“Yes,” Gunnerson said, looking mildly impressed.
“You did it to make an impetus for this meeting. You wanted us all together. Now.”
“Yes.”
Now all questioning and back talk had died out, and the silence was heavy as everyone in the room waited for this exchange to come to a conclusion that clearly only Laura Roslin and Wolf Gunnerson knew.
She took a deep breath and said, “You’re planning to wipe out the entire Quorum in one shot.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Yes.”
“What!” Zarek almost exploded out of his chair, and he grabbed Gunnerson by the arm. “What the frak are you talking ab—”
Gunnerson swung his arm casually and Zarek was knocked backwards, sent crashing over his chair. Wolf made no other motion. There even seemed to be, insanely enough, sadness in his eyes.
“Billy,” said Laura, without budging from her place. Billy was standing several feet away, looking shocked, uncomprehending. “Contact Galactica immediately. Tell them an immediate attack is very likely.”
Billy started to back out of the room, but he never took his eyes off Gunnerson. But Wolf made no move toward him and Billy got out with no problem. Instead Gunnerson said calmly, with total conviction, “Call whomever you want. They can’t save you.”
“They can and they will,” Laura Roslin replied, her chin tilted upward in defiance.
“Oh my gods!”
It was Sarah Porter. Something had caught her eye out one of the ports, and she had cried out in shock. Laura looked to see what it was that had provoked the response.
It was the Bifrost.
It was still a good distance away, but the ship had turned away from its customary position in the fleet. Instead it was moving crosswise across the flow, attempting to navigate its way toward Colonial One.
It was on a direct collision course. If its course went unaltered, it would smash Colonial One amidships, rupturing the hull of both vessels, and both of them would explode, fireballs snuffed out within seconds in the airless vacuum of space.
Pandemonium broke out in the conference room, which was instantly transformed into a maelstrom of accusation, fury, and fear.
And in the midst of it all, D’anna Biers—the eye of the storm—smiled wanly to herself and slowly shook her head.
We tried, she thought sadly. We tried so hard. We tried our little booby trap the last time, after I shook Gaeta’s hand during the making of the documentary and inserted that little listening device into it. We tried to herd you into a situation where you would have been so completely overwhelmed by our forces that you would have had no choice but to surrender. We could have extracted Sharon’s baby at that point . . . perhaps even taken a percentage of you prisoner and turned you into workers. You wouldn’t have been completely exterminated. A handful would have survived to serve us, and wouldn’t that have been appropriate? But you had to be oh-so-clever to avoid the trap. So this time . . . this time we finish it. Or at the very least, we cripple you by destroying your entire membership and your civilian leaders.
We tried to be generous, but you simply weren’t willing to allow it to happen. For this one, you have no one to blame but yourself.
We know where you’re going to Jump to. If you try to get away, we’re waiting for you, and we’ll blow what’s left of you to bits.
Too bad about Sharon, though. I bet the baby would have had her eyes.
CHAPTER
23
“Cylon raiders!”
The members of Adama’s command crew had barely had the opportunity to register that Colonial One was in deep trouble when space all around them was alive with Cylon raiders spinning out of subspace and angling toward the fleet. They came out firing, and even though Adama had the pilots scrambling to their vessels, he was certain they were losing out on precious time.
“Vipers away!” called Dualla.
“Gaeta!” said Tigh with growing urgency as he crossed over toward him. “Get those coordinates for the Jump up and ready!” Despite the gravity of the situation, he was wise enough not to say anything beyond that, nor was Gaeta engaging in the standard operating procedure of getting verbal confirmation from other officers in CIC as to the specifics of the coordinates. Instead Gaeta was keeping his big mouth shut as he readied the coordinates and the fleet’s Jump.
Adama’s eyes were riveted, however, on the Bifrost as it approached Colonial One. Neither ship was especially speedy or maneuverable; both were outfitted with FTL drives, but that did nothing for them when they were operating in standard space and moving with the alacrity of a drunken cow.
