over in his mind before replying. "So they're Cylons after all?"
"No," Bill said with a shake of his head. "They had us dead to rights. Five Baseships with our backs pinned to the fleet. They could've destroyed Galactica in one volley then taken the civvies. The Cylons went from two ships to five, and now ten. We're not their only target anymore, and they know that the Odyssey is worth more Baseships than Galactica is."
"This could all just be a trap," Saul argued.
"What would be the point of such an elaborate trap? Five Baseships could've finished us off. Ten is overkill. The Cylons wouldn't sacrifice so many ships just to get one to tag along with the fleet. They have no reason to. They've already proven that they can track us."
Saul grunted in dissatisfaction and turned back to the DRADIS table. "Frak that ship is fast," he muttered as the Odyssey shot out of the far end of the fleet and closed on the other five Baseships in half the time it would've taken a Viper to cross the same distance.
"The Odyssey's covering our backs, but the fleet is pinned between a two-sided battle with nowhere to go. If they get spooked, they'll scatter and the Raiders will have free run of the entire fleet. Dee, get on the horn and make the captains understand that if they break formation they're putting everyone's lives at risk. If we all survive this and anyone does break formation they'll be tried for treason," Adama ordered. "This will be a defining moment for all of us. How we handle the next few minutes will either make or break the future of our entire species. We live together, or we die alone."
"So say we all," Dee said as she started relaying the Commander's orders.
"So say we all!" the CIC crew echoed in unison.
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
The Odyssey's railguns tore into the fighter bay so foolishly located at the joint of one of her target's arms and its center column. The arm snapped off under the fire as secondary explosions tore through it and a missile, perfectly timed to slip between the Raiders swarming the Battlecruiser, threaded the needle hole and flew into the depths of the Baseship where it detonated beside the liquid-fuel storage tanks. The Baseship exploded in a fireball a split second later and Donnelly was already chipping away at the next Baseship's armor before the light had dissipated while the 302s gave the Raiders a run for their money.
"That's two down, three to go," Donnelly said as another missile slipped into the Heavy Raider bay of the target Baseship. The Major, being of the Tau'ri, however, didn't know that such a thing as a Heavy Raider even existed. None of them did. Nevertheless, the second Baseship exploded just as easily as the first.
That only made it all the more surprising when a flash of light deposited a large, shuttle-like ship inside of the Odyssey's shield. The small shuttle made a bee-line for the Port side hangar bay and fired a pair of missiles at the blast doors. The trinium-alloy plating held under the blasts which was to be expected of an alloy designed to survive plasma bolts, but the door was now dented. Heedless of the risk involved, the Heavy Raider made a kamikaze run and rammed into the damaged doors.
The armor buckled and bent out of shape as the Heavy Raider made space for itself where space wasn't meant to be available. It made a crash landing in the hangar and alarms started blaring throughout the Odyssey, the Warrior Airmen squads instantly running to the armory to gear up for anti-boarding duties. The guards posted at the Bridge silently exited the room to set up a defense post as the bulkhead sealed behind them and more officers ran up to join them in the defense of the ship's command center.
"What was that?" the unmistakable voice of Colonel Viride came from the rear of the Bridge where Doctor Naco was working on her tablet.
"We've been boarded," the woman replied as she pulled a pistol from her waste, checked her clip, and then placed the weapon back in its holster, "and you have my gun."
"Focus on what's important," the Colonel ordered gruffly.
"A Cylon shuttle or troop transport blew its way through the Port hangar bay doors before crash landing. Odds are that people survived. People we don't want to be on our ship."
"We're moving to intercept," the Colonel replied.
"Colonel," Davidson called to the voice coming from the tablet, "I'm giving you command of the anti-boarding teams. Prioritize the Bridge, Engineering Deck, Engine Room, Med Bay, and the Barracks. If at all possible, keep one of them alive."
"Affirmative, Colonel," Viride replied before the line was terminated from his end.
Davidson turned back to the matter of his own battle and had a moment of disorientation as he went from staring at the stable background that is the rear of the Bridge to staring out at the stars as they swirled around them. Marks had taken the Odyssey into a barrel roll and Davidson could see why. There were three more of the shuttles in the Odyssey's shield and the Major was disposing of them by ramming the shield into their hulls as the protective barrier moved with the ship that was projecting it.
"Point defense weapons are running low on ammo," Donnelly warned them. "We need to reload the magazines, but that opens up opportunities for the Raiders to jump through our shield or for them to attack the civilians."
