Battlestar Galactica 3 - The Tombs Of Kobol

by Glen A. Larson

  "Training!" he shouted. "You've been training to—"

  "I'm a shuttle cadet, Apollo. I've soloed. My evaluation reports are good, they're—"

  "Boxey, would you excuse us a moment?"

  Boxey was peeved at being dismissed from the conversation. He'd been watching us as if we were performing a little comedy just for his benefit. Looking down at his daggit, he muttered:

  "Come on, Muffit. They're going to argue."

  "We are not going to argue," I said, as firmly as I could under the circumstances.

  "Yes, they are," Boxey said to Muffit, as he closed the door behind him.

  "Yes, we are!" Apollo vowed, and I knew I had a real fight on my hands.

  No matter, I thought, I can handle it. At least I hoped I could. Looking at the wrath in my betrothed's face, I was no longer so sure.

  "You didn't even tell me!" Apollo said. "That's what hurts the most. I was not even good enough for—"

  "Come off it, darling. You know why I didn't tell you. I wouldn't've seen the inside of a cockpit if I'd so much as mentioned—"

  "All right. I'll concede the point. I'm an arrogant, browbeating martinet who can't be trusted to consider both sides of a matter like this. All right, I—"

  "Stop that. There's no need to go highside about it. If I was wrong in not telling you, I'm sorry, but—"

  "No one told me. Of all the—I'm supposed to be the Flight Commander, remember? I still haven't even received a single report on our little makeshift flight academy. Does my father know you're—"

  "No. He doesn't get a report on every cadet in the fleet."

  Apollo looked ready to flunk the whole fleet on an efficiency report. He also looked very, very angry. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I was afraid he might not take too kindly to even a mild expression of affection at that precise moment. Finally, the words coming out like bursts of laser fire, he said:

  "It's . . . it's too dangerous. I can't . . . I won't . . ."

  I realized suddenly that I, too, was very angry.

  "You don't have a choice!" I shouted.

  It was not sensible to fight him like that—with foolish bluffs, especially—for, after all, he did have a choice. As flight commander and son of Adama, he could get me tossed off mission roster easily. My approach should have been to soothe him but instead, impulsive squabbler that I am, I had responded in kind.

  "Serina, it's not—not right. It's—"

  "Not right? For what reason?"

  "We're about to be married!"

  I should have expected that. So many of the males aboard this battlestar think that just dropping the words "married," "marriage," "wedding," "wife" into a conversation automatically defines the issue. Once the words build the fences, they think, there should be no arguments. Well, that might have worked with some women, but I'd had too much independence for too long back on Caprica, and I wasn't about to let Apollo try to make gender a defining principle.

  "Yes, we're about to be married, but what does that have to do with it? Your own sister's a pilot—and warrior!"

  "She's my sister. Not my wife-to-be!"

  "Well, if that's all that's disturbing you, we can take care of that. Easily. I'll be just another cadet and you won't have to worry about it. I always knew I didn't believe in marriage contracts. Now I see why!"

  Apollo is nothing if not a good officer. He knew when to retreat by being forward. He put his arms around me and said:

  "Serina, I love you. That's what counts. I don't want anything to happen to you, ever."

  Acknowledging his calmness, I regained control over my own emotions.

  "Don't you think I love you, too?" I said. "And talking about danger, look at things from my point of view. You're always going off on patrols, flying missions in a viper. Into combat. And don't hand me any of your bilge about the viper being the most efficient and successful war machine ever developed. I've seen too many of them go down launch tube for the last time to buy that line. And I'm not even attempting to qualify as a viper pilot. Kobol forbid. All I'm training to be, after all, is a shuttle pilot."

  "Do you know how many shuttle pilots have been picked off by Cylon sneak attacks, how many shuttle pilots were lost at the Battle of Carillon?"

  "Do you know how many civilians? Apollo, face it, there is no really safe place or job-function anywhere in the fleet. That's why we need the emergency procedures so desperately. Everyone is being trained in every capacity. It's our best chance for survival."

