Tripp explained that he considered it dangerous to confront Uri's mob anywhere in the crowded corridors. Stray shots could not only hurt individuals, they might start a riot that even the well-disciplined security force could not contain. Therefore, he announced, he was calling in all security personnel on duty to the bridge to make a stand there, if necessary. It would, of course, be up to Omega to soothe the situation and make that stand unnecessary.
Omega said that he'd rather face the mob without security backups, but Tripp told him quite rudely that it was his duty to protect the personnel of the ship and he intended to carry out that duty now. Lucifer would have been delighted to see how well his device had caused the discipline aboard the Galactica to deteriorate.
However, Lucifer was occupied with matters closer to home. He watched helplessly while Baltar took credit meticulously for Lucifer's creation. He had hoped the Leader, with his trio of capacious brains, could see through Baltar's lies, but apparently three brains perceived matters no better when they received only false data. Several times Lucifer was tempted to step forward and confront Baltar with the truth, but reticence—and the realization that it would look like he was trying to outmaneuver his own commander—held him back.
"And so," Baltar concluded his explanation of the guilt device's uses and functions, "by now the situation aboard the Galactica should be in such shambles that our ambush will be achieved easily."
Imperious Leader's reaction to Baltar's complex strategies was not the one Baltar had expected and hoped for. After all this time of desiring the defeat of the Galactica and the human fleet, Imperious Leader felt a few waves of resentment that the ultimate victory should be that of a traitorous human. He realized that such a thought was not acceptable to a third-brain Cylon, but he could not help thinking it anyway. Ever since he had achieved the third brain and inherited the leadership of the Cylon Alliance, he had devoted the major portion of his active consciousness to the war against the humans. His third-brain ability to be completely objective about himself had one drawback—he was also able to perceive the unhealthy influences his obsessive goals had had on his reasoning processes. In pursuing the elimination of the human vermin, he had been required to understand their irrational and emotional thought processes, the kinds of illogical thinking that had so frequently given them the edge in battles and other confrontations. He had had to exploit a human, Baltar, in order to make the ambush of the fleet and the twelve worlds successful. He had learned to think like a human, accepted their repellent beliefs and attitudes into his trio of brains. The assimilation of human ways had, in turn, altered his ways of perceiving everything. The humans had, in effect, contaminated his mental processes. He had tried to eliminate all the human decay that had entered his consciousness, but that had become impossible. The human influences seemed permanent.
For these reasons he still regarded Baltar as an enemy, even though he had been forced to use him as an ally. Because there were disadvantages to allowing the man too much power, Imperious Leader would have to stay remote from Baltar's coming battle. If Baltar's victory was overwhelming, the Leader would have to find a way to claim it for his own, then get Baltar out of the way.
It was not so simple for Imperious Leader to remain remote from the intriguing device that Baltar had just described. He apprehended instantly that its potential uses were multitudinous. Baltar, with his small mind, had not seen the far-reaching applications it had. It might not just alter the states of humans, it could affect any species. Imperious Leader could use it to enlarge his control over Cylons, as well as all the alien species that infected the universe.
He stopped Baltar from his incessant chatter and ordered:
"I wish a demonstration of your device."
"Now? But the attack—"
"There is no difficulty. We will supervise the attack together. There is time, is there not, before it must begin?"
"Well yes, but—"
"Then I require you to demonstrate LEADER for me! Now!"
When Imperious Leader's raspy voice resounded through a chamber as large as Baltar's cavernous command room, rattling even objects that were set in firm foundations, there was no arguing with him. Bemused, Baltar gave the orders for centurions to bring a contingent of human prisoners from the ship's prison level.
"If we're going to have a demonstration," he explained, "then let it be a mass demonstration. A real show, your lordship."
Spectre, impressed by Baltar's quick-thinking theatrical ingenuity, edged closer to the human, so as to be associated with him in the Imperious Leader's view.
