After Adar left, Ila hugged me for a long time. She seemed sad. I never did know why, though I asked the question often enough at the time. She said she just felt sad. Then the daggit, with Apollo after him, ran between my legs, and I fell to the ground. As Ila laughed and helped me up, she said she’d forgotten to ready anything for lunch and would I accept leftovers. I said what are you laughing at and yes I would. She said I looked absurd falling to the ground and would I fix us a couple of cocktails. I hugged her again. To this day I can feel vividly the way her body nestled against mine.
CHAPTER TEN
Adama kept a constant surveillance of the Carillon work activities. Shuttles from the agricultural project hastened toward the Galactica and other ships, with a harvest beyond original predictions of yield. The last request for a new Tylium load had been met with the usual Ovion polite phrasings that more would be sent soon, after they had corrected a malfunction in their processing machinery. Tigh, angry, complained that a number of tankers sat on the surface. Scanners showed them filled with Tylium in its volatile liquid form. Adama told his negotiators to keep trying. He was pleased to learn that one of the tankers had been dispatched, and he personally oversaw the meticulous landing of the battered-looking ship on one of the Galactica’s decks. An officer reported the successful boarding of the food stores, and Adama ordered all agricultural personnel to be shuttled off the planet. With the livery and agricultural workers returned, that left only the people collected in the casino for the awards ceremony still on the planet. His sense of timing suggested he wait a few moments before sending out a recall order. He would have liked to bring up Apollo immediately, but that was impossible. However, he put Tigh on alert, reacting to the Colonel’s report that a group of Ovions in the casino were acting strangely.
Athena, who had been manning the scanners directed planetside, reported an unusual number of aircraft and a lot of ground movement on Carillon. The exceptional darkness of the planet made it difficult to specify, she said, exactly what was going on. At least one aircraft appeared to have emerged from the cloud cover now hanging over a large portion of the night hemisphere. The trajectory seemed to indicate the rather large aircraft had emerged from the dense center of the minefield.
“Is that possible?” she asked her father.
“Yes, if—”
“If what?”
“If they are in possession of information allowing them to pass through the minefield with safety.”
“But such a large ship.”
“Were you able to get a good outline of it for scanning?”
“Afraid not. The darkness and the cloud cover and the gathering precipitation—”
“Yes, I see. Very good, Athena.”
“You have a suspicion about the ship, don’t you, Father?”
Adama considered whether there was any danger in telling her. The time seemed to have arrived to employ Athena’s strategic acumen.
“I think it just might be a troop carrier.”
It took a moment for the information to sink in, then Athena said, “Cylons?”
“Possibly.”
She returned to her duty. On the scanner screens, movements which had seemed strange to her previously now began to take on a military aspect.
A bridge officer turned away from a scanner console, and reported.
“Picking up a large body of objects closing toward us rapidly. They seem to have come out of nowhere.”
“From behind an ambush screen, no doubt,” Adama muttered.
“What was that, Sir?”
“Nothing. Scan the objects for life forms.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
Adama glanced away from the console, into his daughter’s concerned eyes. Obviously she had heard his muttering.
Before her father had alerted her to danger, Athena had been wallowing in self-pity about being left behind aboard the Galactica. Her mind had been filled with pictures of Starbuck chasing after that socialator. She wished she had not reacted so rashly, throwing the key down like that. If she had had any sense, she would have lured Starbuck to the guest quarters, used all her abilities to make him forget the Gemonese woman. It did not seem to her that men developed permanent relationships with socialators, and that comforted her for a while, until she recalled that Cassiopeia could not really be considered a socialator anymore. She was an ex-socialator, able to use her considerable training within new social systems.
