Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 13
Title: Stumbling Towards the Dawn - Part 13
Word Count: 2,484
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
“Admiral, Wraith is in trouble!” Adama’s communications officer shouted. “Her captain reports that her engines have been hit. Her crew is abandoning ship.”
Adama glanced at the DRADIS plot just in time to see Imperial battleship Wraith vanish from the universe. However, there were fewer hostile icons displayed, and the Baseships’ coordination was shot because of the Imperial jamming drones, but the Cylon raiders were still hellishly effective. The lifeboats and breaching pods were fragile eggs in this shooting gallery.
“Get me Pegasus Actual,” he ordered the communications officer. “And let our vipers know to head for the closest Imperial ships when the need to land. The girl nodded and went to work. “Helm, new heading--take us in closer to Target Beta.”
“Aye sir,” the helmsman replied as he input new coordinates.
“Pegasus Actual is on the line, Admiral.”
“Lee,” Adama said when his son answered. “I’m taking Galactica in to retrieve Wraith’s lifeboats and breaching pods. I need Pegasus to keep the raiders off my back.”
“Understood sir, will watch your back,” his son replied briskly and closed the channel.
Adama changed channels on the Imperial comlink and the image of Harriet MacIntyre flashed into the air in front of him. “Captain MacIntyre,” he said without preamble. “I’m heading in to pick up Wraith’s lifeboats and breaching pods, please advise them to make for my flight pods. I’ve ordered my fighters to land on your ships.”
“Understood, Admiral--will advise Wraith’s small craft to head for Galactica,” MacIntyre replied. “Also, be advised that Enterprise and War Hammer have arrived. They’ll be in-system within four minutes and will drop fighters and parasites to provide additional cover.”
“Flight deck reports ready to receive Imperial small craft, sir,” his comm officer reported and he nodded. The fires of Tartarus made his ship shudder, but she was a tough old girl--she would survive.
“Continue targeting the raiders,” he ordered his tactical officer. “Keep them off the small craft.”
“Aye sir,” the tactical officer replied.
“We’ve lost our number two port mid-ship gun and we’re low on ordinance for the forward guns,” Kelly reported. “Damage Control teams are working to fix the transfer rails in order to divert ordinance forward from mid-ship.”
Adama nodded. “Just keep them shooting, Jake,” he said grimly to the younger man. “Just keep shooting.”
“Flight deck reports Imperial small craft coming in hot!” the comm officer said.
“Radiological alarm! Incoming nukes!” came the shout from tactical and Galactica lurched in agony.
#
“Pull up Digger!” Captain Karl “Helo” Agathon shouted at the Pegasus nugget. But it was clear that the novice pilot, rattled by the loss of her more experienced wingman, had made a critical tactical error in trying to run from the Cylon raider. Instead of pulling an end over end flip to send her fire down the toaster’s throat and present the viper’s smallest profile, she’d opened her ass to the enemy fire. And Helo was too far away to lend any assistance--Gods, too many are dying, way too many! Even the Imperial fighters, despite their shields, were taking heavy losses.
“I can’t shake him!” Digger’s panic was even more evident in her words than in her jinking flight.
“We’ve got you, little buddy,” a new voice came over the fold space comlink as two Imperial fighters swooped in from “below” and blasted the raider from existence. It was then Helo noticed that two more giant Imperial “planet” ships had joined Indomitable and Herdan. Hundreds more Imperial fighters swarmed onto the battlefield.
“Mind if we join the party?” the strangely accented voice continued. “Captain Jules Cocteau, call-sign Frenchie, at your service. My friend here is Thor.”
“There’s more than enough meat to go around, Frenchie, Thor,” Helo replied, blasting away at his Cylon target. “Good to see you guys. Captain Karl Agathon, call-sign Helo. That there is one of my nuggets, Digger.”
“All right, Digger,” Frenchie said, “Stick with us, and let’s kick some chrome-plated ass!”
“Yes sir!” Digger replied, noticeably more confident now.
