01 - Battlestar Galactica (16 page)

There was nothing they could do for
Galactica
now except veer out of
the way and try not to get caught in the explosion…

* * *

“Right bow, left stern—emergency full power! Main thrust emergency full!”
Commander Adama snapped the commands, trying to do the only thing he could to
try to evade the missile. As he watched the screen, he knew it wasn’t enough.
They were going to take a nuclear blast in the flank. Very softly he said to his
old crewmate Tigh, “Brace for impact, my friend.”

“I haven’t heard that in a while,” Tigh replied grimly.

“Collision alarm!” Adama shouted. Klaxons started sounding throughout the
ship. All any of them could do was brace, and pray.

The missile struck the ship on the port side, and its nuclear warhead lit up
the sky.

Galactica,
Burning

Starbuck winced in pain at the dazzling light from the nuclear explosion, but
her Viper was far enough from
Galactica
to avoid sustaining further
damage itself. She took a moment to regroup her thoughts, then made a fast scan
to see if there were any more Cylons in the area. It seemed either she had
destroyed the last one, or any others had left.

“Vipers, set up a patrol around the ship,” she ordered the surviving members
of the squadron. “I’m going in to inspect the damage.” She fired her thrusters
and flew in toward the ship, passing the floating hulks of two dead Vipers on
her way.

There was no time to mourn them now;
Galactica
was burning. Kara flew
alongside the port flight pod, close and slow enough to get a good look.
“Galactica,
Starbuck. If you’re reading me, the forward section of the port
flight pod has sustained heavy damage.” It was a terrible sight, but it could
have been a lot worse. She saw a lot of crumpled hull plating, and fire erupting
from several compartments in the flight pod. Debris, smoke, and vapors were billowing into space. After a nuke, she was surprised the ship still
had
a port flight pod.
“Galactica,
you’ve got violent decompression all
along the port flight pod. Do you read me?
Galactica?”

There was no answer, but that could mean anything from an antenna being
knocked out of alignment to the whole crew being dead. Kara kept a tight control
on her thoughts and her flying, and kept circling the ship, reporting in the
blind. It was all she could do.

Galactica,
Combat Information Center

The CIC was damaged but mostly intact. Crewmembers were moving quickly,
tending to the injured, hoisting fallen equipment off the floor, and trying to
get meaningful information out of partially damaged consoles. Ship-to-ship
transmission was out, though they could just make out Starbuck’s scratchy
reports. Adama was trusting to the remaining Vipers to protect the ship from
outside dangers while they dealt with the emergencies on the inside.

Adama’s neck was craned, as he squinted up through his glasses at one of the
few working monitors, above the light table now being used for damage
assessment. “Radiation levels within norms. The hull plating kept out most of
the hard stuff.” Beside him, Tigh was using a grease pencil to correlate damage
reports on a large transparent schematic of the ship.

Gaeta called out more reports as they came in. “Sir, port stern thrusters are
locked open. All bow thrusters unresponsive. We’re in an uncontrolled lateral
counterclockwise spin.”

“Send a DC party up to aux control,” Adama said, “and have them cut all the
fuel lines to the stern thruster.”

Tigh spoke as soon as he was finished. “Okay, we have got buckled supports
all along the port flight pod, and chain reaction decompressions occurring
everywhere forward of frame two”—he paused to check the printout in his hand—“two-fifty.”

“That’s a problem,” Adama said grimly. It was a massive understatement; if
that went unchecked, they could lose all launch and recovery capability, at the
very least.

“Kelly says he’s got three uncontrolled fires. That’s why he hasn’t been able
to stop the decompressions.”

Adama ran a finger along the diagram. “If the decomps continue along this
axis, they could collapse the port pod.” He looked up at Tigh, his face grave.
“Saul—take personal command of the DC units.”

“Me?” Tigh asked, his face registering sudden apprehension.

Gaeta interrupted at that moment with, “Sir, the stern thruster’s still
locked open.” He gestured with a printout. “We need you.”

And I need you, Saul. This is no time to frak around.
Adama eyed his old
friend, painfully aware of just how far he had fallen to the booze and
self-pity. But he had to put his faith in the man now; he had no choice. In a
low voice, he said, “You’re either the XO or you’re not.”

