Battlestar Galactica-03-Resurrection Page 17

They walked slowly back through the ancient city, talking a little, lapsing into long, companionable silences. Troy felt comfortable with the quiet; at least it wasn't directed at him, for a change. By this time, the celebration was winding down, and only a few serious revelers were left at their tables, drinking, talking, laughing, bargaining with the few socilators who hadn't already been purchased. But they all ignored Troy and Dalton, and that was fine.

  She hesitated, just for the space of a heartbeat, at the entrance to their building, but she said something to herself that Troy couldn't quite catch, and then she was all right. She pushed open the door, and they entered the foyer. They rode the ascensior up to her floor in silence, and stepped quietly out when the computer announced this was their floor. Troy looked up and down the hallway for Trays, but there was no sign of him, as he was sure there would not be. It was too soon. He would want to gather friends behind him before he came after Troy. Well, that was fine. Let them come.

  Dalton's door opened at the touch of her palm on the identi-pad, and Troy helped her inside and into her sleeping module. As exhausted as she was, she would be glad to sleep in her clothes. "You going to be—" Troy started to ask, then thought better of it. He was going to have bruises as spectacular as one of Caprica's sunsets by the morning as it was. "Well," he said, and, not sure what else to say, he wished her good night, and started to leave.

  "Wait," she said, and gripped his hand between hers. It was a strong grip, but it was a strength born out of the fear of being alone and dreaming lonely. "Please, don't go."

  Troy sat on the edge of her sleep module, each of them looking at the other, neither sure what to say. Dalton drew her long, shapely legs up, and for a moment, Troy thought she was going to curl up into a ball once more, but she was just giving him room. "I'm sorry," she said at length, "I'm not very good at opening up."

  He laughed gently; for a moment, she thought he was making fun of her, but his expression was without guile. He reminded her, "Yeah, you forgetting who my dad is?"

  "I'm serious, Troy. I've had to be tough all my life, trying to live up to being Starbuck's daughter, so it isn't easy for me to let anyone see how I really feel."

  Troy took her gently in his arms, slowly and tenderly, as if he feared he might frighten her off, like some skittish avion, but she flowed into his arms like quicksilver. After a quiet while, he laid down behind her, with her back against his chest, snuggling like spoons in a drawer. Her hair tickled his nose and cheek, but he wouldn't brush it away for all the world. He inhaled softly, catching her scent, intoxicated by it. He wanted to kiss her ear, and jaw, and nuzzle her shoulder, but at the moment, she needed a friend who would listen, and he loved her enough that he could be that for her.

  "I guess I've always felt, I don't know, abandoned by him—always going away and leaving me alone," she continued; it was easier for her to speak her feelings this way, without looking Troy in the eyes. If she disappointed him, at least this way she wouldn't have to see it. "All my life, I've blocked my feelings for him out of fear of being hurt again, and now I'll never have a chance to tell him how much I love him and respect him, no matter what kind of father he may have been."

  The tears burned a slow track from the corner of her eye and over the bridge of her nose and down her cheek to fall upon her hair and pillow. "I know I'm going to miss him for the rest of my life, and I'll always regret not being able to say the things I really wanted to say," she managed. Troy held her a little tighter, a little closer. "But I'm also truly afraid of loving anyone because I don't know if I know how, and my feelings for you are so confusing. That's why I've been… that's why I pushed you away. I knew.

  Trays was no good for me, knew he'd reject me or I'd reject him, and that was easier than facing my feelings for you."

  "Your feelings for me?"

  She shifted in his arms, turned to lie facing him, and even though her eyes were red and puffy from crying and her hair was a mess, she was still the most beautiful woman Troy had ever seen.

  "I think I'm in love with you, Boxey," she said.

  "We have to work on that Boxey thing," he told her, and they both laughed. He kissed her, and kissed her again, and they came together as close as praying hands, and out in the streets far below Dalton's window, the last of the party goers finally left for home, but in her room, the real celebration was just beginning.