And for the first time since the engagement began, Helo felt that he could breathe again.
#
“She’s what?” Jos Kirkland said as Herdan’s communications officer reported on the fighter on a collision course with Cylon Basestar Charlie.
“They’ve clipped my wings,” Major Diana “Kali” Ingram said in a grim voice. “I’m going down one way or another. Cormorant still has people on that Basestar--I’m going to try an emergency landing and hook up with the Marines.”
“Copy that Kali,” Kirkland said shaking his head; Harriet smiled in amusement. “Will advise Cormorant.”
#
“She’s what?” George Thompson shouted at Cormorant’s comm officer in outrage as he and his gaggle of POWs joined the rest of his fire teams at the junction corridor.
Suddenly the Basestar heaved like a wounded leviathan, causing some of the POWs to cry out. More than one body-bag stretcher tipped precipitously with its precious cargo. He heard the Colonial Admiral snarl at the bearers to keep their minds on jobs; Thompson was glad to have him ride heard on the POWs.
“Crazy-assed fighter jocks!” Grissom swore.
“We can’t worry about that right now,” Thompson said, but none-the-less, he set his comlink's locator beacon to broadcast. “Kali will just have to find us under her own steam. Perry, Mankowicz--your teams will bring up the rear. Sarazin, you guys go play scout. Let’s move out!”
Admiral Solomon pushed his way forward to fall into step next to Thompson. “Mind telling me what all that was about?” he asked, but he was alert as his watchful eyes swept the corridor.
“One our fighters has made an emergency landing on this Basestar, sir,” Thompson said ruefully and the man did a shocked double-take. “The crew will be looking to hook up with us and get off this tin can before she goes kaboom!”
#
“She’s gone, Tony--grab your gear and move it,” Diana Ingram said as she dragged her operations officer’s attention away from the mangled corpse of their friend and weapons officer, Lieutenant Magda Evans. She double-checked the readouts on both their suits integrity as she shouldered her survival pack and then consulted her sensors’ read of the ship’s layout.
“I’m only detecting locators for two squads of Marines still on board this bird. Thompson’s one deck down--he’s headed for the breaching pod attached to the forward hull on that deck. Juniper Malik’s squad is on this deck, but she’s to hell and gone aft of this position. It looks like there’s a transit shaft this way,” she said as they picked their way through the dank, messed-up wreckage of the Cylon docking bay to what might pass for an airlock.
At the exit into the dimly-lit corridor, Diana’s sensors tweaked. With a low order she and Tony flattened against the bulkhead. She peeked around the corner; a male Cylon with one shattered arm was hobbling down the corridor towards her position, struggling to keep someone upright with his good arm. Diana recognised him from Adama’s intelligence photos; Leobon, this model was called Leobon. She focused on his burden. It was a woman, barely conscious due to the drugs in her system according to sensors … and she was naked.
Oh, hell no!
Diana raised her gun, took careful aim and blew the Cylon’s brains out. It collapsed onto the woman’s body.
“Cover us,” she told Tony as she rushed over to the woman, who was struggling to get the cyborg’s dead weight off her. Diana picked up the thing and threw it against the bulkhead where it landed with a dull thud. She knelt beside the struggling woman and tried to calm her down, but if anything, her struggles just got more frantic and her mewling cries became keening wails.
“Clear your visor,” Tony advised as he turned on his emergency lamp. “You’re freaking her out.”
Diana did as she was told and tried to speak to the woman in the Colonial language. “Ma’am?” she said gently sweeping the heavy mane of damp, dark hair away from the woman’s face. “Ma’am, we’re here to help,” she said and looked down into the terrified eyes of Laura Roslin.
“Oh fucking hell!” Diana cried involuntarily as she recognised the Colonial leader.
“Diana?” Garibaldi said in concern.