At those words, Tigh stiffened, clearly struggling with his self-doubts.
“Yes, sir,” he said. Adama turned and strode away with Gaeta, leaving Tigh to
make up his mind.

On the far side of the CIC, Chief Tyrol and Captain Kelly had arrived at a
dead run from the hangar deck and were working furiously to coordinate the
repair teams from the damage control station. Most of the remote videos were
shorted out, but the alarm board was still functioning. A wall schematic of the
ship, it used rows of indicator lights to display which sections were affected
by decompression and fire.

In the one functioning video display, they could see disaster unfolding on
Port Deck D, Frame 32. The fire there was advancing rapidly, filling the compartment with smoke and toxic fumes. Something
exploded with a bright flash, blowing out through the hull. Three more alarm
lights lit up on the DC board. In the monitor, they could see that only two men
in the crew of fifteen had breathing gear, and those two were frantically trying
to herd the others out of the doomed compartment. One of the deck hands had
grabbed a phone handset right next to the sending camera. He was choking in the
smoke.
“Chief! We’re losing pressure! The port pod—it’s buckling! We
need help—!”

The screen went white, and static filled the voice line. Tyrol cursed, just
as Colonel Tigh stepped into view behind him. “Report,” demanded the XO.

“Another compartment losing pressure,” said Kelly. “We just lost the monitor
and comm.”

Tyrol pointed to a line of pressure-alarm lights on the DC board. “There’s
structural buckling all along this line!
We’ve gotta get those fires out!”

“I know! I know!” Kelly snapped.

The phone rang, and Tyrol picked it up, covering his other ear to hear.

Kelly continued, pointing for Tigh’s benefit. “Fire suppression’s down. Water
mains are down. We’ve got gravity fluctuations all through the compartments.
We’re trying to fight the fire with handheld gear, but—”

Tyrol interrupted, relaying another report. “We’ve got another decompression
on Deck D, close to the port pod!”

Kelly turned to Colonel Tigh. “What are your orders, sir?” He waited for an
answer. “Sir?”

Tigh stood motionless, a hundred thoughts clamoring in his mind. Sweat broke
out on his upper lip as he struggled to make a decision. He
knew
what
needed to be done, but they’d never forgive him for it. He’d never forgive
himself. He turned, without quite being aware of it, and across the CIC saw Bill Adama hunched over a
table with Gaeta, planning whatever needed to be done to solve the thruster
problem. Bill’s voice, harsh and unyielding, echoed in Tigh’s mind:
You’re
either the XO, or you’re not.

Beside him, Kelly stopped waiting for an order from Tigh, and leaned in to
Chief Tyrol. “All right, listen,” he said quietly, “I need you to take the rest
of your DC teams down from the landing bay, to give them a hand…”

Tigh turned back to them, suddenly realizing what Kelly was proposing.
“There’s no time! Seal off everything forward of Frame Thirty and start an
emergency vent of all compartments.”

Tyrol lowered the phone in dismay. “But wait, I’ve got over a hundred people
trapped up behind Frame Thirty-Four!” He pointed to the display on the board. “I
just need a minute to get ’em out!”

“If we don’t seal it off now, we’re gonna lose a lot more than a hundred
men,” snapped Colonel Tigh. “Seal it off! Now!”

Tyrol exploded with anger.
“They just need a minute!”

“WE DON’T HAVE A MINUTE!”
Tigh bellowed. “If the fire reaches the hangar
pods, it’ll ignite the fuel lines and we’ll lose the ship!
Do it!”

Nearly apoplectic with rage, Tyrol keyed the phone for an all-ship
announcement. He clearly had to fight to get the words out.
“All hands. Seal
off… all bulkheads twenty-five through forty. That’s an order.”

In the burning compartment, a deckhand with a respirator and an air tank on
his back was shouting to the others, “Get out of here now!
Go!
They’re
gonna vent the compartment! Let’s go! We need everybody out!” As he yelled, he
waved a chemical fire extinguisher, trying futilely to put out the closest
flames. But flames were everywhere. Gravity was shifting, throwing everyone off balance. It was impossible, and getting worse by the second.

