He and Ila had both drunk a bit too much wine the night of that birthday and had foolishly speculated on the far-off future—on the day when Adama would have come to the end of his usefulness to the Colonial Fleet and could pension himself off to his home on Caprica. Even as they had spoken, they knew how absurd their hopeful speculations were. As long as the war continued, Adama would have refused retirement and pension, and was likely to serve in at least an advisory capacity after he became too feeble to command. In Ila’s last letter, which arrived just before the beginning of the peace conference, she had written that if the conference was successful then perhaps their absurd hopes for the future might be realized after all. He had enjoyed a moment of hope—but just a moment. That was all the Cylons allowed, one moment.
He looked at the youngest Ila, the oldest photograph, taken just before their marriage. Memories of that time came back to him in a flood. When he met her, Ila had been a dedicated career woman, determined to become one of the Quorum of the Twelve. At the age of seventeen she had run for, and won, a seat on the local council. Her radical ideas had already drawn attention to her, especially her plan to reduce her city’s contribution to the overall Caprican military budgets. Because she was gleaning some support from the populace, themselves tired of the war which was then almost a thousand years old, certain military and political circles concluded that she should be investigated. Adama, then a young ensign on TDY to the Caprican training base, was dispatched to check out the mild agitation in the boondocks, and see what he could do to smoothe it over. Caprican law would not allow Ila’s right of free speech to be interfered with, but there was nothing in the books that said a handsome young ensign couldn’t positively influence a beautiful young agitator. The insight of the military higher-ups in this matter proved to be extremely prescient. Not only had Ila been positively influenced by the ensign, he had fallen head over heels in love with her, from the first moment he saw her making an impassioned speech to her council. He had always preferred women with strength of character, and Ila turned out to be one of the strongest women he had ever met. Her inner strength had saved him time and time again during the course of their marriage, especially during those moments when he had to be told no as he leaned toward some ridiculous course of action.
Each separate likeness of Ila he looked at started similar waves of memory. He saw her beauty in all its stages, could remember his love growing through all the years. Suddenly he broke down, began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Ila,” he sobbed. “I was never there when it mattered. Never there when—”
Inevitably, he thought of all they might still have accomplished together, all they might have done in the past. The pain became too much to bear. He willed the tears to stop, willed himself to turn away from the wall of photographs. When he looked up, he saw Apollo standing in the doorway. Obviously he had been there watching for a long time. Adama had forgotten that Apollo was with him; he was disoriented for a minute. With his fingertips, he brushed away some of the remaining tears and struggled to control his voice as he addressed his son.
“I didn’t—didn’t hear you come in.”
“Forgive me, Father,” Apollo said. “I should have gone away, left you….”
“No, no, that’s all right. I was… was just gathering a few remembrances.”
There were some non-holographic photos spread on the mantle below the arranged pictures. He picked one up, offered it to Apollo.
“You want this likeness of you and Zac?”
Apollo drew back. When he spoke there was a clear edge of bitterness in his voice.
“No,” he said. “Look, there are crowds coming. They probably saw our ship land.”
“I’m not worried about them. I’ll be a few more minutes here….”
Clearly the decision was against Apollo’s best judgment, but he nodded stiffly and started to leave. In a second he was back in the doorway, saying.
“Maybe she wasn’t here, maybe—”
“She was here,” Adama said with finality. “She was here.”
Apollo muttered, “Yes, of course,” and left.
* * *
Standing by his ship, Apollo watched the angry crowd of people approach. They moved like a mob, disorganized, with a lot of arm waving and jostling. Their voices, pitched high and shrill, made their hostility clear. Apollo wondered if his father had judged correctly in staying around. A mob like this one might kill the both of them, and what good would that do? Perhaps he should have insisted more strenuously, rushed the old man back to the plane and taken off before the crowd’s arrival.
Adama might, after all, be too overwrought right now to make a decision wisely. It certainly didn’t seem rational to Apollo for the old man to mourn quietly before a bunch of old photographs. Apollo didn’t like photographs. They were just ice sculptures that would melt away if you refused to look at them, and the last thing Apollo wanted was to look at pictures of Mom and Zac. He had refused his father’s offer of the photo from the mantel—and that picture had once been his favorite—because he couldn’t bear to look at it, to see Zac’s smiling face and their arms around each other’s shoulders. If he kept that picture, it would definitely call up the memory forever of their last battle together, definitely force him to speculate about his possible error in leaving Zac out there all alone. The kid wasn’t ready to be left on his own and, in spite of the fact that all military wisdom dictated that Apollo return post-haste to the Fleet with his information, he would always wonder whether or not he should have turned and flown back to Zac, helped the kid out when he really needed it. With the present desolate condition of the war, it was a memory he could not afford.
The mob stopped about fifty yards from the ship. Some of them pointed toward it angrily. Apollo walked forward, trying to gauge the depth of their enmity. Some of the people who were doing the pointing turned to point toward him. Gradually the entire mob took notice of Apollo coming out to meet them. A man came forward, shaking his fist, shouting.