“Fuck it--get on the horn, Tony, and get someone here to pick us up now!” she ordered, biting back her own tears as she registered the bruises marring the woman’s porcelain skin. She rummaged through her pack for a thermal blanket and wet-wipes. “Tell them we’ve found Laura Roslin, but there’s no way to carry her and hoof it halfway across-ship to the Marine breaching pod.”
Diana turned her attention back to her charge. “Ms Roslin,” she said gently as she wiped off the worst of the Cylon’s blood and wrapped the blanket about the woman’s shivering body. “We’re here to help, Ma’am. We're here to rescue you. Admiral Adama sent us,” she continued with sudden inspiration.
The change in Roslin’s demeanour was dramatic as Diana invoked Adama’s name. Her eyes suddenly focused as she rasped out, “Whel--” in a hoarse, torn voice.
Diana pulled out her water cache and held the siphon to Roslin’s chapped lips.
“Easy,” she said as Roslin sucked greedily. “Try to drink slowly.”
“William!” Roslin croaked painfully as she pulled her head away.
“Yes,” Diana replied stowing the water cache back into her survival pack. “Admiral William Adama.”
“Where?”
“He’s on Galactica, Ma’am,” she answered. “He’s leading our ships out there in the fight against the Cylons. He sent my people in to get you and the other prisoners off the Basestars.”
“Your people?” she rasped out and Diana’s heart lifted to see her engaged. It reminded her of watching her eldest daughter as a child, try to figure out a puzzle, and it was a definite improvement over the almost feral, instinctive creature of only minutes ago.
“Yes, my people,” Diana said attempting to keep it light. “Didn’t I introduce myself?” she said in mock dismay. “How remiss of me--my mother would be very disappointed in my manners. Well I’m Major Diana Ingram, call-sign Kali, and I am a fighter pilot on board His Majesty’s ship, Emperor Herdan. That big lug over there is Lieutenant Antonio Garibaldi, my fighter’s operations officer.”
“His Majesty?” Roslin said faintly in confusion.
“Umm hmm, His Majesty Colin MacIntyre the First, Emperor of the Fifth Imperium, the Empire of Man … and by happy co-incidence, our motherworld, Earth,” she said gently.
Roslin’s lips trembled as she whispered, “Earth? William found Earth?”
Diana grinned. “Not exactly, but he did find us,” she told her. “And I suspect that you’ll get to Earth in good time. But right now, the plan is that as soon as we can evacuate New Caprica, we'll head for the Imperium's capital world, Birhat.”
"Why not go to Earth?" Roslin asked plaintively.
"Well, fifty years ago we fought a war against an alien species called the Achuultani," she explained. "It turns out they'd created their own version of the Cylons--"
"Figures," Roslin rasped out. Diana laughed--glad to see the glimmerings of humour.
"Yeah, tell me about it," she said. "Anyway, these master computers not only turned on the Achuultani, they turned them into slaves and then used them to wipe out all species of organic life they could find for the last seventy million years." She saw Roslin's surprise at that information and continued briskly. "Well, to make a long story short, they found Earth fifty years ago and tried to wipe us out. We fought back and won, but the Achuultani bombardment nearly shattered Earth--as it is, they're just starting to come out of a global ice age--"
"And they wouldn't be able to cope with us," Roslin said, a shrewd look coming into her eyes.
"Yes Ma'am," she replied. "Birhat has the necessary infrastructure to help your people and house you until you choose a new home from among the planets that are ready to be opened for colonisation.” Roslin looked at her dubiously and Diana could see the wheels turning behind those intelligent grey-green eyes.
“They’re coming,” Tony said over her private channel, “ETA six minutes. A breaching pod will attach at the cross-corridor up ahead. They suggest that we stay here until they have a seal, but they can’t guarantee it will be a tight seal.”
“Then we’ll have to bag her to be safe,” Diana said, pulling a body-bag from her kit and handing it to Garibaldi. She’d hesitated to use it before because of the rapport she’d built with Roslin and to change that might push the woman into shock or worse. But if the pod’s seal wasn’t tight and the ship started venting atmosphere, Roslin would die.
