Battlestar Galactica 3 - The Tombs Of Kobol

by Glen A. Larson

  Flight-control specialist Rigel had Boomer and Jolly hold at the outermarker preparatory to making their landing runs. Through the noises on the commline he could hear Starbuck and Apollo' report from further out. Good, Boomer thought, I'll be able to get to the party before the guest of honor. Hate to show up late for this bash.

  "Repeat: Boomer, do you read?"

  Repeat? He hadn't heard any previous message from Rigel. Maybe there was some foul-up in the communication system. It was time to overhaul this old viper—way overdue, in fact. It was, after all, one of the originals and not one of those glued-together wrecks that the foundry ships were manufacturing.

  "Reading," Boomer said.

  "You are cleared to land, Alpha Patrol."

  "Thank you."

  Boomer didn't know whether what he felt as he aimed his viper toward the landing deck was a wave of relief or another mild bout of dizziness.

  "Let's put 'em in, Jolly."

  Jolly's ship headed in first. As it neared the pod containing the landing deck, it wavered momentarily from its usual direct line. Boomer was on the commline immediately, shouting:

  "Hey, Jolly, get your nose up. I've seen cadets make a better approach than you're making."

  Jolly did not respond right away. Boomer became afraid something was wrong. When Jolly finally did speak, it was in a detached, apathetic voice:

  "What'd you say just now, Boom—"

  "I said, get your nose up and steady up."

  Jolly's apparent disorientation and his own feelings of sickness and dizziness made Boomer apprehensive. What could make both of them act so erratically?

  "You feel all right, Jolly?"

  "I don't know, Boomer. I have a buzzing in my ears." Boomer became conscious of a buzzing in his own ears. "And, I don't know, I feel a little woozy." Boomer felt more than a little woozy. "And cold inside." Boomer's blood seemed to be turning to ice.

  "We better get our breather gear checked. When you land—that is, if you land, c'mon, get your nose up, Jolly—when you land, wait for me at the decontamination chamber. Copy?"

  "Copy, Boomer."

  Somehow Jolly managed a proper landing. Well, proper enough according to the general handbooks, but not the smooth, slick landing one would expect from a pilot of Jolly's skills.

  Boomer found it was all he could do to keep his own viper steady as he came in for landing. For a moment after his viper had streaked to a stop, he felt too dizzy to pull himself out of his cockpit. A member of the flight crew offered to help, but Boomer waved the woman away and climbed out unsteadily.

  At the decon chamber, Jolly looked about as Boomer felt. His face, normally robust and healthy-looking, was pale and his eyes had clouded over.

  "Think we picked up something out there, Boomer?"

  "Perhaps. But that's what we have decontamination for. We got anything from that asteroid, we'll get rid of it here."

  The organisms, nestled in the bodies of Boomer and Jolly, satisfied their needs indifferently. They might as well be indifferent. The decontamination chamber, keyed to the threats of known microscopic dangers, could not affect them. It could only destroy things whose general nature had been discovered previously. Its scanning did not even detect the presence of the organisms. The organisms, in turn, were not aware of the decon chamber activity. They just went merrily about their business. Well, not merrily, since they had no real awareness of anything, not even of the nutrients they were absorbing.

  Boomer convinced himself he felt all right when he came out of decon. He forced his voice to a normal pitch when he reported in by telecom to his commander about their discovery of Cylons on the asteroid.

  "A Cylon outpost?" Adama asked.

  "Well hidden, but there."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. As usual, the fleet is grateful for your abilities. I'll notify the helm to change course to another quadrant."

  "Yes, sir."

  As he turned away from the communications console, Boomer knew he should feel content, even a bit happy. He had just received a verbal commendation from his commander—something definitely to feel good about. But good was not what he felt. All he wanted to do right now was climb into his bunk and not respond to a duty call until a superior officer pulled the covers off him and flipped him onto the floor. But first he must do his duty by Apollo, salute the groom-to-be properly and with a rousing ambrosia toast. Then, the bunk.

