Battlestar Galactica-03-Resurrection Page 10

  Nagi could not see in through the canopy; it was cauterized, like the cataracts in an old man's eye, and his rapping on the hull went unanswered.

  He didn't have a good feeling about this one. Not at all.

  Trays couldn't wait for his Viper to come to a stop and be locked down before he flung open his canopy and scampered out onto the wing. He hopped down and ran in great, scissoring strides across the bay toward Dalton's Viper.

  She was shaken and dazed, being helped out of the cockpit by meds, but Trays elbowed his way through them to the girl's side.

  "Are you all right?" Trays asked her, his hands under her arms. He lifted her down from the fighter's wing and tried to help steady her on her feet. "If anything had happened to you—"

  "If anything had happened to her, it would have been all your fault," Troy said. He clapped his hand on Trays' shoulder and squeezed hard, spinning the other man around into a looping roundhouse right. Troy's fist connected hard with the Warrior's chin, driving him back against the side of Dalton's Viper.

  "That is the last time you ever disobey an order and put the lives of your teammates and the safety of the fleet in jeopardy, or you will be grounded, do you understand me?" Troy grabbed Trays' flight suit collar and banged him back against the hull of the fighter to punctuate every word. Trays was still too stunned by the surprise punch to gather enough wits to defend himself.

  Boomer had managed to extricate himself from his Viper and hurried to Troy's side and, with Jolly's help, pulled Troy away from Trays. There was a wild moment there when Boomer thought Troy would lose control and throttle the brash upstart, possibly even kill him. Not that he could blame Troy for the impulse, but it wasn't worth seeing the boy throw away his career.

  "That's enough, son," Boomer said; it took everything he and Jolly had to keep Troy from breaking loose and going after Trays again. "He gets the message… don't you, Trays?"

  Trays, without Troy's hands around his throat, slid down the side of Dalton's Viper, coughing and wheezing for air. He loosened the collar of his tunic, massaged his throat, which still held the purple imprints of Troy's fingers, and said, "That's the last time you ever lay a hand on me." He broke into a jagged coughing fit, regained his composure. "Next time you touch me, you're a dead man."

  Dalton, ever the nurturer, knelt beside Trays and helped him to his feet, but he shucked off her hands and her concern, seeing it only as one more humiliation—a Warrior being helped up by a girl.

  "I'm only trying to help," Dalton snapped, stung by Trays' rebuke.

  "That goes for you, too," Trays warned her. "Don't ever touch me again."

  Dalton's mouth opened, then snapped shut as she set her jaw in hard resolve. She wasn't going to let him know how much that hurt. No one would ever know how much anything hurt her.

  "That's enough out of you, Trays," Boomer warned him. "That's enough out of all of you. Gods, when I think of all the good Warriors who died to keep snot-faced mugjapes like you safe…"

  "Oh my god," Dalton gasped, her hands clapped over her face.

  Troy snapped his head around, thinking Boomer's words had upset her, but she wasn't part of this conversation any longer. She was peering off in the opposite direction, back toward the launch aperture, watching Starbuck's badly damaged Viper being towed in, surrounded by swarming meds and carts full of equipment. His fighter's canopy was heat-welded shut, and the techs had to blast it off with a small wad of shaped explosive jelly. The hatch fell away in shattered, ragged pieces, and even from here, Dalton could see Starbuck was lying slumped back against his seat, unmoving.

  "Not again," she whispered. She sounded like a lost child, one who lived in a world built on a foundation of shifting sand and peopled with uncertain relationships.

  Dalton pushed aside the last of the crawlon webs from her thoughts and forced herself, on legs that felt too long for her body, to cross the landing bay to her father's blasted and scored Viper. The med crew was lifting Starbuck's limp body from the cockpit as Dalton reached his side. Nagi held her back as the meds placed Starbuck on the crash cart. One of the meds deactivated Starbuck's helm and removed it. Another ran the green-glowing hand-held scanner over his body, and as it passed over his head, it flashed a serious red.