As Tony set up the body-bag, Diana turned her attention back to Roslin. “Ms Roslin, our rescue party will be here in a few minutes,” she said. “They’re using a breaching pod and that might cause the ship to lose integrity in this section. Therefore, we’re going to have to put you into a portable life-support unit.” She saw the fear in the woman’s eyes and hastened to continue. “It will only be for a little while, until we can get you on board our ship, I promise, and I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Roslin closed her eyes and nodded her permission. As gently as she could, Diana lifted her up and placed her in the bag. “Adjust the internal temperature to maintain at least twenty-two degrees Celsius,” she ordered Garibaldi. “We don’t want her to go into shock.”
Turning back to her charge, Diana put her spare emergency comlink near Roslin's head and activated it. “You’ll be able to hear everything and speak to us with this,” she told her. “I promise--everything will be fine.”
“Thank you,” Roslin replied. Tears smarted in her eyes.
“You’re welcome,” Diana said and put her water cache within Roslin's easy reach. She squeezed woman's hand gently, before withdrawing and nodding to Tony to help her seal the bag.
While Garibaldi hooked up the oxygen supply, Diana pressed each of the corner seals together, causing a chemical reaction that stiffened the joints and walls, making a flimsy plastic bag into a rigid, self-contained life-support unit.
“Try to relax, Ma’am, and take deep breaths … there’s more than enough air. I know that you’re still pretty shocky, but I need you to stay awake and alert until our medics can treat you. All right?”
“Mmmm, yes,” Roslin whispered.
The ship shuddered as the pod made contact with the hull. “Don’t worry,” Diana told her charge. “We’ll just wait here until the marines give the okay.” Roslin lifted one hand and pressed it against the transparent top of the unit. Smiling, Diana pressed her gloved hand against it in return.
Part 14
Word Count: 2,484
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Not mine ... just playing.
Spoilers: To LDYB Part II - Everything is definitely AU from the moment the Cylons flew over.
Summary: When Cloud Nine is destroyed, it attracted the attention of not only the Cylons.
Author's Note: This is a crossover fic, with David Weber's Mutineer's Moon - Fifth Imperium universe, but I don't think that you need to know the universe of this trilogy of novels to get it. Hopefully, it's explained well enough in the story.
“Admiral, Wraith is in trouble!” Adama’s communications officer shouted. “Her captain reports that her engines have been hit. Her crew is abandoning ship.”
Adama glanced at the DRADIS plot just in time to see Imperial battleship Wraith vanish from the universe. However, there were fewer hostile icons displayed, and the Baseships’ coordination was shot because of the Imperial jamming drones, but the Cylon raiders were still hellishly effective. The lifeboats and breaching pods were fragile eggs in this shooting gallery.
“Get me Pegasus Actual,” he ordered the communications officer. “And let our vipers know to head for the closest Imperial ships when the need to land. The girl nodded and went to work. “Helm, new heading--take us in closer to Target Beta.”
“Aye sir,” the helmsman replied as he input new coordinates.
“Pegasus Actual is on the line, Admiral.”
“Lee,” Adama said when his son answered. “I’m taking Galactica in to retrieve Wraith’s lifeboats and breaching pods. I need Pegasus to keep the raiders off my back.”
“Understood sir, will watch your back,” his son replied briskly and closed the channel.
Adama changed channels on the Imperial comlink and the image of Harriet MacIntyre flashed into the air in front of him. “Captain MacIntyre,” he said without preamble. “I’m heading in to pick up Wraith’s lifeboats and breaching pods, please advise them to make for my flight pods. I’ve ordered my fighters to land on your ships.”
“Understood, Admiral--will advise Wraith’s small craft to head for Galactica,” MacIntyre replied. “Also, be advised that Enterprise and War Hammer have arrived. They’ll be in-system within four minutes and will drop fighters and parasites to provide additional cover.”
