Unity

Chapter One A trio of Cylon raiders dipped and swooped through space like silent bats on razor wings. Kara Thrace clenched her toesthe only part of her that wasn't occupied with flying her Viperand tried to keep her eye on all three at once. Two of them split off and swooped around to her left and her right in a pincer move while the third one came straight at her. Kara's eyes darted back and forth and her heart pounded hard. Come on, she thought, and goosed her thrusters so the Viper jolted upward. You on the lefta little higher. "Watch yourself, Starbuck," Lee Adama said in her earpiece. His voice was heavily distorted by the radio, but Kara understood him perfectly well. You learned to sort out the words through the distortion, almost like learning a foreign language. "I know what I'm doing, Apollo," she snapped. "Watch your own ass, not mine." "Apollo's watching Starbuck's ass?" Brandon "Hot Dog" Constanza said over his own radio. "Can I make a comment about that? Please?" "Just do your frakking job, Lieutenant," Lee warned. All around them, other Vipers rushed at the flock of raiders. The deadly little Cylon ships were sleek, flat, and black, with a protrusion in the front that resembled a head. A single red "eye" cruised restlessly back and forth, hunting, scanning. Aiming. In stark contrast, the Vipers were battered and battle-worn. Kara's had once been white, but scorch marks, scrapes, and other damage had weathered it to an uneven gray. It looked like a miniature fighter jet that had crashed once or twice and been knocked back together in a mechanic's back yard. Behind Kara and the other Vipers cruised the immense bulk of the Battlestar Galactica. Surrounding it like chicks near a mother hen were the disparate shapes of some seventy-odd shipspassenger ships, cruise ships, work ships. They were all that remained of human civilization. Behind the fleet spun an honest-to-gods blue planet. It had water, it had plant life, and it was the reason why the fleet hadn't simply hit their faster-than-light drives and Jumped out the moment the Cylons Jumped in. The two Cylon raiders rushed inward for their pincer move, one to port, one to starboard. Kara caught a gleam of starlight off their forward guns. They fired. With a whoop, Kara yanked the control lever at the side of her seat. Auxiliary jets flashed, and the little fighter blasted straight upward. Bullets crossed the intervening space and both Cylon raiders exploded, torn to pieces by friendly fire. Kara wondered if they felt any pain. The Cylon ships were actually living beings, or as alive as Cylons got, anyway. Not that this fact kept Kara from pressing the trigger. She flicked another lever and her maneuverable little Viper whipped around in time to fire on the third Cylon. It exploded as well, close enough that the blast knocked her sideways a little bit, wrenching her around in her seat. "I can't believe you frakkin' did that!" Kat shouted as her own guns raked the raider in front of her. Kara grinned without answering. Ahead of her, two more Cylons exploded in bright fireballs beneath her guns. A piece of debris rushed straight at her, and she dived beneath it as if the Viper were an extension of her body. Two raiders skimmed into view ahead of her, straight into her cross-hairs, and she wiped both of them out before they even noticed she was there. Beyond the flockHarper, Steven is the author of 'Unity ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780765355195 and ISBN 0765355191.