Chapter 1: The Beginning
The air in the main landing bay of Picon Fleet Headquarters always carried the same chill, but today it felt electric. Maybe it was the extra spring in her step, or maybe it was the low, anxious thrum of the Viper Mark IX’s nuclear core powering down behind her, a sound that lived in her bones. Commander Emma Kent—Aphrodite to everyone from the President down to the deck crew—swung herself out of the cockpit and landed on the deck plating with a soft tap of her boots.
“Welcome back, Commander.” Chief Reno didn’t look up from his datapad, a smudge of grease already on his cheek. “Heard the buzz? They’ve finished the paint job.”
“Don’t tease me, Chief. My heart can’t take it.” She pulled off her flight helmet, and a cascade of blonde hair tumbled free. She shook it out, feeling the weight of a five-hour patrol leave her shoulders. The bay around them was a symphony of organized chaos: the shriek of mag-clamps, the distant thump-thump-thump of a maintenance bot, the ozone-tinged scent of burnt plasma that never really washed out.
Reno finally grinned, nodding toward the vast observation blister at the end of the bay. “Go see for yourself.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.
The walk was a gauntlet of nods, salutes, and lingering looks. She offered smiles, a few words here and there, her melodic voice cutting through the industrial din. She was used to the looks—a mixture of respect and raw want. It was part of the landscape, like the flickering red emergency lights that cast long shadows up the stark corridor walls.
The view from the blister stopped her breath.
Docked to the external skeleton of Headquarters was a leviathan. A next-generation battlestar, its angular, black-steel hull bristling with new projectile batteries and point-defense clusters. It was massive, a city block of calculated violence sleeping in the void. And along the starboard flight pod, gleaming under the station’s work-lights in fresh, brilliant white, was her name: APHRODITE.
Her ship. Her command.
“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
She hadn’t heard Captain Daniels approach. He was old guard, grizzled, his uniform always a bit too crisp.
“It is.” She kept her eyes fixed on the ship. “A bit flashy with the name, though.”
“The President’s idea. ‘Morale.’” He said the word like it tasted of something sour. “She’s all yours once the final systems checks are done. Tomorrow, probably. Just in time for the review.” He clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Don’t let it go to your head, Commander. Admiral’s stars look good on you, but only if you earn them.”
“Understood.” She watched a shuttle drift slowly toward the battlestar’s main hangar bay, a tiny minnow approaching a whale.
A sharp, synaptic jolt, wrong and artificial, lanced through the station’s neural net and directly into her wrist-comm. Every light on the Aphrodite—and across the entire headquarters—snapped from steady white to pulsating crimson.
The alarm that followed wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure wave, a bone-deep BWOOM that shuddered the deck plates.
Daniels frowned, tapping his own comm. “Report.”
Emma was already moving, her blood switching from celebratory to combat-cold in a heartbeat. She slammed her hand against the blister’s comm-panel. “Reno! My bird, now! What’s happening?”
Reno’s voice crackled, strained. “Multiple unknown jump signatures—right on top of us! It’s a frakking ambush!”
Outside the window, space itself tore. Silent, gashing ruptures of blue-white light spat out horrors. Cylons. A dozen Basestars, their spidery arms already beginning to glow with the fire of readying missiles. Swarms of Raiders, like metallic piranhas, spilled into formation.
The colonial fleet, caught at rest, scrambled. Vipers streamed from the flight pods of other battlestars, their chemical engines flaring. Then, the silent kill.
A creeping, digital blackout.
The lights on the battlestar Athena, docked opposite, winked out. Completely. Her flight pod, half-full of launched Vipers, went dark and drifting. Across the formation, ship after ship—cruisers, gunships, two other battlestars—powered down. Their engines died. Their weapons fell silent. Only the frantic, short-range chatter of the already-launched Vipers filled the comms, screaming for orders that wouldn’t come.
Her Mark IX was different. A prototype. Isolated neural network, hardened systems. It hadn’t gone silent.
It had screamed.
The alien jolt she’d felt. The Cylon hack had hit it, tried to claw in, and been burned by the unique architecture of its nuclear heart. Her fighter was the only system still online in the entire HQ bay.
“They’ve killed the fleet!” Daniels yelled over the rising panic on the deck behind them.
“Not all of it.” Emma was already running, her hair flying behind her like a banner. “Reno! Is she live?”
“Core’s hot and singing, Commander! What’s the plan?”
She vaulted over a railing, landed hard, and sprinted the last fifty meters to her Viper. The deck crew, trained for this, had the canopy open and the ladder ready. She was climbing in before they could steady it.
“The plan is I fly,” she said, pulling her helmet on. The HUD flickered to life, a symphony of targeting data and system readouts against the relentless flash of red alarms. “You get me a firing solution on anything that isn’t us.”
She sealed the canopy. The world became the hum of the reactor, the cool flow of her suit’s atmos, the glowing green and gold of her controls. Outside was panic and darkness. In here, there was only purpose.
“Aphrodite to any colonial forces,” she called, her voice calm in the chaos. “Cylon electronic warfare has taken down the fleet. I am the only active weapon in the main bay. I am engaging. Do not fire on the Mark Nine. Repeat, do not fire on the friendly glowing fighter.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Her hands danced over the controls. The mag-clamps released. Her Viper dropped two meters and then her main engines ignited, shoving her back into the pilot’s couch with the beautiful, brutal force of a god’s shove. She shot from the blacked-out bay into a storm of confusion.
Space was a mess. Drifting colonial ships, dead in the water. Glowing Cylon Basestars, their missile ports now open. Clouds of Raiders turning their attention from the powered-down giants to the few active Vipers making desperate, uncoordinated attacks.
A targeting pipper settled over a trio of Raiders weaving toward a drifting cruiser. Her finger brushed the firing stud.
The Viper Mark IX didn’t have guns. It had lances.
Twin beams of concentrated hell, brighter than stars, flashed from her wings. They punched through the lead Raider, speared the second, and clipped the third. All three vanished in silent, expanding balls of gas and debris.
“That’s one,” she whispered, already banking hard.
A missile lock warning screeched in her ear. A Basestar had spotted her. She kicked in the tactical FTL jump—a short, gut-wrenching flicker of nowhere—and reappeared five kilometers to port, upside down relative to the enemy. Her lances fired again, slicing across a Basestar’s spine. It didn’t explode, but deep internal detonations bloomed along its length, and it began to list, bleeding atmosphere and fire.
She was a wasp in a hornet’s nest. A very, very angry wasp with nuclear stingers.
For minutes that felt like hours, she danced. She weaved through salvos of missiles meant for battlestars, slicing them apart with precise energy bursts. She baited Raiders into chasing her, then vanished with a micro-jump and annihilated them from behind. Each kill was a message. Each saved Viper, a tiny victory.
But it wasn’t enough. She was one ship. The hack was systemic. The Aphrodite, her beautiful, untouched command, was a silent, powerless monument next to her.
A new signal flashed on her threat board. Not Cylon. Colonial. A weak, battery-powered distress ping, coming from the command deck of the headquarters itself.
Followed by a voice, crackling with static and sheer terror. “Aphrodite! They’re boarding us! They’re—!”
The transmission cut.
Emma stared at the darkened, vulnerable station, then at the Cylon armada still disgorging troopships. Her allies were helpless. Her home was being invaded.
She pivoted her Viper, facing the onslaught. The nuclear core pulsed, ready. Her fingers curled around the controls.
One step at a time. First, clear the door.