Now, however, there was no room for jealousy. If her growing suspicions were correct, and what was happening on the planet below and space above was another Cylon secret assault, then there was no time for petty emotions. Why didn’t her father order up the troops, instead of leaving them in the casino? The odds were already against them, and the time wasted in lifting the warriors off Carillon might make all the difference between defeat and victory. She was not used to her father being hesitant in his command role. On the other hand, she had not been prepared for his resignation from the council, an act that seemed to indicate emotional disturbance. Was it possible that her father was cracking up, that under that tough surface, pressure was building toward an explosion of madness? She shook her head, not wanting to even consider that.
Switching on the comline to Tigh, who had left his transponder open, she asked him for a report.
“The Ovions’re collecting in droves,” he said. “We might have to make a move very soon. If we can get this stupid crowd moving—”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re buying every word Uri says. How can they? Listen, I’ll turn up the transmitter, and you can hear….”
Uri was speaking.
“…to use this occasion to invoke in each of us a rebirth. A wiping the slate clean of animosities and prejudices against any living brother, whether a former friend or foe….”
The cheer that went up almost deafened Athena. The man’s speech was effective, all right. How could their people be so gullible? She remembered her father saying once, panaceas were a cubit a dozen, but solutions cost much, much more.
“Athena?” Tigh came back on the line.
“Yes?”
“Tell your father I can’t keep the lid on here much longer.”
“Righto, whatever that means.”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Athena’s fright seemed to have doubled as she turned away from the scanning console.
For the moment Starbuck and Apollo had outdistanced their Cylon pursuers. Cylons were not known for ground speed. Unfortunately their last turn had led them into a dead end.
“How do we get out of here?” Starbuck asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Am I correct in assuming that, in addition to finding ourselves in a cul-de-sac, we are also hopelessly lost?”
“That’s correct, Lieutenant.”
“Well, I always like to know the odds. Especially when they’re a thousand to one against me.”
“You can’t always measure life in gambling odds, Starbuck.”
“Is that right? Do you suggest an alternative measurement?”
“Starbuck, those Cylons’ll locate us at any minute. This is no time to—”
“I agree. But what do we do? Go shoulder to shoulder, run out there blasting away like we did that minefield? And what about Boxey and that barking growling machine of his, what about—”
“Muffy’s no machine!” Boxey protested.
Muffit perhaps felt the insult, too, for he started barking.
“Quiet, you daggit!” Boxey said.
The daggit started running away from them. He ran a few steps, then ran back.
“What’s he doing?” Starbuck said.
“He wants us to follow him,” Boxey said. “C’mon—”
“Boxey, I don’t think now’s the time to—” Apollo said, but before he could finish Boxey had leaped out of his arms and begun to follow the running daggit back up the corridor.
Apollo and Starbuck rushed after them. When they had al
most caught up with the boy, the daggit turned into a dark area in the wall that looked like a shadow. Boxey followed him into it. Starbuck and Apollo exchanged glances. Closer examination showed the dark shadow to be a small tunnel that ran between the corridor and what proved to be, when the two men had crawled through the tunnel, a large cavern. At first Apollo thought it was just one of the mining areas until he looked closely at the ground.
“What’re those?” he said to Starbuck.
“Looks like some sort of vegetable patch to me, but—”
“My God!”
They simultaneously perceived the humans inside the pods. Starbuck crouched down by a nearby pod and touched the plumpish young woman bound inside it.
“I think—I think I was playing hi-lo with this woman that first day I found the casino. Her name was—was—God, I forgot it already.”
“Is she alive?” Apollo said.
“She’s breathing. She’s got a pulse. Let me see if I can—oh, God!”
“What is it?”
“Her body. It’s stuck here. Not only stuck. It’s becoming part of the pod, blending with the leaves. Underneath, she’s—Apollo, the back of her head and shoulders, they’re breaking up into matter, into—”
“We can’t stay here. C’mon.”
“But this woman. The others. We can’t just leave them, we—”
“And we can’t sort out who’s salvageable. We’ll send a team back. Right now there’s the Cylons. C’mon. Follow Muffit, he seems to know where he’s going.”
They crossed the chamber, carefully stepping over the pods, trying not to look at their contents.