“Where are they, the rest of your fancy pilots?”
Another man, just behind the first speaker, hollered:
“Where were you, lad, when they were killing everyone? What were you doing?”
Other men and women separated from the crowd and edged toward Apollo. They were angry, as if they would like to tear him apart and spread the pieces from here to the burning city.
“Wait,” called out a woman who was running to the front of the crowd. The front ranks parted and she stepped forward, leading a small boy by the hand. “Let him talk.” She turned to Apollo, and walked a couple of tentative steps toward him. Apollo was struck by her beauty, which shone through the dirt marks on her face and the dishevelment of her hair and clothing. “Before they jump at your throat, I’d like to know a few things. Where you were. For that matter, where was everybody, the entire military force? Where were all of you? Even after the battle had begun, we prayed for relief, but you never came.”
Her words were enunciated precisely, with a theatrical projection. This lovely woman could be the real danger to him, Apollo thought. The mob he could handle by tactics learned in training, but one intelligent person could combat such tactics easily. To give himself a moment to think, he looked down at the boy beside her. The child’s face almost couldn’t be discerned through all the dirt on it, but his innocent eyes were clear as they stared upward at him.
“Most of us are dead,” Apollo said, trying to speak as matter-of-factly as possible. The crowd quieted down. “We were ambushed. There is no more fleet.”
First there was a collective gasp in the crowd, then individual reactions of anguished crying and angry despair. The woman looked around at the mournful people, her face showing the confusion she felt.
“But,” she said, “but why—I mean, you’re here. Where did you come from?”
“The battlestar Galactica.”
“Survived….”
“Yes….”
“Well, what of the presi
dent, what about the Quorum of the Twelve? And the other colonies. We can fight back surely. We’re united, all twelve colonies, after hundreds of years. Our combined strength, it can’t possibly be defeated, that’s what we were all taught, what we learned from the cradle.”
Adama, standing by the wing of Apollo’s craft, moved into the flickering light and spoke.
“Our unity, our strength, came about too late.”
The woman clearly recognized Adama, and her head made an automatic bow.
“Commander Adama!” she shouted.
Others in the crowd reacted to the name.
“Serina,” Adama said.
His mere appearance seemed to bring home to Serina and the crowd the impact and scope of their defeat.
“Then it’s true. They’ve beaten us. We’re doomed.”
Adama’s look was stern, magisterial. Apollo turned away from it and looked down at the boy who was, inexplicably, smiling as he looked up at Apollo with admiration.
“Can I ride in your ship, mister?” the boy said.
Apollo bent down and picked the boy up. The child was lighter than he looked. As he replied to the boy, he thought of Zac and he had to look at his father as he spoke.
“Fighter ships are no place for boys.”
Adama must have understood the meaning of his son’s glance, for he looked away, some hurt in his eyes.
“They’re going to have to be if our people are going to survive,” Serina said.
Adama walked slowly up the hill and turned his attention toward the burning cities. Serina moved up behind him. Apollo followed, still holding the boy in his arms.
“Commander,” Serina said, “we’re going to have to fight back. We can’t—can’t simply give up.”
A long silence followed. Both Serina and Apollo stared at the commander, searching for signs of decision. When Adama looked their way again he seemed to look past them.
“Yes,” he whispered, “we’re going to fight back.”
Those in the crowd who could hear his declaration told those closest to them. Word spread quickly. As the knowledge was shared, the crowd reacted variously, with cries of satisfaction, frustration, vented anger.
Adama took a couple of steps toward Apollo before speaking again. When he talked to his son, it was as if the crowd beyond them didn’t exist. The intimacy was a combination of father speaking to son and commander addressing captain.
“But we can’t fight back here, and not now. And not in the colonies, not even in this star system. We must gather together every survivor from each of the twelve worlds, every man, woman, and child who’s survived this infamy. We must get word to them to set sail at once, in any vehicle that’ll carry them, no matter what its state.”
“Father,” Apollo said, “there isn’t time, not enough time to arrange provisions. I’m sure the Cylons will be sending landing parties to eradicate the survivors. What we should do—if we could just send in our remaining fighters—”
“No! Too many of them, too few of us. There’s a time to fight, but not now. We must withdraw, fight another day, it’s only—”
“But—but there’s no way to board the entire population on the Galactica, and we have no troop carriers anymore. Those vehicles—they’d be, well, just a ragtag fleet. Their potential for conversion to hyperspace capability is marginal at best.”
“You’re thinking logically, yes, but this isn’t the time for logical thinking. We’ll use what we do have. Every intercolony passenger liner, freighter, tanker, even intra-colony buses, air taxis, anything that’ll carry our people into the stars.”
“And when they’ve gathered in the stars?” Serina asked softly.
“We will lead them. And protect them until they are strong again.”
Adama’s eyes glowed with such powerful confidence that, for a moment, Apollo couldn’t be sure whether he was facing a madman or a savior. From the confused face of Serina and the curious looks emanating from the mob, it was clear that they weren’t sure either.
