“This isn’t any time to think about—” the man said, but Serina waved to him to shut up.
“Come on,” she said softly. “We have to go. I’m sure your daggit is all right.”
“Please, miss,” the man screamed desperately. “The building there’ll topple at any moment.”
Serina looked in the direction toward which the man’s functioning arm waved. Before she located the about-to-collapse building, her eyes fixed on a pillar from which what looked like a daggit’s limbs stuck out. Shielding the boy’s head, she maneuvered a few steps toward the pillar. It was the daggit, all right, crushed underneath the pillar, its pointed snout buried in dirt and rubble. Turning her body so that it screened any possible view the boy could have of the dead animal, she pointed in the opposite direction and said.
“There he is, must’ve been him, running that way. Let’s go have a look.”
“I want Muffit. Is he all right?”
She picked up the boy, held him close.
“Sure, he’s all right. Everything is all right. Everything is going to be just fine. Just fine. What’s your name?”
“Boxey.”
She wiped some of the dust from the boy’s face. He was a cherub-faced child, with large brown eyes and a shock of curly brown hair hanging down on his forehead. She imagined that shock of hair was continually getting in his eyes.
“Hello, Boxey,” she said.
She looked past him, at what remained of the city. Not much remained. The buildings that still stood were rocked with explosions, bursting with fire. The wounded man pulled at her with his good arm and, still carrying Boxey, she began to run. She did not look back at the sound of the crashing building behind her. As they hurried past the place where her camera had been originally set up, in front of the floral arrangement spelling PEACE, she noticed that the flowers had been completely buried and that the flags of the twelve colonies were in flames.
Athena kept glancing covertly at her father to check on his reactions to the dreadful slaughter they were all helplessly viewing on the Galactica’s multi-screened communications console. Most people would have expressed the opinion that Adama was emotionless, that he didn’t react at all to the holocaust, but Athena knew better. She detected the somber pain in his eyes. He stood stiffly, nodding at the reports of his officers, but Athena could tell he was thinking of her mother, who lived in a suburb of the smoldering Caprica City. She wished they could leave their duties, be father and daughter again for just a minute, go to a quiet room and hold each other. But that was not possible. God, she thought, mother’s got to be all right, she’s got to be!
Tigh had moved to his commander’s side with the latest report.
“Sir,” he said, “long-range scanners are picking up Cylon base ships. Launching to all outer planets.”
Athena, hearing this, wanted to slam her fists down on the panel of gauges in front of her. A conversation she had had just a few days ago with Zac and Apollo came back to her vividly. She had been arguing with them about the coming peace mission, contending that the Cylons could be trusted. They were at the very least an intelligent race. Apollo said Cylons might have technological prowess but he wasn’t so sure they could be described as intelligent, at least in human terms. It was an old argument, one that she had had countless times since joining the service. Cylons might be intelligent, but they were certainly not compassionate; they were hardly, in fact, emotional at all. Apollo, like many others, believed that the ability to feel was necessary for intelligence. Athena held to her belief that the Cylons must have feeling, must have emotion, it just wasn’t describable in human language. Since their cultural systems were so entirely different, she argued, we must search for and discover the other differences, too.
Their argument had become quite heated, even though she and Apollo knew the debate itself was ancient, almost ritualistic. Zac broke it up by laughing suddenly and saying they should all get falling down drunk in order to make their argument more logical. They all laughed. Their father, walking in on the hysterical trio, chided them for silliness below the call of duty. It had been a nice moment, a fine moment, the last time they’d joined in warmth as a family. Now Zac was dead—and Athena didn’t want to think deeply about that just now.