Ahead of them, a group of Ovions entered the cavern, carrying four new pods. Apollo grabbed Muffy and crouched behind the nearest pod. Starbuck and Boxey fell to the ground beside Apollo.
“What’s going on there?” Starbuck whispered.
“I think they’ve been siphoning off people from the casino, bringing them down here. That’s the reason for the casino, the reason they keep everybody winning and happy and fat.”
“But why? Why are they wrapping them in these pods and—”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps we’re a source of food for the Ovions, maybe—”
“Food? Do you mean the casino is a foodlot? The Ovions are a race of cannibals?”
“No, Starbuck, that’s not—”
“What do you mean, it’s not—”
“Cannibals are species that eat of their own species. Ovions aren’t eating Ovions here, they’re—”
“You choose a fine time to nit-pick. You mean they’re just fattening us up, like cattle, like—”
“That may be it. Those first pods they just brought in, the men in them look familiar.”
Starbuck squinted at the pods, which were being delicately held up horizontally while Ovions attached tubing to them.
“They’re the three men we were looking for!” Starbuck said.
“I thought so. Even from here the uniforms look like bad fits.”
“And the other one—my God! It’s Cassiopeia!”
Starbuck had stood up and begun to run before Apollo could stop him. He rushed toward the pod carriers like a competitive runner, leaping over the pods underfoot as if they were hurdles. With a last running jump Starbuck hurled himself on one of the Ovions who had just propped up the pod containing Cassiopeia for the attachment of its tubing.
Starbuck’s move seemed to activate Muffit Two, who ran after him. Naturally, Boxey followed the daggit. Apollo, still crouching behind the pod, muttered, “Damn!” then started crawling toward Starbuck, around and over the pods.
Seetol, alerted to the disturbance by a messenger, rushed into the pod chamber. From another entranceway came Lotay, accompanied by the tall Cylon spy.
One of the humans, the brash young man Starbuck, was struggling in the grip of two Ovion warriors. As Seetol approached, she heard him say:
“You bastards! You can’t turn her into—into food!”
“Not food precisely, Sir,” Seetol said. “Although your nutrient substances are part of what is absorbed. They are diluted, in fact, into a liquid used to feed our babies at the time they hatch from the eggs.”
Starbuck appeared to be sick.
“Ovion bitch!” he said. “You’re lower than—” He saw the Cylon approaching. “Lower than a Cylon!”
Seetol showed no reaction to his insult as she continued.
“Within these pods we are able to extract all that is best in your race. And other races, for that matter. Minerals, life-giving liquids, bones for building materials. We can even extract knowledge from your brains, information from your bodily cells. You might say, we use every bit of you usefully.”
The Cylon centurion laughed harshly.
“Impossible to see a piece of human vermin as useful,” he said.
Barking and yelling distracted Seetol’s attention. The young human boy was pulling at the uniform on the leg of one of her warriors, while his detestable pet was biting at the Ovion’s leg. The queen, clearly amused by the situation, walked to the scene, and with her long arms pulled the boy away from the soldier.
“I have special plans for this child,” she said to the warrior, who had drawn a weapon. “He’s mine. But, if you wish, you may dispose of the animal.”
The Ovion coolly pointed the weapon at Muffit Two, who was now leaping in anger. Squeezing one of its two triggers, she shot the daggit at the high point of a leap. Sparks flew from Muffit’s hide as it fell to the ground in a crumpled, inert heap.
“Muffy! Muffy!” Boxey shouted.
“Why, you—” Starbuck shouted. Twisting his body violently, he pulled out of the eight-armed grasp of the two Ovion guards. Leaping up suddenly to Seetol’s left, Apollo fired at the Ovion who had shot the daggit, sending a killing beam through her neck. Starbuck, in reaction, rolled to his left and came up shooting. His aim was true, as he sliced the Cylon’s helmet in two. Suddenly the two men were blasting away, and an Ovion warrior seemed to fall with each shot.
