CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Although the Galactica bridge might have seemed still and inactive to an outside observer, there was an abundance of human movement going on. Crew members’ hands were testing dials and gauges whose information had remained stable for some time. Communications officers kept pressing their earpieces harder against their ears, trying to discover some encouraging sounds. Colonel Tigh sat at his post, rippling the corners of printouts he’d stopped examining centons earlier. Athena’s eyes searched every horizontal scan line of her monitoring screen, and kept punching new combinations of the same data into her computer setup. Adama’s large knobby hands gripped and ungripped the railing that ran along the starfield walkway.

Suddenly one of the bridge officers grumbled a curse and called to Colonel Tigh. Tigh rushed to the woman, Adama close behind him. She pointed to her long-range scanner. Tigh turned to Adama, saying:

“That scanner’s picked up a Cylon fighter squadron.”

“How many?” Adama asked.

“Looks like an attack phalanx. They’re beginning to press.”

Adama nodded.

“Order Blue Squadron to patrol the rear.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” Tigh flipped the nearest communication switch as activity around him on the bridge multiplied. “Scramble Blue Squadron! Patrol rear sectors Sigma through Omega!”

The claxons roared through the Galactica, and the bridge crew could almost physically detect the rush of pilots toward launching bays. On various screens, pilots could be seen swinging into action, flight crews readying the vipers, and the reverberations of the fighter ships themselves.

The squadron launched and achieved formation long before a visual contact with the Cylon attack phalanx was made. Positioned well to the rear of the fleet itself, the vipers were more than ready for the not-so-sneak attack of their enemy.

Aboard the Galactica, the bridge crew stood and sat at battle stations, their active eyes watching information screens and equipment. Adama ordered the picture being transmitted from Blue Leader One transferred to the main screen. Tensely, they all watched the distant points grow into blots and then take form as flat-looking but multileveled Cylon fighters. The first blast from a Cylon weapon was directed at Blue Leader One, and everyone on the bridge flinched and startled backward when the shot seemed to come right at them. Then the skies were filled with laser fire and the sudden bursting flames of direct hits. A pair of Cylon fighters broke through the Blue Squadron line of defense and headed for the fleet.

“Protect the freighters!” Adama ordered.

“Galactica to Blue Leader,” transmitted a bridge officer. “Engage!”

A Blue Squadron viper peeled away from the squadron and in one long beautiful sweep fired at both of the attackers and transformed them into two masses of fire whose flames reached out toward each other, combined, fell together, and exploded further in a burst of bright light that, for a brief moment, illuminated the entire wide triangle of ships that was the present fleet formation.

“My God!” Athena gasped.

“Good shooting?” Adama, standing behind her, asked.

“Not only that. That double kill was accomplished by one of the cadets.”

“As I said, good shooting.”

Adama walked away from her, his face apparently expressionless, but Athena recognized a flicker of pleasure in his reaction to the heroism of a graduate of his makeshift flight academy.

The Cylon ships, quickly routed by the dizzying maneuvers of the Blue Squadron vipers, retreated into the distance, became points again. A flight officer approached Adama, and reported:

“Blue Squadron returning to base. Four Cylons destroyed, the rest are running.”

“They’ll be back,” Adama commented. “In packs, like wolves. What do your reports show, Tigh?”

The colonel was scowling at a set of printouts that he gripped tightly in his hands. Something clearly disturbed him.

“We got ships again, but not Cylon personnel. The Cylons in the rearguard ships guided the others, as before. We lost one viper and one good pilot. They lost just the vehicles, if vehicles is the proper word. They’re wearing us down with these empty ships. It’s eerie.”

“That may be what they want us to feel. If they come at us again, go for the rearguard ships. Station a few warriors on the slower freighters with heavy artillery to blast any of the pilotless aircraft that might get through next time.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Athena, eavesdropping on the conversation between her father and his aide, sidled up to Adama and whispered:

“Let me go.”

“Go where?”

“Give me some heavy artillery, station me on a—”

“I told you. We need you here.”

Adama’s voice was firm. She should have immediately returned to her station, but she decided to press her luck.

“Well, you’re going to have to take a few warriors off the flight roster. Let me take up a viper the next attack. I can—”

“None of that. You stay here.”

“I’m as well checked-out in a viper cockpit as any of those cadets you’re rushing into battle.”

Adama’s shocked face cut off her little speech abruptly before she could get to the logical part.

“One of those cadets, as you so happily informed me moments ago, performed that skillful double kill, Athena.”

“All right. I’m properly chastened, Commander. But one lucky cadet is just a rationalization for your keeping me stuck at a console on the command bridge. I want my chance at—”

Adama’s stern expression softened.

“I promise I’ll give you your chance, Athena. But right now, back to duty. You are needed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tigh, the usual papers in his hand, returned to Adama’s side, and said:

“Any estimate on time remaining until the landing party completes the mission?”

“It’s irrelevant. We have to move forward in”—Adama glanced at his chronometer—“in four hundred and twenty centons regardless of whether they’re successful or not.”

Gradually the activity on command bridge had stopped, stalled. Only the nervous agitated hand movements remained.