"We'll just have to be quick about it," Davidson replied grimly.
"It's an automated system," Donnelly explained as he gunned down another wave of missiles aimed at the civilians. "It takes ten seconds for the expended clips to be removed, the loaded clips to be positioned, and the bullets to be fed up to the barrels."
"Then it's best we start now," Davidson said with a tone of finality.
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
Adama was keeping his eye on the five Baseships bearing down on the Galactica, his attention on the overwhelming number of missiles being fired at his ship. Saul was watching the Odyssey, not yet ready to accept that the ship wasn't there to destroy them. It was, therefore, he who witnessed the Odyssey stop firing long enough for a missile to impact one of the passenger liners.
It was a luxury model that had a spinning ring for its habitable zone to simulate normal gravity. The missile clipped the ring and blasted a hole in the ship. More missiles flew past the small ship headed for the fleet and Saul was sure that this was the plan all along. He was strangely relieved when the Odyssey, rather than let the missiles slip past it unchallenged, turned its main guns on the missiles. Normally the long barrels of the turrets on the ship's hull pumped out enough rounds to create a stream of bullets. This time, however, a single bullet was sent chasing after each missile.
To do this, the Odyssey had to turn its back to the Baseships it was trying to hold off. When it did, the Cylons pounced like rabid wolves at the smell of fresh blood. Missiles slammed into the rear of the ship unopposed by the Odyssey's point defense system. More than one of them were nuclear.
"Bi…" Saul began as he feared that the ship had been destroyed and the fleet was now defenseless. He stopped before finishing his friend's name.
DRADIS was still relatively clear since the blasts were so far away, and, oddly enough, the EMP wasn't reaching them. Three nukes had just slammed into the Odyssey's engine block, but the ship was still fighting. Orange bullets were still chasing down missiles, and, as the last of the nukes aimed at the civilians disappeared off their screens, the Odyssey turned again and its point defense weapons roared to life with a vengeance. That little ship was a hell of a lot tougher than Saul had given it credit for, that much he was certain of. Their loyalty, however, he still doubted.
"What is it, Saul?" Adama asked.
"The Expedient got hit by an indirect blast. They're venting atmosphere and there are fatalities," Saul replied. "It looks like the Toasters caught the Odyssey while they were reloading their magazines."
"Frak," Adama swore. "We're not going to hold out much longer," he begrudgingly admitted. "We need a Gods-damned miracle."
"Radiological alarm!" Gaeta shouted above the noise of the CIC.
Adama braced himself and waited for the hit, the rumble, the death that followed those words. It didn't come. Not in the way that he expected.
*USS Odyssey (Bridge) [a few seconds earlier]*
"This is bad. This is really, really bad," one of the crew was saying as they tried not lose their cool.
"We are not giving up!" Davidson said in a tone that left no room for arguing. "There are lives depending on us, the fate of an entire sub-branch of Humanity hangs in the balance, if you can't handle the stress, report to your bunk, send in your replacement, and get some shut eye. I need you at your best or not at all."
The Airmen in question eyed the bulkhead that separated the Bridge from the rest of the ship then looked back to the Colonel. There were aliens aboard their ship and a firefight had broken out near the hangar bay. To make matters worse, their internal sensors couldn't detect the enemy and their comms were being jammed. No one knew where the enemy was, and past that bulkhead was a long run to the next heavily guarded area of the ship.
"Are you with me?" Davidson asked.
The Airmen locked eyes with the Colonel, squared his shoulders and nodded in confirmation. "I'm with you, Colonel."
"This is fucking ridiculous!" Donnelly swore as he checked their ammo readings. "We've pumped out more round in this battle than the Daedalus did against the Wraith in the battle to save Atlantis from twelve Hiveships, thirty-six Cruisers, and thousands of fighters and we've downed twenty percent of the number of Raiders than they did Darts and it's taken us longer to get it done. These damned fighters are too maneuverable to hit!"
"How many nukes do we have in reserve?" Doctor Naco asked the tactical officer.
"A full salvo," Donnelly replied.
"Can I use one?" she asked, her question now directed towards the Colonel.
"For what?" Davidson asked.
In reply, she pressed a few buttons on her tablet and the tactical display shifted to show an external view of the Odyssey. "Detonate a nuke here," she said as a red dot marked where the nuke would be detonated, "and the blast will destroy both of those Baseships and seventy percent of their fighters."
"We'll be caught in that blast," Davidson argued.
