"Alright, Tigh can be charged with assaulting a superior officer, insubordination, drunkenness on duty, and conduct unbecoming of an officer. He practically is the definition for that last charge." There was a chuckle from everyone in the room.
-Christine Rendino
Chapter 20: Kobol's Last Gleaming Part II
Starbuck went through jump after jump. The raider's FTL derive was significantly more efficient than any that the colonials used, and she wondered if it could be replicated with the industrial base that they had. It didn't have a lot of the biological tech that they had but it still was effective, and while the colonials may not be able to replicate the entire thing they could certainly improve the efficiency of what they already had.
It had taken them over a month to get where they were now but it wasn't that colonial FTL drives were incredibly inefficient when compared with their Cylon counterparts. It was that the speed of the fleet was dictated by the slowest ship in the fleet, and there were some old ships with FTL drives that were on the brink of death. Jumping lots of times in rapid succession was not only hard on the components of the ships, but it also used up a lot of fuel. After the battle at the tylium asteroid, they had taken on as much of that as they could and had used very little of the fuel. And it was also complicated to manage all of the ships going and coming from FTL, as there were dozens of things that could potentially go wrong. So if given the choice the fleet would be more effective in getting to and from places in a faster manner but unfortunately still not the most efficient.
It took her almost a day to get back to colonial space, and she soon arrived in the Helios Alpha system that hosted the four colonies of Caprica, Gemenon, Picon, and Tauron. Four of the most important colonies. As the raider emerged, Starbuck took around the destruction that had been brought down on the colonies. There was the wreckage of hundreds of ships, from colonial military and civilian to several basestars. It seemed like the colonies hadn't gone down without a fight nearly to the level that had been hoped, and that brought a smile to her face. Hopefully, there were more colonials out there, but she knew that if they were still alive they were smart enough to not attract attention to themselves.
She decided that on her way out she would check out the rest of the colonies and look at the disposition of Cylon forces in the systems. She could see about 40 basestars in the system, and if she got a better look at what was going on she guessed that it could be up to 80. If the Cylons were putting this many ships on busy guard duty then there was some sort of threat here in the colonies. There were probably other groups of survivors that were giving the Cylons hell.
Adama looked at Lieutenant Sharon Valeri as she entered the CIC. The young lieutenant was dependable, and for the upcoming mission, he would need loyal people. Especially with the situation going on.
"Lieutenant, the Cylons have a basestar in orbit of Kobol. This is preventing us from sending a rescue team back to the world to retrieve two of our survey teams which are at this moment still alive down there."
"Well sir, what can I do to help?"
"I need you to go and take one of our captured raiders, launch a couple of nukes at it, and get out," Adama said. "Can you do that, Lieutenant?"
"Yes sir."
"Do you understand what you're getting into?"
"Yes sir."
"Well good," Adama said. "Skids up in 30. I'm confident that you can complete the mission successfully."
"Thank you, sir." She replied.
With her ECO, Crashdown, currently on the surface of Kobol (and potentially dead) she would be taking another ECO, Lieutenant Margret "Racetrack" Edmonton. They were soon loaded up with their nuclear warhead and heading to Kobol.
Once they arrived, they cut power and began drifting towards the basestar. They soon made it into one of the vessel's main hangers, which was interestingly completely deserted. Due to a failure of the warhead, she had to manually arm it and get out of the raider.
As she did so however she was surrounded by multiple versions of herself as Number Eights. She was confused by this as she was a human. The Cylons must be screwing with her. After deploying the nuke, she rushed back into the ship, ignoring the other versions of herself. After leaving the ship and getting out of range just in time the nuke went off, destroying the basestar. Rescue operations could now begin on Kobol. She returned to Galactica and was praised widely for what had happened, as she had essentially saved the lives of the people down on Kobol. But despite that, she felt that there was something wrong with her after all that she had done. It just didn't seem right.
Meanwhile, the situation was deteriorating in regards to the President. Colonial One had changed course and now resided behind the protection of the battlestar Valkyrie. The standoff continued, and more and more ships had made clear their positions, whether they supported Adama or Roslin. This was not going to end well. While Adama had calmed down he was still furious at the President for going behind his back. He was furthermore angry at multiple others, such as Marks who had refused to arrest Roslin, his son who had gone with them, and the commanders of the other ships in the fleet that were siding with the President.
