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Battlestar Galactica Resurrection by Richard Hatch
PROLOGUE
The void is full of death and dying.
A stinger from the great Chitain warship, easily twice the size of a battlestar, whips past Apollo's Viper, just missing him and destroying two other fighters. He prays to the spirit of his father and he prays to the Lords of Kobol—he prays to anyone who will listen—to just see them through this massacre, because he knows it's going to take a stack of miracles to survive this day, much less win it.
As he thinks that, the tip of the stinger glows ruby-red and discharges a deadly laser blast, vaporizing half a dozen Vipers; the brightness of the blast is imprinted on his retinas, even though his Warrior's helm automatically opaques when the flash of laser fire is too bright, and for a moment, Apollo is blind. In battle, a moment is all it takes to end up dead.
He knows his Viper is in the sighting hairs of a Chitain fighter, and his vision is coming back, but slowly. Too slowly. He's going to have to fire blind. Apollo remembers the position of each of the nearest fighters, Viper and Chitain alike, before the searing light from the laser temporarily stole his sight, and he trusts to his senses. He's a Warrior, after all, and he has been trained all his life for every eventuality. All of this races across his mind in a micron, and his thumb stabs the turbolaser.
In his shimmering, dancing vision, the Chitain craft erupts in a fire-flower, and Apollo offers a quiet prayer of thanks.
But this battle has been raging on and on for what feels like—may well he—centons, and there seems no end in sight. They've never faced anything quite like the Chitain before: a race so alien and warlike and fearsome as to make the Cylons seem civilized. Like the Cylons, the Chitain want to become the only sentient lifeform in their sector, even if that means eliminating everyone and everything else.
If not for the intercession of the colonials' valiant ally, the Sky, this story may end quite differently; even so, it still ends badly.
The Chitain dreadnought, itself almost indestructible, is surrounded by a nearly impenetrable forcefield. It is only by staying close to the ship's underbelly and harrying away at it, like skreeters on the back of a bova, that the Vipers have any hope at all, for the Chitain can't turn their weapons after the Warriors without destroying their own ship.
It is all chaos and confusion; red beams sizzle from a hundred different fighters, and the war-world's stinger tendrils answer with their own deadly voice. But the concentrated assault is working; the Chitain dreadnought is in trouble and the aliens know it. Like a mortally-wounded animal, the great mechanical beast is going to take down as many of its attackers as possible, and it looks like Apollo is going to be first.
Frak, he thinks, and grits his teeth, waiting for the inevitable blast from the onrushing Chitain fighter.
The blast comes not from the fighter, but is the fighter, vaporizing in a spray of brightly-burning fuel, then winking out. It's Starbuck, of course, there to save him as he's always been.
Apollo heaves a sigh of relief, more like a laugh, and he tells Starbuck he's going to buy him a tankard of grog in the aft ODOC. But Starbuck says, "Don't you remember? That's not the way it happened at all."
And he's right, it doesn't end like that, not even anything close to it; this is nothing more than wishful thinking and rewriting the ending to be more palatable than the truth was, because a moment later, Starbuck's Viper is caught in the rippling fireball of the warship, the size of a small planet, as it explodes. The shock waves spread out like circles in a pond, shattering everything they touch. The Sky don't even try to outrun the spreading death, but accept it as part of the endless cycle, the way of the universe.
Everything happens fast after that, but the image of Starbuck, slumped forward in his fire-blackened, shredded Viper, never seems to leave Apollo's vision, neither waking nor dreaming.
The colonial fleet has suffered devastating losses, more than half their force of Warriors and starfighters, and thirty-seven vessels, including the Agro-2. Devastating… but not nearly as devastating as seeing his oldest friend, closer than any brother, closer than his own brother, lying in his med-berth, kept alive only by machines. Starbuck's uniform is all but melted to his body, and his flesh is blackened, cracked, with crazy zigzags running off in every direction, as if his skin is a sun-blistered mud-flat. There's been massive cranial trauma, and there's no way to know if Starbuck will ever awaken again. If not for the slow and labored rise and fall of his chest, anyone would think Starbuck a corpse.