"Our shields were designed by the Asgard to fight the Replicators who use their own technology against them only super charged because the Replicators can use their own bodies to create extra power generators," Marks replied as he brought them in for another pass on the capital ships. "Goa'uld shields can handle our nukes with no problem and we're still at eighty-six percent shield strength. I agree with the Doctor here, it's worth the nuke to clear the airspace."
"How do we get the nuke to your designated point without the Raiders shooting it down?" Donnelly asked.
Gabi smiled a sly, mischievous smile. "We fly in the opposite direction to get the Raiders to follow us, the Baseships should also turn their good armor towards us as well, and then we beam the nuke to the coordinates and let them have a taste of their own chosen method of genocidal destruction."
"What about our fighters?" Marks asked.
"They're engaging the Cylon fighters already in the fleet. They're well out of range of the blast radius," Gabi replied.
"I like the way you think," Davidson said with a smile of his own as Marks took the Odyssey on a course that would drive them away from the designated coordinates. "Engineering, beam a Mark VII to the following coordinates and set it to detonate in three seconds," Davidson ordered.
"Aye, aye, Skipper," Sam's voice replied in a tone that told Davidson she knew exactly what was going on. Then again, the two women were probably communicating over the ship's wireless network.
Three seconds later, a bright light consumed two Baseships, shoved the third off course with minor damage to its hull, vaporized the cloud of Raiders that had formed around the Odyssey, and washed over their shields, a soft rumble running through the hull being the only ill affect they could feel.
"Now we know how the Goa'uld feel when they get hit by our nukes," Marks mused. "It's not fun."
"Report," Davidson ordered.
"The blast took out roughly ten percent of our shields. We're now down to just below eighty percent, but there's only one Baseship left and their fighters are almost entirely gone."
*USS Odyssey (Port F-302 Bay)*
Gunfire tore through the air as both sides of the warring parties unloaded into each other. The big, shiny metal men with the roving red eyes were tough SOBs to take down and they packed one hell of a punch. It was rather unfortunate for the soldiers of the Tau'ri that they weren't used to fighting metal men, but rather fortunate for them that they were used to fighting Replicators, Wraith, Jaffa, and Anubis' Kull warriors. All of those enemies were just as hard to take down, and the men and women who had fought them had learned to be just as resilient.
One of the Marines, for there were members from almost every branch of the US Armed Forces in the Odyssey's crew, defending the hallway in an attempt to stop the boarding party here and now had three bullet holes in his chest and still refused to fallback. He was slumped against a wall with his rifle resting on his knee to keep it steady, his other arm hanging loosely at his side. Mostly he was laying out suppressive fire, but his determination was inspiring. Most of the men and women standing defense of the hall were bleeding from one wound or another, be it a gunshot to the leg, arm, chest, or gouges inflicted on them by the razor sharp claws the robots had for fingers. Of the original ten who were in the immediate area when the shuttle blasted its way through the hangar doors, eight were left standing and only one of them wasn't in need of immediate medical attention.
That one was currently trying to drag the man with three bullet holes further back up the hallway to get him away from the advancing machines. Her rifle was blazing and her muscles straining to drag the man who outsized her by nearly double the weight. She had a look of grim determination on her face as she limped on a leg that was bleeding steadily and continued to drag her fellow combatant towards the safety of a corner. With one arm she gripped the back of his collar, with the other she gripped her rifle firmly and sent a steady stream of bullets flying down the hallway as she retreated with the other defenders providing covering fire. When her clip was emptied, she dropped her rifle and let it hang from the strap that secured it to her body, drew her sidearm from her thigh, and kept firing. She is a Marine, and she would take as many of her enemies to Hell with her as she could.
A flash of orange flew past her and impacted one of the robots in the head, the aforementioned appendage being blown away in a shower of sparks as the shiny metal body dropped to the ground in a limp heap. Two more orange flashes impacted the torso of a second robot, but that one simply shrugged off the blows and kept walking forward. It got too close to the woman dragging the man for her to be comfortable, so she released her grip on the now unconscious man, steadied her aim, and emptied her clip into the holes in the robot's armor. The robot stumbled back as if stunned and she used the opportunity to reload, choose another hole, and open fire. The second clip finished it off.
A second later a large black man grabbed the unconscious Marine by the arm and threw him over his shoulder with the ease of a Jaffa. Teal'c then easily retreated back to the corner, firing the whole way with the woman by his side, and carefully laid the man on the ground as the rest of their reinforcements ran up to join in the fight.