Lucifer glided to the other side of Baltar, turned his voice to its softest coherent level, so that neither Spectre nor the Leader would hear, and said:
"Are you sure you require so many of the humans? I have enhanced the output power of the transmitter, and performed many other adjustments. Further, the machine has restructured itself in some ways that I have not yet solved. It might malfunction. And, more, to use so many prisoners will require abundant power."
"Don't worry, Lucifer. It's power that we can spare. Don't interfere."
"As you wish, commander."
Even with the controls Lucifer employed to keep his voice flat and level in tone and pitch, he still sounded bitter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Greenbean was terrified. Not only his heart, but the majority of his inner organs were in his throat. Where had the strange voice come from? He looked in every direction, peered down dark dismal vistas, saw nothing.
"What was that?" he finally managed to say.
"Just me," came the voice again.
Greenbean swallowed hard.
"Okay," he said. "I won't bother you. Don't mind me. I'll just catch the next elevator up."
"All elevators go up from here," the voice said ominously, and the speaker emerged from an alcove next to the elevator bank. "Welcome to the devil's pit, ensign."
He was an old man with a long dirty gray beard. His clothes, obviously ancient, showed a history, ancient and modern, of food spots, sooty dirt, and mold. They hung in shreds about his body. As he came closer, Greenbean was almost stifled by the stale ambrosa odor that coated the old man's breath and clothing.
"Who in Hades are you?" Greenbean asked. He found it difficult to keep his voice normal.
The old man shrugged.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "My name'd mean nothing to you. I was an engineer for this tub, the rattletrap Galactica as I call it, yahrens before you were born, sonny. I got tired of duty. Now I stay here, in the underbelly of the ship, sometimes sneaking abovedecks to steal a little sustenance and whatever else. I've snitched an enviable collection of booze."
"You live down here?"
"Of course. I'm not the only one. Though I may indeed be the only one you'll see, sailor. We don't . . . socialize with each other, we citizens of the devil's pit."
This second mention of devil's pit, plus the otherworldly way the man spoke, heightened Greenbean's fear.
"Are . . . are you a ghost?"
The man laughed. The laugh echoed through the cavernous devil's pit ethereally as if it had an existence separate from the man who'd originated it.
"I wouldn't tell you if I was."
Noises of machinery operating in the elevator shaft made both men turn their heads toward the elevator bank.
"Strange," the old man mused, "there's others comin' down here. We don't usually get two visits same day."
"It may be people, friends of mine, other pilots. They're after me, chasing me."
The old man looked quizzical.
"And they're your friends."
"Yes."
"Is this a game?"
"No game. I . . . I betrayed them. I betrayed the ship. They should kill me."
"But you'd rather do that job on yourself, if I heard you correct?"
"Yes."
"Maybe that can be arranged. But you don't want to be in plain sight when they arrive. Come here with me."
; The old man beckoned him toward the dark alcove he'd originally come out of. Greenbean was afraid to step into it, but the old man shoved him forward.
After they had become submerged in the dark, the elevator doors opened. Apollo and the others rushed out. They stopped quickly, overwhelmed by the darkness and the complexity of passageways in front of them.
"God," Dietra said, shivering, "this place is eerie!"
"It's worse than eerie," Cassiopeia said.
"Hey, Apollo," said Bojay, "why don't we go back up? If Greenbean's down here anywhere, he can't do anybody any harm. We don't have to—"
"No!" Cassiopeia said. "He told me he was going to kill himself. We've got to stop him."
"Okay, okay. You made your point. What's the drill?"
Apollo began to gesture to each of them in turn.
"Bojay, you and Sheba head down that way. Dietra, you and Cass go down that corridor. Boomer, you try that one. I'll take this way."
After they'd each gone a few steps, Apollo hollered after them:
"Remember now. Whatever Greenbean does, shoot only if you have to, then only to stun."
There was a murmured agreement, then they were off. Greenbean listened to their steps, unrhythmic clicks, fading out to silence.
"They're gone," the old man whispered.
They emerged from the dark alcove.