“Flight deck reports ready to receive Imperial small craft, sir,” his comm officer reported and he nodded. The fires of Tartarus made his ship shudder, but she was a tough old girl--she would survive.
“Continue targeting the raiders,” he ordered his tactical officer. “Keep them off the small craft.”
“Aye sir,” the tactical officer replied.
“We’ve lost our number two port mid-ship gun and we’re low on ordinance for the forward guns,” Kelly reported. “Damage Control teams are working to fix the transfer rails in order to divert ordinance forward from mid-ship.”
Adama nodded. “Just keep them shooting, Jake,” he said grimly to the younger man. “Just keep shooting.”
“Flight deck reports Imperial small craft coming in hot!” the comm officer said.
“Radiological alarm! Incoming nukes!” came the shout from tactical and Galactica lurched in agony.
#
“Pull up Digger!” Captain Karl “Helo” Agathon shouted at the Pegasus nugget. But it was clear that the novice pilot, rattled by the loss of her more experienced wingman, had made a critical tactical error in trying to run from the Cylon raider. Instead of pulling an end over end flip to send her fire down the toaster’s throat and present the viper’s smallest profile, she’d opened her ass to the enemy fire. And Helo was too far away to lend any assistance--Gods, too many are dying, way too many! Even the Imperial fighters, despite their shields, were taking heavy losses.
“I can’t shake him!” Digger’s panic was even more evident in her words than in her jinking flight.
“We’ve got you, little buddy,” a new voice came over the fold space comlink as two Imperial fighters swooped in from “below” and blasted the raider from existence. It was then Helo noticed that two more giant Imperial “planet” ships had joined Indomitable and Herdan. Hundreds more Imperial fighters swarmed onto the battlefield.
“Mind if we join the party?” the strangely accented voice continued. “Captain Jules Cocteau, call-sign Frenchie, at your service. My friend here is Thor.”
“There’s more than enough meat to go around, Frenchie, Thor,” Helo replied, blasting away at his Cylon target. “Good to see you guys. Captain Karl Agathon, call-sign Helo. That there is one of my nuggets, Digger.”
“All right, Digger,” Frenchie said, “Stick with us, and let’s kick some chrome-plated ass!”
“Yes sir!” Digger replied, noticeably more confident now.
And for the first time since the engagement began, Helo felt that he could breathe again.
#
“She’s what?” Jos Kirkland said as Herdan’s communications officer reported on the fighter on a collision course with Cylon Basestar Charlie.
“They’ve clipped my wings,” Major Diana “Kali” Ingram said in a grim voice. “I’m going down one way or another. Cormorant still has people on that Basestar--I’m going to try an emergency landing and hook up with the Marines.”
“Copy that Kali,” Kirkland said shaking his head; Harriet smiled in amusement. “Will advise Cormorant.”
#
“She’s what?” George Thompson shouted at Cormorant’s comm officer in outrage as he and his gaggle of POWs joined the rest of his fire teams at the junction corridor.
Suddenly the Basestar heaved like a wounded leviathan, causing some of the POWs to cry out. More than one body-bag stretcher tipped precipitously with its precious cargo. He heard the Colonial Admiral snarl at the bearers to keep their minds on jobs; Thompson was glad to have him ride heard on the POWs.
“Crazy-assed fighter jocks!” Grissom swore.
“We can’t worry about that right now,” Thompson said, but none-the-less, he set his comlink's locator beacon to broadcast. “Kali will just have to find us under her own steam. Perry, Mankowicz--your teams will bring up the rear. Sarazin, you guys go play scout. Let’s move out!”
Admiral Solomon pushed his way forward to fall into step next to Thompson. “Mind telling me what all that was about?” he asked, but he was alert as his watchful eyes swept the corridor.
“One our fighters has made an emergency landing on this Basestar, sir,” Thompson said ruefully and the man did a shocked double-take. “The crew will be looking to hook up with us and get off this tin can before she goes kaboom!”