"I'll admit," Colonel Viride said as he stacked up on the corner to get a look at their opposition, "I'm surprised you kept that thing."
"It is more ceremonial now than practical," Teal'c replied as he readied his staff weapon. "It looks better to walk the halls of Dakara with a staff weapon than it does to carry a Tau'ri weapon. There is still much debate over whether or not the Jaffa should still be allies with the Tau'ri."
"Yeah, I heard about that," the Colonel replied. "It looks like there are still eighteen hostiles remaining, and they know we're here. They're fortifying their position."
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed with the Colonel's assessment as he, too, leaned around the corner to take in the situation. "They could be planning on repairing their ship and trying to escape."
"That's unlikely," the Colonel replied with a shake of his head. "They didn't ram our hangar doors just to retreat after suffering two casualties. They could be attempting to salvage enough of their shuttle to overload their reactor and take the Odyssey down the way that Colonel Sheppard did to that Hiveship during the Second Siege of Atlantis."
"Then we must stop them before they succeed," Teal'c said matter-of-factly.
"Indeed," the Colonel agreed. "Jack, I'm going to need you on point."
"About damn time," a short woman with even shorter hair said as she shouldered her way to the front of the formation of twenty soldiers.
"You five, take the wounded to the medical bay and be sure to bring a first-aid kit with you on your way back," the Colonel ordered of the five people nearest the rear of their little huddle.
"Yes, sir," three of them replied before helping the wounded to their feet. The other two shared a look of dissatisfaction before nodding their compliance and helping those who couldn't walk quickly on their own.
"Alright, Jack. Make a hole," the Colonel ordered with a nod to the woman.
"With pleasure," the small woman said before her body began to glow a deep shade of blue-ish purple mixed with an unexplainable darkness. She then stepped into the hallway and the Cylons opened fire on her. Bullets pinged off of her skin, simply bouncing away as if they were striking rubber as she gathered that darkness.
With a snarl of rage mixed with centuries of pain, the woman took a single step forward and crossed twenty meters of distance in a blur. As her foot hit the ground on the other end of that twenty meters, a boom echoed down the hall and she took another. Twenty more meters crossed in an instant and another sonic boom as the air slammed back together after having been forcefully parted to accommodate her passing. She made it to the other side of the door to the hangar bay in three booming steps and the glow around her body became unstable before expanding into a shockwave of force.
The two robots defending the door were blasted away from their position and the Colonel ordered the anti-boarding party to, "Move in and secure a beachhead!" As the fifteen of them charged down the hall in the wake of the glowing woman, the Colonel called ahead, "Jack! Bubble!"
The woman shuddered, the glow of her body traveling up her spine towards her head before running down her arms and forming in her hands. She brought her arms up, hands spread wide, and a simmering barrier snapped into existence between the Humans and the Cylon's robotic soldiers. Enough gun fire to reduce the Human body to nothing more than paste impacted that shimmering barrier in the time it took for the Humans to charge into the hangar and slide into cover behind creates of supplies for the 302s. With any luck, they weren't hiding behind anything that would explode if shot.
The barrier protecting the small group of Humans from the slightly larger group of robots began to flicker and loose its brilliance as the glow surrounding the woman's body lost its intensity. Clearly the two were connected. The Colonel ran forward and tackled the woman to the ground, their bodies sliding across the metal floor but stopping just short of the crate the man had obviously attempted to land them behind. They both scrambled to their feet and made a dart for the safety of cover as bullets flew over their heads, or, in the woman's case, bounced harmlessly off of her unarmored flesh. She moved with her side exposed to the robots, the Colonel running beside her and protected from harm by the very flesh of the glowing woman. Then the two were in cover and the woman was breathing heavily.
The Colonel popped up over his crate and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. Whatever ammo he was using, Teal'c was certain it was not the standard SG-issued rounds. The bullets from his rifle did the one thing no one else's gun could do. They pierced the armored chest of the robotic men and tore apart the internal working with ease. A short burst was all it took to down one of the Cylon's soldiers while others were working in pairs and trios to a far lesser effect.
'Three down, seventeen to go,' the Colonel thought to himself as he noted the two robots Jack had thrown away from the door rising to continue fighting. "Have at it," the Colonel shouted over the noise of the fighting as he turned his gun on those two that were behind their line.
"I love it when you say that," the former Goa'uld Host said with a dark look in her eyes before the glow surrounded her body once more. With a thud of air displacement, Jack appeared before one of the robots. The glow of her body coalesced into a ball of light around her hand and she drove her fist through the thing's chest in a single punch, the two-and-a-half centimeter thick metal plating doing nothing to stop the powerful blow. The Cylon toppled over, lifeless, and Jack turned her wrath to her next target with a throaty roar.
