"I guess I'm not going to," Xiomara said. "Inconvenient, this war."
At her bunk, she assembled her battle equipment rapidly. For a moment Apollo ignored the urgent threats of the klaxon and watched Xiomara, wondering to himself if what she had said about him was true. Why had he hesitated to touch her?
Although he tried to keep ignoring the klaxon, the belt wouldn't let him. He had to be ready for battle, too. He returned to his bunk and got his gear. All around him the other soldiers were throwing their equipment together, some of them looking as if they were responding while still fully asleep. Croft appeared to be especially groggy.
Outside the barracks there was an explosion. Nearly all the soldiers were knocked off stride, then there was a great rush for the entrance. Sarge and Corporal Barra squeezed by others in the doorway and began to roust the remaining soldiers. Barra hollered that the camp was being ambushed.
Apollo and Xiomara headed for the entrance simultaneously. Before going out, they looked at each other. Xiomara blew him a kiss. It was an odd gesture, carrying insult along with the affection. He saluted her, and she laughed.
They charged out of the barracks together. Right in front of them the battle was going on. Crouching slightly, they both shot at the same time. Two enemy soldiers fell and Apollo and Xiomara, responding according to their training as a precise fighting unit, plunged forward.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Several battles later, Sarge's elite squad had become a slick and sleek fighting unit, the best bunch of soldiers he had ever collected together. Now, as he watched Croft efficiently lay down a cover for the forward-rushing Apollo, he realized he had never before seen a squad of warriors act so precisely together. On a mission they performed in unison, knowing their assignments and getting them done, protecting each other, thwarting any counterattack.
If Sarge could have read Croft's mind, his confidence might have been shaken. Even as he fired rapidly at anything that threatened Apollo, he was only vaguely aware of what he was doing. His mind was clouded, his memories of the past were uncertain, his entire feeling of identity was shaken. The worst part of his deterioration was that, in a small stubborn corner of his mind, he was quite aware of it. And troubled by it. Once in a while a clear view of his slavery would come through the fog. Slavery? he thought. No, this is worse than slavery. Slaves can escape, a prospect denied us.
The more time that passed, the less he even wanted to escape. He was sure the others felt the same way. Each of them was now inhabited by a strange kind of split personality. One personality was the warrior—that part of them that was controlled by their belts and sweatbands. This side was a willing servant of the state, even though they had no real knowledge of what the state was all about. The only state they really knew was the state of war.
The other side of their personality was that part of their original identity that each retained. That was the part that was quickly fading for him. Croft hated his own personal disintegration. In the old days, the pre-Yevra days, he had been able to see enemies as individuals. Now, accepting the dictates of the controlling mechanisms, he saw this new set of adversaries as inferior beings, as monstrous creatures that should be destroyed, as pieces of matter that shouldn't exist. In spite of his famous role as cynic and pessimist, he couldn't stand feeling all the hatred that had been implanted in him. He hated the hatred more than anything else he had ever hated in his life. Yet, though he strove to struggle against the hatred, he couldn't fight it. He couldn't even speak to Apollo about it anymore. Apollo, like the rest of them, seemed to care less and less with each passing day, each passing battle. He was the strongest of them all, yet he'd surely be destroyed eventually. They'd all be shells soon enough.
"Look out, Croft!" Xiomara yelled.
Smoothly Croft whirled to see a human attacker bearing down on him, a pair of laser pistols at each side, blasting away. Croft ducked beneath the fire and, taking slow deadly aim, he shot at the soldier. The shots opened a fiery hole in the enemy's chest. As he died, his eyes had the same kind of zombie-like look they all had. Croft hated that look.
"Why can't they even show some pain?" he muttered. He rejoined the main battle. Near him Apollo was firing away furiously, dropping enemy soldiers by the threes and fours. Croft rushed to his side. As Apollo glanced confidently toward him, Croft felt that surge of happiness that always came when he and Apollo were functioning together smoothly.
Sarge watched Croft's quick moves with approval, and he positively gloated over the skill of his squad. He hoped it would never be broken up. Even as the thought occurred to him, he wished he could take it back. Prideful thoughts often just preceded disaster.
Sarge didn't know how right he was.
Xiomara's back was against a boulder. Sheba, seeing her plight, united with her to repel a contingent of enemy warriors.
Their concentration on the enemy was almost their downfall. A large, repellent, froglike creature in enemy uniform was slithering over the boulder. Reaching a long flipperlike tentacle down, it grabbed Xiomara's arm and pulled her upward. She slid up the rock, her legs kicking. Sheba screamed and took a shot at the ambusher. The beam just bounced off the armorlike coating of the creature's uniform. Apollo, alerted by Sheba's scream, ran toward the boulder. Seeing Xiomara in the creature's grasp, he took aim on its arm. It was a risky shot, but he hit exactly the target he'd aimed for. The creature yelled, a yell that was decibels louder than the din of battle, and dropped Xiomara. She slid down along the boulder.
As he hurried to Xiomara, Apollo did not see the trio of similar creatures emerging from behind the rock.
"Apollo!" Croft cried. "It's a trap!"
One of the froglike creatures, a tentacle waving in a large arc, threw a netting toward Apollo. The metallic thread of the netting gave off sparkling rays. It enveloped Apollo before he was aware of it and formed a kind of cage all around him. Croft remembered his instructions about this weapon. It was a capturing device. From a compartment at its top, a blue gas drifted out. Apollo's efforts to push the netting off him were in vain as he was made unconscious by the gas. His eyelids drooped as if he had just been reading for too long, and he was unconscious.
"No!" Croft screamed.
He knew what would happen. The creature, pulling the guidance rope of the netting, forcing it to enclose its victim entirely, jerked it toward him, and the cage containing Apollo began to sail into the air. The creature released the guidance rope as the cage picked up speed and flew upward. It disappeared so fast in the sky that Croft had not had time to think out what was happening. After it had gone, he knew the cage would ascend to great heights. In the rarified upper air, Apollo would try to breathe and the attempt would kill him. Then the cage would drop him to the ground with such force that his bones would be broken into tiny chips.
"It's—" Xiomara said. "He's—"
"He hasn't got a chance," Croft said. "Not a chance."
Xiomara was startled by the emotion in Croft's voice. He hadn't shown this much emotion at any time since she'd met him. Briefly, she put her arm around him but had to release him quickly to return to combat. Croft, with the aid of the belt, managed to come out of his doldrums and begin to shoot wildly at a new contingent of rapidly charging soldiers.
Sarge was astonished. One moment he had been mentally praising the skills of his elite squad in an inordinate fashion, and the next his best soldier was gone. While not an emotional individual, he did feel a strong sense of regret. He had liked Apollo, and such comradeship had been rare for him. He rarely liked the soldiers under his command, but there had been something in the human that elicited from Sarge a rare and grudging admiration. But it's war, isn't it? he thought. Everything in war is loss. Loss has to be accepted. He wondered why it was getting harder for him to accept such obvious things. Why did he look upward now and try to see the vanished Apollo? Why did he hope Apollo would fall out of the skies alive? He shook his head, uncomfortable with uncomfortable thoughts, and began barking order
s at his now depleted elite squad.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Among the crew of the Battlestar Galactica, it was said that Commander Adama's voice could please a demon or agitate an angel, and he didn't have to change an iota of pitch, tone or emphasis to do either. Now, as he dictated his log in the privacy of his cabin, the crewmembers might have been astonished at the new sounds of age and weariness that had come into that famous voice. The loss of Apollo had hit him harder than he wanted to admit to anybody.
He held the flat microphone in the palm of his hand and spoke to it as if it were a miniature human being.
"This place—Starbuck's planet, as we've come to call it—has proven quite rich in the materials we need. It is remarkable that it seems to have no inhabitants. Doctor Wilker has speculated that the traces of poisonous elements in the air, enough of them to force us to wear breathers at all times, are probably too strong to sustain mammalian life at least. Nevertheless, even with that information about the planet's unsuitability broadcast widely throughout the fleet, the dissenters have come to the fore with their usual monotonous demands to end this long flight and settle on the—"
His dictation was interrupted by a soft knock on the door. He had heard that knock so often that he could always identify it as the polite rapping of Colonel Tigh. He hollered to Tigh to come in and the door eased open. Tigh entered, his arm lightly on Hera's elbow. She seemed to be trying to resist even this light pressure. A symbolic resistance, perhaps.
Hera towered over Tigh. Adama, standing up, realized that the young woman was two or three inches taller than he was.
"Cadet Hera, I presume," he said.
"Sir," Hera said, obviously trying to keep her irritation out of her voice, "with all respect, I demand to know why I've been brought here."
"I think you suspect. She was difficult then, Tigh?"
Tigh's smile was ironic.
"A bit. She spilled grog all over the uniforms of the arresting officers. It took three of them to subdue her."
Hera charged forward. Standing on the other side of the desk, she looked down into Adama's eyes. Her stare was unsettling, especially when coming down from that height.
"Am I arrested then?" Hera asked, unable to disguise the defiance in her voice. "Will you take me to the grid barge and lock me away?"
Adama smiled.
"Hardly," he said. "That can only come after a proper investigation and trial. And we're not about to take that route right now. No, I only had you seized because you have avoided all the routine summonses to report to me."
"Sir, with all respect, there are certain obligations that must be met ahead of routine."
The self-righteousness in her voice angered Adama and his next words were spoken harshly.
"Maybe on Vaile, but not on this ship!"
"Sir, with all respect—"
"Stow it, Cadet Hera! I'll excuse your insubordination on the grounds of your inexperience and because of the great help the people of Vaile have been to us. Sit down."
He felt more comfortable once they had sat. He liked being able to look directly at the young woman, across his desk, with all the command authority that the positioning implied, instead of looking up into her angry eyes. He nodded calmly at Tigh, a way of ordering him out of the room. Tigh exited saluting, and smiling. When the door had clicked shut, Adama spoke softly.
"Cajlet Hera, the skills you've shown in your training have brought honor to all Vaileans. The—"
"Sir—"
"Please don't say 'with all respect' again."
"No, I wasn't intending that. I was going to be ruder than that."
"Oh? Then please, go ahead."
Hera was clearly the type who would cut her throat to prove the razor had a point.
"I just wanted to say that you don't have to soft-soap me. All that honor of the Vaileans felgercarb. You know?"
The comment, plus the childlike stubbornness in Hera's face, amused Adama, and he smiled warmly.
"I see you've picked up pilot slang along with your other achievements."
"I like it. It suits me. What is this all about, Commander?"
"About Starbuck. But you know that already, am I correct?"
"Correct, sir. And let me say, I don't spy on my comrades."
"I will not ask you to spy. Or inform in any way that's distasteful to you. I'm not a crusader, Cadet, just an experienced old officer who knows he's got a problem and isn't sure himself how to deal with it."
Hera was impressed by Adama's frankness. She relaxed for the first time since she'd been dragged into the Commander's quarters. He saw her newfound ease and his smile broadened. The smile was so disarming that she had to smile back. She had seen Adama often enough at a distance, but this was the first time she had spoken with him, and she was quite nervous. Most Vaileans had been taught to respect authority but also learned soon how to sneak around it as often as possible.
"Well," Hera said, casually pulling down the sleeves of her flight jacket, "I always liked a good sitdown chat. So shoot, Commander."
Adama leaned back in his chair. He liked this forthright young cadet and the tension of duty left his body.
"As I said, I wanted to talk with you about Starbuck. It has been reported to me that you are practically the only person he'll communicate with these days."
"He talks to me, yes. He's kinda surly about it, but he does chat me up a bit."
"What does he say?"
"I'm sorry, Commander, but—"
"Cadet, I know you think I'm leaning on you, but this is important. I don't know why I can see it, but I am sure that Starbuck's about to desert."
Hera was surprised at Adama's insight, a surprise that most people who served under the Commander experienced at one time or another when he showed his usual accurate perception of a situation.
"He's told you, hasn't he?" Adama said. "That he's going to take up a Viper and desert?"
"Sir, that would be—"
"Never mind, Cadet. The tone of your protest tells me it's the truth. Look, please believe me, I'm not trying to find evidence on which to build a case against Starbuck. I just want to stop him from making a mistake. I know he's grieving about Apollo and—"
"And you're not?" Her body pressed against the back of her chair as the Commander leaned forward. For the first time she was scared of him. "I mean, I thought Apollo was your son. You don't sound like a . . . a grieving father. I know Starbuck's grieving about Apollo and—"
She stopped speaking, to avoid betraying one of Starbuck's confidences. She didn't know what to say to the steely-eyed man behind the desk. She only wanted to get away. This dealing with command was certainly tough.
Adama spoke quiedy. "I can figure out what Starbuck must've said. And it doesn't matter. How I grieve is my business. Is that right, Cadet?"
"Right, sir," Hera said, crestfallen.
Before he spoke again, Adama thought of all the sleepless rest periods he had endured since Apollo's disappearance, all of the private grief that had him staring at walls and seeing empty visions there. How could an outsider, like Hera, or even Starbuck, dare to judge his grief? Why did others think that their open grieving was somehow better than the internalized pain of loss? Starbuck was so wrapped up in himself that he couldn't see outside the borders of his own depression. Adama was not angry. Such blindness about grief was common, especially for the members of this fleet, all of whom had suffered similar losses. The pain everyone had already gone through had made it essential that the Commander not emphasize his own losses by displaying his grief.
"Hera, I have an order to give you." She flinched at the word order. "I see you are not keen on accepting an order just now."
"I'm afraid so, sir."
"Don't worry. I just want you to go on doing what you've been doing. Be Starbuck's friend. Perhaps your friendship will keep him from deserting."
Hera did not speak for a moment. When she did, it was in a calm and measured voice. "Sir, I'm not saying that you're ri
ght about Starbuck, but I must say this: Whatever is on his mind, I can't peach on him. We Vaileans are a loyal people, but we have certain codes of behavior when it comes to using official channels."
"All right, I won't interfere with that. I merely wanted to let you know that, if needed, I'm ready to help. However you deal with Starbuck or any other aspect of the situation, that is your choice, Cadet. I don't want you to, as you say, peach on Starbuck. But, if I can be useful, please call on me."
"I will, sir. If you can be useful."
Adama liked the forcefulness of Hera's replies.
"Exactly," he said, with similar force. "That will be all, Cadet."
"Yes, sir."
Hera stood up crisply and gave Adama a salute whose ramrod neatness he had not seen from a pilot in ages. He could not help but return the salute just as smartly. Hera made a precise military turn and started for the door.
"Cadet Hera," Adama called after her.
She turned.
"Yes, sir?"
"I'm happy to have you aboard the Galactica."
She was clearly pleased, though she struggled not to show it.
"Thank you, sir. I'm happy to be here."
She left. Adama stared at the door, wondering if he had done the right thing with this forthright young cadet. Should he trust her? Was she too young to be allowed such trust? He wasn't sure, but his instinct, honed after years of commanding hordes of hot-blooded pilots, told him she'd be all right. Better than all right.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Consciousness returned to Apollo in a rush, or perhaps it seemed that way because of the rushing air around his cage of netting. At first he was confused. This was so much like being abducted by the Sweeper recruiters that, when he looked up, he expected to see a recruiter, but there was no one bearing this load. He was merely going upward like a pellet shot out of an old-fashioned cannon. The speed of the netting capsule seemed to be increasing. There was no tactile sense of nearing a zenith.
Battlestar Galactica 13 - Apollo's War Page 13