#
“She’s gone, Tony--grab your gear and move it,” Diana Ingram said as she dragged her operations officer’s attention away from the mangled corpse of their friend and weapons officer, Lieutenant Magda Evans. She double-checked the readouts on both their suits integrity as she shouldered her survival pack and then consulted her sensors’ read of the ship’s layout.
“I’m only detecting locators for two squads of Marines still on board this bird. Thompson’s one deck down--he’s headed for the breaching pod attached to the forward hull on that deck. Juniper Malik’s squad is on this deck, but she’s to hell and gone aft of this position. It looks like there’s a transit shaft this way,” she said as they picked their way through the dank, messed-up wreckage of the Cylon docking bay to what might pass for an airlock.
At the exit into the dimly-lit corridor, Diana’s sensors tweaked. With a low order she and Tony flattened against the bulkhead. She peeked around the corner; a male Cylon with one shattered arm was hobbling down the corridor towards her position, struggling to keep someone upright with his good arm. Diana recognised him from Adama’s intelligence photos; Leobon, this model was called Leobon. She focused on his burden. It was a woman, barely conscious due to the drugs in her system according to sensors … and she was naked.
Oh, hell no!
Diana raised her gun, took careful aim and blew the Cylon’s brains out. It collapsed onto the woman’s body.
“Cover us,” she told Tony as she rushed over to the woman, who was struggling to get the cyborg’s dead weight off her. Diana picked up the thing and threw it against the bulkhead where it landed with a dull thud. She knelt beside the struggling woman and tried to calm her down, but if anything, her struggles just got more frantic and her mewling cries became keening wails.
“Clear your visor,” Tony advised as he turned on his emergency lamp. “You’re freaking her out.”
Diana did as she was told and tried to speak to the woman in the Colonial language. “Ma’am?” she said gently sweeping the heavy mane of damp, dark hair away from the woman’s face. “Ma’am, we’re here to help,” she said and looked down into the terrified eyes of Laura Roslin.
“Oh fucking hell!” Diana cried involuntarily as she recognised the Colonial leader.
“Diana?” Garibaldi said in concern.
“Fuck it--get on the horn, Tony, and get someone here to pick us up now!” she ordered, biting back her own tears as she registered the bruises marring the woman’s porcelain skin. She rummaged through her pack for a thermal blanket and wet-wipes. “Tell them we’ve found Laura Roslin, but there’s no way to carry her and hoof it halfway across-ship to the Marine breaching pod.”
Diana turned her attention back to her charge. “Ms Roslin,” she said gently as she wiped off the worst of the Cylon’s blood and wrapped the blanket about the woman’s shivering body. “We’re here to help, Ma’am. We're here to rescue you. Admiral Adama sent us,” she continued with sudden inspiration.
The change in Roslin’s demeanour was dramatic as Diana invoked Adama’s name. Her eyes suddenly focused as she rasped out, “Whel--” in a hoarse, torn voice.
Diana pulled out her water cache and held the siphon to Roslin’s chapped lips.
“Easy,” she said as Roslin sucked greedily. “Try to drink slowly.”
“William!” Roslin croaked painfully as she pulled her head away.
“Yes,” Diana replied stowing the water cache back into her survival pack. “Admiral William Adama.”
“Where?”
“He’s on Galactica, Ma’am,” she answered. “He’s leading our ships out there in the fight against the Cylons. He sent my people in to get you and the other prisoners off the Basestars.”
“Your people?” she rasped out and Diana’s heart lifted to see her engaged. It reminded her of watching her eldest daughter as a child, try to figure out a puzzle, and it was a definite improvement over the almost feral, instinctive creature of only minutes ago.
“Yes, my people,” Diana said attempting to keep it light. “Didn’t I introduce myself?” she said in mock dismay. “How remiss of me--my mother would be very disappointed in my manners. Well I’m Major Diana Ingram, call-sign Kali, and I am a fighter pilot on board His Majesty’s ship, Emperor Herdan. That big lug over there is Lieutenant Antonio Garibaldi, my fighter’s operations officer.”