  The organism inside Boomer was expanding, duplicating, ready to send out copies of itself into other beings. Boomer was about to come in contact with enough new hosts to relieve any frustration the organism might have felt, had it been able to feel frustration.

  Boomer tried to lend his bass-baritone to the merry song that the other pilots were bellowing, but he could not. Somehow his voice would not work. He could not force a single note of music out of it. Well, no matter. He wasn't the fleet's most eager singer, anyway. His low notes were usually off-key, and the high ones were as shaky as a cadet's first landing.

  What he really wanted to do was make a toast, but to what? Apollo and Starbuck were still in decon, although it was rumored that their arrival at the party was imminent. He would have to deliver some other kind of toast then. Perhaps a general toast to the success of the fleet, or of the freedom of pilots everywhere. A freedom being encroached by the stupid dictates of the Council of Twelve—maybe he should toast the council, that would have a proper kind of sarcasm about it. Here's to the twelve ancients and their jingoistic armed oafs they choose to legitimize by calling Security Forces. No, that was too much of a mouthful, and Colonel Tigh had ordered that they not antagonize the Council at this time. Maybe a simple "To Life." Yes.

  He stood up. He sat down immediately as he realized how weak and drained his body actually was.

  Although there was some renewal of nutrient level, the organism required more, or else it would go hungry, die along with the host it inhabited.

  Boomer, not one to allow himself to be defeated easily, forced himself to stand up again, this time without falling gracelessly back. Getting the attention of the pilots around him, he lifted his glass to make the toast. Suddenly his fingers would not work, and the glass fell out of his hand, crashing to the floor. Then his legs gave out, and he crashed to the floor, too, narrowly avoiding the shards of broken glass.

  "Hey, Boomer."

  He looked up. Ensign Giles stared down at him. He could make out the worry on Giles' face through a dense fog that now seemed to be settling into the ready-room. Greenbean's long, lean face appeared over Giles's shoulder.

  "Come on," Giles said. "Colonel Tigh's watching us on the monitor."

  "Don't clown around," Greenbean said.

  "I . . . don't . . . clown," Boomer muttered.

  "No, that's right, you don't," Giles said. "Something—"

  Tigh's deep voice filled the room:

  "With Captain Apollo returning late from patrol, I'd called to extend the curfew under the commander's orders. From what I can see, however, if you men are going to get falling-down drunk . . ."

  Boomer, with an effort, sat up and addressed the monitor.

  "I'm not drunk, sir. I just got dizzy."

  Tigh scowled, obviously not yet ready to believe what was on the surface a pretty lame excuse.

  "Any more dizziness, and I'll send everyone back to quarters. Understand?"

  "Understood!" Greenbean shouted, then whispered to Boomer: "C'mon, I got some special stash that'll make you feel much better. You'll be drunk as a—"

  "I . . . don't . . . get . . . drunk."

  "Don't talk. You're getting us into enough trouble as it is."

  "Hey, I couldn't help it . . . I got . . ."

  He tried to stand up again, but his legs wobbled and he faltered. Giles, putting his hands under Boomer's arms, helped him to remain upright.

  "Somebody gives Giles and me a hand," Greenbean said. "Sit down and relax, Boomer. You're just tired. Those deep patrols are too long. We all know that."

 
"It's not that . . . It's . . . it's . . . I can't understand it . . . I felt fine after decon . . . I felt like . . ."

  Boomer fell unconscious suddenly. Somebody was going to make another sarcastic remark about how some pilots shamed the code by not being able to hold their ambrosia, when somebody else pointed out that Jolly had just fainted, too.

  In the meantime the organism had done rather well. It had made several copies of itself and transmitted them to many new—healthy—hosts.

  As he neatly positioned his striped flight helmet in its locker niche, Starbuck realized that his gloomy mood had dissipated. Nothing like meeting a little danger out on patrol to make self-indulgent feelings vanish. In fact, anticipating the bachelor party picked up his spirits immeasurably. Apollo didn't look so happy, however. He looked like a prisoner on the way to an undeserved execution.