“Fire a warning shot across their bow,” said Adama. He was furious with himself for being hamstrung. Helo and Starbuck—Starbuck, for frak’s sake—were on the Bifrost along with two of his marines. If the warning shot didn’t take, he was going to have to seriously consider blowing the ship out of space. This would end the Midguardian threat, but it would also be the end of his people. Of Helo, of . . . of Starbuck . . .
A single shot from the Galactica’s big cannons hurtled past the Bifrost as it started to approach Colonial One. It seemed frighteningly as if the Galactica was firing upon the civilian fleet, but there was no helping that now.
The shot hurtled past the Bifrost without striking it. The civilian ship didn’t slow.
Suddenly the Galactica was rocked by concentrated fire power from the Cylons. The big guns were needed elsewhere. If Adama didn’t have the target shifted to the threat of the Cylons, there wasn’t going to be a fleet to worry about, much less a single ship.
Starbuck . . . Helo . . . do something, Adama thought desperately.
Boxey sprinted down the corridor, dodging the confused and terrified people who were milling about, shouting that they were under attack, demanding to know what was going on. Kara, Agathon, and the two marines were right behind him, and they weren’t especially gentle about shoving people out of the way in order to get where they were going.
Enough people were looking upset that Starbuck had the distinct impression what was transpiring was news to them. It wasn’t as if there had been some vast group plan to try and send the Bifrost winging its way into Colonial One. It was the actions of a few people acting independently of the rest of the ship’s populace. Unfortunately, those few people were in control of the ship.
“This way! It’s this way!” Boxey was shouting, and he rounded another corner. The four adults were hard-pressed to keep up with him, but they managed to do so and then they suddenly skidded to a halt as Boxey stood outside a large set of double doors and started pounding on them in frustration.
“This the control room?” Starbuck demanded.
When Boxey nodded, Jolly shouted “Stay back!” and un-slung his weapon. Zac followed suit, and they opened fire on the outer door. Their weapon fire bounced harmlessly off the reinforced armored door.
“Frak!” shouted Starbuck.
Jolly slammed a fist against the door, which didn’t accomplish much since his fire power had already proven insufficient. “We should have packed explosives! Anyone got any?”
“I have an exploding cigar, but I left it back on Galactica,” Starbuck said with bleak humor. Then something prompted her to look overhead. She saw the grillwork and a desperate thought occurred to her. She glanced over at Boxey, who had automatically looked up to see what she was staring at, and then the same thought occurred to him.
“Lift me up!” he cried out.
Instantly Starbuck started to second-guess her own notion, but there wasn’t any time for such concerns. “Helo, get it clear!” she shouted, nodding toward the overhead grillwork. Helo reached up, grab it and yanked it clear. Starbuck interlaced her hands, providing a step up for him. Boxey planted one foot in the aide and she propelled him up and into the ventilation shaft.
“Wait by the door!” he called. “I’ll get it open from inside!”
Jolly turned to Starbuck, looking none too enthused about the situation.
“We’re counting on the kid?”
“Yeah!” replied Starbuck, her eyes fiery with the demented gamble. “We’re counting on the kid!”
Lee Adama, a.k.a. Apollo, wished to the gods that he had Star-buck out there with him, guarding his tail. He’d never felt more vulnerable than now, when he was fighting for his own life and that of Galactica and the best damned pilot he knew wasn’t there.
Worse, he knew exactly where she was, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it . . .
Despite the fact that there was hot fire from the Cylon raiders all around him, his attention drifted briefly to the Bifrost.
He gasped. He saw that the ship was on collision course with Colonial One. But he was too far away to do anything about it, and if he disengaged from the enemy to attend to it, raiders would get through and manage to jam their weapons fire right down Galactica’s throat.
“Galactica, this is Apollo! Colonial One in imminent danger from Bifrost!” he shouted over his comm unit.
There was a heartbeat of a pause, and then a voice came back—not Dualla’s, but instead Lee’s father. “We’re monitoring the situation.”
