The Cylon Death Machine

by Battlestar Galactica 02

  Starbuck crawls over to me, asks:

  "What are our chances?"

  Another invocation of my expertise from a Galactica officer. I'm sure gaining in stature around here. Too bad it's probably too late.

  "Depends on how long this storm lasts," I say, "and if the atmosphere, under the influence of the di-ethene, starts descending to the critical point of the gases composing it. That's the point when, well, when you can't really see much distinction on the critical-temperature curve between the gaseous and liquid phases. For our purposes, the air outside turns to liquid. Some call it deathpoint, though the name's never made much sense to me, since normally you're pretty dead long before the critical point. That satisfy you?"

  "Not much. But thanks anyway."

  "Anytime."

  He crawls away very slowly. The cold's beginning to affect his muscles. It's affecting all of us that way. I have to force myself to keep exercising what muscles I can in this cramped sitting position.

  The droid suddenly springs away from the kid's side. Its furry ears point upward. It looks like it's heard something, though I don't know what it can possibly hear with that blizzard howling outside. It begins to bark furiously. The kid tells it: Shut up, daggit. Then it breaks for the door. With more strength than I could work up, it forces the door open and bounds out. Starbuck tries to go for the door, but can't make it.

  "I... I can't move," he mutters.

  "Muffit," the kid whines weakly. "Muffit! Come back."

  Apollo pulls the kid even closer to him, saying:

  "It's all right, son. Muffit isn't like us. He can survive di-ethene."

  "Three cheers for Muffit," I say.

  "Will he be back?" the kid says.

  "He'll be back."

  Apollo glances around, then mutters to no one in particular:

  "I just hope he doesn't bring a Cylon patrol back with him."

  I almost wish he does. What good is it huddled inside this broken-down vehicle? The Cylons might just let us have a warm cell before executing us. Be fitting for me, wouldn't it? Complete the cycle? From warm cell to warm cell. Welcome it. Though I don't feel so cold anymore. Feel numb. Drowsy. Hey! Stop feeling drowsy. Can't go to sleep now. Sleep's death. Won't let everything end this way. Can't let it. Won't. Can't. It's not right. Not fair. Not..

  FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:

  I wonder if, when we finally outrun or destroy the Cy-lons and find a planet to welcome us, we will be able to reconstruct our lost legends, our destroyed books, our currently unperformed entertainments. Some of these are, of course, preserved in our computer banks, but not all. Not all. Yesterday I requested a copy of the Caprican story Sharky Star-rover, confident that it had to be preserved somewhere in the fleet records. But the answer returned, scan negative. For a moment I could not accept the answer. A book that I'd read and reread years ago was no longer available—was, in effect, lost to us. No one would ever read it again, unless a frayed copy turned up in somebody's locker or as an artifact on some deserted planetary outpost. I nearly instigated a search.

  Alone in my quarters, I tried to remember the story of Sharky Star-rover. I thought I could remember it easily. Perhaps I could renew the oral tradition, keep alive at least the major part of a story I had so loved. But, I soon discovered, I had few of the details of the story in my mind, even less memory of the order in which it happened.

  Sharky was just a boy, that much I recalled. A tough kid just past the hurdle of puberty. Trapped on an out-of-the-way military asteroid, where his disabled-veteran father coped with his combat record by becoming a hophead and his mother coped with the father by turning into a shrew, Sharky vowed to escape. I don't remember how he managed it, but he stole a supply shuttle, having learned simple piloting by watching the ship's pilot do the job. He headed the shuttle away from the complex of military asteroids, setting his course for an area that was considered unpopulated, although appealing rumors of sin cities and pleasure palaces had accrued around it. Somehow he teamed up with his new pal Jameson. I don't remember whether Jameson stowed away on the shuttle when Sharky stole it, or whether they met on one of the many settlements Sharky visited. Jameson was some kind of blob, a representative of an alien race that was quite unpopular in some sectors of the galaxy. There were times when Sharky had to hide Jameson away, but when it was necessary, he fought tooth and nail for his alien friend.

