THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

CHAPTER 18

“You always start out with a plethora of choices, and watch them come down to one,” Dirce said.
Starbuck, sitting across the dinner table from her in her day cabin, had the impression she was talking mostly to herself rather than to him. Just before he had arrived for a previously-scheduled meal with her, Columbia’s scout crew had made their report. Indeed, things seemed to be moving ahead at a rapid clip.
Dirce went on, “And I don’t seem to have been left with a choice but one. We have to attack now. I wanted to draw them out rather than fight them around the planet, but I have to fight them whatever way I can. It’s going to be more difficult to avoid collateral damage, though.”
“No choice,” Starbuck agreed. “Iblis’ game is pretty obvious. We may have forced his hand a little, but I’d bet he was planning this all along.”
“That’s a bet you’d win. It’s the Cylon situation all over again.”
Starbuck sat back a little, lit a fumarello, and asked, “Have you talked to Cain much?”
Dirce’s lips quirked in distaste. “No. I didn’t like him to begin with...and I like him less now. His weakness, his ego, have led directly to this. That should be a warning to people,” she added.
Starbuck suspected her comment was directed at him; he had been her executive officer long enough, she knew what he was like. “I’m not perfect, but I am not Cain.”
“Who the hell was he before this happened?” Dirce countered. “If someone came along and played to all your weaknesses....”
“At least I understand my weaknesses,” Starbuck replied. “I’d see it coming.”
“Maybe,” Dirce allowed after a centon. She picked up her fork, tapped it absently on the tabletop. “None of us are perfect.”
Starbuck studied the tall, rather austere woman sitting across from him. Dirce had few weaknesses that he knew of, and those were minor. Any other ones she kept to herself. This is the woman who won the war, he thought. Sure, Adama drew up the overall strategy, and it was gorgeous, but she executed it. And improvised when she had to. And she always wins. He realized that his faith in her was as close to religion as he ever got.
Dirce had faith in Starbuck as well. “I’m not going to lie to you, Starbuck. They have us way outnumbered in single-seaters. This is liable to be the nearest-run thing you’ve ever seen.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Decapitate them. Take out their government, their fleet, and their bloody Cylon factory, and try to do it with as few civilian casualties as possible. And then let the people decide what they want to do. I don’t have time to confer with all of the other commanders, so I’m going to make my orders and pass them along. I’m going to plan to attack within a standard day.”
Starbuck nodded. “You know we’ll do our best.”
“I do know that,” Dirce replied. “And I know you will.”
Starbuck puffed on his fumarello for a few centons, then he commented reflectively, “You know, they have a saying on Pisces. ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It’s meant to be ironic.”
“We have lived in interesting times,” Dirce agreed.

“Needless to say,” Commander Akamas said nonetheless, “this is the most important mission you will ever be sent on.”
Columbia’s striker crews had gathered in one of the ship’s ready rooms to be briefed. The importance of the mission was emphasized by the fact that the commander himself was briefing them. He continued, “As some of you may have heard rumored, the Gamoreans have reactivated a factory on the planet that is producing Cylon centurions. Gamma squadron’s mission is to destroy that factory. Six strikers will be armed with nuclear weapons in the assumption that one or two will reach the target. They will be supported by the rest of the squadron on anti-fighter patrol and ground fire suppression. Beta squadron will attack Count Iblis’ headquarters in Gamoray City, with conventional weapons. We can’t give you any more escort than that because the enemy outnumbers us very heavily in single-seaters; we need all of our vipers for fleet defense.”
“You think this is going to work?” Ares asked Rhiannon afterwards as they were waiting in line to pick up their navigational information.
“It better,” she said simply.
Ares sighed. “I remember,” he reminisced, “you and me in the hospital on Caprica and deciding that whatever mission we were being sent on was going to be...I think you said, ‘mindlessly dull.’”
“I wish it had been.”
He saw her concern in her monosyllabic replies and dropped his usual uninvolved, unaffected attitude. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he said, “Hey, it’s going to be all right. For us to get killed at this point would be anticlimactic.”