From the far end of the compartment came shouts and banging. “The bulkheads
are closed!
Let us out!”
Men were crowded up against the end bulkhead,
where the smoke was thick but the flames had not yet reached. They were
hammering on the locked bulkhead doors.
“Let us out!”

But there was no escape.

Colonel Tigh inserted the key into the emergency vent switch and twisted it.
He stepped back grimly to watch the board.

Deep in the ship, relays tripped and motors surged. Dozen of large air vents
opened. On the outer hull, hatches blew open, releasing enormous gouts of fire
and smoke from the flaming compartments. Along with the fire, dozens of dying
crewmen hurtled out into space like so much debris, tumbling head over heels
into space, before vanishing into the darkness. It was all over in a few
moments. The flames went out as the last of the air vented from the savaged
compartments.

At the damage control board Tigh, Tyrol, and Kelly waited in stony silence
until the board indicated all clear—fires out, temperatures dropping toward
normal, pressure zero in the vented sections and holding steady in all others.
Finally Kelly affirmed what they all saw: “Venting complete. Fires are out.”

Tigh stared solemnly at the board, not meeting their eyes. He knew damn well
what they were thinking. But he told them anyway: “If they remembered their
training, then they had their suits on and they were braced for possible vent
action.”

Chief Tyrol, too, was staring at the board, a haunted expression on his face.
“There were a lot of rooks in there.”

“No one’s a rook anymore,” said Tigh, and turned away to return to the CIC.

South of Caprica City, Somewhere in the Hills

Gaius Baltar fidgeted as he stood amid the crowd of people near the Raptor
spacecraft. He couldn’t believe he had gotten this far. He had driven only about
four miles before the crush of people crowding the road, and the obstruction of
abandoned vehicles, had made it impossible to drive any farther. He had
abandoned his car, like many before him, and taken to the hills on foot.

He was several hours into his hike when someone shouted that they saw a
Colonial spaceship coming down—landing in the hills to the southeast. Without
hesitation, Baltar joined the breakaway mob that ran in that direction, hoping
for rescue. Why else would anyone land a ship within a thousand miles of this
madness, if not to look for survivors?

The discovery that it was a military craft, downed for emergency repairs, had
been a blow to the crowd, and to Baltar himself. So much for his perfectly
reasonable hope that someone had miraculously come down to give
him
a
ride off the planet. But then, against all odds, the Raptor crew had agreed to a
lottery, to take three adults plus some children to safety. Perhaps God—if there was such
a being, and he laughed silently at the notion—wanted to help him to safety,
after all.

Numbered pieces of paper had been distributed, and one person, a middle-aged
woman, had been selected so far. Two more chances to go. Baltar bit his lip,
sweating.

The female pilot reached into an open toolbox lying on the ground in the sun.
The box was filled with torn pieces of paper, each bearing a number. Baltar
himself held the number 118. The pilot straightened, holding up a single piece
of paper. “One twenty-seven.” She gazed over the anxious crowd. “One two seven.”

In the front of the crowd, a dark-haired woman in her twenties raised her
hand, holding her own slip of paper. “Here.” The pilot waved her forward. “Thank
you, Lords of Kobol,” the woman murmured, stumbling toward the Raptor. She
dropped the slip of paper into the hand of the injured male copilot as she
passed him. “Thank you. Thank you,” she muttered over and over, softly, as if
unable to quite believe her good fortune.

Baltar watched her darkly as she walked up the ramp into the ship, then
shifted his gaze as the pilot pulled out another slip. “Last one.” She stood up,
scanning the crowd. “Forty-seven. Four seven.”

There was a stirring, as people throughout the crowd looked disconsolately at
their own numbers and shook their heads in despair. Baltar looked unhappily at
his own, his heart sinking. And then, almost like a gift from Heaven, a
white-haired old woman touched his arm and said, “Excuse me.” Her skin was
wrinkled, and her clothes were worn and faded. “I forgot my glasses, I must have
left them somewhere. Could you please… read this for me?”