"Come with me this way," the old man said. Then the elevator noises came again. "Wait! There's another elevator. That makes three in a matter of microns. Perhaps I should start a resort."
Greenbean and the man crouched again in the hiding place.
Starbuck stepped out of the elevator. The insanity that had been taking hold of him at the instigation of Lucifer's device was now evident on his face. His dark blue eyes glowed wildly as he caressed the barrel of his laser pistol.
"GREENBEAN!" he hollered. "Greenbean! Come out, wherever you are. I just want to talk."
He ran off, disappeared quickly in the ghostly devil's pit blackness.
"I'd be careful about that one, I were you," the old man commented as they emerged from the alcove again. "He looks like a killer to me."
The old man dragged at his arm. At first Greenbean resisted.
"Where we going?" he asked.
"Where else when you come to the devil's pit? To hell, ensign, to hell."
Greenbean gave in to the man's pulling and followed him down a dark corridor no one else had taken.
Cassiopeia lost all sense of direction immediately. Feeling quite spooked by the heavy air and density of the devil's pit, she stayed close to Dietra as they went down one pitch-dark corridor after another. Their noses were assaulted by a succession of unpleasant smells. They heard sounds unlike anything they'd ever heard in any other part of the ship.
"I didn't know places like this existed shipboard," Dietra observed.
"I didn't want to know. I don't want to know."
Apollo proceeded warily through corridors and mazelike areas. Up ahead he saw movement, a person or creature edging along a wall. It came to a light and Apollo saw it was human. But it was too short, chubby, and dirty to be Greenbean. Whatever sex it was, it scampered away as soon as it saw Apollo.
A few more steps and something made Apollo glance upward abruptly. He was certain he saw more than one pair of eyes gaping down at him from metal rafters.
"Devil's pit, huh?" he muttered. "They named it right, anyway."
Sheba, trudging her way cautiously and feeling quite blind, tripped over a pile of clothing. She picked up one item from the pile, held it toward the dim light cast by her microflashlight. The odor rising from the cloth made her grimace.
"Whew!" she said. "Whoever wore this's set up housekeeping in the sewage lines."
Bojay got a whiff of it and choked.
"Put it down, Sheba," he said in a strained voice.
"You don't have to worry about that," she said, flinging the cloth away from her as hard as she could.
The old man led Greenbean down an aisle between long rows of mysterious pipes. There were noises all around them. Greenbean wondered which were the movements of his pursuers and which were the scrapings and scufflings of the shadowy denizens of the devil's pit. He wished he weren't here. He wished he'd just climbed into a space-waste chute and got himself flushed out of the ship.
"How's your balance, kiddo?" the old man said.
"Good, I guess. I don't get dizzy in a spinning viper, if that's what you mean."
"Then come with me."
The old man started climbing a ladder that Greenbean hadn't seen. It led straight up from the flooring to a walkway above them.
After going up a few steps, the old man glowered back at Greenbean and told him to climb. Greenbean started up the ladder.
"Where we going?" he asked the old man.
"That walkway. Used to be for inspection when there was anythin' down here to inspect. I go up here to contemplate the good things in life."
Cassiopeia and Dietra turned a corner and saw a dark tall figure up ahead of them. It moved gracefully, the catlike walk of a viper pilot. Had they found Greenbean so soon? Cassiopeia thought. But the man came into some light, and she saw if was only Apollo.
"How did you get here?" she asked him. "You went off in a different direction."
"I don't know. I can't get any sense of direction down here. It's a maze."
"God," Dietra said, "we might be lost here forever."
"Let's hope not," Cassiopeia said. An icicle seemed to caress her back.
"Well, you guys keep going this way," Apollo ordered. "I'm going to try that forbidding little hallway over there."
"Be careful, Apollo."
"Down here, I get more cautious with each passing micron."
Unlike the others, Starbuck strode through the devil's pit as if it were illuminated by banks of fierce light. He had no idea how he moved so well in the darkness. He had been in the devil's pit once before, visiting forgotten rooms devoted to psychological therapy, but he had little memory of the devil's pit's geography.
