02 - The Cylon Death Machine Read online

  “She looks like she could take us all on,” Boomer whispers to Starbuck, clearly impressed by Leda’s formidable appearance. “With or without chains. She’d beat us all.”

  “Leda,” Starbuck says, consulting his computer again. “Medic first class. Expert in laser wounds. And arctic experienced. She’s—”

  “What’s the mission?” Leda interrupts sharply.

  “Commander Adama’ll be briefing you,” Boomer says.

  Leda glances my way.

  “Adama, huh? You buddy-buddy with Adama now, Croft?”

  I laugh.

  “Just like a carabiner snaplocked to a piton,” I say.

  Leda scoffs at the joke, then addresses Starbuck and Boomer:

  “To have Croft and myself in the same place at the same time invites disaster. I suggest you return me to my cell. I’m better off with the rot there than with the likes of Croft.”

  Starbuck smiles. What in blazes is he so pleased about?

  “I take it you don’t like him,” he says to Leda.

  Leda smiles broadly, displaying her white even teeth.

  “I’m married to him,” she says. The smile goes away as quickly as it came, and she speaks more softly: “And no, I don’t like him.”

  “Hello, Leda,” I say. “You’re still prettier than a Libran—”

  “Shut up, Croft!” she says loudly. “I’m not taking any more of your birdlime. None of us are.”

  Boomer examines the four of us, the old team now in irrevocable rift, and mutters to Starbuck:

  “Cozy little group. This is one mission, Starbuck, I know you’re not going to volunteer for.”

  I feel for you, Boomer, but I’ll never be able to reach you.

  “Let’s get these… these gentlemen and lady out of here, Boomer,” Starbuck says, as he folds up his minicomputer and slips it into a pocket of his flight jacket.

  Boomer looks very disturbed as he orders Leda and Wolfe unchained and then herds us all out of the briefing room. I’m going to miss that chair, and I figure it’s going to be a long time before I ease myself into one like it again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Apollo could almost feel the Galactica’s motionlessness, as if the ship had miraculously managed to brake to a complete stop, instead of just drifting at a point out of the laser cannon’s range.

  He made his knock on Adama’s cabin door sound firm and determined. A touch on Adama’s desk panel made the door slide open. Adama looked up, smiled.

  “Come in, Apollo. You look troubled.”

  “Not troubled. Just angry.”

  Adama’s eyes narrowed, and the smile disappeared.

  “Go on,” he said to his son.

  “The computer search for members of the landing party…”

  “What about it?”

  “It was influenced. Contrived.”

  A flicker of anger in Adama’s eyes as he said:

  “That’s a serious charge.”

  He was offering Apollo a chance to retreat. Apollo was not going to take it.

  “I’m aware of that,” Apollo said. “It is a serious charge.” He struggled to keep his voice level. “You don’t want me to go, do you?”

  Adama swung his chair away from the desk, gave Apollo a stare that would have withered the average Galactican officer, and said:

  “You think I’d spare a member of my own family?”

  Apollo became aware that the recording device above the desk was now on, had been operative perhaps since he had made his charge. He spoke slowly, measuring his words:

  “I’m suggesting the selection was biased, or I would have been chosen. I’m qualified in survival techniques. I’m single. I have the correct endurance rating, not only correct but the highest among Galactica’s personnel, officer and enlisted man. I also have the weapons capability, command factor, the ability to—”

  “But,” Adama interrupted, “you lack experience in subzero temperatures.”

  Apollo was prepared for this objection.

  “None of our warriors have such training,” he said.

  Adama swung his chair back toward the desk.

  “If the computer passed you over, it did so for a reason.”

  Apollo was equally prepared for this observation, and struggling to keep his voice official and controlled, he said:

  “And I know exactly what that reason is. You are the sole judge of who is expendable and who isn’t. And, according to Colonel Tigh, I’m rated as nonexpendable.”

  Adama sighed.