She tried to shake the sorrowful thoughts out of her head by taking a reading of her equipment. However, she couldn’t help but watch the monitors often. Planetside, things were worse. Fires everywhere. Buildings still falling. Corpses tucked into doorways and corners of rubble as if arranged for viewing. The scattered survivors moved slowly, sluggishly, in a collective state of shock. Adama turned away from the terrible pictures, his shoulders slumped in defeat. She knew that she looked just as miserable. She felt comatose; the nightmare had to end soon, she must wake up. A hand gripped her shoulder. She looked up, into the grim face of Apollo. She pulled away from him, feeling illogically angry at his pain, furious at the downcast look of her father. She could no longer hold her feelings in and she raged at Apollo.
“First Zac, now this! They trusted us to protect them!” She sensed her father looking distressfully her way. “How could we let it happen? Why were we guarding a bunch of corrupt politicians instead of our homes? We let it happen, we just let it happen.”
She looked toward Adama, saw the pain in his face again, wished she hadn’t spoken. He was commander. When she said how could we let it happen, she knew that inside he heard why did you let it happen. She wouldn’t be able to take that back. It was true, but she wouldn’t be able to take it back.
For the next few minutes she performed her duties still in the dream state. But all the concentration she could work up would not push the gruesome memories of destruction out of her mind. If only Starbuck were here to cheer her up, she thought—but she didn’t even know where he was. They had left him behind with the others they had—they had abandoned. He had to come back. At least Starbuck had to come back. She needed him now.
Tigh called everybody’s attention to the largest monitor screen. The Cylon base ships had now been located. One of them could be seen in closeup, the other two in the distance. All of them were launching more fighters. Another officer locked in scenes from all of the twelve worlds. Each picture showed Cylon fighters on bombing runs.
“What are the reports from the twelve worlds. Colonel?” Adama asked.
“No hope. Commander.”
“There’s always—what about Sagitara? They have the most sophisticated defense system in all the worlds. Perhaps there’s still time—”
“Sorry, Commander. The planet is in flames.”
Athena had never seen her father so pale, so close to collapse. She took a tentative step toward him. He saw her and waved her away. He turned to Tigh.
“Prepare my shuttlecraft,” he said. Tigh appeared as startled as everyone else who heard the commander’s request.
“Shuttlecraft—?” Tigh said.
“I’m going down to the surface of Caprica, Tigh.”
“That’s out of the question. Commander. You can’t.”
“Prepare the—”
“Sir, if the Cylon scanners should pick you up when you get out of our camouflage force field—”
“I’m going with you,” Apollo said.
“Yes,” said Athena. “I, also.”
Adama touched her arm, spoke softly:
“You stay here. We’ll be all right.”
“But I want to—”
“You’re needed here.”
She capitulated to the firm tone of command in Adama’s voice. As elder brother, it was Apollo’s right to take this particular trip, even though it was usually her job to pilot the shuttlecraft for her father.
“We’ll go in my fighter, father,” Apollo said. “You’re the last surviving member of the Quorum. If we run into a Cylon attack ship, at least you’ll have a chance—”
“The captain’s right,” Tigh said. “And, since I’m the one who has to fill your shoes if anything happens, well, I in
sist you go down in the fighter, Commander.”
Adama nodded at Tigh.
“You proceed to rendezvous with the survivors of the Fleet. Make all necessary preparations. You must proceed as if I might not return.”
“Not return?” Tigh said. “You’ll return, Commander.”
Tigh extended his hand and the two men, old friends as well as fellow officers who had served together for more than three decades, clasped each other’s wrists as they shook hands.
FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:
Nobody likes being called a coward. I didn’t even understand the misconceptions placed on my withdrawal of the Galactica after the Cylon ambush.