  It's Sharky's friendship with Jameson that I really want to remember. They worked so well together in flying the shuttlecraft across the galaxy—I recall all kinds of clever exchanges, all sorts of moments in which a sly joke of Jameson's gave Sharky peculiar and valuable insights on life. There was a meditation of Sharky's in which he almost said he wished that a real love were possible between a human and a member of Jameson's race. He never really said he wanted to embrace Jameson—and, remember, Jameson couldn't be embraced, or even held onto, no matter how hard you tried—but it was clear that Sharky's fantasy would include a Jameson magically transformed to human shape and quite embraceable.

  The adventures are even harder to recall than the impressions of character. The book was basically a collection of episodes about Sharky's adventures on the various planets he stopped at. At the more civilized settlements he found that his theft of the shuttle had been recorded and he was wanted as a criminal. He had to go through some pretty hairy times to escape and not be returned home. (The continuing to flee was an especially important feature of the book—it seemed to suggest that irresponsibility was a desirable way of life, and I find it funny that my responsible adult self remembers that theme so nostalgically.) He fell in with a group of criminals, pretended to go along with them, then thwarted their plan by getting Jameson to walk in on them at the moment of the crime. But what was the crime? Who were the criminals? Why don't I remember their characters? Once Sharky—who was only in his early teens, remember—almost successfully impersonated a star-cruiser captain, a disguise he was using to try to obtain a cargo hold of food when he and Jameson were starving. I can remember that episode pretty well. I used to read it to my children when they were growing up. Zac used to pretend to be Jameson, and crawl bloblike around the floor.

  I can still feel the sadness of the end of the book, when Sharky and Jameson were finally apprehended. Sharky wanted Jameson to be returned home with him, but the rules wouldn't allow it. The officer in charge of the squad that captured them told Sharky that Jameson could not survive within any military installation. He would be a figure of scorn. The captain said that separating them was an act of compassion and not cruelty. Sharky said he saw the point, but I never felt he did, and neither, I suspect, did any readers of the book. Anybody who could read the scene of parting between Sharky and Jameson without crying had to have a sturdy hold on his emotions. I can't really remember Sharky's return to home, perhaps because I don't really want to. I remember it was sentimental. Perhaps his dad had gone off his habit and his mother had become a saint. It doesn't matter. Nobody I know who ever read it ever bothered much about believing its ending.

  Clearly, Sharky Star-rover was a flawed book, and perhaps some misguided programmer librarian thought he/she had good reason for not including it in the Galactica computer library. That's too bad. Sharky's quest for a more adventurous life seems so similar to our quest for Earth. The story might give us hope when we need it. No matter how much of the book I can reconstruct, no matter how much eloquence I attempt in trying to retell the story to anyone, I'll never really have Sharky again. So much has been destroyed. So much.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Although the Galactica bridge might have seemed still and inactive to an outside observer, there was an abundance of human movement going on. Crew members' hands were testing dials and gauges whose information had remained stable for some time. Commu­nications officers kept pressing their earpieces harder against their ears, trying to discover some encouraging sounds. Colonel Tigh sat at his post, rippling the corners of printouts he'd stopped examining centons earli
er. Athena's eyes searched every horizontal scan line of her monitoring screen, and kept punching new combinations of the same data into her computer setup. Adama's large knobby hands gripped and ungripped the railing that ran along the starfield walkway.

  Suddenly one of the bridge officers grumbled a curse and called to Colonel Tigh. Tigh rushed to the woman, Adama close behind him. She pointed to her long-range scanner. Tigh turned to Adama, saying:

  "That scanner's picked up a Cylon fighter squadron."

  "How many?" Adama asked.

  "Looks like an attack phalanx. They're beginning to press."

  Adama nodded.

  "Order Blue Squadron to patrol the rear."

