To Stop Running
by AJ Marks
Part 3
“Commander Apollo, what do you think you’re doing? You do not have the permission of the council, you realize that?” Ziers roared at Apollo.
“Commander Tigh, we’ve got a serious situation here,” Apollo said, ignoring what Ziers said, knowing that the commander would be off screen. He continued before Ziers could say anything else. “It seems that we are now surrounding by a fleet of warships, I don’t recommend fighting out way out.”
“You never would have been in such a situation had you followed the council’s wishes,” Ziers stated, anger in his voice.
“There was no time to consult the council, and wait as they debated for centons about what to do,’ Apollo replied. “And councilman, which would you rather have, the Pegasus in this situation or the entire fleet in this situation as we waited for your decision on what to do.”
He watched Zier’s face turn red at the insult before he finally managed to reply. “That does it, son of Adama or not, I’m calling for the council to remove you as commander of the Pegasus right now, let me talk to your second in command now.”
“Commander, we’ve got a problem,” Apollo heard the scanner operator say even as he looked over at his second in command, Devon. He gave him a nod indicating who he would follow, and it was not the council.
Devon reached over and cut off the transmission from the Galactica. “It was a boring conversation anyways commander, and we have more pressing concerns,” he said to Apollo with a smirk.
“We’ll we’re going to have deal with that later on, but,” he trailed off seeing the looks from the rest of the crew. They all were thinking the same thing. The council seemed to interfere too much on decisions they should not be making. He knew they had slowly been expanding their power over the yahrens, and they would have to deal with it, but for now, they would work on another problem.
“Well, they can’t fire us all,” Devon replied, knowing it for the truth.
“All right, what’s the problem,” Apollo said, turning the conversation back to the situation at hand as they ignored the fleet line. One great part of the Pegasus having been a flagship, it had the ability to block out other priority messages.
“There are several fighter type ships heading our way, and Captain Starbuck and his patrol are heading back asking what they should do?” the operator stated.
“Tell Starbuck to land, make no hostile moves,” Apollo said. “Close the blast shields, yellow alert, but do not put the weapon systems on-line yet.”
He wanted to be ready in case they attacked, but he would not be the first to attack.
“Communications, see if you can raise the enemy commander,” Apollo said.
“Sir, Captain Starbuck is requesting to talk to you,” the reply came back to him. Apollo motioned for him to put it though.
“Apollo, we’ve been ordered to one of their ships, and I’ve been thinking about this, we should take it,” Starbuck said causing Apollo to wonder about such a tactic. “We scanned their fighters, they are human, we might have found a group who knows where Earth is.”
Apollo gave it some thought before replying. “All right, but be careful, and try not to start a war by flirting with some cute woman, you know how Cassiopeia is.”
“Right,” Starbuck answered.
He watched the scanner as the vipers turned, and hoped Starbuck and his son would do a good job being the ambassadors for the fleet. He knew the council would have a fit, but whatever worked.
Percy White watched as the invading ship began to obey their commands. This made him pause, and wondering if they were the ones they were looking for. He doubted they were the ones who had attacked the outpost, but that raised another question.
If they were not the attackers, then what was the luck that two groups of aliens could be encountered so quickly together. He had an idea about going over to the invading ship on a shuttle.
Of course, he knew the captain of the Pacifica would argue against such an arrangement, and did. They still had no way to know if this group was friendly or not. Still, he made plans in case the group turned out to be friendly.
“Any reports on scans from their ships?” Apollo asked. He knew Starbuck mentioned they were human, but he wanted to know for himself.
“Still working, they are just too far away still for such a reading,” the reply came back from Devon.
“Okay,” Apollo replied, seeing a message from the Galactica come in text format.
He read it though chuckling at the tone of the councilman. He was going to be court martialed for his actions, and thrown in the brig for a long time. Of course that was all considering what would happen next. What would the council do if this was Earth? That thought made him smile.
Starbuck and Boxey made their way towards the ship which was given in the instructions to follow. They both noticed it was large, about the size of a battlestar, but looked more primitive, menacing than anything they had come across before. The Easter Alliance destroyers were elegant compared to these ships. Both hoped the landing bay would be long enough for them to land in.
Starbuck was given instructions to cut his engines. He did and drifted towards the hangar. To his amazement he was caught in a beam of energy which maneuvered the viper into the landing bay and settled it down into the hangar. He noticed several armed guards waiting for them even as Boxey’s viper was placed next to his.
“Boxey, I think we should do what they say kiddo,” Starbuck said surveying the situation in front of him.
He climbed out along with Boxxey and stood by their vipers not making any sudden moves, instead waiting for them to move first. They seemed a bit shocked at their appearance. Several guards shifted and a few murmurs rose but were quickly silenced by the person in charge.
“Slowly remove your weapons, place them on the ground and walk towards me,” the man in the middle said.
Starbuck slowly removed his blaster, then made his way towards the men. They were handcuffed and taken off the hangar deck and down several corridors and finally put into separate cells.