  "What's the matter, Apollo? You look like you're having the usual second thoughts about getting wed."

  "On the contrary, old chum. I feel just fine about the impending ceremony. It's this bachelor party you've cooked up that's frightening me. Maybe I shouldn't go. Maybe—"

  "Shouldn't go? You're the guest of honor. You don't even have a choice. I'll drag you there in chains if I have to."

  "Well—"

  "Well, nothing. Come on, prisoner."

  As they entered the corridor leading to the ready-room, Apollo—who had been unusually silent during the long walk, listening sullenly to Starbuck's lively chatter—suddenly said:

  "This had better be good. I could be with Serina, you know, and this is delaying an awfully sweet reunion."

  "Every time you encounter the least little social obstacle, you start sounding like a country boy fresh off the farm. Apollo, I promise you a night you will long remember."

  Starbuck nodded genially to the security man standing guard by the ready-room door, figuring the man had been assigned to see that the frivolity of the party did not spill over into the Galactica's more genteel corridors. There had already been several complaints lodged about pilots' post-combat raucousness from civilians who misunderstood the therapeutic value of such emotional releases. As Starbuck reached for the handle of the ready-room door, the guard spoke brusquely:

  "Don't touch the door, skypilot."

  Starbuck spun around, ready to battle the guard, who in response gestured menacingly with his left hand while keeping his right hand showily on his holstered laser pistol.

  "What's going on? What're—"

  "Starbuck! Apollo!" Adama shouted. Starbuck looked back down the corridor. The commander and Colonel Tigh were charging down the passageway, a group of officers keeping pace just behind them.

  "Out," Adama ordered, out of breath. "Get out of this corridor. Both of you . . . Colonel, get these men to the bridge."

  Tigh gestured Apollo and Starbuck to follow him. After they had taken a couple of obedient steps, the ready-room door suddenly sprung open. Seeing Boomer being carried by Giles and Greenbean, Starbuck started to move toward his obviously disabled friend.

  "Don't get any closer, any of you," warned Doctor Salik, who followed the three men out of the ready-room. Salik was completely covered from head to foot in a transparent decontamination suit.

  "I don't know what's wrong here. I don't want any of you to get close to the sick men. You three, who told you to leave the ready-room?"

  "Boomer thought if he could just walk around a little . . ."

  "Enough! Get back into that room. Guard, send for my staff. We're going to have to transfer everybody attending this party into isolation chambers for study, until I can find out what this is all about. Tell 'em to get the chambers down here as fast as they can. Faster."

  The guard rushed off down the corridor.

  "Doctor Salik," Apollo said, "what is it? What's happened?"

  "I don't know."

  "But—"

  "Look, I won't speculate. Not my style. I don't even know if this is as bad as it looks."

  "Doctor—"

  "Forget it, Apollo. I've got to work now."

  Realizing there was no further point in interrogating Doctor Salik, who was not an eager talker under normal conditions, Apollo turned to his father.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I've been afraid of something like this happening. We are just not safe out here, traveling through sections of the universe we've never seen before. I think Boomer and Jolly have carried back some illness from their patrol. A strange virus, perhaps, a bacterium of some sort. The important thing is that it seems unknown to us. We have no cures, no remedies."

  "But surely our decontamination procedures should—"

  "They're simply not good enough. We've never had any guarantee they'd work in all cases. Boomer and Jolly should have reported their symptoms. Now they've endangered everybody. Of all the incredibly stupid—"

  "Father, I don't think they can be blamed. If this—whatever it is—is dangerous, they can't be expected to think straight in every—"

  "Colonial warriors should be expected to think straight whenever there's the slightest possibility of danger. I cannot accept excuses."