  Cassiopeia awakened to the feeling she was not alone; that was true, since Apollo slept like one drugged beside her, but she felt another presence here in the room with them. She gasped when she saw the hooded figure standing at the foot of the bed, its eyes glowing red.

  Before she could speak, or scream, or rouse Apollo, she felt her will being deadened, as if she were some insectoid trapped in a crawlon's web, injected with numbing toxins. The robed figure stepped closer, and its eyes seemed to glow brighter still, boring through her skull and into her brain, and deep into the core of her being. There was something unspeakably evil about it, something unutterably corrupt, but she could not look away. If it cost Cassiopeia her soul, she could not look away.

  She threw back the warmers and let loose her hold on Apollo. Perhaps if she had not done that… but then that slow, clanging alarm was silenced. Cassiopeia belonged to this thing now, heart and soul, but it cared not a whit for her heart.

  Cassie nodded, and, smiling, she stood and spread her arms to take this nocturnal lover to her bosom. "Darling," it said.

  At about the same time the celebration in the hidden city was beginning, the Scarlet Viper bearing Starbuck's body continued on its lonely, endless journey, already far away from Kobol, moving into deeper space. Odd pulses of light filled the cockpit of the funeral ship, then, darkness, as if the ship were signaling to something or someone.

  Out past the farthest moons of Kobol and the next planet in the Kobollian solar system, and out beyond that, and still the little ship sailed on.

  Another burst of light from the cockpit, this time brighter, and sustained, and the entire ship seemed to glow now, as if it were made of solid light.

  In its path, far away but growing nearer, larger, came a beacon of light, its ray shining through the cold gulf to play upon the Viper's hull. The funeral ship grew brighter still, until it was almost translucent, little more than a carving of light, every nut and bolt and plated seam clearly delineated. It was not just following the path of light now, it was becoming the light, and its speed increased as it drew nearer the source of the radiant beam.

  The light and its source were almost too brilliant, too beautiful to gaze at, but it was equally impossible not to look, even if it meant being struck blind. And then, as the Viper rode the ribbon of light up into the source, for just a moment, just before it vanished, the radiance revealed itself to be a Kobollian Light Ship.

  And then, the Light Ship and the Viper vanished, and the darkness crowded in once again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CYLON RAIDERS stipple the sky, as plentiful as the fluff of weeds, blotting out the sun.

  Vipers scramble to meet the attack, but there are so many Raiders, and they seem to have come from nowhere, just appearing over the planet, that many Warriors and their fighters are destroyed before they can even leave the ground. A few Vipers get airborne and instantly engage the Cylon invaders, but it doesn't matter, because for all the Raiders that are destroyed, the basestars, each as big as a small moon, disgorge a dozen more to replace each one that's fallen. The basestars themselves are bristling with armaments, and enough raw firepower to rip Kobol apart down to its molten core.

  And now the plasma cannons power up, and the first blast is loosed, tearing through the tallest building in the city, where the civilians are housed. It is just meant to be an opening salvo, a shot across the stern, with no purpose other than to show the colonials just what kind of power they are up against, and that resistance is futile.

  Another plasma pulse rips through the base of another building, triggering a series of explosions that grow expon
entially larger. The building stands upright a moment on support columns

  that no longer exist, and then topples with an exaggerated, comic grace into the building next to it. Windows shatter, followed a micron later by walls, and countless bodies, many of them still alive, tumble one after another to a horrible death.

  Apollo stands in the center of all this, watching, not understanding why he isn't already scrambling for his Viper, why he's letting everyone else face the juggernaut and die in his place.

  The toppling buildings strike the ground hard enough to shatter it, and wild zigzags race across the earth in all directions, past Apollo, and directly beneath his feet. He hears the ground sigh, as if it halfway expected something like this to happen, all along and it's been proven right, and a micron later, the ground vanishes beneath his feet and he is dropping into the caverns below this city.