Rhiannon smiled. “True.”
Ares accepted his navigational crystal from one of the ship’s junior navigators, tucked it in one of his flight suit pockets, and followed Rhiannon over to the lockers. He watched as she got out her helmet and gloves, then opened his locker and took out his own gear. Funny, he thought, during the Cylon War I don’t think I ever consciously thought before a mission that this could be it. I wonder why I do now? Are the odds that much worse? Or do I just care more?
“Ready?” Rhiannon asked, breaking into his musings.
“I suppose we can’t put this off.”
“I think not.”
Ares was unsurprised to find Leah waiting outside the ready room door; he politely stepped aside as she flung herself into Rhiannon’s arms. All right, he told himself, I am jealous. I just wish someone felt that way about me. Someday, maybe.
Leah composed herself, drew back. “Rhiannon....”
“This is me. And Ares. We come back,” Rhiannon said.
Leah frowned, unimpressed by Rhiannon’s typical bravado, then she had to smile. “All right. Be careful. Come back.”
Ares said, “You too, Leah. This thing is a hell of lot a bigger target than a striker.”
“Don’t remind me.” She hugged Ares, then she was gone.
Ares tugged at Rhiannon’s arm; she was staring down the corridor after Leah. “Mind on duty. Come on.”
“Right,” Rhiannon said reluctantly.

Columbia, escorted by Glory and Triumph, closed into Gamoray orbit to launch her strike squadrons. Aeneas had expected an attack, but none was forthcoming and all strikers launched without incident. Once they were clear and on their way to their targets, the battlestar and her two escorts moved towards the backside of the planet, to begin the attack on the enemy’s fleet base.
They had been in geosynchronus orbit, hovering over one point, for so long that the backside of Gamoray was wholly unfamiliar. Unlike the side they had been forced to orbit over, this part of the planet was mostly ocean, long expanses of water broken by occasional chains of volcanic islands and one small continent located near the planet’s southern polar region. That Aeneas noticed in an instant. More interesting was the data coming in from Columbia’s scanners.
“All right,” Akamas reported, “there’s the dockyard. And there’s their blasted Cylon base ship.”
“Very well. Launch the first spread of missiles and decoys,” Aeneas ordered. The range was very long and he knew that most, if not all, of the missiles would be destroyed long before they reached targets, but it was worth the effort to get some idea of what sort of defenses the enemy dockyard had. “What do they have in orbit?”
“Besides the base ship, a lot of smaller ships, and four of those missile ships.”
“No cruisers?”
“No cruisers,” Akamas confirmed.
Aeneas frowned. That was a bad sign. They must have guessed we were going to make a preemptive attack. Of course Xaviar worked with Dirce for two or three yahrens, so he must have some idea of how she fights. Hell!
On the scanners, missile trace after missile trace ended in a brief flash of light as the enemy anti-missile defenses kicked in. As Aeneas watched, the smaller ships began moving away from their moorings.
“Base ship has initiated power-up,” the chief scanner officer reported.
“Launch vipers to attack the dockyard. They should concentrate on anti-assault defenses. Order the battlecruisers to launch their vipers to cover us,” Aeneas said.
“Commencing launch...and coming down to close missile range,” Akamas said.
“Launch our second spread of missiles. Order the battlecruisers to attack independently, concentrating on smaller enemy ships. Focus on that base ship, Akamas.”
It might have seemed a tactical error using Columbia to attack the base ship rather than sending in the battlecruisers, but in fact Columbia was almost as heavily armed and, being a larger ship, had a better chance of surviving a toe-to-toe slugging match than a battlecruiser, which was designed to rely on stealth and ambush tactics. In a battle such as this, they were better suited to taking on smaller ships which they could easily overpower.
“We’re closing it,” Akamas said. “It’s going to be fully powered-up before we get in range.”
“Base ship is beginning to launch fighters,” the scanner officer reported. He leaned closer to his displays, swallowed his surprise, and said, “My lord, the base ship is launching raiders...manned by Cylon crews.”
“Not too astounding,” Akamas remarked.