Now Apollo is standing at another bedside, this time his father's, and he is saying his silent goodbyes as Commander Adama slips away. And even through this, Apollo cannot express his feelings, except for perhaps an unusual brightness in his eyes, and the unusually-stern set of his jaw. There are so many things he wants to say, and yet, he says nothing. After all, he is like his father, and Adama knows the things Apollo feels, even if neither one can exactly say them. Knowing is not quite the same as being told, but it will just have to do.
So he watches him go, and a world ends for Apollo, the way a world always ends when a father dies. Athena, much closer to her emotions than her brother, buries her face in his chest and weeps openly. Apollo gives her his strength to draw from; he's good at that. He's just not so good at expressing his emotions.
They stand that way for a long time, neither speaking, Athena's sobbing is the only sound in the room. He doesn't hear Cassiopeia enter the room, but she must have, because she's asking him how he could let this happen.
Apollo shakes his head; he doesn't understand. "It was his time," he answers. "There was nothing I, or anyone else, could do."
"Liar!" she shouts, and her vehemence rocks him back on his heels. For a moment, anger flares in him, one of the few emotions he can show, but that anger leaves him in a sudden wash, because when he looks past Athena, past Cassiopeia, he sees the funeral bier and the body resting in state upon it. He knows immediately it is not Adama because there are none of the ceremonial trappings as befits a man of the commander's station, and Apollo's heart breaks into a wild, galloping rhythm.
Now that he thinks about it, it couldn't be Adama, because their father died almost a yahren ago. Apollo is a strong man; he thinks he has enough strength within him that he can loan it out to anyone who needs it, and now, when he really could borrow some of that steel from Athena, she's not there. Neither, for that matter, is Cassiopeia. He's alone, and he has a bad feeling he's about to find out just how alone he really is, because the one he's always been able to draw strength from is Starbuck. They are always therefor one another, and only a terrible catastrophe could prevent that. Apollo feels a catastrophe is imminent, the way bova and avions can predict an oncoming storm.
Apollo takes a step closer, and then another; it doesn't seem that he's willing his feet to take him to the funeral bier so much as he's simply unable to stop their advance. He stands at the open casket for what seems like forever, but he knows it's not more than a few seconds, and at last he looks down.
His heart, racing out of control just a moment before, seems to stop beating altogether and he is hot and cold, all at once, because it's not Adama lying before him, but Starbuck, still clothed in his melted uniform, his flesh black and blistered.
Apollo hears a low, wretched moan from somewhere in the room but he ignores it and lightly touches Starbuck's lifeless cheek, causing a bit of his charred flesh to flake off. He's always been a strong man, but he can't prevent that low, anguished cry that escapes his throat or even the
tear that falls.
The sound of his own misery woke him.
Apollo blinked, looked around his darkened chambers, caught somewhere in the borderless place between waking and dreaming, confused by the morbid keening sound that woke him. As in his dream, he realized that he was the source of that sound, giving time an odd sense of folding back upon itself. And then the entire dream came flooding back, too much like a premonition, and his heart smashed against the walls of his chest like an avion banging against the bars of its cage.
It only a dream, of course, but Apollo still caught himself glancing quickly around the darkened cabin, as if the funeral bier would somehow, illogically, materialize in the room with him.
"Commander?"
The door to Apollo's sleep-chambers whisked open and Gar'Tokk bustled in, the muscles of his big frame coiled and ready for action. The Borellian Noman palmed the lights, filling the cabin with a cool, efficient, shadowless glow.
"Gar'Tokk?" Apollo murmured, his voice still thick with sleep, his eyes squinted against the light. "What?"