  Impossibly, he is not hurt, but is standing on his feet, even though great slabs of the world above litter the cavern on all sides of him. He looks up, but there is nothing to see. The roof of the cavern is miraculously healed, as if by faith. The sounds of battle filter down through the blanket of stone, and puffs of dust and small rocks tumble from the roof, shaken loose by unimaginably powerful explosions, but it is all distant, and far away, part of another world, not his, like hearing voices and laughter coming from the living compartment next door. Whatever is happening above, Apollo senses his business is down here, among the ancients.

  Circles of light appear on the path before Apollo, and he follows them the way a man will use stepping stones to cross a stream. Somehow, the lights lead him to the temple, and the indecipherable writings and runes and sigils and mimms and japps on the wall are glowing like witchfire. He squints because their light is so intense, and even through slitted eyes he can feel the light burning itself on his retinas, bouncing off his optic nerves and racing up into his brain, where the symbols brand themselves indelibly.

  Now he closes his eyes, but the symbols are there, like the information scroll on his Warrior's helm, and the symbols are racing faster and faster, spinning and whirling, fusing into new words

  that he thinks he might be able to understand, if they'd only slow down for just a moment.

  There's music now, and he doesn't know how long it's been playing; it's like the sounds of battle filtering down from above, through countless tons of earth and stone, distant and vague and just… there. But now that Apollo is aware of the music he can hear it more clearly, and he realizes it's a verse of some kind, being sung over and over. With that snatch of tune in his head, the symbols suddenly seem to make sense, and he's about to decipher their meaning when he feels a touch on his shoulder.

  He turns and finds himself looking at the serene face of Talen, standing there in her white robes. She smiles and her hands reach up and shake loose the cowl that half-hides her face, and Apollo wonders how he could have been so blind, how he could have not recognized her. And he begins to speak her name, with the prickling of tears in his eyes… as he wakes up.

  "Are you all right?" a woman's voice asked him. He blinked, confused by his darkened surroundings, in that half-world between waking and dreaming, at the borderland of fact and fancy. "Apollo, are you all right?" the voice repeated, and he finally recognized it as belonging to Cassiopeia, although that only created more confusion: How the frack did he get here? He touched his hand to his temple, throbbing from too much ambrosa not that long ago. A black wrecking ball of pain had set up inside his skull and begun demolition.

  He nodded, wished he hadn't, and said softly, "I'm all right." His tongue felt as fat as GarTokk's thumb, too big for his mouth, his eyes too small for their sockets. Gods, how did Starbuck do this night after night? Apollo swung his legs over the edge of the sleep module, realized he was naked, and looked with some alarm at Cassiopeia.

  "On the back of the chair," she said, pointing. She drew her legs up to her chest, and wrapped the warmer around her naked body. Apollo pulled on his trousers and punched his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, feeling the blood drums pounding in his head with every movement he made. "Where are you going?" she asked.

  He considered for a moment. "I don't know," he admitted, "I just have to go."

  Apollo pulled on his boots and stood; the room swirled around him and he had to sit down on the edge of the berth until it stopped. "You're in no condition to leave here," Cassie warned him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. He shook it off and stood up, and this time the room decided to cooperate and obey the rules of gravity.

  He didn't know what else to say, so he repeated himself, "I have to go." As if that would make it all clear to Cassiopeia, when it wasn't clear even to him. Apollo reached the door and stepped out into the corridor, where Gar'Tokk sat on his haunches, back against the wall, eyes closed in a light doze.

  At the end of the hallway, Apollo saw Talen standing there, smiling, as she had been in his dream. He opened his mouth to ask her about the dreams he had been having, but she motioned with her hand for him to follow her, and then, as if it were assumed he would, she turned and walked down the corridor.

  "Wait!" Apollo called after her. Gar'Tokk's eyes opened and he was on his feet at once.

  Apollo hurried after Talen, but even though he ran and she walked, she remained too far ahead for him to do much more than narrow the gap, as if this were still somehow a dream of running and staying in one place. Gar'Tokk was at Apollo's side, his long, muscled legs keeping pace easily. "Two women in one night?" he asked the commander, something like a smile on his broad face.

