Battlestar Galactica - Destiny, page 2
Apollo would like to enjoy the company of his son or his sister or Cassie. Even Baltar would do at a time like this. But when he saw the planet shed its atmosphere like a snake would shed its skin he decided he had to be alone. He needed to use his mind to the utmost of his ability.
There were no voices coming to him from other states of being. No whisperings from the Lords of Kobol. No good advice from his Gamon friends. He was alone in his head.
The people would turn to him again. Although the council would pretend to have a say in the decisions to come, they secretly hoped the commander might prove to be an excellent lighting rod for criticism as was his fate ever since taking up the mantle of his father.
He did not lie to himself that at times like this he wished his father still lived. It’s not that he needed Adama to tell him what to do. What mattered through all the long years of his warrior duties was confidence that his father stood there to approve his victories and help him get past his failures.
On the other side of the officer’s log, he’d never fully appreciated how much his father needed Apollo after Zack died; he hadn’t understood completely until Adama joined Zack on the other side of the curtain.
Sometimes it seemed as if life taught all the hard lessons too late to do anything about it.
There were a lot of fathers and mothers and sons and daughters who were waiting for a decision from Commander Apollo. He, in turn, was waiting for data from the scientists. What the hell had just happened to Paradis?
The biosphere was history. Salik theorized that internal forces had also begun to destroy the planet. If they hung around long enough they might even see the planet come apart at the seams. That might provide raw materials in a convenient form to build what the fleet needed.
But there was no time for that if the Cylons were on the way. Too many colonials feared the Cylons were already here and had caused the disaster. When it came to the whereabouts of the Cylons, Apollo figured it was a good idea to trust his expert.
But Baltar was no more qualified than anyone else to tell those left behind that everything was going to be all right. The Great Traitor was the last person to put in charge of the Aid and Comfort Department.
Survival in this solar system was not a problem if the ships had the means to utilize the industrial possibilities of vacuum engineering. They could weld the necessary metals more easily in space anyway. Ever since the Exodus, the colonials had all been forced to learn how to live and work in low gravity and zero gravity environments. They might not like it but those left behind had no choice.
Apollo wasn’t worried about their survival. He didn’t doubt that in time they would outfit the ships for FTL. No, there was only one worry. The Cylons were hurrying to this solar system. When they arrived they would find the stragglers. And without the support of the battlestars, those left behind would be annihilated down to the last atom.
It was a problem. He could only imagine one thing worse. The last time he spoke to Baltar, the living receiving set made a little speech:
“Apollo, has it ever occurred to you that the Cylons have changed their primary goal in regard to us? Maybe they no longer desire our extermination. You can take it from me that there are worse things than death.
“I don’t pretend to know why the Cylons mighl want us alive after all their sincere efforts to eliminate us. I suspect that it might have something to do with a war they are fighting among themselves. Maybe we can be of use to them.”
Alone in his quarters, Apollo was not about to forget Baltar’s suggestion. The Cylons were coming. They were always coming.
The next time they found Apollo, he’d be ready for them no matter what.
2
As she watched the tendrils of atmosphere uncoil into space, and the formerly beautiful planet Paradis turn into a gray expanse of dead rock and black seas. Commander Athena wrestled with a strange, new feeling. She was almost glad for the disaster because this time the horrible unexpected had taken place before any colonials lost their lives. She knew that her brother would not torture himself over making the wrong decision. Not this time.
Of course, Apollo had no way of knowing this would happen. She imagined him staring in disbelief from the bridge of the Galactica. She could bring him up on the monitor readily enough but she elected to keep her own counsel. She resided in splendid isolation on the bridge of the Daedalus, her own ship that she had made such sacrifices to attain. Glancing around, she took note that only a skeleton crew of technicians was with her at this empty hour. It was as close as a leader of a battlestar could come to being alone.
There was a morbid fascination in watching a living planet begin to die, as one layer after another came off, an onion peeling itself. Hard to believe that not long ago she had felt the breezes of Paradis on her face, drank fresh water, played with living animals and watched birds matching their brilliant plumage against richly textured sunsets.
All gone now. Another memory for the colonials to file away in their long journey from somewhere to nowhere. The scientists would argue among themselves over the death of Paradis as they had argued over its discovery. Questions of why a planet lived would be replaced with questions of how a planet died.
Athena didn’t care anymore. You’ve see one world, you’ve seen them all. She cared about the burdens of command crushing her brother. What mattered was that the council couldn’t use this as another club to beat him over the head because the planet had conveniently committed suicide just as colonials once more walked its verdant fields. While the council twiddled its collective thumbs, Apollo made decisions and acted upon them. This time he was saved from disaster. And she knew that he would have been far harsher in judgment of himself than the flaccid authorities of the council always ready to condemn a brave man.
She knew the bone-pulverizing agony of being responsible for the Daedalus. Her whole life had brought her to this honor and sometimes she could barely withstand the fulfillment of her youthful ambition. To be in charge of the entire fleet struck her as almost beyond the power of words to express. Apollo’s greatest achievement was the same as their father’s: both men maintained their sanity against impossible odds.