"I heard you cry out," the Borellian explained, relaxing a bit, but his eyes still surveyed the room for signs of hidden treachery. "And, since you did not retire for the night with female companionship, I assumed your moan was not one of pleasure."
Apollo allowed himself a slight chuckle. "I'm fine," he told his bodyguard. Gar'Tokk's thick, beetled brow creased slightly. "Just a nightmare."
He threw his warmers back and swung his legs over the edge of his sleeping module to the floor.
The Noman frowned. "The last time I heard anyone moan like that," Gar'Tokk said, "was a human warden we tortured. Nomen," he added pridefully, "suffer their pain with silent dignity."
Apollo smiled and said nothing. If you only knew, he thought. If you only knew.
CHAPTER ONE
THEY PRESSED on through the endless darkness, aiming toward the light of distant stars and the hope of better days. Hope was fading, and the stars whose light they followed doubtlessly long ago went nova. They were steering their lives by things that no longer existed, the light of forgotten days cast by stars that no longer gave light. No one dared think such things, of course; that would be too much like admitting defeat.
So, they pressed on, although there were fewer of them to do so, now.
The battle with the Chitain and the Cylons had cost the colonial fleet terribly, in terms of lives lost and lives ruined. There were very few whole family units aboard the rag-tag fleet; so many fathers died yahren ago, during the first Cylon raid, leaving behind women and children—children, grown now to young manhood and the age of their fathers when they perished, leaving behind their own women and children. Without fathers, or mothers, these children grew up wrong, and hard, and fast, and without much respect for anything or anyone. They were not much better than urchins, living in corridors and crawlspaces instead of streets and alleys, a whole subculture that existed, but no one looked at too closely. Some of these children, those old enough to be inducted, were given the choice by the council whether they would spend time in the brig for their crimes, ranging from theft to assault, or be conscripted into the military and became Warriors. Some disappeared, back into the hidden world of the poor and neglected; others chose prison, and still others chose the way of the Warrior.
Theirs was a terrible life; but, for some, it was the only life they had ever known. For some, it might be the only life they would ever know.
Still, there was some faint, small glimmer of hope—the chance that the planet Kirasolia might have once been visited by the Thirteenth Tribe, and it was toward this distant rumor of a world they journeyed.
They pressed on… but more of them began to wonder why.
It isn't fair, Apollo thought. He wasn't the first person to arrive at this conclusion, nor would he likely be the last. It was a destination everyone reached, sooner or later: it was simply through a path paved with a matter of differing events that made the journey short or long.
He looked again at the comatose figure of Starbuck, so still and so… lifeless. It was hardly a word anyone who knew him would have associated with Starbuck, but that was the word. His external injuries had healed, sped along their way by the med-berth in which he slept without waking these past weeks, but the most severe damage was internal.
Cranial pressure in Starbuck's skull had reached critical dimensions, necessitating a craniotomy to relieve the fluid build-up before the pressure squeezing his brain could render irreversible damage. The signs of the surgery had already healed, but nothing else had changed about Starbuck's condition. He slept on like a character from some long-ago children's fairy tale, neither dead nor alive in his glass coffin; but what would it take to wake him?
Apollo wished he knew.
Starbuck's was the only med-berth still occupied following the battle with the Chitain; all the rest who had been injured had either healed, or…
But there would not be an or for Starbuck. People like Starbuck did not die, not like this, anyway. He was always beating impossible odds, and what was more impossible than this?
"What did I get you into now?" Apollo said, softly. There was no answer, of course, except for the flat, idiot ping of the heart and brain monitors to which Starbuck was attached. They were impartial; they didn't care that they were recording the slow, winding down of a human life.
Apollo was unsure how long Cassiopeia had been standing there, to his side and slightly behind, but he was glad she was. After a while, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and, after a while, Apollo placed his hand upon hers.
"I suppose it would be pointless to tell you to get some rest?" Cassie asked the commander. It was not so much a question as it was a statement of fact.
