02 - The Cylon Death Machine Read online

The explosions stop. We all take a simultaneous deep breath and I seem to feel the floor of the elevator swaying beneath me.

  “Are we falling?” I ask Apollo.

  “No. But something’s loose somewhere. I don’t know if—”

  “Captain Apolllloooo!” cries a voice below us. The sound is faint but clear. Apollo, amazed, looks at me.

  “That’s Starbuck’s voice,” he says, then crouches down near the doorway and shouts downward, “We’re up here, Starbuck. Can you hear me?”

  “Pretty good, Captain. Think I can see you. You’re about fifty meters above us. Looks to me like there’s a maintenance ledge about… about twenty meters below you. If you can get to that, there’s a sort of ladder.”

  “Okay, Starbuck, thanks. We’ll be right down. Keep your people out of the way.”

  Apollo stands.

  “Okay, Croft, what do you suggest?”

  “Blast a hole in the flooring first, then we’ll descend by rope. I mean, rope we got in abundance, right?”

  “Just about my idea, too. Stand back, everybody.”

  Aiming his laser pistol at a section of flooring, he quickly carves out a rough circle of metal. Holstering the laser, he then taps that part of the flooring with his ice-ax. It gives way easily and falls down the shaft. We hear the clank of it hitting the bottom even sooner than we’d hoped.

  “Okay,” Apollo says to me. “Who should handle the belay?”

  “No need for a belay, Captain. I still have some of the fancy pitons.”

  “I don’t understand. How are you going to get out there into the shaft and push them into the rock, how—”

  “They hold in metal, too. Watch.”

  I set the molecular-binding scale on the top of the piton to metal. Kneeling down, I drive them into the thick flooring in a semicircle. Going in, they sound good. They should hold. Leda, thinking ahead of me, has rope ready and attaches it to five carabiners, then snap-locks them to the five pitons. I test that each carabiner is securely locked to each piton and satisfy myself that they should hold the rope.

  “Good work,” Apollo says. “Okay, I’ll go first, test the holding power of the rope and—”

  “No, Captain,” Leda interrupts. “We appreciate your bravado but—”

  “It’s not bravado, it’s common sense, as the leader of—”

  “It’s hardly common sense. You showed us on the mountainside how experienced you were when it came to climbing. All due apologies, but the same goes for descending, Captain. Croft and I have better experience, more training. We’ll go first. Is that all right with you, Croft?”

  “Of course it’s all right.”

  I have to struggle to keep joy out of my voice. Leda’s asked me to team up with her again, even if only for this one task. Of course it’s all right.

  “Ready, Croft?” Leda says, as she flings the coil of rope through the hole, then sets it for the stiff cablelike tensility.

  Leda seems normal again, like in the old days. Efficient, steady, eager to attack a task without pause.

  “Should we rope together?” I ask her.

  “No. Better to descend one person at a time. Safer that way, in case the conditions on the mountain affected the rope at any point.”

  “Shall we toss for who goes first?”

  “No. I’m going first.”

  “Leda, I’ll—”

  “Croft, it’s my play.”

  She’s appealing to my sense of leadership. If I tell her not to go first, she’ll defer to me. But, on the other hand, she’s telling me she’s not only got the right to go first, but she has the best shot at doing it right. She’s angling for an unselfish command decision. I have to give it to her.

  “All right, Leda. Take care.”

  She smiles.

  “Sure thing,” she says, and has grabbed the stiff rope and started descending before I can come up with a clever good-bye. I lie prone by the hole and watch her descend in the dim light cast by our lanterns and the interior illumination of the elevator. A crack of light can be seen crossing the bottom of the shaft. It’s not a long descent to the bottom at all.

  “It’s an easy rappel,” Leda hollers up to us. “Easy. All of you, just dig your crampons in the wall and let your legs do the work. I have to. I forgot to wear my gloves, they’re probably up there on the floor somewhere, and this rope’s as rough as a rasp file. My hands’re gonna be as raw as daggit-meat.”

  “The rock jutting out below you, Leda, it looks loose,” I holler.

  “Right. I see it. Thanks, Croft.”

  Bouncing her feet off the wall sometimes, at other times digging the crampons in for a few careful steps, she slowly makes her way down the rope.

  “I think you’re just about there, Leda.”

  “Yeah. About another half meter.”

  When she reaches the ledge, she gives a good kick at the side of the shaft wall and lands, clumsily but firmly, on the ledge.

  “All right, Croft,” she hollers up. “Nothing to it. Come on down. I can anchor the rope from down here, so it’ll be even easier for you, cragsman.”

  Reacting quickly, I grab a section of the rope and ease myself out of the floor hole. Leda is right. The rappel is easy. Having watched her rappel, I can do it even faster. The rock I shove my crampons into is firm and I get good friction all the way down.

  I am about three meters from the ledge when I hear a reverberating rumble above me.

  “What’s that?” Leda calls.

  “Another explosion. Or one big avalanche or quake on the mountain.”

  I start scrambling down the rope. When I am near level with the ledge, the shaft starts trembling in reaction to the blast. Some rocks fall right by my head.

  “Swing yourself this way, Croft,” Leda yells.

  I swing toward her. She grabs my leg, eases me down toward the ledge. The noise in the shaft grows louder. More rocks break loose from the shaft wall. Leda grabs my left hand with her right. My right is still on the rope. As my foot touches the surface of the ledge, there is another frightening rumble and I feel the ledge breaking away beneath my feet. Clinging to the rope, I try to tighten my grip on Leda’s hand. She tries to do the same, but neither of us can quite coordinate. Her hand, raw and bleeding, slips a bit in my glove, but she manages to hold on. She flings out her feet, trying to get them onto the piece of ledge that’s left. I try to get leverage to help her swing, but can’t. My arm feels stretched, hanging from the rope. Another try by Leda for the ledge fails, although her foot briefly touches its edge. Now she’s hanging below me. Dangling.

  “Grab a piece of the rope!” I holler.

  She reaches toward it with her left hand, puts her fingers around it, seems to grip it.

  “Don’t let go of me yet!” I cry, but she is already letting go. I don’t know whether she intends to grab the stiff rope with both hands or whether her right hand, too raw to hold on, just slips out of my glove. Whatever, she has also lost her grip on the rope. She begins to slide downward. She makes a grab at the rope with her free hand, but misses. Then both hands are off the rope and she is falling.

  I remember her falling away from me in my nightmare. This fall is nothing like the one in the dream. It is quick, and her scream echoes through the shaft even after her body has struck the bottom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Athena brought Mount Hekla into focus on the monitor screen. This was the first scan they’d been able to make of the ice planet’s surface in some time. Now, for a moment at least, the mountain could be seen clearly. She called Tigh over. He nodded grimly.

  “Then they didn’t get it,” he said, pointing to the laser weapon on top of the mountain, which responded to his point by letting out another pulsing blast.

  Athena and Tigh stared at the screen as if it were playing an entertainment cassette. For both of them, the apparent stillness on the planet’s surface seemed to, once and for all, signal defeat for the Galactica.

  “I thought for certain they’d�
�” Athena muttered, but was interrupted by an intensely bright flash of light from the top of the mountain. At first she thought it was just another pulse from the gun; then she saw the barrel of the cannon turn bright red, then white, just before the whole emplacement exploded outward. The whole summit of the mountain seemed to erupt and form a small cloud above where the gun emplacement had been. Debris was still flying outward when she turned to Tigh and yelled:

  “They did it! They did it!”

  “Commander,” Tigh shouted. “The laser cannon’s been destroyed. It—”

  The Galactica was rocked by a pulse from the laser gun, passing closer to the battlestar than any previous pulse had. A warning light flashed on, signifying a fire in a cargo hold. Adama ordered a fire crew dispatched.

  “Was that the last pulse from the gun before it—?” he said to Tigh.

  “I hope so. I certainly hope so.”

  Tensely, everyone on the bridge waited, each person dreading the eerie thought of being wiped out by a weapon that had been already destroyed.

  “That’s it,” Athena finally said, looking up from her scanner. “It was definitely the last one.”

  A sense of relief passed across the bridge, and several crew members managed a weak but emotion-filled cheer.

  “They’ve done it!” Adama said, smiling for the first time since the attacks had begun. More crew members supplemented the growing cheer.

  “Send down a rescue unit with full fighter escort,” Adama ordered. “Athena can pilot the rescue ship. I’m sure she’d enjoy that.”

  Athena almost hadn’t heard her father’s last orders. Then they exchanged affectionate smiles, as she escaped from her communications console and headed for the launching deck.

  Vulpa was nearing the headquarters airfield when the explosion above him sent his ship rocking, nearly into a spin. Climbing out of the spin, he saw the massive final blast that destroyed the laser weapon. He did not have much time to think about it, for the shock waves from the blast caused his ship to go out of control again. Vulpa tried to restore a steady course, but he could not stop the plunge downward. He managed to level the ship off just before striking ground, and it skidded to a stop in the ice field, a few meters away from headquarters.

  Fearing a systems failure that would set the ship afire, Vulpa scrambled clumsily out of the cockpit and staggered a few steps away. His arm, grazed by the shot from the stocky human’s gun, began to hurt again. He looked back at his ship. Much of its underside had ripped away, and it was no longer flyable, but it did not catch fire.

  Turning, he started walking toward the command-post building. For the first time he saw the dying fire inside its portals. Suddenly he understood everything. While the bomb-planting team had attacked the summit station, another group of humans, perhaps also aided by Ravashol’s deceptive clones, had attacked the command post and probably the underground complex. That was why the Cylons at the gun had lost communication contact with the headquarters in the Hekla foothills.

  Vulpa wanted to run wild with rage. Running wild was a rarity among Cylons, but not unknown. For the first time Vulpa understood what rage was all about. This infernal small group of humans had not only wrecked his garrison and blown up his gun, they had also exploded his life. There was no more point to his ambition. He would never return to Imperious Leader’s base-ship. He would be shifted from one exile post to another. He would never succeed Imperious Leader. His life had become as useless as a street poet’s on the home planets of the Alliance.

  Inside the command post, he surveyed the damage. The humans had almost totally wrecked the place. Their attack and the subsequent fire had transformed everything into smoldering wreckage. He touched the activation button of the transmitter, hoping to see the shape of Imperious Leader form bit by bit on the cracked screen, but there was no response to his pressing of the button. The only piece of furniture still intact in the room was his command chair. He slumped into it.

  Using the meditative factor of his second brain, he was able to put himself into a kind of trance that not only calmed him, but mercifully removed awareness of his surroundings. He did not know how long he remained in this state. When he came to, he was immediately aware of danger. He looked out the command-post window. A large ship had just come out of the clouds, followed by an escort of fighters. Vipers. Human ships. What were they doing here? To rescue their invasion force? Or complete the destruction of his unit here? No matter. What did he care what the humans’ motives were anymore? The only instinct left in him said to destroy them, any of them. He would start with this rescue force.

  Slipping out of the command-post structure, he made his way to the airfield without being blocked by any of the enemy. The first ship he came to was one of the Cylon fighters that were equipped to guide the ghost ships that were positioned in the front ranks of the airfield. He could control five ghost ships from this guidance craft. It was just what he needed. The humans would think an entire Cylon squad was attacking them, when it was only Vulpa and a quintet of ghost ships. He looked up at the human ships. There might be too many of them, but he would give them a good battle before going down.

  Pressing a control-panel plate so that the imprint of the glove on his right hand was recognized by the scanning equipment, he brought the fuel-activation level to full power. To his left, he saw some children, reacting perhaps to the sudden noise of his aircraft, crawling out of the fighter next to him. Children? What would children be doing in a Cylon fighter, especially children who vaguely resembled Ravashol’s cursed clones? Everything, it seemed, was going crazy around him. No matter. The destruction of human ships would bring back his sanity. He pressed the plates that powered the ghost ships. Ahead of him, five ships stirred quickly to life.

  Starbuck helped Apollo climb out of the elevator shaft. A meter and a half below, on the floor of the shaft, Croft still knelt by the body of Leda. The man just sat there, as if he were willing to wait through eternity for a flicker of movement from her. Starbuck considered going down there, convincing him to leave her, telling him that they could arrange a proper disposition of the body, burial or flames, later. But he decided to leave Croft alone with his sorrow for a couple of moments longer.

  “She did a good job up there,” Starbuck muttered.

  “Both of them did,” Apollo said. “By the way, thanks for being here.”

  “Told you not to worry about my timing. Though the Cylon guards put up so much resistance, they darn near were your welcoming committee, Captain.”

  “Any Cylons left in the garrison?”

  “No,” Boomer said. “They seem to be wiped out.”

  “We’ll have to regroup now. Boomer, you go back and get Haals and the wounded, bring them back here. Take a squad of Ser 5-9’s people to help you.”

  “Yo,” Boomer said. He turned militarily and strode away.

  “Starbuck, you go get Boxey and the children.”

  “Right, Captain. Hey, Cadet Cree, come with me.”

  Cree—or at least a gaunt version of the formerly cocksure cadet—appeared from a shadowy niche and weakly saluted Apollo, who returned the courtesy.

  “I didn’t expect to see you, Cree.”

  “Never said a word to them, sir.”

  “Well, that might earn you a bit of metal, Cree.”

  “A… bit… of metal?”

  “An award, Cree, a medal.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Go help Starbuck.”

  Apollo went back to the elevator shaft and descended to Croft.

  “We’ve got to go now,” he whispered. “I’ll send someone back for Leda.”

  “I should have saved her, shouldn’t have let her drop, shouldn’t—”

  “Take it easy, Croft. We have to go.”

  Croft stood up, looked down at Leda’s body.

  “I wanted to get back together with her,” he said. “I was thinking of that, back on the elevator. Well, that was probably just so much bilge. She’d never’ve come
back to me. But there were so many things I—”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Right.”

  They climbed out of the shaft, Apollo giving Croft the final hand up. Ser 5-9 approached them, saying:

  “Dr. Ravashol told me to tell you that he’s established contact with the Galactica. They’re sending down a rescue unit. It should arrive anytime now.”

  Apollo told Ser 5-9 to take him to Ravashol. With Croft following, they made their way through labyrinthine corridors to Ravashol’s quarters. Ravashol smiled when he saw Apollo.

  “Your rescue ship’s just outside the cloud cover now. It should be coming through momentarily. Are you all right?”

  Apollo glanced at Croft, whose eyes seemed vacant.

  “Well enough,” Apollo said.

  “My clones have been conducting a celebration in the main hall. Look.”

  Ravashol pointed toward the telecom screen. Apollo looked. The clones were, indeed, making merry, he thought.

  “Emotion has been alien to them,” Ravashol commented. “It is good to hear it again.”

  “The Cylons will come back,” Apollo said.

  “We will be ready for them. You have saved us. You’ve saved my children.”

  “I might suggest you stop calling them children, sir. You may be having a little trouble with them from now on. They seem to be getting more and more human.”

  “I am glad.”

  The handshake between Apollo and Ravashol was interrupted by Starbuck bursting into the room.

  “Captain! Boxey and the children. They aren’t there! One of the Tennas told me the Cylons came, and the children ran away in the confusion.”

  “Send everyone you can to search the corridors,” Apollo commanded. “You come with me, Croft. You, too, Ser 5-9. I’ll need your help getting around out there.”

  Croft followed Apollo and Ser 5-9 out of the room and down a long corridor. Finally catching up to them, Croft said to Apollo:

  “Where we going?”

  “To the airfield. The children might be wandering around out on the surface. The cold or the di-ethene could kill them!”