“Monitoring! If they hit—! Permission to engage Bifrost—!”
“Negative, focus on Cylons. Starbuck has it in hand.”
Saul Tigh turned and looked in astonishment at Bill Adama as Adama point-blank lied to his son. Adama shoved the phone down and returned the look.
“She does,” Adama said with simple conviction, without having the faintest idea why he knew. He turned toward Gaeta and asked, “Mr. Gaeta . . . how long until we’re ready to Jump?”
Gaeta help up two fingers to indicate two minutes and said aloud, “Five minutes, sir.”
Adama nodded and then looked back in bleak frustration at the Bifrost. Space was alive with Vipers engaging the Cylons. Even if they tried to fire directly at the Bifrost, they might blow their own Vipers out of the sky. And if Colonial One attempted evasive maneuvers, they could just as easily steer themselves directly into stray shots from either the Cylon raiders or even the Vipers. The entire area was too hot.
Plus if the entire fleet Jumped to escape the Cylons and the Bifrost was being commanded by hostiles, they very likely wouldn’t make the Jump along with the rest of the fleet, leaving Kara and Agathon to the nonexistent mercies of the Cylons.
Come on, Starbuck, he thought in frustration.
Laura Roslin shoved past the members of the Quorum and went straight up to Wolf Gunnerson, who was the picture of calm. Two security guards were approaching him, and he fired them a look that was fraught with danger. “Stay back!” Laura snapped at them and they halted where they were. She looked up at Gunnerson and demanded, “Why are you doing this?”
“The Edda must be fulfilled,” he said calmly. “These things don’t happen by themselves.”
“Yes! They do! Do you think I was trying to make myself ill so that I would fulfill scripture?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gunnerson. “You didn’t succeed. I shall. My daughter shall. She’s steering the Bifrost.”
“And what about the Cylons!” Tom Zarek spoke up angrily.
“They’re crawling all over us out there! Are you working with them, too?”
Wolf Gunnerson said nothing, but merely smiled enigmatically.
The Bifrost drew closer.
Boxey eased his way through the duct work with confidence that he knew exactly where he was going. It wasn’t all that far. He could do this. He had to do it.
This is it. This has to prove that you’re not a Cylon. That you were just making yourself crazy over it.
Although . . . Boomer helped blow up a lot of Cylons before she discovered what she was. Maybe . . .
Stop it! Stop it!
He made his way around a curve in the duct and found himself staring down into the control room. Freya was there, along with Tyr and Fenris. They were manipulating the controls in the slightly cramped area, and Fenris was keeping a steady countdown going toward the imminent collision with Colonial One. “Eighteen,” he was saying, “seventeen, sixteen . . .”
No time! No time!
Boxey brought both his hands down upon the grillwork and slammed it as hard as he could. The panel, and he, crashed through to the floor. He was up on his feet in a second, and he locked eyes with Freya Gunnerson.
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun.
Boxey’s head snapped around and he saw the locking mechanism on the door. He lunged toward it. The first shot from Freya’s gun slammed into his right shoulder and he cried out. He heard her shout “Get him!” and Tyr and Fenris were coming at him. He willed the pain away, stumbled fell toward the locking mechanism, and another shot struck him in the chest. As he fell, his fingers slammed against the lock, twisting it open, and then he hit the floor and the last thing that went through his mind was If this doesn’t prove it, nothing will, and then everything went black.
“It’s going to hit!” screamed Sarah Porter.
Laura Roslin looked out a viewing port. She could practically see the rivets in the Bifrost’s hull.
“It’s for the best,” Wolf Gunnerson said coolly.
She fired him a glance of utter contempt. “Frak you,” she said, which was hardly the most eloquent of final words, but certainly as fitting as any.
The door slid open and Starbuck, her gun in her hand, shoved Jolly aside and was the first one in.