Apollo smiled crookedly. "I might ask you the same thing, Cass," he said. "How long have you been here, yourself?"
"Oh, no," she said. "That isn't a fair question. I'm here in the capacity of attending med, whereas you…"
Apollo glanced back at her over his shoulder. "We're both here for the same reason, Cass."
She let her hand fall away from his shoulder. There was nothing Cassie could do for Starbuck, but perhaps she could still do something for Apollo. Perhaps she could get him to live again before it was too late. She said, "I don't have an entire Fleet depending on me." Apollo opened his mouth to protest, but she pressed on. "There's nothing you can do for him that Dr. Wilker can't do better."
"I can be his friend," Apollo answered simply. "I can be here for him, like he was always there for me."
"Cut the felgercarb," she snapped. Apollo could only blink in dumb response to her outburst. "You're here for Apollo, not Starbuck. You're here because you feel guilty, you're here because you're the great Adama's son and you think that means you can fix everything. Well, I'm sorry, sweetheart, but there are some things you can't fix. There are some things you just have to accept."
"How do we know this is one of them until we've tried everything?" he countered. His eyes locked with hers, and it was she who looked away this time. Apollo stood quietly for several moments beside his oldest friend's med-berth, clearing his mind of clutter and anger. When he opened his eyes again, they were clear and focused. He placed his hands lightly against Starbuck's temples and let his consciousness expand in waves, as if his mind were being broadcast on a wideband frequency. And then, Apollo narrowed his thoughts to a wedge, like probing tendrils, and he felt his consciousness slipping into Starbuck's slumbering mind.
Apollo's consciousness skimmed like the shadow of a cloud passing over a lake, a dark and bottomless lake, tumbling down and down, into unrelieved, unbroken blackness and silence. Apollo probed deeper, but the jet blackness made it difficult to tell just how deep he had gone, and still there was no sign of Starbuck's own consciousness.
Deeper.. .just a little farther, Apollo promised himself; just a little more, and then, if there's no sign of him, I'll turn back.
And down his consciousness tumbled, pressing on until h
e began to feel the crushing, overwhelming weight of despair and hopelessness, the cold of the void, as if Starbuck's mind were at absolute zero. Nothing could exist here, no thought could resonate, no memory survive. It was the cold of the void, the cold of the waiting grave.
Are you there? Apollo's mind-thought called out, the sound of it tiny and swallowed by the greedy darkness. Starbuck, can you hear me? Please, if you can hear me, just answer me, just give us something, some hope—
And then he was racing toward a distant pinprick of light, far away, the light of other days, racing faster and harder, and for a wild, heady moment, Apollo thought he had found Starbuck, buried alive in a mental cave-in.
"Apollo?"
Starbuck—?
"Apollo, can you hear me? Apollo—"
Starbuck, where —
Suddenly, the light exploded all around him, momentarily blinding him, making him cry out in pain.
"—can you hear me?"
"Yes, of course I can hear you, but where—?"
The world swam back into a gauzy sort of focus, the light so bright after the long, deep darkness that it made Apollo's eyes tear and sting, but it was only the light of the med-bay, and the voice was only the voice of Cassiopeia. Her face, doubled and trebled by the prism of tears through which Apollo viewed it, was etched with concern. Apollo palmed his eyes dry, looked at Cassie, questioningly.
"Why did you make me break contact?" Apollo asked, anger alloyed with confusion. "I almost—"
"You almost got lost inside his mind," Cassie finished, forcefully. Apollo frowned because he knew she was right. He did almost get lost there, in the darkness, where Starbuck was also lost. Lost and alone and probably dying.
"I'm all right," Apollo argued. "I would have been fine."
"Who said anything about you?" Cassie asked. "Of course you would have been fine; you're always fine. But what about Starbuck? The man has a brain trauma! What do you think fracking around with his mind is going to do to him?"
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