“His Majesty?” Roslin said faintly in confusion.
“Umm hmm, His Majesty Colin MacIntyre the First, Emperor of the Fifth Imperium, the Empire of Man … and by happy co-incidence, our motherworld, Earth,” she said gently.
Roslin’s lips trembled as she whispered, “Earth? William found Earth?”
Diana grinned. “Not exactly, but he did find us,” she told her. “And I suspect that you’ll get to Earth in good time. But right now, the plan is that as soon as we can evacuate New Caprica, we'll head for the Imperium's capital world, Birhat.”
"Why not go to Earth?" Roslin asked plaintively.
"Well, fifty years ago we fought a war against an alien species called the Achuultani," she explained. "It turns out they'd created their own version of the Cylons--"
"Figures," Roslin rasped out. Diana laughed--glad to see the glimmerings of humour.
"Yeah, tell me about it," she said. "Anyway, these master computers not only turned on the Achuultani, they turned them into slaves and then used them to wipe out all species of organic life they could find for the last seventy million years." She saw Roslin's surprise at that information and continued briskly. "Well, to make a long story short, they found Earth fifty years ago and tried to wipe us out. We fought back and won, but the Achuultani bombardment nearly shattered Earth--as it is, they're just starting to come out of a global ice age--"
"And they wouldn't be able to cope with us," Roslin said, a shrewd look coming into her eyes.
"Yes Ma'am," she replied. "Birhat has the necessary infrastructure to help your people and house you until you choose a new home from among the planets that are ready to be opened for colonisation.” Roslin looked at her dubiously and Diana could see the wheels turning behind those intelligent grey-green eyes.
“They’re coming,” Tony said over her private channel, “ETA six minutes. A breaching pod will attach at the cross-corridor up ahead. They suggest that we stay here until they have a seal, but they can’t guarantee it will be a tight seal.”
“Then we’ll have to bag her to be safe,” Diana said, pulling a body-bag from her kit and handing it to Garibaldi. She’d hesitated to use it before because of the rapport she’d built with Roslin and to change that might push the woman into shock or worse. But if the pod’s seal wasn’t tight and the ship started venting atmosphere, Roslin would die.
As Tony set up the body-bag, Diana turned her attention back to Roslin. “Ms Roslin, our rescue party will be here in a few minutes,” she said. “They’re using a breaching pod and that might cause the ship to lose integrity in this section. Therefore, we’re going to have to put you into a portable life-support unit.” She saw the fear in the woman’s eyes and hastened to continue. “It will only be for a little while, until we can get you on board our ship, I promise, and I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Roslin closed her eyes and nodded her permission. As gently as she could, Diana lifted her up and placed her in the bag. “Adjust the internal temperature to maintain at least twenty-two degrees Celsius,” she ordered Garibaldi. “We don’t want her to go into shock.”
Turning back to her charge, Diana put her spare emergency comlink near Roslin's head and activated it. “You’ll be able to hear everything and speak to us with this,” she told her. “I promise--everything will be fine.”
“Thank you,” Roslin replied. Tears smarted in her eyes.
“You’re welcome,” Diana said and put her water cache within Roslin's easy reach. She squeezed woman's hand gently, before withdrawing and nodding to Tony to help her seal the bag.
While Garibaldi hooked up the oxygen supply, Diana pressed each of the corner seals together, causing a chemical reaction that stiffened the joints and walls, making a flimsy plastic bag into a rigid, self-contained life-support unit.
“Try to relax, Ma’am, and take deep breaths … there’s more than enough air. I know that you’re still pretty shocky, but I need you to stay awake and alert until our medics can treat you. All right?”
“Mmmm, yes,” Roslin whispered.
The ship shuddered as the pod made contact with the hull. “Don’t worry,” Diana told her charge. “We’ll just wait here until the marines give the okay.” Roslin lifted one hand and pressed it against the transparent top of the unit. Smiling, Diana pressed her gloved hand against it in return.
Part 14