  "Get this man to the med-bay—now," Nagi ordered.

  "What is it?" Dalton asked, her voice rising in panicky steps. "What's the matter with him? Is he going to be all right?"

  But the meds were already bustling the cart bearing the unconscious Starbuck through the cavernous landing bay; any questions Dalton had would just have to wait.

  "He'll be okay," Troy said, regretting it at once, hearing how foolish it sounded. But what else could he tell her? She was tough, but she wasn't indestructible.

  "What do you base that on?" she asked, shrugging his hand off her shoulder.

  Because he's Starbuck, he wanted to say. Because people like Starbuck and Apollo don't die. But although he may have believed that when he was just some kid named Boxey, Troy knew differently now.

  "That's what I thought," Dalton said, her lip curled in a sneer. "I can't waste any more time here." She didn't bother to look back, but ran away from Troy, from Trays, from the landing bay and after her father.

  Troy was heartsick at his impotence in comforting Dalton, and heartsick, too, that whatever fragile thread had once brought them together seemed irrevocably sundered. But that was life. All that you love will be carried away. It seemed to be full of more goodbyes than beginnings, and sometimes even the wisest men couldn't tell them apart.

  "You asked to see me, Apollo?"

  The security man escorted Baltar onto the bridge, where Apollo, Athena, and Tigh stood looking at the scanner and the planet that was so impossibly familiar. Apollo glanced sidelong at Baltar, and gripped his hands together behind his back. He wore an expression of tight, barely constrained rage.

  "Is something wrong?" Baltar asked.

  "That's what you're going to tell us," Apollo said.

  Baltar studied Apollo a moment longer, then turned to face the scanner. Apollo watched him from the corner of his eye, and if he was pretending to be surprised, Baltar put on a good show of it.

  "How is that possible?" the traitor asked, and shook his head.

  "That can't possibly be… these aren't the coordinates I gave you. What are you playing at?"

  One of the bridge crew, seated at his work station, finished studying the scroll of numbers and matching starcharts on his computer. "Coordinates match… and confirmed," he announced, and removed his headset, placing it down gently on the console before him.

  Baltar shook his head. All of a sudden, he didn't like where this was headed, didn't like it any more than the rest of them.

  The tech exhaled, a slow breath trickling from his nostrils, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He turned in his chair to face the quartet, and stood.

  "Welcome to Kobol," he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT'S A trick," Baltar said. "I don't understand why, but you're trying to trick me into believing we've come back to Kobol—" Apollo moved with surprising speed, grabbing the traitor and flinging him back against the wall, at the same time pulling his sidearm from its holster. He shoved the laser's business end into the hollow under Baltar's chin, and pressed his face close to the traitor. "This is the last time you're going to trick us," he promised the frightened man, and felt his finger tightening on the trigger.

  His anger and frustration taking over, Apollo prepared to blow Baltar's brain out of his skull, feeling as though he were watching the action like some disinterested third party. Well, gods knew, a small voice in his head rang out, maybe it's time. Adama would never have allowed himself to be made a fool of by this miscreant the way Apollo had.

  "Please, I swear," Baltar gasped. Fat beads of sweat rolled lazily down his forehead and stung his eyes. He blinked, but couldn't seem to clear his vision. "I swear to you, Apollo, I didn't know, I didn't know—"

  "Didn't k
now what, traitor?" Apollo asked. His voice was little more than a whisper. "Didn't know I'd finally grow the pogees to do what I should have done a long time ago?"

  Baltar squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth open in a silent cry of terror. He wouldn't feel the laser blast that ripped through his skull, and death would be instantaneous, but that was of little comfort to him.

  "Please—"

  Athena had motioned for a support crew to surround Apollo, and now, she stepped closer to try to dissuade Apollo from making a mistake he would forever regret. "He may well die, Apollo," Athena said, reasonably; "but you don't want his blood on your hands. If it's going to happen, it needs to be carried out by a military court… not here, and not by you."