“No. And Cylons we know how to fight,” said Aeneas. “Order our vipers to engage the raiders.”
The base ship had waited perhaps a little too long to launch its fighters. As its raiders started streaming from its multiple hangars, they found themselves immediately under attack by Colonial vipers. Helpless as they launched, one after another was picked off. Greatly daring, in spite of intense fire from the ship’s weaponry, more than one viper pilot pressed in and fired directly into the open hangar bays, setting parts of the vast ship on fire.
“He’s on fire, my lord,” Akamas said.
“Good. Now let’s give him something to really think about. Launch missiles.”
Columbia dispatched another volley of heavyweight missiles. The dockyard’s own defenses might have picked them off again had it not been for the battlecruiser Glory, which, heedless of the danger and the close proximity of obstacles, plunged right into the midst of the orbiting structures and took the control center out. An enemy frigate that tried to stop her was swatted away like a bothersome gnat by a torpedo, the violet flash of an X-ray laser obliterating her in an instant. After that, the other small ships that had been organizing for an attack on Glory and Triumph rethought their plans and turned on Columbia instead.
“Some of those raiders have gotten clear and are heading this way,” the flight officer reported.
“Continue closing on the baseship,” said Aeneas.
After the holocaust the Colonials had had good reason to develop weapons designed to break up mass attacks by small ships against the heavy units of the fleet. Although battlestars were well defended by mixed batteries of lasers and missile launchers, such weapons were at best point-defense armament, a last resort against an enemy who had been permitted to get too close. A better solution was a missile armed with an X-ray laser. The warhead, unlike the uni-directional warheads intended for torpedoes and designed to concentrate their enormous power on a single target, was fitted with splitters that could direct the X-ray pulse onto dozens of targets. Two such missiles were ready in Columbia’s forward tubes and she now launched them. By some mischance a Cylon raider was able to destroy one before it detonated, but the second took out a good third of the attacking raiders in a single shot. Then they were too close, and Columbia’s point-defense weapons and escorting vipers had to take over.
Immediately the battlestar began taking serious damage. Aeneas gripped the command platform railing as the ship shuddered from a hit. He watched the damage control board light up with reds and yellows, but nothing vital had been struck yet. “How long until we’re in pulsar range of that base ship?” he asked.
“Six centons,” Akamas replied. “He’s fully powered-up now but not moving; either the vipers have damaged him or he was undergoing repair and doesn’t have any drive.”
“Good. Continue closing.” Aeneas checked the tactical displays. The two battlecruisers were tearing the dockyard apart with their heavy weapons. Already one of the enemy missile ships was destroyed and another was a flaming wreck, falling out of orbit out of control. A third, to Aeneas’ surprise, was broadcasting messages that it wished to surrender. Before he could absorb that development the flight officer said, “My lord, Commander Starbuck on Fleet Comline Alpha.”
“Put him through.”
In his usual informal way, Starbuck said, “Hey, one of those guys wants to give up. What do you want me to do?”
“Accept his surrender and park a homing torpedo behind him. One wrong move, let him have it.”
“Right,” Starbuck said, signing off.

On Triumph’s bridge, Starbuck turned to Boomer and said, “You heard the man.”
“Right.” He gave the necessary orders to the offensive weapons officer, then looked around to see Starbuck studying the tactical display closely. Boomer looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think Aeneas is in deep felgercarb,” Starbuck replied. “Those small ships are going to be all over him in a centon. We’re going in to help him.”
“We’re supposed to be destroying the dockyard,” Boomer felt constrained to point out, though he knew it was useless.
“The dockyard’s gonna be here after the battle. Navigator, stand by to change course....”

“Four centons to main armament range,” Akamas told Aeneas. “The vipers have him in a world of hurt, but his main armament is probably still operational.”
“Launch our last missiles.”
“Missiles away.”
The defensive weapons officer reported, “Sir, we have several enemy frigates closing behind us.”
“Frack,” said Akamas, looking over to see what Aeneas’ response was.