  Apollo, who was often frustrated by his father's military sternness, decided to check his anger this time, at least until more became known about the illness. In the past he and Adama had had long arguments about what Apollo felt was a too-stiff set of regulations governing the crew and civilian passengers of the fleet, but now was not the time for an analytic discussion of anything. Silently, he followed Colonel Tigh and Starbuck to the bridge, where he found the crew performing its duties with an obvious underlying tension. Adama came on the bridge a few moments later. He seemed a bit calmer.

  "Any news from Salik?" he asked Tigh.

  "Only that more of the pilots attending the party seem to have come down with the illness."

  "Keep me posted. The important thing now is to act on Boomer's information. We've changed course to avoid a Cylon outpost. That means, Captain Apollo, that we'll be going in along the route explored by you and Starbuck."

  "Negative," Apollo said. Adama seemed surprised by the firmness of Apollo's response. "We can't go that way."

  "Can't? It appears to be the only route we can take now."

  "There's something out there that I believe is potentially more dangerous than a Cylon outpost. A magnetic sea, endless, as endless as anything I've ever encountered."

  Adama's eyes glazed over pensively as Apollo described the void.

  "It was so far across we couldn't scan the other side," Apollo concluded. Adama, his eyes clouding over gradually during Apollo's account of the void, turned abruptly and moved away from his son. He did not even seem to be listening any longer as he walked beside the starfield map. "Father, if you could have seen what it did to my sensors. If Starbuck hadn't flown in after me, I couldn't have made it back, I know that."

  "Then that tears it," Tigh said. "We can't go that way. Perhaps there's a way of skirting around the void, follow its perimeter or—what do you think, commander? Commander?"

  His face ashen, his eyes still in an apparent daze, Adama turned to Tigh and said:

  "I'll be in my quarters. Maintain this course until further orders."

  "But we're heading straight for the void, sir. If I may suggest . . ."

  "You have your orders, Colonel."

  When Adama had left the bridge, walking in a dreamlike slowness, Apollo and Tigh exchanged puzzled, troubled glances, then Tigh ordered the helmswoman to maintain present course and slumped into a command chair.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SERINA: I'd just returned from a briefing on emergency procedures to be taken in the event of control-panel malfunction when I heard Boxey delightedly shout out Apollo's name. Oh God, I thought, the moment of truth has come. I both wanted to see his face and was frightened right out of my wits at the prospect. Quickly, I ran to the mirror to make sure all parts of my outfit were properly in accordance with the service's dress regulations.

  Apollo asked Boxey where I w
as and the boy told him I was in the sleeping quarters. I could hear the laughter in Apollo's voice as he said:

  "I'll bet she's trying on her wedding gown and I'm not supposed to see it, right?"

  I couldn't figure out what made him jump to that conclusion. Boxey, who knew my actual outfit, must have provided some clue, a fidgetiness or a fear in his all-too-revealing wide eyes, that told Apollo something was up. It's been pretty tense around here, keeping secrets from my own fiancé.

  "Apollo, I'll be right out," I hollered.

  He shouted back that I was not to worry, he didn't think it bad luck to see the bride in her gown before the wedding day. I was tempted to protest, use that ancient prenuptial superstition as a convenient excuse to postpone the confrontation, then I decided it was better to get it all over with, so I told him to come in.

  When Apollo saw me (trying to appear elegant in my best high-fashion pose), he looked so stunned I thought for a moment he might actually be liking it. I mean, it was the first time he'd seen me in my cadet's uniform, after all.

  I tried to make it easier for him by saluting, hoping that an exaggerated militariness might at least amuse him. He always says he likes the satiric approach.

  "Flight Cadet Serina, reporting for duty, Captain," I said in my best clipped, warriorlike voice. I had been imagining this moment for a long time, knowing he would be shocked to see me in the brown buckskin jacket and close-fitting trousers. I'd believed that, after a moment of astonishment, he would be happy to see it.

  "What is this? A joke?" he said angrily.

  I was so disappointed, I couldn't answer at first.

  "No. I just wanted to surprise you. I've been in flight training ever since your father opened up the program to replace the pilots we've lost."