There is a legend that goes back so far in space lore no one knows its origin. A moon miner in the original solar system that contained the fabled Earth works the natural satellites of the various planets. A miner is like no other, braving the desolate areas where normal humans would cower in fear, just to dig out materials vital to human progress. Moon miners, according to legend, live more fiercely and celebrate more ferociously than any other heroes in the space fraternity. At a party on some outworld of the system, honoring one of the usual holidays devoted to harvesting or history, a group of moon miners party happily. Suddenly their celebration is interrupted by the roar of a loud, ugly voice. A strange, ugly man, dressed in a bizarrely colorful variation of the basic green mining outfit, strides into the center of the party. No one has ever seen him before or knows where he comes from. Immediately he chides the miners for their cowardice and offers a challenge. They should, he says, choose the bravest of their number and he will allow that designee a shot at him with any weapon he chooses. Our hero, named Gavin in most of the versions of the story, springs forward and makes his choice. In many versions it’s a vehicle, usually a bulldozer equipped with the surface-mining scoop. Aiming the bulldozer at the rude intruder, Gavin runs it at him full force. With the scoop he knocks the villain so high in the sky that the man goes into temporary orbit. But he comes down, lands on his feet, and tells the miner-hero that they’ll meet again, on the next occasion of the holiday, and it will be Gavin’s turn to receive a blow. But where will I find you? Gavin asks. It’ll be your business to discover that for yourself, the villain responds. Among moon-miners the implication of cowardice is the worst insult, and so our hero spends the next year, experiencing many adventures, including the usual romantic dalliances, in search of the domain of the rude intruder. But no one he meets seems to know where the villain lives.
Finally, the legend has it, the moon miner comes to the original moon, the one that circles Earth. He’s never been there before, never known its magical properties, never even glimpsed the planet of humankind’s origin from the vantage point of its own moon. If he finds the villain and lives through the experience, he vows to descend to Earth, perhaps spend his remaining days there.
On the moon his adventures continue, but he begins to despair of ever finding the goal of his quest and taking the return blow. However, on the day fated for their meeting, he encounters an old hag nestled in an abandoned scoop within a manmade crater, and she instructs him. The villain dwells in an orbiting castle in the sky above the moon, and Gavin must launch himself there. Why launch? he asks. Why can’t I just hop the daily shuttle or a passing freighter? She says that the boastful villain claims that the miner will prove himself a coward if he comes up by shuttle or any safe conveyance.
Gavin secures himself upon the track of a mass-driver, a long, beltlike device used to launch products of the mines to a precisely located receiver-scoop vehicle, called a catcher, where it’s transferred to an orbiting space station. He sets the mechanism going, and he begins to be pushed along the mass-driver track. At first slowly, then faster and faster. As his speed increases he gradually rises a few feet above the track of the mass-driver, and then a few feet more, kept from flight only by plates designed to prevent a payload from being flung into space ahead of an exactly computed time. With acceleration he speeds up the final launch slope. Restraining plates drop away and he is thrown into space, into the dark sky above the moon. A living corporeal payload, Gavin speeds through the vacuum of space. His rate of speed increases to six hundred miles an hour. In front of him, the villain’s floating green space castle appears, as if out of nowhere. At the last minute it puts out its own catcher and rudely interrupts the moon-miner’s flight.
Well, of course, our hero would have been broken into a million pieces, just like a mining payload—but this is legend, and he awakens in the bedchamber of his host. The villain now extends his hand in friendship and says that the debt is paid. Gavin has verified his bravery, he is no coward. And—who knows?—in stories where villains are instantly transformed into comradely hosts, perhaps Gavin the moon miner does realize his dream of visiting Earth.
There were times when my own apparent cowardice made me feel like the moon miner, as I faced the destination where I might be broken into a million pieces. However, I could not count on awakening comfortably in my opponent’s bedchamber.
CHAPTER THREE
When the Galactica withdrew from battle, Starbuck almost fell out of his cockpit in anger.
“What’s going on?” he radioed Boomer.
“Don’t ask me. Commander’s calling the shots.”
There was an edge of sarcasm in Boomer’s voice, the tone of the hard-bitten pilot who knows full well you cannot trust anybody in power.
“But he can’t leave us hanging out here like—”
“Hey you guys,” Greenbean’s voice broke into the transmission. “What’s up? The Galactica’s pulling out.”
“You noticed!” Starbuck said. “I don’t… it must… there’s gotta be a good reason.”