“Continue closing,” Aeneas said. He watched the missiles tracking away from his ship, hoping they’d get through. He’d slugged it out with Cylon baseships before and did not want to repeat the experience. Die, damn you, he thought, fists clenched unconsciously.
But the Cylon baseship still had plenty of fight in it and its lasers tore Columbia’s missiles apart before they could get within firing range.
The battlestar shuddered again, far more violently than before, and an entire block of damage-control indicators went red. “What was that?” Aeneas demanded.
“One of those frigates put a torpedo into our port main drive,” Akamas exclaimed, watching the reports scroll up on a monitor. “Damn him...we’re on fire, bad....”
“Continue closing. Fire when in range,” Aeneas said. Another explosion rocked the ship, and as Aeneas caught at the console to keep from being thrown to the deck he caught a glimpse of the flight officer’s face, tight with fear, covered with sweat. I suppose I look like that, he thought. He pulled himself upright again, for the first time looked at the rear-quadrant monitors, showing the attack of the enemy frigates on Columbia. Six or seven of the bloody things, he thought. If we only have another centon....
Another image appeared on the monitor, and two of the frigates abruptly vanished. A third disappeared in a fireball, and the others suddenly were all over themselves trying to escape.
“Starbuck, thank God,” Akamas muttered. A series of telltales went green and he exclaimed, “Firing!” as Columbia’s main batteries lashed out at the base ship. For an instant the beams of energy seemed almost to splash as they struck her shields, then her shields went down all at once and the pulsars lanced into the basestar itself. Aeneas thought the attack was going to be unsuccessful, then the Cylon baseship broke in half where the two disk-sections were joined. Brilliant flares of arcing electricity played around the severed parts as clouds of frozen atmosphere escaped into space where the ship’s pressure hull had been fractured, then the remains simply vanished in a series of explosions, silent and terrifying.
“Break off!” Aeneas ordered. “Frack!” Around him, he knew, his ship was dying. The enemy frigates had caused tremendous damage before Triumph had driven them off, and the effects were spreading. The bridge lights went out for an instant, came back on, flicked out again, came back on. Somewhere from within the bowels of the ship he heard the distinct scream of metal being pulled beyond its limits. Then there was another explosion and the lights and gravity went out together. Aeneas felt himself flung into space by another convulsion of the dying battlestar, then as the emergency systems came on line the unwelcome return of the artificial gravity yanked him down and he landed heavily on the deck just in front of the starmap behind the command platform. He tried to rise, couldn’t. Broke something, he thought. The flight officer was there, helped him up; Aeneas tried to put his weight on his left leg, was only just able to hold back a cry of pain as he did so. “How bad is it?” he gasped.
“Engines blew up,” the flight officer said simply.
“Abandon ship.”
“Commander Akamas already gave the order. Help me, sir,” the flight officer said, trying to pull Aeneas to the nearest escape capsule.
Trailing his broken leg behind him, Aeneas did his best to help the flight officer drag him towards the bright orange blinking light that marked a waiting escape capsule. Akamas was by its hatch, helping personnel into it.
“Hell of a thing,” Aeneas told him.
Akamas helped the flight officer get Aeneas inside. The capsule was already crowded with crewmen, many of them wounded to varying degrees. The seats were all taken, so Akamas and the flight officer laid Aeneas on the deck beside other injured personnel. Aeneas turned his head and looked into the face of one of the navigators...what’s her name? Leah, he thought. She was staring at him blankly, one pupil dilated, the other contracted, blood slowly seeping from one ear, staining her blonde curls. That looks bad, he thought, and then the capsule launched.

“What the hell is he doing?!” Commander Timiak exclaimed as he, Dirce, and Tinia watched the tactical display on Orion’s bridge show the developing attack on the dockyard. The battlecruiser and her consorts were waiting, stealthed, near Gamoray, waiting for the enemy to commit his cruisers and the Pegasus.
Dirce raised a hand, watched Starbuck break off his ordered attack on the dockyard to go to Columbia’s aid.
“He isn’t following orders,” Timiak maintained.