  Apollo forced himself to regain control, and it was like the dream of falling where one awakens with a jolt and a racing heart. But he didn't feel yet as if he had completely awakened; in fact, Apollo was sure he was still falling. He slipped his sidearm back into its holster and snapped the safety strap closed.

  Athena's body seemed to unwind like a taut spring that had been suddenly released. "Guards! Take Baltar back to his quarters and stand watch outside his door," she ordered.

  Apollo, jaws set, eyes glaring, slowly nodded his assent.

  Doctor Wilker had been trying, unsuccessfully, to make contact with the bridge. Now the tech who had delivered the devastating news confirming that the planet around which the fleet orbited was Kobol, saw the flashing light on his console and ordered the computer to open the frequency.

  "Commander," Wilker said, his face as grim as his voice. "We need you in med-unit, right away. It's Starbuck… it isn't good."

  Apollo turned to Baltar, who was being escorted from the room by the Black Shirts, and thundered, "If Starbuck dies, I swear by the Lords of Kobol you won't outlive him by long!"

  Baltar's mouth opened, perhaps to plead for his life, perhaps to swear once again he knew nothing about this, but he said nothing.

  The fire in Apollo's eyes made him rethink whatever it was he was going to say.

  "If you say one word, Baltar, one little word, I swear I'll kill you now," the commander warned him.

  "Go ahead," the captain of the security guards whispered in Baltar's ear. "Say something. It'd save us the bother of keeping an eye on you."

  "I'm on my way," Apollo told Wilker. When he looked again, Baltar had been led from the bridge.

  "This could be a trap, you know," Athena told her brother, nodding her head slightly to indicate the impossible planet on the scanner.

  Apollo nodded. "I know," he said. Gods, what had he gotten them into now?

  The great minds were wrong when they proclaimed nothing travels faster than light. They had failed to take into consideration bad news, and the speed at which it travels. If starships could be made to travel at the speed of bad news, the longest journey would be over almost before it had begun.

  Aboard the bridge of the Pegasus, Commander Cain had already heard the news, and was livid with rage and confusion.

  "We're in contact with the Galactica, Sir," the communications officer told Commander Cain.

  "Put them on screen," Cain ordered, his hands grappling with one another. His normally gaunt features, wrinkled as an origami sculpture, seemed ageless now, as if he had sloughed off all his many yahren by sheer force of will.

  Apollo's features filled the flatscreen; he was not happy, but Cain didn't seem to notice. "What is it, Cain?" he asked, curtly.

  "What have you done?" Cain asked, his outrage barely in check. "How did we get back here? Of all places, Apollo, why Kobol?"

  Apollo and Tigh glanced sidelong at one another, and although their eye contact was brief, everything that needed to be said passed between them in that moment.

  Their understanding had been forged by yahren of friendship, and in many ways, Apollo considered Tigh a mentor and second father. They had, over time, developed a deep love an abiding respect for each other's wisdom and abilities. No one else would even have noticed the look that passed between the two men, but volumes had been spoken in that look, and all without a single word.

  "I appreciate and share your misgivings, Commander," Apollo began, treading lightly. He did not need to alienate Cain now, of all times. "For the moment, we're away from the Cylon armada, a breathing space that gives us the chance to study our options at greater detail."

  "Options?" Cain thundered. "We're right back at the beginning of our journey, like a bad children's game! I'd be very interested in hearing what you believe these options you mentioned are."

  Apollo did not get the chance to respond to Cain and, considering the reason, his words would not have mattered, anyway, for in the next moment all the ships in the fleet were simultaneously contacted through their communications channels. A holographic image of a hooded woman, smiling beatifically and seeming to radiate light, appeared on the bridge of every ship.

  "I bid you peace, travelers," she said, her voice as mellow as temple bells, "and welcome to Kobol."