  “You are the highest-rated combat experienced commander we have. It’s imperative that we conserve—”

  “Are you sure your feelings are not obscuring your objective judgment on this one, sir?”

  Apollo moved toward his father. Adama remained silent, staring sightlessly at the surface of his desk.

  “Don’t you think I understand?” Apollo said, his voice gentler now. “You’ve lost so many members of the family. Zac. Mother…”

  Both of them now lapsed into silence. Obviously his father was remembering the same scenes that were obsessing Apollo. Zac being blown out of the skies by the Cylons. He and his father returning to Caprica to realize that Ila, too, was dead. The feelings these memories engendered could not be adequately spoken, even between father and son. Adama rubbed his eyes as if to remove the memories and said to Apollo:

  “Don’t ask me to—I won’t reprogram the search.”

  “You don’t have to. Just expand the party by one.”

  “Apollo, I—”

  “If, as you said, I am your highest-rated commander, you need me on this mission. What difference does my expendability or lack of it make when you know we’re going up against that death weapon? If this mission fails, we’re all doomed, all due to be blasted to pieces. And you know it!”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment, each trying to cling to his own stubbornness. But finally Adama, assuming his command voice, relented.

  “Tell Colonel Tigh it is so ordered,” he said, and started to swing his chair back to his desk. Before he could do so, Apollo touched his hand, and returned his cold look with an affectionate one. A hint of a warming effect in the commander’s steel-blue eyes appeared briefly. It was enough for Apollo. He nodded and then strode quickly out of the command cabin.

  Athena, who’d been informed by Apollo of his plan to join the mission and had advised him against confronting their father, felt angry when she pulled out the new mission list from the computer and saw her brother’s name added to it. She considered going to her father to complain, but knew that would do no good. Adama wouldn’t appreciate being besieged by both his children arguing opposite sides of an issue. And, worse, now it was impossible for her to put in the request that she become a substitute on the mission—to replace the medic, Leda, who had expressed so much reluctance to join the expeditionary team…

  Starbuck suddenly confronted her, his eyes fixed on the computer sheet she was holding.

  “Is that the revised list for the mission?” he asked.

  “Yes. Apollo is on it. I wanted to be on it, but the computers chose this… this Leda. She’s a convict!”

  “Hate to tell you, but they’re all convicts, darling. Feel lucky you’re not on the list. I’m just praying that Apollo makes it back intact. Looks to me like a one-way voyage. Sure glad Boomer and I didn’t make it.”

  Starbuck could always get a rise out of Athena, and he was especially successful with his last little aside.

  “Starbuck,” Athena whispered angrily. “That’s the side of you I can never understand, or accept. One moment you’re offering Blue Squadron for a daredevil foolish assault, the next you’re oozing about how glad you are to be off the mission. These people have a chance to save the entire fleet, I’d give my eyeteeth to—”

  “Good for them. I say good for them, and more power forever. I personally have a very dangerous card game coming up. Here, let me have that readout. I’ll take it to Commander Adama.”r />
  She looked at him puzzledly. What was he up to now?

  “Look,” he urged, “I have to be at the briefing anyway. I’m in charge of the prisoner detail until they accept the mission.”

  She hesitated. It was always best to hesitate when Starbuck volunteered for anything, large or small. He smiled at her, and she handed him the list.

  “Hang around that briefing room as long as you can,” she said. “Maybe a little bravery will rub off.”

  It was a cheap shot, she knew, especially when directed at a warrior whose battle record was so distinguished. She just wanted him to act like the hero he was, a role he seemed to resist with relish. Except under battle conditions.

  No, she thought as she watched him walk briskly away from her, I shouldn’t’ve said that. Should not have angered him. Now we’re on the outs again! When will I ever learn?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Croft:

  Galactica lousy Commander lousy Adama doesn’t even recognize me. Angry, I remind him. Even after I remind him, he gives me a blank look. He says yes he remembers, but he really doesn’t. It was just a passing moment in his lousy life, just a matter of duty. I’ve been able to visualize every feature of his face since our capture, and yet it’s clear he wouldn’t know me from a pile of daggit-meat. I hate him more than ever.

