38 Quartus 6490
Chapel, the Battlestar Pegasus

Final briefing had come and gone.

Illych, Mione and Willem had all come aboard the Pegasus for it. Van Trion wasn't available: she was too busy doing the last centon checks over the old colony, getting as good an estimate as possible on Cylon numbers and checking that the planet hadn't suddenly sprouted more defensive wards overnight. Apollo wasn't worried about Van's absence. He trusted her to be where he wanted her when he wanted her there.

The two transport ships and the Hertford were to stay back, well hidden behind a dense asteroid field on their approach to their position behind the second planet in the system, while the Pegasus moved in closer and Apollo and the Dhow's warriors went in and did... well, whatever it was they had to do to give Apollo the chance to work out exactly how right he was.

After the other captains had dispersed back to their ships and Cain went to the bridge to confer with Kit and Tolen, Apollo spent his last centar on the Pegasus in the little chapel on Deck Four. Praying was something he'd stopped doing long ago, when he'd abandoned the outward practice of his childhood faith. He wasn't sure that he was praying now, when all his chaotic thoughts could come up with was a constant plea that he be as wrong as he possibly could be. Instead he sat very quiet, staring at the altar, going over it again and again.

In a few centars time, he could be a murderer.

He didn't know if he would ever be able to come into a chapel again to face up to a God he had trouble believing in. He wasn't sure he could face up himself, for that matter.

But for all that, the dusty little chapel was a comforting place to be. The décor was simple, simpler even than the church at home where he'd spent many a bored Tenth-day, but the imagery was the same. If he concentrated and shut off the little voice inside him pleading for it all to be a bad dream, then he could almost hear old Father Diogenes singing the prayers in his cracked, wavering tenor.

It was a memory he took with him to the flight deck to pick up his transport to the Dhow. Cain was loaning him a Viper. He'd got used to flying Vipers; he even liked flying Vipers. He still preferred the small Shield Raptors, but half of that preference came from an emotional attachment and loyalty to anything that smacked of home. There was nothing wrong with a Viper, and he was grateful for Cain's unexpected thoughtfulness.

No-one came to see him off. He was thankful for that. Bojay had wished him luck at breakfast, with the same polite indifference he'd feel if their positions were reversed and Sheba had added her good wishes almost as a careless afterthought. She'd been a little off with him for the last couple of days, for some reason. It didn't bother him, certainly it didn't bother him enough to ask her why. It had taken him a little while to notice.

He was so glad that Jak hadn't assigned him to the Pegasus, that he seriously considered kissing the old man's trouser turn-ups next time they met. Waiting for the Pegasus bridge to give him launch authority was a form of purgatory. And as the Viper shot down the tube at last, the only emotion he felt, aside from the constant anxiety about what he'd find on Molecay, was a profound and genuine relief.