  "Yes, but—"

  But he couldn't come up with any more buts. He glanced away from me as if studying the gray rows of rivets in the metal wall panels, then back at me. Then he sighed, then he let out a breath. Finally he said:

  "Are you any good?"

  "Top of my class."

  He pulled me closer.

  "You better be if you're going to be married to a squadron commander."

  "Oh, well, then . . . Yes, sir."

  He kissed me then. And—for the moment—that particular battle was over. A standoff followed by a truce and time to regroup.

  I'm sorry, in a way, that we had to go through the pattern of anger and conciliation. I've never had a chance to tell him how scared I am, how I can't sleep nights for fear of dreams in which a Cylon raider bears down on me and shoots off a laser blast that surrounds me in blinding whiteness before I wake up. I told Athena about my uneasy dreams. She just passed them off, called them cadet sweat.

  But the dreaming doesn't stop.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Cassiopeia walked down the aisle between the double row of support chambers, checking the gauges on each to see that the proper cryonic levels were being maintained. She stopped at Boomer's chamber for a long while, trying to see a flicker of life on the young man's face. The rime frost which had collected on the inside of the chamber's glass gave Boomer a ghostly look. Although all measuring instruments indicated that he lived, there was no sign of life on his face. For that matter, all of the men seemed encased in their coffins rather than in life-support devices.

  A shudder seemed to go through her entire body as she momentarily envisioned Starbuck sealed in one of the life-support tubes. When he had told her how close he had come to charging by the security guard and entering the party room, he had been blasé about it, as if this mysterious sickness could not touch him. Still, everyone at that party was now down with the illness. Further, one pilot had left the party on the trail of amatory adventure. He had collapsed before he'd annoyed any passing woman, but he'd made contact with several members of the security force who had made contact with others and, at the moment, there was no telling how far this plague might spread. If the quarantine procedures and stiffer curfew regulations did not work, then anyone—Starbuck, Apollo, Serina, the commander—could contract the disease. No new cases had been reported for two duty-tours, so Doctor Salik believed the communicable phase might be in check now. But, as he said, how could anyone predict the progress of a disease no one knew anything about? Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought of Starbuck, and fervently hoped that he would be able to goldbrick himself off the duty roster to be with her after her own tour of duty ended. She wanted to hold him, protect him even while he protested he needed no protection. Maybe she could get him to stay with her for an entire rest period instead of rushing off to some game table somewhere. (Where? All his gambling buddies were here, planted in life-support tubes.) If only he'd stay—maybe if she bet him eight to five that he wouldn't . . .

  Doctor Salik, who had been working with the ship computer, feeding in all known data and receiving inconclusive responses, suddenly turned away from the console and interrupted her thoughts of Starbuck by muttering:

  "Still nothing. I've put in all that I know about their symptoms, eliminated everything that's tested out negative. There's no more I can come up with."

  "But we—"

  "Let's go over it again. Review the symptoms." This was the tenth time, at least, that he had asked Cassiopeia
for a recital of symptoms. Each time she dutifully provided it:

  "Dizziness. Rapid pulse. Sudden fainting spells. Fever. Lowering blood cell count. That's most of them."

  "I know, I know. And I still haven't got a clue. Everybody in the fleet could die and I'll still be here getting inconclusives from the computer."

  She put her hand on his arm. The skin around his eyes had grown so puffy, the eyes themselves seemed to be hiding behind battlements.

  "Take it easy, doctor."

  "Right, Cassie. I just don't—"

  He stopped talking when he realized that the Galactica's commander now stood on the other side of Boomer's tubelike chamber. The man had entered the life-support station so silently that neither doctor nor med-tech had taken note of him.

  "I just got a report," Adama said. "This disease swept through every fighter pilot and half the bridge officers. Everyone who came in contact with anyone who'd been at the party. Clearly it originated with Jolly and Boomer. Decon chamber checked out as fully operative."