Apollo tried to picture what his father proposed. All manner of ships rising from planets in flame—as he had called it, a ragtag fleet. The survivors of all the colonies, the Aeries from Aeriana, the Gemons from Gemini, the Virgos from Virgon, the Scorpios, the Leos, the Picons, the Sagitarians. It just didn’t seem possible. But judging from the determination displayed on Adama’s face, Apollo wasn’t going to pull forth any doubting auguries.
Apollo nodded, said they had to try it. Serina agreed. Soon the mood of the crowd had changed from puzzlement to a confidence as they cheered their leader.
FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:
The assembling of the survivors! What a miracle that was. Word went out over all the secret channels. Somehow people on all the twelve worlds received it. I’m told that the waves carrying the message only had to burn their way through the thinnest beginnings of planetary atmosphere before messengers on the surface were dispatched in every direction. Get to a rallying point, salvage every ship with sufficient thrust to reach the chosen coordinates, sneak around, above and beneath the Cylon patrols that were scouring the ground and weaving webs in the sky.
Not every refugee made it to our secret rendezvous. We have, in fact, no way of knowing how many failed. In the aftermath of a holocaust like the Cylon massacre, there’s no time to arrange for the proper memorials, no cenotaphs that can be planted in airless space. Some made it, some did not. They came to our designated assembling point, around which Apollo had neatly improvised an enveloping camouflage force field that made us invisible to the many Cylon search patrols that passed near us. How no ship led the Cylons directly to us is simply another facet of the historical miracle that took place.
Divine intervention was suggested to some by the fantastic chain of events that brought thousands of survivor ships to us. Whether it’s interpreted secularly or mystically, the miracle happened.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Cylon Imperious Leader had learned long ago to overcome his distaste at the sight of a human being. In the rare times when he had needed in the uncomfortable course of duty to actually face a captured enemy, he had felt sick for a long time after the interrogation. They greatly disturbed his sense of unity. He was never sure why, but he absorbed small doses of their irrationality when forced to be physically near any of them. Now, self-discipline and the deliberate suppression of certain portions of the third-brain enabled him to encounter a human without undue reaction afterward. However, the human being standing before him at this time threatened severely to restore the old irrational responses. While trying to figure out why this particular human was so particularly unsavory, he carefully shut off those parts of his mind that could be significantly affected by the being’s mere physical presence.
The answer to his growing feelings of revulsion might be the simplest, the most obvious. The man, Count Baltar, was a traitor. Traitors deliberately disturb order for their own selfish gain. They were the vilest of a vile race. And Baltar was surely the greatest traitor of all, since his betrayal had made the human annihilation possible. While the leader would have liked to treat this traitor with proper contempt, the involved ceremonies of Cylon courtesy demanded that he at least be polite.
“Welcome, Baltar,” he said, controlling the vocal output of his helmet so that a human-sounding warmth underscored the words. “You have done well.”
Baltar, who had sustained an emotionless appearance since being led to the Leader’s pedestal, now suddenly spoke in anger, adding to his voice that strange inflection that humans termed sarcasm.
“I have done well, eh? What have you done? What of our bargain? My colony was to be spared.”
Another unexpected and unreasonable outburst of emotion from a human. Imperious Leader should have been prepared for it, he knew, but he did not always correctly judge the erratic use of emotions that made humans so annoyingly unpredictable.
“The bargain was altered,” the leader said, his third-brain instructing his voice box to put a h
umanlike sarcasm into the words. The sarcasm was a good approximation, and he felt quite satisfied with it.
“How can you change one side of a bargain?” Baltar said.
It was like a human to place what little logic he did have at his command into a framework of extreme selfishness. They could never see the scope of a larger plan unless they were directed toward it. Even then, their minds seemed unable to absorb such a plan’s completeness. They could, it seemed, see parts but never wholes. No wonder they were not fit to govern a single portion of the universe. As he replied to Baltar, he continued to give his voice a human sound, so as not to confuse the stupid, traitorous man.
“Count Baltar, there is no other side. You have missed the entire point of the war.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Baltar said. His voice suddenly subdued, he cringed.
“What I mean is that there could be no dominion over the species so long as man remained a power with the universe. There are no shades of meaning when it comes to this. Man or the Alliance, the answer is obvious. Compromise is not at all acceptable.”
A whining tone came into Baltar’s voice when he spoke next:
“But you have what you want. The threat is gone, it no longer exists. I delivered my end of the bargain. On my world, my reputation is firm—whatever Count Baltar says he’ll do, gets done by him and him only. I did what I was supposed to, damn it! My dominion was to be spared, you said it was to—”
“Dominion? There can be only one dominion, one power, one authority. There must be no exceptions.”
“What are you, you think you’re some kind of god?”
“Gods are one of the intellectual trivialities of your race.”
“All right, forget I said that. But, believe me, I have no ambitions against you.”
Imperious Leader blended a burst of laughter into the sarcasm of his voice-box mixture.
“You grow smaller as you stand there, Baltar. Could you think me so foolish as to trust a man who would see his own race destroyed?”
[Battlestar Galactica Classic] - Battlestar Galactica Page 8