Dirce looked back over her shoulder at him; Tinia, watching, considered how far she would have fled had Dirce turned such a look on her. But then Timiak had never served with her before, and perhaps did not know her limits. “Orders,” Dirce said dryly, “are meant to be broken.” Turning back to the tactical display, she watched as Starbuck picked the attacking frigates off Columbia, permitting the battlestar to complete her attack run. She nodded in grim satisfaction as the baseship exploded. To Timiak she said, “If you disobey orders with such results, I’ll forgive you as well.”
“It looks like Columbia is pretty badly hit,” Siress Tinia said.
“Terminally, I think,” Dirce agreed, watching the battlestar turn away, burning and only marginally under control. “They’re beginning to abandon ship,” she added, noticing the little round dots of escape capsules appearing around the stricken ship. “A lot of them ought to escape.”

Though jumped by the first wave of fighters just after they entered Gamoray’s atmosphere, Rhiannon and Ares did not turn to give battle. Their orders were specific, and in any case to try and engage enemy fighters with the weapon slung under the belly of their striker would have been suicidal. It was a rocket-boosted nuclear device fitted with a long, pointed nose, designed to punch deep into the ground under the Cylon factory and ensure destruction of not only the plant itself but also of any buried installations. It was too big to fit into their weapons bay and hence did not improve their aerodynamics in the least. Out of the corner of her eye Rhiannon saw something going down in flames but she had no idea if it was another striker or one of the attacking enemy vipers.
Rhiannon got her striker down on the deck as soon as possible; the lower they were the safer from detection and interception. As soon as the drop tanks were empty she jettisoned them and pushed the throttles forward. With the weapon beneath it the striker would not quite go supersonic at low level.
It was easier flying than normal; it was a few centons past dawn and the long shadows cast by the sun rising behind them picked out upcoming obstacles, plus the still-cool air was smooth and they were not jounced around the way they would have been had they attacked in the afternoon.
Rhiannon noticed Ares stiffen, raise a hand to his helmet to tap at the receiver. “What is it?”
“We’ve lost our uplink,” he said.
“Get it back!” It had to be an equipment problem; she refused to think what else loss of contact with the Columbia might portend.
“Working on it,” Ares said, fingers moving rapidly over his instrumentation. “Wait...got it back.” He listened for a long moment, then looked wordlessly at her.
“What?” she demanded.
“It’s Triumph.”
Don’t think about it now, just keep flying, Rhiannon told herself. Just keep flying....
“Five centons to target, mark,” Ares said.
“Master arm on,” Rhiannon ordered.
“Triumph, this is striker gamma five,” Ares called, “requesting final arming codes.”
“Your code is omega, omega, four, five, nine, omega,” Starbuck’s familiar voice came back. “You are clear to attack. Good luck.”
Ares entered the code, watched the arming lights for their nuclear weapon come on in sequence. “Armed and ready,” he said.
Then they were over the lake again, on final; it occurred to Ares that this was the first time he’d seen it in daylight. The smooth blue water flashed by in a blur. It looked like good fishing...and no one is going to be fishing around here for a long time, he thought. “Picking up enemy radars; they don’t have us yet,” he told Rhiannon.
“The rest of the squadron should be hitting their anti-assault batteries...right about now,” she said, and indeed far ahead they could see the brilliant white exhaust trails of missiles firing up at the attacking strikers and other missiles heading down towards the enemy radars and missile launchers.
“Enemy radars are down,” Ares said with satisfaction.
“This is it,” Rhiannon said, and pulled the stick back. As the striker attained the vertical she pressed the button on her stick grip and the weapon was released. It climbed away as Rhiannon continued her loop until the striker was upside down, then she snap-rolled upright, pushed the throttles all the way forward, and dove again for the deck, racing away to safety.
On its own, the missile continued upward until gravity slowed it and pulled its nose down. Sensors quickly identified its target, confirmed it with images taken from the earlier reconnaissance flight. Fins oriented it, and then its rocket motor fired.