All he really cared about was finding Greenbean. Led by his growing madness, he had become obsessive in that quest.
He came to an area of criss-crossing pipes. Ducking under one, he came out into a passageway. Looking to his right, he saw Greenbean halfway up a ladder.
He stopped and raised his pistol to eye level.
"GREENBEAN!" he shouted. Greenbean, his face terrified, peered toward him.
Starbuck pulled the trigger. The shot, which narrowly missed Greenbean, made a resonant whistling noise that sounded like an explosion of fierce wind in the echoing vastness of the devil's pit. Greenbean scampered up the ladder and reached the walkway. Starbuck ran to the ladder.
Boomer edged his thin body through a narrow opening into a rank-smelling area that he was sure hid a few of the inhabitants of the devil's pit. Up ahead of him he saw Bojay and Sheba passing through a shaft of light. He started to call to them when he heard Starbuck shout Greenbean's name and then shoot. He started running toward the sound of the shot, which he could tell was close.
Bojay and Sheba also headed toward the area the sounds had come from.
"Isn't that Boomer up ahead?" Sheba said. "How did he get there?"
"Probably just his ghost," Bojay said. "I think the shot came from down that way."
Boomer was heading in the same direction. They followed him into a passageway bordered by thick pipes. They saw Starbuck, who was now on the ladder, waving his pistol maniacally and shouting downward:
"Don't come near me, Boomer. He's mine. I'm gonna take care of him once and for all."
"Something's wrong with you, Starbuck," Boomer yelled back.
"Wrong with all of us," Starbuck responded.
"Come down. We'll go after Greenbean."
"Don't you understand, Boomer? I'm gonna kill him!" Starbuck resumed his upward climb. Boomer shrugged and started up the ladder himself. Bojay and Sheba ran to the foot of the ladder.
"
You follow them," Sheba said. "Somebody besides Starbuck's running along up there. Hear? Probably Greenbean. Somebody else, too. I'm going to follow the sound of it from down here, see if I can find another way up, ahead of them. What are you waiting for? Go!"
Bojay began climbing the ladder. Sheba ran down the aisle, pursuing the clanking metal sounds above her.
Cassiopeia and Dietra heard the shot, but didn't have a clue to its origin. They continued in the direction they'd been heading.
They came to a hallway, with rooms on either side. Cassiopeia took one side, Dietra the other, opening doors and giving quick furtive looks inside.
Toward the end of her row, Cassiopeia opened a door and saw a cowering group of people huddled against a wall. They were dirty, dressed in shards of clothing, and vacant eyed. One of them snarled at her and she slammed the door shut quickly.
She caught up to Dietra, who was staring upward.
"I heard something," she said. "Up there."
Starbuck's voice, soft and sinister, drifted down to them.
"Stop running, Greenbean. No place you can go."
There was a crazed urgent sound to the voice.
"They're up there," Cassiopeia said.
Starbuck's voice came down again, this time louder and shriller.
"I got you in my sights now, Greeny."
He shot twice.
"Oh, no!" Cassiopeia muttered.
"You were lucky, that one!" Starbuck yelled. "Next one's the first nail in your coffin."
This was followed by the clattering sound of running along the walkway. Down below Cassiopeia and Dietra kept pace with the steps.
The shot singed the railing next to Greenbean. He and the old man broke into a run. They were pulling away from Starbuck because of the old man's surefooted knowledge of the walkway, when a shot, another near-miss, made the old man lose his balance. He fell. Greenbean stopped and, over the old man's protests, helped him up. Starbuck, a few meters away, halted and took aim. His shot made Greenbean veer away and bounce off the railing. The impact sent searing pain through his hip. The old man urged him to run on. Greenbean wondered if he should. Perhaps it'd be better to just stand still and allow Starbuck to kill him. It'd be easier than shooting himself.
Battlestar Galactica 11 - The Nightmare Machine Page 16
