The Cylon Death Machine
Page 24
The trap should have worked. It was as if it had been sprung and had captured its quarry, and still the humans had found some way to wriggle out.
He came out of his reverie to find the Starbuck simulacrum looking at him and smiling.
"How did they escape?" Imperious Leader asked the Starbuck.
"Escape?" it answered. "That's just so much bilgewa-ter, bug-eyes. We beat you, that's all. We beat you again. And we're going to keep on—
Imperious Leader leaped at the Starbuck, intending to strangle it. His hands went right through the Starbuck's neck, and did not alter one degree of its smile. With one gigantic effort, Imperious Leader pushed the entire simulator off his pedestal. It crashed to the floor of the chamber. Sparks flew in all directions. For a moment, the Starbuck stood at the center of the wreckage, then suddenly flickered out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Croft:
After what I've been through, the bridge of the Galactica seems incredibly claustrophobic, even though it's an immense chamber. But I can't stop my shoulders from contracting at the box that I feel enclosed in. Boxes, prisons, cells. That's my life. Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to escape with Wolfe and Leda. They might be still alive and I might not feel so trapped. Still, as I look around at the joyful crowd gathered on the bridge, I can't help but feel that their lives were traded for the lives of all around me, all personnel and passengers on the many ships of the fleet. Perhaps it was the proper trade.
Adama is in his commander mood and praising Apollo and the expedition for the successful completion of the mission. He tosses a couple of bouquets to Athena and Apollo for their flying skills. I try to feel a part of it all emotionally, but all I can feel is that it was just a job I did. I wouldn't downplay my part in it, especially the rope-swinging act I did with the kid, but I still don't feel that I belong here, drinking in the rhetoric of praise. They used me because they had to. Otherwise, they would have left me in my stinking hole. The hole they're going to send me back to.
Adama has moved to Cree and is eulogizing on how brave the young cadet was. Well, that's true enough. I'd rather have been hanging on that rope and falling in that avalanche than be subjected to Cylon torture. Good work, Cree, you deserve the praise.
Suddenly Adama is standing in front of me. I try to straighten up into some semblance of attention, a reflex from the old days, but my bones are so much in pain I can hardly move them.
"And Croft," Adama says in his resonant voice.
"I guess it's back to the old grid-barge," I say, and try to smile as if I don't mind.
Adama smiles back. The monster, smiling about sending me back.
"No," he says after a pause. "I think you worked out the rest of your time down on that ice planet. You're needed on the Galactica, Commander."
I almost don't hear him say the last word. Commander. Reinstatement in rank. If only Leda were here, she might just—I've got to stop thinking of her now. Anyway, she'd only have said that reinstatement in rank was just so much bilge.
Adama grips my shoulder for a moment, then moves on. Now he faces the kid and his daggit pet, which is doing a good mechanical version of a happy drool.
"Boxey," Adama says, "if anyone should be sent to the grid-barge for disobeying orders..."
The kid looks scared. I almost want to protect him. The daggit squeals.
Maybe a good scare'll cure the kid of sticking his nose into dangerous places.
But I doubt it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
First Centurion Vulpa pulled his heavy body up over the hanging cornice. The sound of the metal in his uniform scraping against the ice surface sent echoes rolling down the mountain. He glanced down at the uniform. Many of the black bands awarded him as decoration for valor had been scraped away by his climb. Breaks in the suit that had occurred during the crash landing of his ship had rendered it only barely functional. He had had to continue to wear it as protection against the rising cold temperature.
There was only a little farther to go. Exercising all the willpower that two brains could offer, he climbed upward. By the time he had reached the summit station, he knew he had no more powers of exertion left in his body. He lay still for a long time.
Finally he could force his body to rise. Without looking around him, he began stepping heavily across the wreckage until he reached the center where the remains of the once-powerful weapon stood. Its shell still rose mightily toward the sky, dark gray and gloomy. But it stood on a mangled foundation. The awesomely powerful energy pump was in jagged ruins. Fragments of the station, broken, split, bent, lay about the still-intact flooring. At points Vulpa could see a helmet or uniform from one of his warriors perceivable beneath some part of the ruins. A bridge of burned metal had formed across the gaping elevator shaft. Except for the shell of the gun, nothing tangible revealed what it once had been.
Leaning his heavy body against the shell of the weapon, Vulpa resolved to go into a meditative state. The ability to do that in the midst of a disaster such as this was a second-brain quality for which he was extremely grateful.
He could meditate here, oblivious of the wreckage around him and what it meant to his life, for a long time.
Perhaps for the rest of eternity.
Or until a reinforcement garrison arrived.
Or until he died.
It did not matter.