“Sure there is,” Boomer said. “It’s dangerous around here. A guy could get—heads up, Greenbean, you’ve got a pair on your tail.”
“Pull up yourself, Boomer,” Jolly’s voice cut in. “You’re in somebody’s sights yourself. I’ll try to get ’em off.”
As Starbuck zeroed in on the sinister fighters pouncing on Boomer, he looked back at the departing Galactica and muttered more to himself than to anybody who might be listening.
“There’s gotta be a good reason.”
He had scant time to be introspective about the mystery of his parent ship’s hasty departure as scores of Cylon fighters impolitely demanded his attention. Several times he was nearly trapped in one of their insidious and dreaded pinwheel attacks, in which a dozen Cylon vehicles surrounded their target and each, in a complex, intricate sequence of arclike sweeps, bore down on the human flyers. A pinwheel was a particularly tough style of attack to evade, but Starbuck had been up against every deceptive tactic known to the vicious, iniquitous Cylons and could time his own moves to match theirs—and wipe out many of them in the bargain.
Time and the fact that the Cylons greatly outnumbered the humans took their toll. Soon Starbuck discovered that his weapons charge had diminished to a dangerously low level. With no Galactica around to return to for recharging, he could become a sitting duck for even the greenest of Cylon warriors. He searched the sky for another battlestar, where he could make an emergency landing for new fuel and new armament charges. He found the Solaria, but it was under fierce attack by a Cylon warship. Starbuck could see, through its portals, the flickering of hundreds of fires inside the battlestar. He directed his own fighter toward the besieged Solaria.
“I’m with you,” said a voice in his ear. Boomer, streaking by just above him. The Cylon pilots hadn’t seen either of them yet. They zeroed in on the target.
“I got him on the left,” Boomer said.
“And me on the right,” Starbuck said.
Boomer and Starbuck released their laser torpedoes synchronously. A second later the Cylon ship exploded, leaving thousands of lazily floating metallic traces in its sector of space. Another Cylon fighter emerged from the far side of the Solaria, took aim at the battlestar, fired a massive charge, and hit it amidships. Starbuck could
see the Solaria begin to split in half as the Cylon fighter pulled away. Cursing venomously, he bore down on the enemy and, relishing vengeance, sent the ship to smithereens with what seemed to be the last good shot he had left.
“Nice shooting,” Boomer said.
“Yeah, but a little late,” Starbuck snarled, as he watched the final stages of the Solaria’s disintegration.
He located another Cylon fighter in the distance and started toward it. But his common sense took over from his rage. Testing the firing button on his steering column, he heard the faint whine that told him that the weapons charge was now below efficiency level. He veered his own ship to the right, to escape any attack the Cylon craft might attempt. However, to his amazement, the several enemy ships he could discern now all went into an abrupt arcing turn and headed away from the human forces.
“What’s up?” Starbuck said.
“Total defeat is what’s up,” Boomer said. “The Solaria was our last battlestar. Minus the Galactica, of course, which seemed to find it militarily necessary to turn tail and—”
“Stow that, Boomer. We don’t know what happened yet.”
“Okay, okay. Whatever, they’ve destroyed the fleet, the slimy louses, and there’s no use hanging around.”
Jolly’s voice cut in.
“They’re turning tail. Let’s go get ’em!”
“No,” Starbuck cautioned. “We’ve got barely enough reserve fuel as it is.”
“To do what?” Boomer said. “To joyride around this sector? Where do you propose we land, Lieutenant Starbuck? There’s nothing left for—”
“The Galactica has left,” Starbuck said. “I suggest we try to find it.”
“Right,” said Jolly, “and when we do—”
“We shoot it down,” said Boomer.
“Tone it down, Boomer,” Starbuck said. “Let’s take time to hear their side. They must’ve had a good reason to pull out when they did.”
[Battlestar Galactica Classic] - Battlestar Galactica Page 6