There was another thud in the air, the shockwave reverberating around the empty chasm that is the 302 bay. The woman tumbled through the air in a supersonic summersault that was punctuated by her booted feet striking metal with enough force to send a robot that had to weigh at least a ton crashing into another. Neither of them got up from that, and it looked like the two bodies might have been fused together by the pressure in certain areas.
On one side of the engagement, plasma bolts fired from Teal'c's weapon, the orange bolts burning through metal armor as if it wasn't there and frying machinery precious to the metal men, but still the Cylon's robotic creations fought on. On the other side, Oliver's rifle took down metal men with equal ease while Jack rampaged through the ranks of metal men. Still the Cylon soldiers returned fire on the Humans crouched behind cover, wounding several. The Kevlar vests that the men and women of the Tau'ri wore had, long ago, been replaced by a composite material designed to be more resistant to Wraith stunners and Goa'uld staff weapons. Stopping bullets was child's play for such a material, but the Cylons weren't using standard ammunition. Their rounds were armor-piercing.
And soldiers were dying.
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
The floor beneath them rumbled and shook violently as a pair of nukes detonated on the outer hull. That brought the count up to three, and they were still fighting the clock. "Fires in sectors seven, ten, eighteen, and twenty-two. Damage control teams to actions station," Lieutenant Gaeta ordered over the internal comms.
Adama was looking at the DRADIS table watching the Raiders and the Vipers chasing each other across space. They were losing ground, and more than one Raider had made it past their defensive line. One of the signals representing a civilian ship blinked three times before disappearing off of their screen. The Olympic Carrier had been destroyed.
Another blinking signal on the DRADIS screen caught the Commander's attention and the last Baseship the Odyssey had been fighting was destroyed, but the Odyssey herself was nowhere to be seen. The ship was hard to detect when it was holding still, but Bill could always make out its signal even when it was moving. That signal was now gone entirely and that area of space was being flooded with EM radiation from the overpowered nuke the Odyssey had deployed.
"Looks like they bit the dust," his XO said.
"Something tells me that you're wrong, Saul," Bill countered.
"I hope I am," Colonel Tigh agreed. "There!" he said as the Odyssey shot out of a cloud of radiation and EM emissions firing off a barrage of missiles as they reappeared on DRADIS.
One of the Baseships assaulting Galactica took seven standard missiles to its central column followed by two that slipped into the hole that those seven created. The Baseship wasn't even done dying by the time the Odyssey's main guns were blowing a hole into the next one, the orange bullets shifting from one target to another in rapid succession with six missiles following them out of the launch tubes. The entire swarm of missiles fired by the small ship was intercepted by the Raiders on defense duty, but the damage was done to the hull and, where the Odyssey failed, one of its fighters succeeded. Flying through space so fast that it was a ghost on the DRADIS screen, the small fighter slipped a single rocket-propelled explosive through the gap in the Baseship's armored hull and struck something critical enough to set the entire Baseship aflame.
"Empty the tubes!" Adama roared.
All of Galactica's missile tubes opened and fired, the long cylinders following a preset course that would take them through a predetermined gap in the Battlestar's flak field. Three of the missiles flew into the hole the Odyssey had created in the second Baseship, two more stuck the armor of the third Baseship, two slipped into the gap created by the joint assault, and the rest of them were intercepted by Raiders. With three of the Baseships attacking her now destroyed, the Galactica turned in space to bring her forward weapons to bear.
"Target the Raider bays and fire at will!" Adama ordered victoriously as he began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The forward facing KEWs were already loaded, the coils were spinning, and the rounds were poised. The first pair of the kinetic energy shells slammed into the central column of the Baseship that stood before the Galactica and split the starfish in half, the compromised structure succumbing to secondary explosions. Galactica continued to turn as her guns were reloaded, the Odyssey joining her in her assault.
The last of the Baseships was spinning. As the Odyssey's hyper-accelerated rounds slammed into its hull, they dug gouges into the armor, but failed to penetrate as the motion of the Baseship helped to deflect part of the energy. The ship was also moving back in a retreat from Galactica's main guns. Just as the Battlestar got its sights lined up and fired, the Baseship disappeared in a flash of light. The massive bullets Galactica had fired soared through empty space where once a Baseship had been.
It was over.
And they were still alive.