She turned from the monitor and one of the technicians caught her eye. “Yes, Commander?” he asked. She had not realized that she’d been staring.
“Continue with your work,” she said, and swiveled the chair back to her monitors. There were many pitfalls in command. She must remember not to treat her men as if they were equipment or wallpaper. She had a good crew and they were attuned to her at a level that, if not telepathic like the Gamon, came in a close second.
The Gamon. She hadn’t thought about them until this moment. Could they have done something to precipitate the slow fading of Paradis from the worlds of the living? They had told the colonials not to mourn their passing before it was even a fact. Apollo might be comfortable with their insistence about how they were about to pass on to a higher plane. Athena was not like her brother when it came to transcendental questions. She believed what she could see and hear, taste and touch. Apollo seemed to be on intimate terms with the Lords of Kobol in a manner that eluded his sister. The philosophy of the Gamon was even harder for her to assimilate.
Even as a young girl, she’d been too impatient for the kind of reflective life that attracted her brother. She had the sense to realize that his mystical approach to life helped give him the strength to face the challenges of ultimate command. She tried not to judge him, although there were occasions when his private insights infuriated her because he could not share them with her. At least not fully.
Then again, Apollo never had to face the prejudices a woman dealt with daily if she sought to ascend the ladder of command. Athena appreciated what female warriors preceding her had accomplished. For two hundred years women had been posted. They were on the lists. But only a fool believed the old attitudes had been completely mollified by excellent service records.
Apollo had never burned for the rank of Commander as Athena had ulcerated and ached for such a position. In common with her brother, she had risen up the ranks of command, mastering each position in turn. Athena didn’t expect any special favors because her father was the great Adama. None of his children ever gave him cause for shame.
She remembered the day her father said, “Athena, I love you and Apollo as I love my left and right hands. But the two of you couldn’t be more opposite in nature. He’d rather fly and you’d rather study, even though you’re both well rounded and able to do everything required. But your hearts could not be more different.”
That was one occasion when she wanted to be angry with her father but she found it exceedingly difficult when confronted by the truth. The trouble was that men in the ranks would always prefer a leader who flew and fought by the seat of his pants. She could spend all the time in the universe immersing herself in study and being mentored by the best tacticians she would someday replace on the bridge.
But that didn’t make her one of the boys.
Hell, she’d won the senior cadet class debate; but it was a pyrrhic victory because only the other girls in her class warmed to her afterward. That was her first big lesson on the road to having her own battlestar. If her male classmates didn’t trust her then she could never be the leader that she wanted to be.
A crotchety old professor had surprised the class with an argument that only she had felt qualified to answer. He looked right at Athena even though he was supposed to be addressing the entire class.
“You fine young ladies invariably make the case that your records are comparable to male cadets and that estrogen can prove as deep an ocean of violence against an enemy as the more highly touted testosterone. But you fail to see the one crucial weakness you bring to any large scale military operation.”
“And what is that?” she asked in an even voice, dedicated to the proposition of not losing her temper on this occasion.
“You forget the male equation in your Algebra of human rights. You are so busy proving yourself that you fail to consider what your own injury or capture means to your male comrades. It is difficult enough to abandon your fellow warrior when he’s a fellow! But if the mission requires, you must act ruthlessly. Many men find that sort of action more difficult with a woman in the picture. For instance, a man is more likely to toss a blaster to a fatally injured man and expect him to finish himself off. Women in combat further complicate an already volatile situation.”
Athena formulated her answer in the time it takes to hurl a curse or suck in a breath. “Professor, erect a neat wall between civilians and combatants and we’ll talk. But in modern warfare the primary target is the civilian population. When the enemy intends mass extermination of men, women and children these fine distinctions of yours evaporate like the morning dew. Not only do I make the case for women warriors but we should do a better job of teaching children to be killers. If I could make a daggit into a killing machine. I’d do that as well.”
The way the professor’s mouth opened and closed with no sounds coming out suggested to her that he’d never encountered her response before to what he probably viewed as his best unanswerable question. Athena only wished the male cadets had been more enthusiastic when she won the debate. One boy she’d had her eye on seemed afraid to ask her out on a date after that.
As she continued staring at the death throes of Paradis, she had a sense of grim satisfaction that her whole life seemed like a vindication for what she had said that day. The Cylons were the full embodiment of the implacable enemy that made no concessions to women and children. During the attacks on the home worlds, it seemed as if children were the primary targets.
That made biological sense to a race of monsters that wanted to remove humanity from the universe. The youngest members of the species are the most dangerous because they represent the future threat.
Athena flicked off her monitor. Contemplating a dying planet made her relive all the world-killing that began the exodus to the stars in the first place. Right about now she’d enjoy the company of Starbuck for a reason having nothing to do with romance.
Now there was a man who’d like the world of the Cylons to enter the cosmic cemetery.