  “Do you harbor any feelings toward me that would hamper your performance in the mission we’ve selected you for?” he asks.

  This is my chance, I realize. I can express my contempt and get away, not have to do a job for a man whom I’d rather kill than serve. But resigning from the mission means returning to the grid-barge, climbing into that rotten cell, and being forgotten again, maybe for good this time. I don’t want to go back to that cell. I’d do anything to keep away from it. Even embrace lousy Adama as a long-lost friend.

  “My feelings never hamper my performance,” I say.

  “That’s true enough,” Leda says, and then laughs. The echo of her laugh bounces around the command bridge like an artillery shell gone crazy.

  Adama screws up those fierce, almost cruel eyes and stares deeply into mine—discovering, I know, eyes crueller and fiercer than his.

  “How is it a man of your abilities, a commander, is still confined to a prison ship?” he asks suddenly.

  “You oughta know. You put me there.”

  “I don’t mean that. After the prison ship managed its escape from the confinement base on Sagitara, all prisoners were offered a chance at rehabilitation. We need personnel too badly to worry about past sins. Only the criminally insane were denied freedom.”

  Involuntarily I glance toward Wolfe, wondering what his classification was and if he’d ever been offered rehab. If he had been, he would have taken it, so I suspect he hadn’t. What had changed things so now, so that even Wolfe was useful?

  “Most prisoners accepted the offer of Core Command to join the fleet as useful personnel. You refused. Why?”

  I shrug.

  “Well, I guess I’m just a romantic at heart.”

  He screws up his brow to match his screwed-up eyes.

  “What does that mean?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Just that rehabilitation meant swabbing down landing decks and repairing the rubber bands that power this lousy fleet. Garbage details. Like the flirtatious maid said to her overeager master, I don’t do windows.”

  “I doubt you refused rehab because you’re a romantic. Sounds more like pride to me.”

  “We’ll match numbers on pride sometime. Sir.”

  Adama gets more businesslike in his manner and briefs me on his precious mission. It’s simple and complicated at the same time. The layout’s not too bad. The gun emplacement takes up most of the mountaintop because of its size. There’s a small area for landing a ship, nothing else. Nothing except a jagged mountain that looks like it’s got more death traps hidden in its terrain than easy pathways or slopes. In the foothills is a large encampment that appears to contain a full Cylon garrison. Beside the garrison is a large airfield that scanners show has several Cylon warships of different classes spread across it. Great! This all looks just like the platinum raid. They discover we’re on the mountain, they can pick us off for target practice.

  “And you want us to go up that?” I ask Adama.

  “It’s not so high,” Captain Apollo interjects. Who is this guy anyway? He acts like he’s somebody important.

  “Shows how much you know about mountains. Be glad you don’t have to climb it.”

  Apollo flushes, red to the gills. He’s furious, trying to hold it in.

  “I’ll be part of the team,” he says.

  “God save us,” I say. “Look, the worst thing you can do to sabotage this mission, Commander, is give me some green amateur who doesn’t know a piton from a—”

  “My son will join the mission,” Adama says quietly. His son! Terrific. I got to drag his son along, break my back belaying him up cliffsides, toss him ahead of me over ridges, probably get jounced into a ravine because of one of his mistakes. And all because a commander wants to give his son an edge. This mission is shaping up just dandy.

  “I have mountaineering experience,” Apollo says to me, as if that alone justifies his presence on the team.

  “Is that so? Then how could you make such a dumb remark? Take a good look at the geologic scan of this mountain. What did you say, it’s not so high? Look, man, height’s not a measure of difficulty when you’re assaulting a mountain, especially when it’s a mountain where there’s been no recorded previous climbs to provide us information on possible routes. Ever hear of Mount Cyimklen, Captain Apollo?”