Although the factory was automated, there were a few human supervisors on shift. They knew that they were under attack, but trusted their anti-assault batteries. Some of them might have seen a flash as the missile powered down through the plant and into the ground; they might have just had time to absorb what that portended.
“Detonation,” Ares said, watching the timer count down to zero, and they both turned to look to see if it had indeed worked. As they watched, the ground under the plant bulged up in a huge dome, the factory buildings crumbling as gigantic fissures appeared under them, then the fireball broke out into the atmosphere and what it did not incinerate the blast wave flung to the winds. A vast cloud, purple and dark gray, writhing like something alive, rose into the clean blue morning sky. Suddenly the cloud was disturbed and more dust and smoke rose out to expand it horribly. Clearly at least one further missile had gotten through and detonated.
Awesome, Ares thought. What a totally over-used and washed-out word...and it’s the only one that fits. We can do this, and people like that Colonel Bojay aren’t even impressed.... A blinking light on his panel caught his attention. “Frack, we have company coming in.”
“Good,” Rhiannon hissed, and, far from heading for orbit and their assigned rendezvous, she turned to give battle.
Here we go, Ares thought resignedly. “Missiles first?”
“Missiles up.”
“Your button is hot.”
The four vipers that intercepted them had little opportunity to consider what had hit them; in any case, any viper pilot who took on a striker in atmosphere deserved what was coming to him. Rhiannon shot the first two out of the sky with heat-seeking missiles, got the third with her laser, and tore the fourth apart with cannon shells.
As she watched the last of the falling wreckage flutter down to the forest below, Ares pointed out, “We have just enough fuel to make the rendezvous.”
“All right. Switch to gravitics,” she said, pulling the nose up to begin the climb towards space. “What about that uplink?”
“I still have Triumph.”
“Do you think...?” Rhiannon ventured after a centon.
“Let’s not think. Let’s find out for sure,” he advised.

“Scanners indicate that most of the forces aboard that baseship were Cylon,” Commander Timiak informed Dirce.
She nodded. “We’re going to put a final end to that nonsense.”
Suddenly, on the scanners, a veritable cloud of enemy fighters appeared from around the limb of the planet. “Mass force of enemy fighters, closing the dockyard,” the flight officer reported.
“Estimate on numbers?” Timiak asked.
“At least one hundred and fifty. All vipers, sir.”
“Pegasus’ strike wing, then,” Dirce said. “Order Galactica to launch her wing to intercept.” As the flight officer did so, Dirce told Tinia, “It looks as if the waiting is over.”
“I think so,” she agreed.
“Further enemy fighters coming up from Gamoray. Vipers and raiders both, estimate at least one hundred,” Timiak announced.
Galactica had to drop her stealth field to launch her vipers, and in any case the brilliant exhaust effluxes of scores of vipers using full turbo made any attempt at invisibility futile, but the battlestar was positioned well away from Orion and her accompanying battlecruisers Fame and Victory just for that reason. Their location would be a mystery to the enemy for a time longer.
“Somebody is trying to be clever,” Dirce commented in tones that indicated she was not impressed as, a few centons later, Pegasus, in formation with the three surviving enemy cruisers, came around the opposite side of the planet from her fighter wing. “Plot me some intercept courses,” she ordered Orion’s navigator.
“Working on it,” the navigator replied, her expression distant as she ran through permutation after permutation in her head. “I have five recommendations for you,” she finally said, and displayed them on the tactical readout. Dirce scanned them quickly.
“This one,” she said, pointing to one. “Transmit to Fame and Victory and prepare to execute. Power up the main drive, stand by to destealth.”
There was a flurry of activity on the previously placid bridge as the crew moved to perform their assigned tasks. Rows of telltales began coming to life as the battlecruiser’s main drive powered up. As far from the planet as they had been they had risked using partial gravity, but the return of full artificial gravity was welcome.
“Ready for main drive,” the engineer reported.
“Fame and Victory confirm their orders and report they’re standing by to execute,” the flight officer added.
“Destealth and execute.”