  "I've taken dozens of scans of the bodies of the infected pilots, sir. Nothing indicated. Nothing bacteriological or viral at any rate. Something's happening to their blood and there's a definite weakening of the intestinal tract, but these and other symptoms don't add up to anything I can work with. Whatever is causing this, I can't isolate it. I can only leave the men in cryogen tubes until we do get closer to a solution. Jolly and Boomer would be dead now if I hadn't put them into cryogenic suspension. And I'd guess that that's only delaying the inevitable unless I can isolate the source of infection. And soon."

  Cassiopeia had never seen such distress in the commander's face before. She remembered Tigh describing to her Adama's reaction to viewing the explosion of his young son Zac's viper at the inception of the Cylon diversionary ambush. Adama must have looked then as he did now, ready to break down and cry at any moment.

  "Doctor," Adama said, "do you understand the significance of these men? These particular men? They've been overworking themselves daily, protecting the fleet. We can't afford to lose them now."

  Salik, clearly holding in his temper, inhaled deeply before replying:

  "I understand all that, Commander. But I have to say with all due respect that the problems of defense are yours. My job right now is keeping them alive." Adama, less successful at checking his temper, shouted:

  "Do your job then, doctor!"

  Salik's voice lowered as he said:

  "As soon as you stop looking over my shoulder every few moments, Commander, I'll do my job."

  Both men appeared to Cassiopeia as if they could come to blows the next time one of them spoke. They were silent, fortunately, for a long moment, then Adama whirled on his heels and strode out of the life-support station. Salik did not bother to look after the commander, but instead returned to the computer console to feed into it the same information he had been giving it since the first symptoms had been diagnosed.

  Starbuck, Cassiopeia thought, you better be there tonight. I need you.

  Adama, still feeling rankled from his confrontation with Salik, sought solace by examining again the microfilmed pictures of the ancient books of Kobol. He stopped particularly at an old map to study it. The lovely calligraphy of the map was written in the ancient language, very little of which was translatable. It appeared to show a bright shining star in a circle with long, snakelike rays shooting out from its center. And the large oceanlike area funneling out from the planet certainly might be a representation of what Apollo and Starbuck had described as the void. One of the alternate translations for the mysterious inscription below the oceanlike area seemed to describe a vast void stretching across an entire galaxy. If they went inside it, and its pull delivered them to that star and that planet, why then—

  "You sent for me, father."

  He had not heard Apollo enter. Looking at the young man now, he started to smile. However, he had to suppress his paternal instinct when he perceived how angry Apollo looked. The welcoming smile quickly diminished.

  "Yes, Apollo. I had Colonel Tigh prepare a roster of everyone in the fleet with any flight experience." The roster lay on a corner of Adama's desk. He picked it up and handed it to his son, who seemed reluctant to accept it.

  "Basically," Adama continued, "it comes down to a small number of combat-trained pilots, then a larger group of old-line warriors with disabilities of one kind or another. Plus those names at the bottom."

  Holding the roster away from him as if it were particularly distasteful, Apollo squinted down at the names upon it. When he reached the bottom group of names, he inhaled sharply and muttered:

  "Oh, no."

  "Those last names," Adama said, "are those cadets who have had some solo experience, although none of them have so much as touched a viper joystick. Get them combat-ready as soon as possible."

  Apollo gripped the roster so tightly that crumple lines appeared in the paper all around his hand.

  "You're not serious?" he said, quite angrily.

  What is this? Adama thought. Everybody's spoiling for an argument today, it seems. First Salik, now Apollo, each ready to explode at me.

  "I'm quite serious," Adama said firmly, hoping that would put his son's argument to rest.