  "Aye-aye, sir." Tigh flipped the nearest communica­tion switch as activity around him on the bridge multiplied. "Scramble Blue Squadron! Patrol rear sectors Sigma through Omega!"

  The claxons roared through the Galactica, and the bridge crew could almost physically detect the rush of pilots toward launching bays. On various screens, pilots could be seen swinging into action, flight crews readying the vipers, and the reverberations of the fighter ships themselves.

  The squadron launched and achieved formation long before a visual contact with the Cylon attack phalanx was made. Positioned well to the rear of the fleet itself, the vipers were more than ready for the not-so-sneak attack of their enemy.

  Aboard the Galactica, the bridge crew stood and sat at battle stations, their active eyes watching information screens and equipment. Adama ordered the picture being transmitted from Blue Leader One transferred to the main screen. Tensely, they all watched the distant points grow into blots and then take form as flat-looking but multileveled Cylon fighters. The first blast from a Cylon weapon was directed at Blue Leader One, and everyone on the bridge flinched and startled backward when the shot seemed to come right at them. Then the skies were filled with laser fire and the sudden bursting flames of direct hits. A pair of Cylon fighters broke through the Blue Squadron line of defense and headed for the fleet.

  "Protect the freighters!" Adama ordered.

  "Galactica to Blue Leader," transmitted a bridge officer. "Engage!"

  A Blue Squadron viper peeled away from the squadron and in one long beautiful sweep fired at both of the attackers and transformed them into two masses of fire whose flames reached out toward each other, combined, fell together, and exploded further in a burst of bright light that, for a brief moment, illuminated the entire wide triangle of ships that was the present fleet formation.

  "My God!" Athena gasped.

  "Good shooting?" Adama, standing behind her, asked.

  "Not only that. That double kill was accomplished by one of the cadets."

  "As I said, good shooting."

  Adama walked away from her, his face apparently expressionless, but Athena recognized a flicker of pleasure in his reaction to the heroism of a graduate of his makeshift flight academy.

  The Cylon ships, quickly routed by the dizzying maneuvers of the Blue Squadron vipers, retreated into the distance, became points again. A flight officer ap­proached Adama, and reported:

  "Blue Squadron returning to base. Four Cylons destroyed, the rest are running."

  "They'll be back," Adama commented. "In packs, like wolves. What do your reports show, Tigh?"

  The colonel was scowling at a set of printouts that he gripped tightly in his hands. Something clearly disturbed him.

  "We got ships again, but not Cylon personnel. The Cylons in the rearguard ships guided the others, as before. We lost one viper and one good pilot. They lost just the vehicles, if vehicles is the proper word. They're wearing us down with these empty ships. It's eerie."

  "That may be what they want us to feel. If they come at us again, go for the rearguard ships. Station a few warriors on the slower freighters with heavy artillery to blast any of the pilotless aircraft that might get through next time."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  Athena, eavesdropping on the conversation between her father and his aide, sidled up to Adama and whispered:

  "Let me go."

  "Go where?"

  "Give me some heavy artillery, station me on a—"

  "I told you. We need you here."

  Adama's voice was firm. She should have immediately returned to her station, but she decided to press her luck.

  "Well, you're going to have to take a few warriors off the flight roster. Let me take up a viper the next attack. I can—

  "None of that. You stay here."

  "I'm as well checked-out in a viper cockpit as any of those cadets you're rushing into battle."

  Adama's shocked face cut off her little speech abruptly before she could get to the logical part.

  "One of those cadets, as you so happily informed me moments ago, performed that skillful double kill, Athena."

  "All right. I'm properly chastened, Commander. But one lucky cadet is just a rationalization for your keeping me stuck at a console on the command bridge. I want my chance at—

  Adama's stern expression softened.

  "I promise I'll give you your chance, Athena. But right now, back to duty. You are needed."

  "Yes, sir."