Boxey inadvertently saved her life, because Freya Gunner-son was aiming her weapon straight at Starbuck and Starbuck tripped over Boxey’s prostrate body. She went down and Freya’s shot went wide, glancing off Jolly’s body armor. The impact staggered Jolly but didn’t take him down.
Starbuck hit the ground, fired once, and her shot lifted Freya up, blew her off her feet and sent her slamming against the far bulkhead. The sheer impact held her there for a moment, and then slowly she slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood behind her.
Tyr’s gun was already out and Fenris was starting to pull his. Zac stepped out from behind Jolly and fired twice, both times with deadly accuracy. The first show sent Tyr’s head exploding in a shower of blood, and Fenris was just starting to bring his weapon to bear when he was shot square in the chest, the impact spinning him around like a top. He went down looking profoundly confused.
Colonial One loomed before them.
“Helo!” she shouted.
Helo vaulted over the fallen bodies and grabbed the controls. There was no time for anything fancy. His hands flew over the controls and then angled the Bifrost up, up and over Colonial One.
“This is gonna be close,” he muttered.
He was right. The underside of the Bifrost banged against the top of Colonial One, and there was an ear-splitting scraping as the two ships slid against each other. It seemed to go on forever, and suddenly they were clear.
Helo grabbed the nearest phone.
Adama had been watching the inevitable collision of the Bifrost and Colonial One with his heart in his throat, and for just a split second, he thought his confidence in Starbuck had been misplaced. And then he saw the Bifrost suddenly change course, and the two ships slid one against the other, leaving behind a nasty scrape but nothing that appeared—at least from this distance—to structurally threaten either vessel.
“Admiral!” Dualla suddenly shouted, her headset wrapped around her ears, “Helo reports Bifrost in friendly hands!”
Relief pounded through Adama, and then he pointed at a screen where the Vipers could clearly be seen battling the enemy and made a “circle” gesture with his finger to indicate that the ships should be rounded up.
Nodding her understanding, Dualla immediately sent out the recall code, and the Vipers peeled off and barreled back toward t he Galactica as fast as they could go.
Everyone in the conference room, with the exceptions of Laura Roslin and Wolf Gunnerson, shouted in fear as the two ships banged up against each other. They staggered, thrown about by the impact, and suddenly
there was nothing. The vessels were clear. The hit had not been direct at all, but instead merely a glancing blow.
Laura Roslin had the distinct pleasure at that point of seeing the air appear to escape from Wolf Gunnerson. As if he’d been hit squarely in the face—something that Laura wouldn’t have minded doing at that point—Wolf gasped, “What . . . happened? Where did . . . how . . . ?” He looked at Laura as if he expected her to share his sense of barely contained outrage. “This shouldn’t be! The Edda . . . it was clear! It was all clear, right there!”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Laura told him.
D’anna couldn’t believe it.
Space twisted and turned around them and seconds later the entire fleet was free of the Cylon attack. Except that shouldn’t have been the case. They should have found themselves, yet again, facing down a Cylon ambush, one that would have most likely been the final ambush they would ever have to deal with.
Instead they were free and clear. Space around them was devoid of any Cylon raiders, and a ragged cheer went up from the members of the Quorum.
Sons of bitches, she thought. Her mind racing, she put together what must have happened and realized that Adama’s people must have discovered the bug planted in Gaeta’s hand. She wasn’t especially concerned that it would lead back to her: Humans were so routine in pressing the flesh of their hands against each other that there was no way Gaeta would associate it with her, especially since it hadn’t gone active until some time later as a failsafe measure.
She waited for Gunnerson to make some sort of violent play. The man was, after all, twice as large as anyone there. He could easily have killed several of the Quorum members before he was apprehended. But he did no such thing; instead he surrendered meekly to the security officers who approached him, keeping their guns leveled at him. He seemed bewildered, frustrated, utterly perplexed that matters had not turned out exactly as he had expected them to. He acted as if . . . as if his gods had abandoned him, and without their support, he had no idea what he was supposed to do or how he should proceed.