02 - The Cylon Death Machine Read online

  Wolfe stops suddenly, shoots a dirty look my way. I try to convince him with a shrug that I’m staying out of it. He spins on his heel and strides off. I should warn Apollo, if he hasn’t realized it already, that Wolfe in a belligerent mood is extremely dangerous. But then I’d have to inform on Wolfe about the stolen gun, and what good would telling Apollo anything do? The smug young captain would just mutter he could take care of it, like he always does. I hope someday he comes up against something he can’t take care of. Soon.

  We load the two injured men aboard the snow-ram, and Apollo goes to the controls. As I climb into the interior of the vehicle, I can hear Wolfe and Haals as they scramble into position up top.

  “Get over!” Wolfe bellows.

  “It’s frozen on that side,” Haals complains.

  “That’s your problem.”

  Let Wolfe be Haals’ problem for a while. I’m getting into the ram and huddling against somebody for warmth, preferably Leda.

  Leda, however, has positioned herself between Starbuck and Boomer. She’d probably rather be positioned against the captain, but she’s always smart enough to take pot luck.

  We go some distance in silence. Even the garrulous Starbuck stares off into space without talking. Once in a while the kid whispers to the droid, but that’s about all the conversation anybody can work up. We’re all tense. If everything’s been this bad so far, what’s up ahead?—in one way or another, that’s what we’re all thinking, whether our goal is the mountain or escape or a warm place for our mechanized daggit that probably has no sensors for cold anyway.

  Suddenly there is the noise of a scuffle above us, then a thump followed by a loud, sharp crackling noise. Without even a cough, the snow-ram engine kicks out, and the vehicle skids a bit across a stretch of ice field.

  Apollo is out of his driver seat and outside as soon as the vehicle comes to a stop. I come out right after him, Leda just behind me.

  A short distance behind the snow-ram, Haals is lying in the snow, his arms outflung. Wolfe leaps off the top, stumbles, and rolls in the snow. Leda runs to Haals’ prone body, checks him out.

  “He’s in bad shape,” she cries back. “Very bad. He might die, looks like.”

  “What happened?” Apollo roars at Wolfe.

  Wolfe takes a deep breath before snarling his answer:

  “He was bawling me out. I told him to get off my back, pushed him a little. He tried to fight back. His feet went out from under him, and he slipped. His torch made contact with that thing there”—Wolfe pointed to the coverless external battery—“then there were sparks all over the place and he fell off the vehicle as it stopped. Your clumsy warrior shorted out the power cells, I guess.”

  Starbuck, emerging from the snow-ram interior, seems about to leap on Wolfe.

  “I’ll bet he did!”

  Apollo holds Starbuck back.

  “Stop it! We’ve got enough problems.”

  Searching the terrain ahead of me, I see just what I’m afraid to see. I whirl on Apollo, saying:

  “We’re going to have more problems if we don’t adjust our breathers to full protective power, and right away. There’s a di-ethene wave building up in this storm.”

  “The ram’s powerless without these batteries,” Apollo says. “Do we have time to hide it?”

  Finally. He’s learning something, showing enough sense to ask my opinion.

  “Do we have a choice?” I say. “Of course we hide it.”

  Apollo and I begin to dig into the snow to throw up a wall around the ram to hide it from Cylon eyes. Starbuck and Boomer help Leda carry back Haals to the vehicle. Wolfe sulks for a moment, then joins the digging. Even Thane comes out of his hiding place aboard the snow-ram to make adjustment checks on the breathing gear. For a moment at least we’re all working together, making like a team. For whatever that’s worth.

  After the snow wall’s constructed we all huddle together inside the snow-ram for warmth. For now there’s no other course of action. Apollo holds the kid in his arms. The breather mask the kid’s wearing looks too big for him, though Thane’s rigged a couple of extra straps to make it fit better. But it doesn’t look like it’s working so good. At least when he keels over we’ll get an indication of how long the rest of us’ll last. No, that’s an unworthy thought. Where did I become the type who’d let a kid die for any selfish advantage? I glance down at the daggit, huddled against the boy, giving warmth instead of taking it. It’s lucky. It doesn’t even have to wear a breather mask. When we’ve all popped off for good, it can scamper among our bodies.

  “How do you feel, Boxey?” Apollo says.

  “Just a little cold.”

  Apollo pulls the boy even closer to him. It’s not bad seeing a little human affection, even briefly, when you consider the composition of this team. I look over at Leda, who’s deep in some private thoughts of her own. I remember seeing her this way, some time long ago, while she was resting in the saddle of a mountain ridge. I don’t remember where, I don’t remember what took place before or after, I just remember her sitting like that and I remember how much I loved her at that moment. I want to reach over and touch her arm, ask her thoughts, have her nestle close to me—but I know that one move in her direction and she’ll smash her fist into my face and break my jaw.

  Starbuck crawls over to me, asks:

  “What are our chances?”

  Another invocation of my expertise from a Galactica officer. I’m sure gaining in stature around here. Too bad it’s probably too late.

  “Depends on how long this storm lasts,” I say, “and if the atmosphere, under the influence of the di-ethene, starts descending to the critical point of the gases composing it. That’s the point when, well, when you can’t really see much distinction on the critical-temperature curve between the gaseous and liquid phases. For our purposes, the air outside turns to liquid. Some call it deathpoint, though the name’s never made much sense to me, since normally you’re pretty dead long before the critical point. That satisfy you?”

  “Not much. But thanks anyway.”

  “Anytime.”

  He crawls away very slowly. The cold’s beginning to affect his muscles. It’s affecting all of us that way. I have to force myself to keep exercising what muscles I can in this cramped sitting position.

  The droid suddenly springs away from the kid’s side. Its furry ears point upward. It looks like it’s heard something, though I don’t know what it can possibly hear with that blizzard howling outside. It begins to bark furiously. The kid tells it: Shut up, daggit. Then it breaks for the door. With more strength than I could work up, it forces the door open and bounds out. Starbuck tries to go for the door, but can’t make it.

  “I… I can’t move,” he mutters.

  “Muffit,” the kid whines weakly. “Muffit! Come back.”

  Apollo pulls the kid even closer to him, saying:

  “It’s all right, son. Muffit isn’t like us. He can survive di-ethene.”

  “Three cheers for Muffit,” I say.

  “Will he be back?” the kid says.

  “He’ll be back.”

  Apollo glances around, then mutters to no one in particular:

  “I just hope he doesn’t bring a Cylon patrol back with him.”

  I almost wish he does. What good is it huddled inside this broken-down vehicle? The Cylons might just let us have a warm cell before executing us. Be fitting for me, wouldn’t it? Complete the cycle? From warm cell to warm cell. Welcome it. Though I don’t feel so cold anymore. Feel numb. Drowsy. Hey! Stop feeling drowsy. Can’t go to sleep now. Sleep’s death. Won’t let everything end this way. Can’t let it. Won’t. Can’t. It’s not right. Not fair. Not…

  FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:

  I wonder if, when we finally outrun or destroy the Cylons and find a planet to welcome us, we will be able to reconstruct our lost legends, our destroyed books, our currently unperformed entertainments. Some of these are, of course, preserved in our computer banks, but not
all. Not all. Yesterday I requested a copy of the Caprican story Sharky Star-rover, confident that it had to be preserved somewhere in the fleet records. But the answer returned, scan negative. For a moment I could not accept the answer. A book that I’d read and reread years ago was no longer available—was, in effect, lost to us. No one would ever read it again, unless a frayed copy turned up in somebody’s locker or as an artifact on some deserted planetary outpost. I nearly instigated a search.

  Alone in my quarters, I tried to remember the story of Sharky Star-rover. I thought I could remember it easily. Perhaps I could renew the oral tradition, keep alive at least the major part of a story I had so loved. But, I soon discovered, I had few of the details of the story in my mind, even less memory of the order in which it happened.

  Sharky was just a boy, that much I recalled. A tough kid just past the hurdle of puberty. Trapped on an out-of-the-way military asteroid, where his disabled-veteran father coped with his combat record by becoming a hophead and his mother coped with the father by turning into a shrew, Sharky vowed to escape. I don’t remember how he managed it, but he stole a supply shuttle, having learned simple piloting by watching the ship’s pilot do the job. He headed the shuttle away from the complex of military asteroids, setting his course for an area that was considered unpopulated, although appealing rumors of sin cities and pleasure palaces had accrued around it. Somehow he teamed up with his new pal Jameson. I don’t remember whether Jameson stowed away on the shuttle when Sharky stole it, or whether they met on one of the many settlements Sharky visited. Jameson was some kind of blob, a representative of an alien race that was quite unpopular in some sectors of the galaxy. There were times when Sharky had to hide Jameson away, but when it was necessary, he fought tooth and nail for his alien friend.

  It’s Sharky’s friendship with Jameson that I really want to remember. They worked so well together in flying the shuttlecraft across the galaxy—I recall all kinds of clever exchanges, all sorts of moments in which a sly joke of Jameson’s gave Sharky peculiar and valuable insights on life. There was a meditation of Sharky’s in which he almost said he wished that a real love were possible between a human and a member of Jameson’s race. He never really said he wanted to embrace Jameson—and, remember, Jameson couldn’t be embraced, or even held onto, no matter how hard you tried—but it was clear that Sharky’s fantasy would include a Jameson magically transformed to human shape and quite embraceable.

  The adventures are even harder to recall than the impressions of character. The book was basically a collection of episodes about Sharky’s adventures on the various planets he stopped at. At the more civilized settlements he found that his theft of the shuttle had been recorded and he was wanted as a criminal. He had to go through some pretty hairy times to escape and not be returned home. (The continuing to flee was an especially important feature of the book—it seemed to suggest that irresponsibility was a desirable way of life, and I find it funny that my responsible adult self remembers that theme so nostalgically.) He fell in with a group of criminals, pretended to go along with them, then thwarted their plan by getting Jameson to walk in on them at the moment of the crime. But what was the crime? Who were the criminals? Why don’t I remember their characters? Once Sharky—who was only in his early teens, remember—almost successfully impersonated a star-cruiser captain, a disguise he was using to try to obtain a cargo hold of food when he and Jameson were starving. I can remember that episode pretty well. I used to read it to my children when they were growing up. Zac used to pretend to be Jameson, and crawl bloblike around the floor.

  I can still feel the sadness of the end of the book, when Sharky and Jameson were finally apprehended. Sharky wanted Jameson to be returned home with him, but the rules wouldn’t allow it. The officer in charge of the squad that captured them told Sharky that Jameson could not survive within any military installation. He would be a figure of scorn. The captain said that separating them was an act of compassion and not cruelty. Sharky said he saw the point, but I never felt he did, and neither, I suspect, did any readers of the book. Anybody who could read the scene of parting between Sharky and Jameson without crying had to have a sturdy hold on his emotions. I can’t really remember Sharky’s return to home, perhaps because I don’t really want to. I remember it was sentimental. Perhaps his dad had gone off his habit and his mother had become a saint. It doesn’t matter. Nobody I know who ever read it ever bothered much about believing its ending.

  Clearly, Sharky Star-rover was a flawed book, and perhaps some misguided programmer librarian thought he/she had good reason for not including it in the Galactica computer library. That’s too bad. Sharky’s quest for a more adventurous life seems so similar to our quest for Earth. The story might give us hope when we need it. No matter how much of the book I can reconstruct, no matter how much eloquence I attempt in trying to retell the story to anyone, I’ll never really have Sharky again. So much has been destroyed. So much.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Although the Galactica bridge might have seemed still and inactive to an outside observer, there was an abundance of human movement going on. Crew members’ hands were testing dials and gauges whose information had remained stable for some time. Communications officers kept pressing their earpieces harder against their ears, trying to discover some encouraging sounds. Colonel Tigh sat at his post, rippling the corners of printouts he’d stopped examining centons earlier. Athena’s eyes searched every horizontal scan line of her monitoring screen, and kept punching new combinations of the same data into her computer setup. Adama’s large knobby hands gripped and ungripped the railing that ran along the starfield walkway.

  Suddenly one of the bridge officers grumbled a curse and called to Colonel Tigh. Tigh rushed to the woman, Adama close behind him. She pointed to her long-range scanner. Tigh turned to Adama, saying:

  “That scanner’s picked up a Cylon fighter squadron.”

  “How many?” Adama asked.

  “Looks like an attack phalanx. They’re beginning to press.”

  Adama nodded.

  “Order Blue Squadron to patrol the rear.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Tigh flipped the nearest communication switch as activity around him on the bridge multiplied. “Scramble Blue Squadron! Patrol rear sectors Sigma through Omega!”

  The claxons roared through the Galactica, and the bridge crew could almost physically detect the rush of pilots toward launching bays. On various screens, pilots could be seen swinging into action, flight crews readying the vipers, and the reverberations of the fighter ships themselves.

  The squadron launched and achieved formation long before a visual contact with the Cylon attack phalanx was made. Positioned well to the rear of the fleet itself, the vipers were more than ready for the not-so-sneak attack of their enemy.

  Aboard the Galactica, the bridge crew stood and sat at battle stations, their active eyes watching information screens and equipment. Adama ordered the picture being transmitted from Blue Leader One transferred to the main screen. Tensely, they all watched the distant points grow into blots and then take form as flat-looking but multileveled Cylon fighters. The first blast from a Cylon weapon was directed at Blue Leader One, and everyone on the bridge flinched and startled backward when the shot seemed to come right at them. Then the skies were filled with laser fire and the sudden bursting flames of direct hits. A pair of Cylon fighters broke through the Blue Squadron line of defense and headed for the fleet.

  “Protect the freighters!” Adama ordered.

  “Galactica to Blue Leader,” transmitted a bridge officer. “Engage!”

  A Blue Squadron viper peeled away from the squadron and in one long beautiful sweep fired at both of the attackers and transformed them into two masses of fire whose flames reached out toward each other, combined, fell together, and exploded further in a burst of bright light that, for a brief moment, illuminated the entire wide triangle of ships that was the present fleet formation.

  “My God!”
Athena gasped.

  “Good shooting?” Adama, standing behind her, asked.

  “Not only that. That double kill was accomplished by one of the cadets.”

  “As I said, good shooting.”

  Adama walked away from her, his face apparently expressionless, but Athena recognized a flicker of pleasure in his reaction to the heroism of a graduate of his makeshift flight academy.

  The Cylon ships, quickly routed by the dizzying maneuvers of the Blue Squadron vipers, retreated into the distance, became points again. A flight officer approached Adama, and reported:

  “Blue Squadron returning to base. Four Cylons destroyed, the rest are running.”

  “They’ll be back,” Adama commented. “In packs, like wolves. What do your reports show, Tigh?”

  The colonel was scowling at a set of printouts that he gripped tightly in his hands. Something clearly disturbed him.

  “We got ships again, but not Cylon personnel. The Cylons in the rearguard ships guided the others, as before. We lost one viper and one good pilot. They lost just the vehicles, if vehicles is the proper word. They’re wearing us down with these empty ships. It’s eerie.”

  “That may be what they want us to feel. If they come at us again, go for the rearguard ships. Station a few warriors on the slower freighters with heavy artillery to blast any of the pilotless aircraft that might get through next time.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Athena, eavesdropping on the conversation between her father and his aide, sidled up to Adama and whispered:

  “Let me go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Give me some heavy artillery, station me on a—”

  “I told you. We need you here.”

  Adama’s voice was firm. She should have immediately returned to her station, but she decided to press her luck.

  “Well, you’re going to have to take a few warriors off the flight roster. Let me take up a viper the next attack. I can—”