  Tigh, the usual papers in his hand, returned to Adama's side, and said:

  "Any estimate on time remaining until the landing party completes the mission?"

  "It's irrelevant. We have to move forward in"—Adama glanced at his chronometer—"in four hundred and twenty centons regardless of whether they're successful or not."

  Gradually the activity on command bridge had stopped, stalled. Only the nervous agitated hand movements remained.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Croft:

  Clothes in pieces, shreds falling off my body. Ice-ax twisting and turning in the middle of a long slow bounce off a cornice. Bare feet getting number and number against the ice of the summit. Leda reaching for me. But without threat. Her outstretched hands are meant to comfort me. She wants to hold me. I slip and slide, trying to reach out to touch her. Her clothing's ragged, too. Flaps and rips all over it. Flecks of ice clinging to her face. The skin of her hand turning black, leprous. Her feet are going out from under her. No, Leda, no Still reaching out, she's falling away from me. I start to fall, too, but grab an outcropping of ice and my body flaps like a flag in high winds. Twisting my neck, I look below me. Leda still stares up at me, her eyes pleading, her body gently spinning in a slow fall, doubling up as it hits the side of a ridge, then continues its descent. Beyond her, the ice-ax takes a high bounce off a serac. I am about to drop from the outcropping, dive after her, but I can't make my fingers work, they seem glued into a permanent handhold. I start to scream but I can't even hear myself above the howling of the wind.

  And then, suddenly, simply, noiselessly, I am awake.

  Where am I? I seem still in a dream. My body feels so numb, maybe I am. But why would I dream a place like this? And so placidly? This place is the stuff of nightmares. It's a cave, I can see that. Several entrances. But what's that war junk on all the walls? There's a hatchway from a Cylon aircraft. A stock from a laser stun rifle. Bits and pieces of unidentifiable metal. Scanner screens. A bunch of metallic Cylon uniforms. Signs in the Cylon language. Half a control board. All this stuff is hanging on the walls of the cave like casual decorations. I get the name of their designer, I'm going to scratch him off my fall list. The stove in the center of the cave is jerry-built from a fuel tank. Stove! I've got to make my body work and get near that stove. Even at this distance from it, I can feel the side of my body facing it begin to thaw. But I can't move yet. What's that on the lower part of the walls? Furs. Mostly white and brown furs. There are animals indigenous to this crummy planet? What's that junk in the corner, piled so high? I can make out—what?—that looks like snowshoes, and that like a mountain of skis, and I suppose those're sleds, but they're so inefficiently designed, so rough in construction, they might be a sideline product of the guy that decorated the cave.

  How did I get here? Last I remember,
we were in the snow ram and I was trying to get my fingers to work. Looking around me now, I can see the other members of our party, some of them still out, a couple beginning to stir. Apollo springs up suddenly, looks around. At the move, one of the fur bundles near the corner jumps up, runs over, and begins to lick Apollo's face. It's the kid's droid. From the other side of Apollo, the kid himself jumps up, hugs his pet.

  "Muffit. You came back."

  Apollo puts an arm around the kid, says:

  "Boxey..."

  The kid smiles up at Apollo.

  "You okay, Dad?"

  Apollo's return smile is a bit weaker than the kid's eager one.

  "I'm okay," he mumbles.

  Others begin to stir. I can move now. I crawl toward the stove, try to lap up its heat like it's flowing water. As I stand up and turn around to warm my backside, I see an extremely large furry bundle that is definitely not Muffit standing beside an entranceway to this cave chamber. This is one big fellow! Taller than any of us, he's got that noble look that blond, blue-eyed types often have as a matter of course, even when they can't lick an intership postal stamp. Not that this guy is a coward. Not in any way. Muscles like that, he's a fighter. He looks almost superhuman. He's the kind of guy that, when you're assembling a team for mock hand-to-hand combat, you pick first for your side.

  Everybody's noticed him now. When he speaks to us, his voice is so stentorian I'm not sure he's quite real: