Battlestar Galactica

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  She leaned forward. “You believe me because deep down you’ve always known there was something different about me, something that didn’t quite add up in the usual way.” A coy grin played at the comers of her mouth. “And you believe me, because it flatters your ego to believe that alone among all the billions of people of the Twelve Colonies, you were chosen for my mission.”

  That sent a shock through his system. “Your mission? What mission?”

  “You knew I wanted access to the Defense mainframe.”

  His heart nearly stopped. “Def … wait a minute. The Defense mainframe?” A terrible ringing was starting in his ears. He could hardly think, and could not breathe. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “Come on, Gaius.” Her delight in her accomplishment spread across her face. “The communications frequencies, deployment schedules, unlimited access to every database …”

  The ringing was growing louder. “Stop it!” Baltar shouted. “Stop it right now!”

  She smiled seductively. “You never really believed I worked for some mysterious ‘company,’ either—but you didn’t really care.”

  “No! That’s not—”

  “All that really mattered was that only you could give me that kind of access. You were special, you knew you were. And powerful …”

  “Oh my God!” Baltar jumped to his feet and walked slowly away from her, as he absorbed the full enormity of what he had done. He turned and spoke as forcefully as he could. “I had nothing to do with this! You know I had nothing to do with this!”

  Natasi got up, shaking her head with a smile. “You have an amazing capacity for self-deception. How do you do that?” She walked toward him, and she had never looked so sexy—or so frightening.

  Baltar could feel panic rising like bile in his throat. “How many people know about me? About me—specifically? That I’m involved?”

  “And even now,” she said, touching his chest seductively, her voice low and sultry, “as the fate of your entire world hangs in the balance, all you can think about is how this affects you.”

  “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me, if they find out?” he cried.

  “They’d probably charge you with treason.”

  “Treason is punishable by the death penalty.” His voice was shaking now, and he could feel himself sweating. “This is unbelievable.” He crossed the room and snatched up his phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Phoning my attorney.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “He’ll know what to do. He’ll sort this out. He’s the best in the business.” He finished punching in the number and pressed the phone to his ear.

  “It won’t be necessary, because in a few hours, nobody will be left to charge you with anything.”

  Baltar froze, and slowly lowered the phone from his ear. “What … exactly … are you saying?”

  She gazed at him evenly, unsympathetically. “Humanity’s children … are returning home.” She paused a beat to let that sink in. “Today.”

  Baltar stared at her uncomprehendingly, unbelieving, unwilling to believe. He turned to look out the window toward the seaward end of the sound, northwest toward Caprica City. At that precise moment, a burst of blinding white light expanded on the horizon. A light as bright as the sun, but rising to a full brightness, and then fading away.

  CHAPTER 13

  GALACTICA, STARBOARD LANDING BAY DECOMMISSIONING CEREMONY

  The ceremony was proceeding pretty much as these things always did, with too many minor speakers, each one followed by polite applause. The priest, a dark-skinned middle-aged woman named Elosha, was by far the most interesting to Laura Roslin. But though Elosha spoke eloquently of the service Galactica and her crew had given, both in war and in peace, she received polite applause just like the minor dignitaries before her. Just as Laura herself had, when she’d presented her own speech as Secretary of Education, as the one who ultimately would oversee the conversion of this magnificent ship into a vessel of history, a tool for education.

  The master of ceremonies, Aaron Doral, following Elosha onto the podium, moved the ceremony briskly along.

  “Thank you so much for those words of inspiration. And now it’s my great honor to present to you a ceremonial, precision-formation flyby of the very last squadron of Galactica fighter pilots, led by none other than Captain Lee Adama.”

  This could not help but be a crowd pleaser. The aft end of the landing bay had been outfitted with an enormous video projection screen, giving a marvelous illusion of being an open window into space. The landing bay could not, of course, actually be open to space; that would make it a little hard for the audience to breathe. But gazing at the lifelike image of the approaching squadron of Vipers, one could easily forget that.

  For a few moments, the squadron hardly seemed to be moving. That illusion vanished as they drew closer at high speed. The squadron team zoomed toward the ship in an arrowhead formation, eight Vipers swooping up from below to pass directly before the onlookers, and then splitting apart to fly off in four different directions. Then came the leader, spiraling up, piloted by the younger Adama, the one known as Apollo. Laura watched with heartfelt admiration and amazement as the pilots showed off their training—flying in perfect, tight formation, rejoining and breaking apart, again and again. It was a demonstration as old as aviation itself—daredevil flying joined with the artistic flair of a great dance performance. In space, it was even harder than in the air. Each of those maneuvers required each pilot to time perfectly a complex sequence of thrusting and turning, and braking and thrusting again—all carefully choreographed to look nearly effortless.

  In the final maneuver, it indeed looked effortless, as all but one of the squadron came together just shy of the aft end of the landing bay, then split off in a star-burst formation. And spinning up through the center of them came Apollo, roaring directly over the landing bay, so that in the screen he seemed to fly nearly straight into the crowd, and right over their heads. Indeed, Laura and just about everyone else ducked involuntarily, and turned to watch on another screen as he disappeared up and out. The crowd—even members of the ship’s crew who were here for the ceremony—erupted in spontaneous applause.

  As the Vipers regrouped and circled away, Aaron Doral once more took the podium. It was time to bring on the next speaker. This was the headliner, the person they’d all been waiting to hear from. As applause for the flying team slowly died down, Doral said, “And now, it is my great pleasure to introduce the last commander of the battlestar Galactica, a man who served on this ship as a young pilot during the years of the Cylon War, and later came back to command her through years of peace—Commander William Adama.” With a gesture, he invited the commander to rise from where he sat among the gathered officers at the front, and to take the podium.

  Laura, sitting just on the other side of the podium, was struck once more by Commander Adama’s roughhewn good looks, rock-solid demeanor, and obvious intelligence. Despite their earlier encounter, Laura was eager to hear what the commander would have to say. He mounted the stage slowly and deliberately, and took a few moments, standing there before the assembly, as though reflecting on what he wanted to say. And then he began, in that deep, attention-commanding voice:

  “The Cylon war is long over.” He looked out, as though to meet the gaze of everyone in the crowd, one by one. “Yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom.” Pause to let that sink in. “The cost of wearing the uniform … can be high.” And when he paused this time, it was for a long moment that stretched into several moments, while some in the crowd stirred restlessly, wondering if he’d lost his place in the script, or forgotten what he intended to say. Laura sensed that that was not the case, though, and waited with growing anticipation to see what this stubborn, unconventional man would say next.

  Adama finally, slowly, removed his eyeglasses and looked out over the gathered assembly. “Sometim
es it’s too high.” Even from where Laura sat, she could see the pain behind his eyes. What was he thinking of, his crewmates who had died in the war? His son, who died in a tragic peacetime accident? Adama continued, “You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, Why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children.”

  As Adama spoke, Laura could see members of the audience shifting a little with discomfort. She was surprised to discover how much she was moved by the questions Adama was raising. She could not have known it, but out in space, circling in a patrol pattern around Galactica, the Viper pilots were listening on the wireless, and one in particular, the one called Apollo, was also surprised by the commander’s words. And even in the brig, Kara Thrace listened, wondering. And in the CIC, the officers on watch. And throughout the ship, everywhere crewmembers had a moment to pause in what they were doing and listen.

  “We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we’ve done. As we did with the Cylons—when we decided to play God. Create life. And that life turned against us. We comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn’t our fault. Not really.” He drew a breath. “Well, you cannot play God and then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.”

  Commander Adama looked out over the audience, as though trying to decide what to say next. Finally, probably to everyone’s surprise, and maybe even his own, he simply turned and stepped down from the podium, and walked back to his seat.

  Laura watched him pass, and as Doral got up to go make his closing remarks, Laura began to clap her hands. She wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened there, but she knew that the commander had dared to speak a truth that most would rather have left unspoken. For a moment, the only sound was her hands clapping, and then the others took up the applause. By the time Adama reached his seat, it was strong and steady.

  Colonel Saul Tigh was one of those who had sat in stunned silence as his friend Bill Adama spoke. What the frak was Bill driving at? Tigh had known him for what—better than forty years? He never known Bill to stir needlessly at a hornet’s nest, unless it was some bureaucracy that needed a kick in the ass. But this—they were supposed to be having a polite retirement exercise. They were turning the ship over to become a museum, not running for public office. As the commander sat down beside him again, Tigh leaned and muttered, under the sound of the applause, “You are one surprising sonofabitch.”

  In response, Adama just turned his head and looked at him—with his familiar steady gaze, and almost, but not quite, with a smile.

  GALACTICA DEPARTURE PATTERN

  The colonial transport accelerated smoothly out of the launch tube of Galactica, and proceeded at a stately pace away from the warship. A lone Viper came up alongside, then moved into position just ahead of the transport. The wireless call went from the fighter craft to the cockpit of the transport: “Colonial Heavy Seven-Niner-Eight, this is Viper Seven-Two-Four-Two. My call sign is Apollo, and I’ll be your escort back to Caprica.”

  Inside the old Viper’s cockpit—his father’s old Viper—Lee Adama was filled with mixed emotions as he flew away from Galactica. Relief, sadness, anger. Regret over some of the things that had been said, or not said … and some genuine astonishment over his father’s words in that address to the VIPs. Some of the things the old man had said actually sounded thoughtful. That part about accepting responsibility …

  Lee shook off the thought. Don’t get maudlin. And don’t give him credit for things he wasn’t really saying.

  The transport pilot answered, “Copy, Viper Seven-Two-Four-Two. Glad to have you with us.”

  Another call came a moment later, this one from the squadron circling Galactica in formation, and visible to Lee at about ten o’clock high. “Viper Seven-Two-Four-Two, Raptor Three-One-Two. This is Boomer. Just wanted to say it was an honor to fly with you, Apollo.”