  They all stared at her, every ship's captain in the fleet, because she was human. There hadn't been a human on Kobol for many eons. Even Cain, for once, was speechless.

  In the exact center of the basestar, the Cylon equivalent of a battlestar, sat the Imperious Leader. His chambers were a dark room located at the end of a dark corridor, and in the center of the room, which was the exact center of the basestar, there was a platform that stood nine steps high, and in the center of this platform was the seat of power from which the Imperious Leader oversaw all things.

  The sides of the pedestal on which he sat were marked and studded with hundreds of sharp points that seemed to cut the very light they reflected. In the corners of the room, torches burned, throwing off fitful light and dancing shadow.

  The double doors to the chamber opened and the cogitator called Lucifer entered. The Imperious Leader's chair was turned away from the door, and he slowly swiveled around to face his visitor.

  Each Imperious Leader had a specific reign, a length of time equivalent in human terms to three-quarters of a century. But Cylons did not recognize the passage of time in such linear terms, and each Imperious Leader chose his own successor. This was only logical, for Imperious Leaders were the only Cylons with a third brain.

  Lucifer had ambitions; he hoped he would be chosen one day to replace the current Imperious Leader. He did not have a third brain; these were awarded, implanted, and along with them, according to Cylon belief, the capacity for limitless knowledge. The first brain was little more than the body's guidance system, the bit of matter that assured efficiency of task, while the second brain contained such necessary skills for Cylon officers as analyzing and interpreting facts. Acting in tandem with the first brain, the second brain ensured its host would rise easily to the level of executive officer. But the third brain allowed the Imperious Leader to elevate above such mundane and prosaic matters as facts, and deal in abstracts. Cylons were not great thinkers, and the second brain was always hungry to join with a third, as Lucifer so well knew. With the gifting of the second brain, true hunger began.

  The Imperious Leader knew this as well; Lucifer's transparent skull atop his cyborg head flashed with the sparking of his thoughts, and so many flashes meant many, many thoughts. A cogitator with so many thoughts was one who saw himself in higher places, and who schemed to get there.

  Lucifer stopped before the towering throne and formally petitioned the Imperious Leader, a tradition as old as the Cylon race itself.

  "By your command," he said.

  "Speak."

  "The humans have evaded us," Lucifer reported, "and are now on an unknown course."

  The Imperious Leader, far from being wrathful, steepled his fingers together and nodded. "All is well," he said. "All goes according to plan."

  And then the Imperious Leader made a sound Lucifer did not recognize, but it was no wonder, for it was a sound never heard among the cold-blooded Cylon race.

  It was the sound of laug
hter.

  About that time, Apollo could have gladly used a third brain to help him make sense of all the contradictory facts with which he had been presented.

  Segis, as the robed woman identified herself, was infuriatingly calm and evasive, vowing that "All will be revealed in its time." But was that because the fleet was safe here, and had all the time in creation, or because the jaws of the trap into which Baltar had led them were not quite ready to snap shut? Apollo wished he knew.

  "You must understand our caution," Apollo tried again. "If you could only give us some… token of faith… a gesture of trust between us___"

  But Segis just smiled her maddening smile, and said, "To pick something up, Commander, you must first place something down."

  Apollo sighed, rubbed his tired eyes. About the only thing he had to put down was his own neck on the butcher's block. Unfortunately, it was ultimately not only his head that would roll, if he was wrong. A commander had to be quick and decisive, but too many things were being hurled at him at once.

  "All things in due time," Segis vowed again.

  "First, I must see to the safety of my fleet," Apollo said.

  He ordered the ships to take stationary orbital position on the far side of Kobol, in case the Cylon armada followed them through the hyperspace shortcut. At least the fleet would be in something resembling a defensible position, rather than waiting like a flock of bovas for the pack of lupuses to bring them down. Plus, despite their hostess's graciousness and warmth, something about Segis did not sit well with Apollo, and he could not shake the feeling this was a disaster waiting to occur.