Meanwhile, on Colonial One, the loyalists were trying to figure out what to do with Colonel Tigh.
"Can we let him go?" Apollo said, looking around at the assembled people. "That might diffuse tensions."
"He could also be tried for threatening to kill the president of the colonies, and for insubordination." Marks said.
"That might make Adama do something rash," Apollo said. "He doesn't take challenges to his authority lightly, and I'm half worried that he's going to come over here with whoever he can muster just to save Tigh."
"It would force Adama into a difficult corner. Not only would he try him with trying to kill the President and insubordination, but also being drunk on duty. And no one in the colonial fleet can disprove that." Garrett admitted with a chuckle. "He will be charged with good reason, I wouldn't be surprised if even Adama agrees with the drunk part."
"How are we going to hold a trial though, I don't think that we have any JAGs?"
"We have someone who used to be one, and one who could temporarily be called back up to serve as one for a short period. That's within regulation." Baker said.
A few minutes later, this former JAG got over to Colonial One. It was Captain Rendino.
"Alright, Tigh can be charged with assaulting a superior officer, insubordination, drunkenness on duty, and conduct unbecoming of an officer. He practically is the definition for that last charge." There was a chuckle.
"If Adama agrees to stop trying to arrest me, then he can have Tigh back," Roslin said.
"Exactly," Garrett replied. "If the worst comes to worst we can jump to Kobol. The area appears to be liberated from the Cylons, and the basestar they have in orbit has been destroyed."
"That's good news," Apollo said.
Meanwhile, Sharon was walking to the CIC. She was congratulated by Galactica's crew, and Adama watched as she walked over to him.
And drew her gun and shot him.
Marines tackled Sharon in seconds, but he had already been shot twice. Adama was rushed to the ward, and the medical personnel of the ship began attending to him. Doctor Cottle, who was on another ship tending to some sick refugees, was rushed back.
Contact was established between Captain Aaron Kelly, the Landing Signals Officer (LSO) of the Galactica, and Colonial One. He was the most senior officer left on Galactica who was not incapacitated. He let the military ships and Colonial One know what had happened.
"Madam President, if you let Tigh back I'll make sure that he doesn't take any actions against you." He said. "I can't do anything about Adama when he gets up, but I need someone with significant command experience."
"The force that boarded Colonial One is coming back, and Tigh will take command," Garrett said. "I am taking back command of the fleet and will be until Adama awakes. Getting him medical care will be the priority." Everyone on Colonial One got back to their ships, but just as a group of three Cylon basestars jumped in.
Starbuck entered the atmosphere of Caprica and headed to the museum where the Arrow of Apollo would be located. The other Cylons didn't pay her any attention, even though she was probably traveling differently than their standard flight patterns.
It wasn't long before she set the raider down in a courtyard outside of the place. The building looked relatively intact, and there wasn't a massive amount of damage. Popping some anti-radiation meds, she jumped out of the raider and then began searching the facility.
As she was doing so, she heard gunshots from inside the building. Starbuck kept her rifle raised as she moved through the building, keeping an eye out for friendly and hostile units. If there were gunshots, there must be other survivors. It would certainly stand to reason that others had survived the fall of the colonies. There were billions of people on each planet and radiation would not spread everywhere. Plus, there were large stocks of anti-radiation medications across all of the world, meaning that people would have at least a chance of survival. But by now it would truly be a miracle if organized resistance hadn't collapsed.
Emerging into one of the mostly rooms she then saw something both disturbing and great.
It was Helo and Sharon, firing on some centurions.
Author's note: well that was one hell of a chapter. A couple of notes:
The crashing of the raptor never made sense in my opinion. The colonials should have sent in a scouting raptor beforehand to watch and make sure the area was clear. Sure, if a raider was running dark or magically appeared out of FTL then there isn't much you can do, but they jumped into an ambush. And that's because, with the limited assets that were available to the colonial fleet with only Galactica and the civilians, this equation gets a lot more favorable as you account for the large number of military assets that are.
I also haven't gone over Helo and Sharon for a while but they will return, and next chapter I'll be going to their backstory and what they've been doing for the past few weeks.