Seetol ran recklessly through the fire toward Lotay, to protect her. Lotay held the child, who was now crying fiercely as he looked down at his fallen pet, tightly in her arms.
The firing behind her stopped. Looking back, she saw that all of her warriors had been killed by the two humans. Starbuck was now advancing toward her and Lotay.
“Stop right there, you ugly insect bitch!” he cried.
Seetol moved sideways, placing herself deliberately between the two men’s weapons and her queen. Whatever else happened, Lotay must be protected. It would be final proof of Seetol’s love of her queen to die for her.
“Starbuck, stop!” Apollo shouted.
“I want to kill both of them. We haven’t got time to—”
“You might kill Boxey, too.”
Apollo’s cautionary message seemed to make Lotay hold the boy all the more tightly.
“Disarm them, Seetol!” Lotay screamed, her voice shrill. Conditioned to respond automatically to an order from her queen, Seetol jumped at Starbuck. The man, surprised at the Ovion’s lunge, nevertheless got off a shot at her which burned through one of her left arms. She finished her leap and knocked Starbuck off balance. Seetol grabbed at his arm to try to wrest the man’s sidearm from his fingers. The move jostled his arm, made him accidentally fire the weapon. A high-pitched scream behind her ended in a gurgle. She turned to see Lotay falling, her head half-severed from her neck by the chance shot. Seetol’s scream took up where Lotay’s left off, and she ran to her fallen queen. Boxey, having been released from Lotay’s arms as they went limp, ran to Muffit. Starbuck aimed his weapon toward Seetol’s head.
“No, Starbuck,” Apollo shouted. “We’ve done enough. Take care of Cassiopeia.”
Starbuck ran to the pod containing Cassiopeia as Apollo rushed to the sobbing boy.
As soon as Cassiopeia had been released from the pod, she fell into Starbuck’s arms, drugged, half-conscious, but alive. He hugged her to him briefly, then se
t her down while he released the three men in the Galactican uniforms. He was about to interrogate them, but he could tell from their glazed eyes they were in no state to produce any explanations at that moment.
At first Apollo did not know what to do about Boxey. He figured that the crumpled daggit-droid’s body must remind Boxey of the death of the real daggit back on Caprica. Only this time nobody had shielded the boy from his pet’s fallen form. Would the boy be able to get over such a loss again? Or did it have to be a loss? Perhaps not.
“We’ve got to go, Boxey. We can’t stay here.”
“I won’t leave Muffy.”
“I know what you’re thinking, but are you a Starfleet trainee officer or not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then get moving, young man. I’ll bring Muffy, I promise you that. Now let’s go or I’ll have you keelhauled.”
Boxey, responding to the authority in Apollo’s voice, sprang to his feet. Gently Apollo picked up the daggit-droid. A few wires inside it hung out, frayed and burned. Ordering Boxey to start moving, they collected Starbuck, along with Cassiopeia and the three uniformed men, all of whom could respond to orders in a robot fashion. They made, Apollo thought, an odd-looking platoon as they trudged toward the entranceway of the chamber. Starbuck brought up the rear, looking back with his weapon raised at the mourning Seetol. He took aim at her, but Apollo said to leave her in her sorrow. She was no threat now.
Seetol, aware of their departure, made no move to follow them. There seemed no point. Lotay was dead. As in all deaths of Ovion queens, the tiny sharp points on the skin of her body had faded to a dull, nearly whitish, yellow. Soon they would retract into the skin.
Without her queen, Seetol was without function. There was nothing she could do to assuage her misery. Wounded by Starbuck’s shot, she could only sit and allow the life to drain out of her body. For a long while she bent over the dead queen and muttered prolonged, high-pitched sounds that were the Ovion version of keening. Eventually, unconsciousness relieved her misery and she fell forward across Lotay’s body.
[Battlestar Galactica Classic] - Battlestar Galactica Page 22