  Apollo looks like he doesn’t want to discuss mountains with me, but he responds anyway:

  “Of course. It’s on my home planet, Caprica.”

  “Well, Mount Cyimklen is the second-highest mountain on your home world. And you’ve probably climbed it, right?”

  “As a matter of fact—”

  “Everybody has. Nothing to it. Six-year-olds can conquer Cyimklen. Despite its height, it’s composed of easy slopes, well-worn trails, practically stairs carved into the rock. There was a time when it was something of a challenge because of its extreme height, but that was a millennium ago. Once somebody had challenged it, and climbed it, discovered its secrets, the ascent of it became easy. Now, let me ask you another question. Ever hear of Mount Pannurana?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “And I’d bet my grid-barge chits that you’ve never climbed it.”

  “I tried. Once.”

  “Pannurana is just slightly more than half the height of Cyimklen. And it’s only been scaled to the top five times. Twice by me. And why? Because it’s a rat-trap of a mountain, that’s why. Rotten rock, lousy footholds, ice like sheet glass, a peak that rises straight up on all sides with nothing to grab hold of, air as thin as your common sense, Cap’n. More guys died on Pannurana than all the surrounding mountains combined. All the surrounding higher mountains. So don’t look at this geologic scan and tell me this one’s not so high, all right?”

  Apollo looks quite embarrassed. Good. Guys like him I like to keep off balance. Maybe if he listens to reason he’ll be able to perform as a member of the team instead of being a drag on the ropes. Still, I don’t like the look of this mountain, no matter who’s on the team.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s establish this. It’s no easy climb, no jaunt in the clear air for eager amateurs. Ignoring for the moment the fact that we can be wiped out in a millicenton if the helmet-heads detect our presence, I can’t see a single good route up the mountain, at least not on the basis of this geologic scan. The north and west faces are clearly too tough to tackle under the conditions down there. East and south are better, but I don’t like the look of the glacial material near the summit. Southeast looks most promising—which is to say not very. Given the fact that you won’t allow us sufficient time to study the mountain closely so we can plan out a proper route—”

  “There’s n
o time, Croft,” Adama says. “I know you need it, but if the Cylons pincer us between the pursuit force and that cannon, we’re finished.”

  “I appreciate that, Commander, but I’m not, shall we say, pleased. A good climb requires long preparation. This mission—you might as well climb it with your eyes closed. After settling your dispersion plans for your share of the pension fund, of course. Are you sure there’re no alternatives?”

  Adama appears irritated. Perhaps he doesn’t like the way I’m taking over the briefing. Tough chute-waste, Commander.

  “What alternatives are you suggesting, Croft?”

  “I assume direct assault with aircraft is out of the question.” He nods. “What about a route inside the mountain? I never knew a Cylon setup that didn’t have some below-ground facilities. They seem buggy about underground passages. I’d bet my pass back to the grid-barge that there’re tunnels inside the mountain, maybe even some sort of elevator system.”

  Adama studies my face for a moment before answering. He thinks he can read me.

  “Perhaps, but all our close probe-scans end up jammed. We don’t know what’s down there, except for what I’ve already shown you. If an alternate route is discovered, it should be used, I agree. For now, we have to assume that the only route to the laser cannon, the only chance we have at destroying it, is—unfortunately—up the mountain.”

  He’s a fair man, I’ll say that for Adama. I wish I had him for backup work in place of his overzealous and inexperienced offspring. I’d still hate him, but at least I could rely on him.

  “I appreciate your evaluation of the situation, Commander. I feel a part of our goal has to involve being opportunistic. We should look for any alternatives to climbing the mountain.”

  “And if there are none?”

  I shrug.

  “Then we climb.”

  Adama is pleased. Well, that’s okay with me. Maybe if we can just pull off this stunt, I can come back to the Galactica and strangle its commander. Insurmountable challenges are easier to take if you got a worthwhile goal to come back to.