Xaviar felt proud to be back on the bridge of the battlestar Pegasus. Iblis had shown considerable trust in him, had honored him by putting him not only in command of the Pegasus but in charge of designing the Gamoraen battle plan. He had anticipated Dirce’s attack on the dockyard, and the loss of the baseship, which had never been anything more than a slightly mobile planetary defense post, being without her stardrive, was not important. Now, his moment of glory, and the final confirmation of Scorpian superiority over the Sagitaran perverts, was about to arrive. We occupied your filthy little planet once, he thought, and what we didn’t burn out of you that time we will now.
But before he could close on the dockyard and take on the two battlecruisers that were still industriously demolishing anything they had missed, Xaviar’s tactical display painted a new threat as three more Colonial battlecruisers destealthed and started closing in on a course that would intercept him from behind. Dirce, Xaviar thought happily. He turned to the flight officer and said, “We’ll change course to intercept.”

“Nice to have so much attention,” Timiak muttered. “They’re all coming this way.”
“It’s good to be loved,” Dirce agreed warmly. “How long until we’re in missile range?”
“We’re in extreme range now. Close missile range in ten...no, nine centons.”
“Very well. Fire a salvo and give them something to think on.” Dirce leaned closer to the tactical display in front of her as a wall of missiles tracked outward from her ship, and from Fame and Victory, attacking with her. A faint smile eased the tension on her face.
“What is it?” Tinia ventured to ask.
“They’re doing just what I thought they would. They’re coming at us, and ignoring Glory and Triumph. Maybe they think they’ve used all their missiles, and I’m sure they have, but as long as Starbuck and Nigar have guns, they know how to use them. And Apollo’s vipers have theirs well and truly tied up, at least for now, so they can’t respond. Look,” she said, pointing at the display. “They’ll be in firing range in two centons.”
Evidently the enemy commander, whoever he was—Dirce suspected it was Xaviar, though there was no way to be certain and incompetence was fairly evenly distributed everywhere—saw the danger at last and his three cruisers turned in a futile attempt to intercept the two battlecruisers closing behind them. Glory’s main guns turned one to debris and Triumph crippled a second, which floated off helplessly on a course that looked as if it would take it right into Gamoray’s atmosphere. The third saw the error of its ways and broadcast a request to surrender.
Before the surrender could be accepted, Dirce watched, startled, as Pegasus launched a salvo of missiles from her stern tubes. Not expecting to be attacked by its own side, the cruiser was taken by surprise and destroyed.
“Hell, did you see that?” Dirce exclaimed, enraged.
“I certainly did,” Tinia replied flatly.
Powerfully armed and comprehensively rebuilt as she was, the only real hope of survival the Pegasus had was in surrender herself. But she continued coming on and launched a spread of missiles at Orion. Between her anti-missile weaponry and ECM, Orion dealt with them in short order, and the following salvoes as well.
“Good news,” Timiak reported. “We’ll be able to deal with Pegasus before her surviving fighters are in range.”
“It could get nasty after that, though,” Dirce said. “Stand by, main guns...fire when the target bears.”
The target was in range very shortly. Pegasus had faced Cylon baseships before, most recently over Molecay, but she had never taken on anything as brutally lethal as a Colonial Orion-class battlecruiser. The fight was over before it really began and Orion and her consorts had to make a hurried change of course to avoid the glowing cloud of debris that was all that remained of one of the Fleet’s most famous warships.
“So much for that,” whispered Tinia, pale with the horror of it.
“Not quite,” said Dirce. “Here come those damned fighters. They finally fought their way clear of Apollo’s vipers.”
Tinia looked at her. “This is the bad part?”
“This is the very bad part.” With a nod at the monitor, Dirce said, “They’re sending up more fighters from Gamoray. I told you they outnumbered us. If I was Starbuck,” she added, “I’d be making a bet with you right now on whether we make it or not.”
“You’d win. You always do. Besides, you have more money than I do,” said Tinia.
Dirce smiled. “Hell,” she said, “who’s interested in money?”
Tinia blinked, frowned, then laughed. “Just fight, Dirce.”
“It is what I do best,” she agreed distantly, studying the tactical displays.

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