  "Father," Apollo said, "the viper is an extremely complicated piece of machinery. It's designed to integrate tightly with the skills of a pilot. I sometimes feel it would chuck me right out of the cockpit if it decided it could do without me. You can't just assign vipers to . . . to shuttle pilots. It's—"

  "We don't know how long it'll be before our sick pilots can return to combat. Or if they'll ever be able to. We can't wait. That's how serious I am; that's how serious the situation is. I don't mean to be brusque, but I am busy." He glanced irritably toward the antiquated map on his viewer. "You have your orders."

  "Yes sir, but—"

  "What is it?"

  Apollo slapped the roster list back onto Adama's desk and walked briskly to the door, where he turned and said quietly:

  "I just don't believe you read all the names on that roster, Commander."

  After Apollo had shoved open the compartment door and charged out of the room, Adama slowly picked up the roster from where Apollo had thrown it down. Looking at the bottom names, he saw immediately what had angered his son. Serina was listed as one of the qualified shuttle pilots. Too busy with the many details of command, Adama had not before realized that Serina had gone through on her threat to take pilot training. He recalled the day when she'd announced her intention, and he had impolitely scoffed, saying that her duty was to be Apollo's helpmate. What had she said then, her voice nearly shrill with indignation? Something to the effect that an individual's duty had to include more than a simple-minded commitment to another individual, especially for reasons that had become outmoded with the first Cylon burst of fire in the attack on the twelve worlds. Curbing his anger and struggling to take a conciliatory approach, Adama had tried to talk her out of the idea of becoming a pilot, saying she could be more useful helping the sick or overseeing supplies or, with her talents in that direction, participating in food preparation. Although she clearly saw his suggestions as condescending, she had not argued with him about them. On the other hand, she had not agreed with him either.

  Now he could not avoid ordering her to risk her life. He could not excuse her from duty and then send out other eligible but just as inexperienced pilots.

  "Oh, lord," Adama muttered, not knowing exactly what he would say to his son the next time they met.

  Cassiopeia nestled her head in Starbuck's shoulder and sang one of the songs she remembered from her socialator days. Fleet Council had banished the practice of socialation, among other luxury occupations, as inimical to the goals of eluding Cylon pursuit and seeking Earth. She had pushed memories of her earlier life out of her mind. However, she had never been able to forget completely the music. It was, after all, lovely, especially so since it had been composed to treat specific emotional problems. T
he song she now sang, "The Death That Is No Death, the Life That Is All Life," seemed particularly appropriate to Starbuck's mood. He was afraid for Boomer and his other comrades, all lying in that bizarre coma in life station. After a moment of listening to Cassiopeia's soft and haunting voice, he put his arm around her and brought her closer to him. Cassiopeia finished her song and then the two enjoyed the silence. The relative silence, anyway—there was no possibility of total silence inside the busily functioning Galactica.

  "If you feel like a smoke, go ahead," Cassiopeia finally said.

  Starbuck smiled and whispered:

  "Nope. I know how you hate the smell of my cigars even when they're made from the slickest and most potent tobacco found on Sagitara. Boomer saved some from—"

  He stopped talking abruptly. His and Boomer's lives were so complexly intertwined that it seemed he could not speak on a subject without somehow bringing Boomer into it. Cassiopeia cursed silently. There was nothing, it seemed, in all her socialator training—all the complex arts, devices, theories, intended to help a woman administer to her male clients—that countered the gloom caused by the closeness of death, not even the soft, sad songs.

  "Starbuck, do you wish—"

  "I have to go, Cassie."

  "No, please stay."

  "I'm not good company—"

  "That doesn't matter."

  "Well, I've got to be in good shape to ogle all my pupils in the new flight-training classes tomorrow."

  "That sounds a bit like the Starbuck I'm used to, I'll admit that. But I don't believe it. You're just—"

  "Cassie, I have to be alone for a while."

  "Be alone with me."

  "I can't. You're wonderful, Cass, but—"

  "It's a standoff then."

  "Not exactly. I'm going."

  "Starbuck, please—"

  Delicately, he removed his arm from around her waist and disengaged himself.

  "I'm jealous, you know," Cassiopeia muttered.