  "Just keep running," Apollo told him.

  The entire chase took on a dreamlike quality, as Talen led them down winding side-streets of the mirror city, passing through alcoves whose walls dripped with water from the underground river that passed just above their heads, then on street level once more, but the maze was no less twisting and labyrinthine for all that. Talen, herself, appeared only as a furtive figure, a glimpse of white through dark, shadowed alleyways, just enough to convince Apollo they were still on the right trail, but never long enough to catch up with her or for her to answer any of their shouted questions or demands to stop. With every step he took, Apollo could feel the physical exertion burning off the dulling effects of the ambrosa, but the whole, surreal quality of the night journey remained.

  Gar'Tokk noticed what Apollo was beginning to suspect, that their pursuit formed an inward spiral toward the very heart of the underground city.

  As they wound their way ever inward to the ancient city's core, the buildings themselves seemed to become more ancient, as if the city had not been built, but had grown organically from these primitive structures.

  Even Gar'Tokk became confused in this winding maze, and took a frustrating turn down a wrong avenue, leaving Apollo to run on ahead. By the time the Noman retraced his steps and made his way back to where he had lost Apollo, the commander was gone. Gar'Tokk's nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, but Apollo and his scent had both mysteriously vanished.

  In point of fact, Apollo had not gone that far; a simple stone facade was all that separated the two men—the width of a wall. Apollo had followed Talen into the open doorway of a tumbledown kiosk, and then lost sight of her. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized there was a staircase leading down beneath the underground city, and, after only a moment's hesitation, Apollo began his descent into the underworld.

  The steps also spiraled, as if everything turned inward upon itself in this city, on this planet, and even in the murky darkness, Apollo saw the narrow staircase was carved from one colossal pillar of stone that stretched from the obscure depths below, up to the roof of the cavern. One stumble would end in a broken leg… or neck. Apollo's hand felt the main support column from which the steps had been hewn as he wound his way down and around.

  At last he reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped off onto solid ground once more, but the room into which the steps delivered him was not much larger than his sanctuary
aboard the Galactica, and the walls were without doors on all four sides of him. Of Talen, there was no sign, but then, he really wasn't expecting there to be. Of course, he was familiar with this particular bit of camouflage from his own chambers and the sanctuary Adama had kept hidden for so many yahren; there was a concealed door, obviously. It was just a matter of finding it and determining how it opened.

  Apollo ran his hands over the smooth stone, surprisingly warm to the touch, almost as if it were alive… or else hell was just on the other side of that wall. At this point, Apollo didn't think either revelation would particularly surprise him.

  As he brushed the wall, more ancient symbols appeared, glowing from within, as if awakened by his touch, and from everywhere and nowhere at once, he heard the song of the bells that he had heard, or dreamed he heard, in the temple. His instinct, or his inner vision, told him what to do: listening to the music of the bells, he vocalized the same few notes he heard in his head. It was a simple passage, but achingly beautiful for all its simplicity. The wall before him began to shimmer and warble, and phased out of the three dimensions it had occupied. Behind it, a sudden wash of light flooded out of the now-revealed chamber, but as bright as it was, Apollo found he did not have to blink. The light was gentle, comforting, and Apollo stepped into the hidden chamber and into another, impossible world.

  Delicate crystalline towers soared so high that Apollo had to crane his neck back to see their uppermost spires. Glass walkways connected the topmost floors of the structures, radiating outward from one central spire, joining with others, and, from there, leaping outward to still another ring of towers, like strands of a crawlon's web. Overhead, a great crystalline ball hung from the ceiling of the cavern, catching the diffuse light and shining it back upon the city; the buildings themselves reflected the light in prismatic hues and chromatic values. Apollo followed the graceful, fluted curves of the buildings from the topmost tower down, down, into the abyss from which the glass city grew.