  “The honor’s mine, Boomer,” Lee said in acknowledgment. For all that they’d had a rocky start, he and the Galactica pilots had flown well together. They’d earned his respect, and he hoped he’d earned theirs. “Where are you heading after Caprica?” How was it he had never asked that? Too busy thinking about other things, probably.

  “Right on to Picon after refueling,” Boomer said. “Squadron’s being reassigned there temporarily—then they’ll be splitting us up. We plan on having a frakking good party before we go our separate ways, though. Are you sure you can’t join us?”

  “Wish I could,” Lee said. “I’ve been playing hooky with you kids for too long already, I’m afraid. Hoist a glass for me, though, will you?”

  “Roger to that. Have a safe trip, Apollo.” As they signed off, the squadron formation changed course like a flock of birds, away from Galactica and in the direction of Caprica. The last of Galactica’s active fighters; all the others were now part of the museum.

  Apollo lifted a hand to them in silent salute.

  In the cabin of the transport, a weary Laura Roslin was collapsed in her seat, eyes closed. A tired but still energized Billy sat beside her in the window seat. From a speaker overhead, a voice came from the cockpit: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now en route back to Caprica. If you look out the starboard window, you might be able to see one of Galactica’s old Mark Two Vipers, which is escorting us. That’s the same Viper once flown by Commander William Adama, during the days of the Cylon War …”

  Laura smiled faintly, remembering the precision flying demonstration the Viper pilots had staged for them just a short time ago. She felt vaguely comforted to know that one of those pilots would be flying alongside them as they returned home. She felt even more comforted to know that the pilot was Commander Adama’s son, Apollo.

  CHAPTER 14

  HOUSE OF GAIUS BALTAR

  Baltar sat frozen, haunted, sweating, watching the newscasts on the video screens. He had seen numerous flashes outside on the horizon, but somehow those hadn’t seemed as real to him as the newscasts. Surely, he had thought, the newscasts would tell the truth. Would somehow dispel this awful truth. But they hadn’t. It was real.

  On the left half of the screen, Kellan Brody, the newscaster who had interviewed him just two days ago, was barely managing to keep up a brave front. “ … Trying to piece together unconfirmed reports of nuclear attack. We don’t have any further information yet. No actual enemy has been sighted …”

  On the right screen, a man was broadcasting frantically from the street. “Official confirmation that the spaceports have been hit. No spacecraft left that can leave Caprica. Our best advice is to stay inside—or if you must leave, head out into the country …”

  Kellan Brody: “Officials are saying that there doesn’t seem any doubt—” She turned suddenly, terrified by something she’d just seen or felt—and the screen went white with static.

  The man on the right screen flinched at a dazzling flash from off-camera—then hunched against a sudden gale-force wind that blew debris sideways past him. An instant later, that screen went white, too.

  Gaius Baltar bowed his head. “What have I done?” he whispered. He looked up again at the blank screens. What have I done? He sat, shaking, for a few moments, tears welling in his already reddened eyes. What … have … I … done?

  Finally he stood up, the feeling of finality washing over him. “There’s no way out,” he whispered.

  Natasi walked to him from behind. “I know.” She moved to place her hands comfortingly on his shoulders.

  He wrenched away from her. “Sure you know! That’s your doing, isn’t it?” He strode away, furious, despairing. Then something occurred to him. “Wait. Wait, there has to be another way out of here. Wait! You must have an escape plan, right? You’re not about to be destroyed by your own bombs, are you? How are you leaving?”

  At th
at instant, a blinding flash came through the windows, from somewhere over the water. He cried out in pain and bent double, covering his eyes. Behind him, Natasi continued to talk calmly. “Gaius—I can’t die. When this body is destroyed, my memory—my consciousness—will be transmitted to a new one. I’ll just wake up somewhere else in an identical body.” She was touching him now, caressing his neck and cheek, in a way that ordinarily would have been comforting. It made him nearly insane.

  Fighting back tears, horrified at the thought he was about to voice, he said, “You mean there’s more out there like you?”

  She faced him closely, and said very matter-of-factly, “There are twelve human-type models. I’m Model Number Six. There are many like me.”

  This was too much to bear. He began sobbing. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to—”

  “Get down.” Interposing herself between him and the window, she shoved him to the floor—an instant before an enormous wall of wind and water rose up and smashed through the side of the house, destroying it like a plaything.

  Baltar knew only a moment of pain and terror as he was hurled across the room by the force of the blast. Then he knew only darkness.

  CAPRICA ORBIT

  High over Caprica they circled, the Cylon raiders, lobbing nuclear warheads down onto the planet. From a distance, there was a certain kind of surreal beauty to the rain of death; from a distance, no one could hear the screams, no one could feel the pain or know the fear or quail in the face of certain death. Unless it was the Cylons themselves. Could they? That was a question no human could answer. And the Cylons weren’t speaking to humanity. The Cylons were eradicating humanity.