William Adama

Rear Admiral William Adama was an officer in the Colonial Fleet who commanded the battlestar Galactica before, during, and after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. Born to a Caprican family of Tauron heritage, he flew Raptors and Vipers in the Cylon War under the callsign "Husker" before a long second career carried him to flag rank. His distrust of networked computers, born of that war, left Galactica untouched by the Cylon infiltration that destroyed the rest of the Fleet, and in the aftermath he joined with President Laura Roslin to lead a convoy of survivors in search of the lost colony of Earth.

Early life and the Cylon War#

Adama was born to Joseph and Evelyn Adama and named, in keeping with Tauron tradition, in honor of his half-brother, who in turn had been named for their mutual grandfather William. The Cylon uprising began when Adama was a child. Inspired by celebrated servicemen such as Ezra Barzel and Deke Tornvald, he enlisted at the Colonial Fleet's training academy rather than wait for conscription, and graduated near the top of his class as an Ensign around 42 BCH.

His first posting was to Galactica, then one of the original twelve battlestars, prized for being immune to Cylon computer intrusion. Because the ship's commander considered new Viper pilots reckless, Adama began as a Raptor co-pilot and ECO. His early missions brought him into contact with the secret Ghost Fleet and a dangerous operation on the planet Djerba, after which he was promoted to Lieutenant and given a Viper. Over the war's final years he flew in many engagements. On the last day of the conflict he took part in Operation Raptor Talon and was shot down over a Cylon facility, surviving to see the sudden broadcast of a Colonial-Cylon armistice.

Merchant service and return to the Fleet#

After the war Adama married his first wife, Carolanne, and they had two sons, Zak and Lee. His military career wound down with the peace, and he found work on a commercial freighter on the Caprica-Tauron run, where he met fellow former Viper pilot Saul Tigh. The two forged a lasting friendship.

Using Carolanne's family connections on the Defense Council, Adama secured reinstatement as a Captain, later bringing Tigh back into the Fleet as well. He served as a Major aboard Atlantia and as executive officer of Columbia before earning his own command, the battlestar Valkyrie, with Tigh again as his XO. Roughly three years before the Fall, the Admiralty ordered Adama to run an illegal surveillance flight across the Armistice Line; when the reconnaissance craft was discovered and damaged, he ordered it destroyed to prevent its capture. The incident precipitated his transfer to the aging Galactica.

Both his sons followed him into the cockpit. Zak struggled in flight training and was passed only because his instructor, Kara Thrace, let her feelings for him cloud her judgment; Zak later died when his Viper crashed. The loss drove a wedge between Adama and Lee, who blamed his father, but it also began the father-daughter bond between Adama and Thrace.

Command of Galactica and the Fall#

By the time the fifty-year-old Galactica was slated for decommissioning, Adama's wariness of automation had hardened into doctrine: the ship's systems were never to be networked. When the Cylons launched their surprise nuclear assault on the Twelve Colonies and crippled the Fleet through its compromised Command Navigation Program, Galactica was spared. Most of its modern Viper Mark VII fighters carried the vulnerable program and were lost, but the ship retained forty museum-display Viper Mark IIs, including Adama's own fighter from the first war.

In the immediate aftermath Adama favored a counterattack and called the surviving Fleet to regroup at Ragnar Anchorage, a hidden munitions depot in the atmosphere of the gas giant Ragnar, where Galactica could rearm. No warships answered the call. Instead Galactica met a ragtag convoy of civilian ships carrying some fifty thousand survivors, led by the newly sworn President Laura Roslin. Roslin urged Adama to abandon vengeance and lead the survivors to safety. After deliberation he agreed, and the Fleet jumped beyond the red line. To give his people hope, Adama publicly claimed to know the location of the thirteenth colony, Earth.

Leading the Fleet#

The journey tested Adama repeatedly. He was nearly killed when the sleeper agent "Boomer" shot him, and his recovery softened him somewhat. The arrival of the battlestar Pegasus under Rear Admiral Helena Cain brought him to the brink of open conflict over Cain's treatment of his crew; each commander secretly planned the other's assassination, though neither gave the order. After Cain was killed by the Cylon Gina Inviere, Roslin promoted Adama to Rear Admiral.

When the Fleet discovered New Caprica and elected to settle, Adama was hesitant but ultimately allowed personnel to muster out. After the Cylons located and occupied the colony, he engineered an unorthodox rescue, even jumping Galactica into the planet's atmosphere; the operation succeeded but cost the Pegasus, which his son Lee deliberately sacrificed to save Galactica. The recovery of Lieutenant Daniel Novacek, the pilot whose craft Adama had ordered destroyed years before, stirred guilt that nearly drove him to resign, but Roslin refused his resignation and awarded him a Medal of Distinction.

Mutiny and the road to Earth#

When Adama moved toward alliance with the rebel Cylons, Lieutenant Felix Gaeta and Tom Zarek launched a mutiny. Adama was arrested, tried in a rigged court-martial, and sentenced to death before loyal crew rescued him; he retook the ship without firing a shot and had Gaeta and Zarek executed. By now Galactica itself was failing, and Adama reluctantly accepted Cylon technology to patch it, then accepted that the ship was dying.

Adama commanded Galactica's final mission, an assault on the Cylon Colony to rescue the half-human child Hera Agathon. He rallied volunteers with a final speech, brokered a truce that broke down when Galen Tyrol discovered who had killed his wife, and ordered Thrace to jump the ship clear as nuclear warheads consumed the Colony. The jump carried the Fleet to a habitable world they named Earth but broke Galactica's back. Adama adopted Lee's plan to abandon their technology and scatter across the planet, and as he had always intended, he was the last man to leave the ship.

After bidding Lee and Thrace farewell, Adama flew the dying Laura Roslin over their new world in search of a place to build a cabin. Roslin died during the flight, fulfilling the prophecy of the dying leader, and Adama placed his wedding ring on her finger. He spent his remaining days beside her grave.

Personality#

Adama was a methodical, pragmatic commander who rarely let emotion drive his decisions, with rare exceptions involving those he considered family: Lee, Thrace, Tigh, and Roslin. Stoic and soft-spoken, he could command a room through plain candor rather than volume. He prized loyalty above almost all else and tested those around him by it, and he held integrity so highly that he once walked out of a lucrative job interview over questions he felt impugned his character. Long a declared atheist who dismissed Roslin's prophecies as "religious crap," his views shifted toward faith over the years, in parallel with his deepening bond with her, until religion and a sense of destiny shaped his decision to launch the final mission.