Starbuck wondered what might happen next, especially considering this went so well. He really hoped to talk to someone in charge.
Apollo waited on the hangar deck, as a shuttle from their ‘captors’ made its way over to the Pegasus. He had no idea what to expect, only that they were taking no chances with everything. They were intelligent, and he hoped they were reasonable. He still had Ziers working to get him dismissed from command, and probably already had if the Council was meeting already.
The shuttle landed and was maneuvered out of the way for operations. It was larger than he expected it to be, but if fit easily inside the hangar of the Pegasus. He looked around the crew to make sure no one made any threatening moves, or would appear hostile.
He watched several men step out, some were armed, but one was dressed in white, obviously a high ranking uniform especially considering how the others looked towards him for what to do next. They appeared slightly shocked upon seeing the crew of the Pegasus. Apollo stepped forward gaining everyone’s attention.
“Welcome aboard the battlestar Pegasus, I’m Commander Apollo,” he said. The shock in the man’s eyes was evident, and Apollo hoped he would use that when talking.
“Admiral Percy White,” the man replied, extending his hand as he looked around. “You’re friendlier than I was expecting, yet.”
Apollo watched as he trailed off in thought, not voicing something else which was bothering him. Apollo had the feeling there was something going on, and he wanted to know what that was.
“You are on board my ship, surrounded by my warriors, we could try to fight our way out, but that would cost unnecessary lives,” Apollo said. “I think you’ll find the truth of why we’re here vastly different than what you think.”
“Perhaps,” the admiral said. “We should sit down and talk then.”
“Come with me,” Apollo said, as they walked off the hangar towards his office, which would do very nicely.
Ziers angrily walked into the council room. He had been disobeyed by someone in the military. He had Marcus call an emergency meeting of the council so they could deal with this latest development. Normally they would have been one member short, Helisan would be over on the Pegasus, but had come over for a council meeting earlier in the day. The Pegasus had left before the meeting had finished.
“Gentlemen, sorry for calling you together in such a short notice. But Commander Apollo has once again overstepped his authority in recent actions,” Ziers told the group.
He watched as two councilmembers rolled their eyes. They were his political enemies, but most supported him and Marcus. He had the political advantage here and everyone understood that.
“What are you talking about,” Terrance asked. He was young, and been nurtured by a previous councilmember, Uri. He had supported Adama and been against many ideas that Ziers tried to bring forth. He was one man who Ziers had yet be able to bring around.
“Commander Apollo has willfully taken the Pegasus away from the fleet and into a dangerous situation. Even now he continues to ignore my requests for communications,” Ziers said.
“Perhaps he encountered something that required immediate attention, or are you willing to put the entire fleet at risk because he wounded your pride, and you can’t act as dictator,” Terrance replied.
“My pride had nothing to do with this, the commander deliberately ignored an order from the council,” Ziers said, wondering how the man could be so dense. They must maintain order, otherwise they had nothing. “If they ignore the council then what’s to stop them taking over the council. We must show them we still have power for the people otherwise we will have a dictator.”
“And what are you proposing?” Marcus asked. “If the commander isn’t answering then we might have to presume the worst and that the battlestar was destroyed.”
“No, its fleet line is still working. Damn the fact the Pegasus was a flagship with the ability to ignore priority communications,” Ziers replied, still angry about that. “I want to put the commander up on charges of negligence and willingly ignoring council orders.”
Everyone knew such charges would end Apollo’s career. Ziers hoped it worked and he could place his own man in command.
“We will vote on the issue in standard procedure,” another member said, watching as the others agreed on that. Ziers had wanted an open vote to see who might vote against him on this, but with so many agreeing on this way, he could not push his view.
They went about and a few minutes later the vote was tallied. His proposal passed with a slight majority, seven to five. That surprised him a bit, that so many voted against him. He wondered who else voted with Terrance.
“Thank you gentlemen, is there anything else that requires our attention?” Ziers asked, waiting patiently for any reply. He could not wait to go tell Tigh the council’s decision.
Apollo walked into his office, along with a couple of members of the group that had demanded his surrender. There was something different about this group of humans. They were wary of him in a way he had never met. It was unlike the Eastern Alliance, which were curious about their technology.
“Please, have a seat,” Apollo said, motioning for them to have a seat.
“Thank you, I have a few questions for you,” Percy said, pulling out a a small rectangular device, it looked like a pad of paper, but had a screen, and seemed to be a small computer.
“Well, I’ll try my best to answer them,” Apollo replied, wondering if Percy wanted to know where they were from.
“A few hours ago one of our listening posts was attacked and destroyed by an unknown force. We sent out a ship to investigate and discovered your entering our system. What do you know about that?” Percy asked, shocking Apollo. It sounded like some sort of internal problem.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. We were investigating signals when we encountered you,” Apollo said.
“Then you know nothing about these ships,’ Percy said, doing something on the tablet and turning it around so Apollo could see. He looked on at the blurry picture. It was hard to see, but it was there, and he felt a sinking feeling at the sight.
“Cylons!”
End part 3
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