The planet explodes like a bomb. Again and again it disintegrates in Baltar’s dream. But is this really happening? Is this only a dream?
“How did you sleep?” came a deep and oddly reassuring voice.
Baltar did not appreciate being asked that question inside a dream. It did not seem right to say those words to someone dreaming that he is awake. He assumed that he must still be asleep because Cylons surrounded him in a cavernous hall with an absurdly high ceiling.
Black tentacles snaking down from the ceiling provided another strong indication that Baltar was not only asleep but having his worst nightmare in some time. But how did he get from an exploding Paradis to the throne room of Imperious Leader? And why was his old tormentor asking how he slept?
“I’m on a battlestar,” said Baltar. “I’m surrounded by other colonials and we are in space. I’m nowhere near a Cylon ship or base, much less in the court of Imperious Leader. Now it’s time to wake up!”
“Have it your own way,” declaimed the Cylon mastermind. “But you’re not waking up until we’ve had another of our interminable conversations.”
“Not that,” muttered Baltar. “Not a chat.”
“Your vacation is over!” the voice insisted, growing more metallic, less human.
“Vacation?” Baltar responded with irritation. “You call that time we spent on Paradis a vacation!”
“Compared to what’s coming next,” said the voice with real sincerity. “You had an easy time of it, didn’t you? Weren’t you on the sidelines through the whole affair of the Gamon? Every now and then Apollo turned to you for advice. And then there was the supreme audacity of you teaching classes. Let’s see, what was the subject matter they entrusted you to impart to the young? I almost remember...”
“You know damned well what I taught!” he filled in. “You’re already in my head, rooting around in my secrets and the stuff I want to forget. You know everything already. I think, therefore you are!”
“No, Baltar. I think. You only react. You are mine, you sad technological barbarian.”
Baltar rose to his feet, unsteady because he was suddenly dizzy. He wondered how he could be lightheaded inside a dream. “You call me a barbarian, you monster! Cylons are no more civilized than a hive of insects.”
Imperious Leader floated above his dais. It was a new trick except that Baltar reminded himself that everything he saw wasn’t exactly real, and anything can happen inside his head.
Unconcerned with Baltar’s objections, the Cylon leader floated over to the human guest, its prey, and responded to Baltar’s thought with: “The experience may not be real in an existential sense, but a lot more is going on than your fantasies. We are in communication.”
“No! Shut up!” To his own ears Baltar sounded like a beggar.
“We communicate but you insist on adding the personal touch. Our previous encounters in the flesh—in your flesh, I should say—traumatized you. The nightmares are now part of you. We have nothing to do with that. The communications are something else again.”
“WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?” Baltar pleaded. As if in answer, one of the black tentacles hanging from the high ceiling like a sickly vine writhed down and seeped inside the fragile little cranium of the dream self locked inside the larger cranium of a sweating man, turning and tossing in his dark room aboard a battlestar.
The tentacle slithered along the central fissure separating the two lobes of his brain. The pain was beyond pain, feeding the curiosity of his unsentimental captor. Then the tentacle sank down through gray matter and found its way to the spinal cord. The black snake hollowed into its new home and sent millions of small agonies into every screaming fiber of his nervous system.
“Now that I have your undivided attention,” said Imperious Leader, “by uniting the two parts of you into one exquisite agony, I’ll explain why you are a technological barbarian. You have spent your life attempting to understand the basic laws of the universe. The only kind of law you respect is the law of gravity. Your goal has been control over the physical world. At a certain point in your development you concluded that your fellow beings were only another part of the physical world to be manipulated for your purposes, no different than a rock or a cyclotron. You never bothered yourself with the moral codes or ethical dilemmas that tormented so many of your fellow beings.”
“Hold it right there!” said Baltar. “How can you presume to judge me? Cylons do not concern themselves with the rights of other beings. You belong to the ultimate collective. You don’t accept any human notions of right or wrong, and so treat the universe in precisely the same manner that you accuse me!”
“How can a renegade like you pass judgment on the perfect morality of the Cylons?” asked a familiar voice. The ghostly visage of Count Iblis filled the chamber, his wise, tired eyes offering no respite to the great traitor.
“Morality? Them?”
“Oh, yes,” intoned the voice of the greater traitor. “They act for their own welfare, don’t they? Until this current civil strife between the biological members and the pure metallic citizens, they experienced no internal strife. They’ve never had criminals. And because their conflict is over ideology, the victors will act for the good of the whole as they see it. They are nothing like us.
“We were born as isolated egos, Baltar, alone with our own purposes. When we cooperate it is for our own narrow motives. Human beings will never know the perfect morality of a true collective.”
Baltar prided himself on being an attentive listener, even if the droning lecture was the product of his own fevered imagination. He could never be sure. Somehow the reality of the situation didn’t seem as important right now as finding an answer to the vileness of Iblis’s beliefs. If this were only a dream, he wished he could conjure up Apollo to sing the praises of freedom, to make a poem of human love and liberty. Those ideas fell outside Baltar’s area of expertise.
