04 - Unity

by Steven Harper - (ebook by Undead)

  Uneasiness tugged at Adama, though he was careful to keep this from showing on his face. He couldn’t help feeling that the Cylons knew exactly where he was, but they were choosing not to attack. Except there was no reason for them to do this. They could have easily sent another basestar with more raiders long before the Monarch had finished evacuating. It was unthinkable that they hadn’t. Something else must have interfered. Maybe the first basestar hadn’t managed to transmit a signal. Maybe Starbuck’s nuclear explosion had jammed their transmissions. Hell, maybe they were running out of basestars. Adama tightened his mouth. Too many maybes. The fact remained that after a full day of no Cylons, it made it worth the risk to put the Monarch back to work.

  And there was the problem of Sharon Valerii. The search teams continued working around the clock, but Kara and Lee were still the only two people who had set eyes on her since her escape. It was possible she had left the Fleet just as that Godfrey woman had, but Adama doubted it. Caprica Sharon was an outcast among her own people and she was pregnant. She wouldn’t go running to them even if she could, and that meant she had concealed herself in the Fleet somewhere. There had been no other attempts at sabotage, thank the gods, but it still made Adama uneasy knowing she was out there. She—or someone very much like her—had nearly killed him less than a month ago. Sometimes he woke up in the night, the sound of her pistol shot ringing in his ears, the pain of the bullet tearing through his gut. It was times like that when he missed Anne the most. Her absence was a black emptiness that trailed after him, no matter how busy he kept himself. He suspected that most people in the Fleet felt the same way about their own loved ones. Adama, at least, had the comfort of knowing his son Lee was nearby, though it scared the hell out of him every time Lee flew a mission. He sighed and wondered what it would be like to be free of crushing stress, to wake up in the morning and not be in some way worried or afraid.

  Suddenly the CIC felt confining, the decks and bulkheads hemming him in like a prison. “Going for a walk, Mr. Gaeta,” he said. “You have CIC. Shout if you need me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gaeta said.

  Adama strode along Galactica’s familiar corridors, keeping his pace fast enough to stretch his legs but not fast enough to start a sweat. Members of crew made way for him, tossing him salutes where appropriate. He had no doubt word was getting around that the Old Man was on the prowl. The idea almost made him smile.

  He hadn’t been on his feet for more than ten minutes before he almost ran into Saul Tigh in a side corridor. The executive officer was waving a magazine under Kara Thrace’s nose. Kara was keeping her face stoic, but Adama caught the amusement that quirked at the corners of her mouth. Adama gave an internal sigh. Kara enjoyed baiting Tigh and he loved raking her over the coals. The two of them were more alike than either of them wanted to think.

  “This is conduct unbecoming an officer,” Tigh was saying. “Dammit, we’re the Battlestar Galactica. Or did you forget that during your little outing?”

  “Is it against regulations to date a civilian, sir?” Kara asked carefully.

  “I’ll ask the questions, Lieutenant.”

  “So that’s a no, then. And sir,” her tone became sticky-sweet, “I don’t recall seeing any unbecoming pictures of me in the magazines. Is it against regulations for people to take photos of me in a public place? It’s not something I can exactly control when I’m not on duty.”

  “You know what I mean,” Tigh snapped. He had rolled up the magazine as if to swat her on the nose with it. “We’re the military, not some fluffbrain celebrities.”

  “I can’t help it that people think I’m photogenic, sir. I didn’t ask them to take the pictures, or to publish them.”

  “You can take these pictures and—”

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” Adama interrupted, then nodded at his XO. “Saul.”

  Kara, seeing him for the first time, snapped a salute. “Sir!”

  “May I, Saul?” Adama held out his hand and Tigh, red-faced, handed him the magazine. Adama unrolled it. The title, Person to Person, blazed in large yellow lettering across the glossy cover. He flipped through it until he came to the offending pages. Kara tensed visibly. Adama found a slightly fuzzy picture of Kara Thrace walking through a park—presumably on Cloud 9—with Peter Attis. They were holding hands. In the next photograph, they were kissing. The accompanying story was short, and only mentioned that Peter and Kara had been seen together often since the concert two days ago. The article was also full of question marks, as in “How serious is this?” and “Can the Galactica’s number one pilot keep up a relationship with a rock star?” A sidebar caught his eye. It was headed, geminon priests denounce performer’s music. Adama flicked through the article. Apparently Peter’s rendition of “You’re the Only One” had ruffled a few religious feathers.

  “Interesting stuff,” Adama said.

  “That it is,” Tigh growled.

  Adama handed Kara the magazine. “Lieutenant, I don’t see a violation in regulations—”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kara said, an impish note to her voice.

  “—so far,” Adama finished. “You need to be careful that you two are not seen together when you’re in uniform, and I hope I don’t need to tell you what the penalty would be if you saw him while on duty.”

  Kara’s face instantly became serious and the impishness left her tone. “No, sir.”

  “Saul,” Adama said, turning to him, “I left Lieutenant Gaeta in charge of CIC. You might want to make sure he hasn’t caused any damage while I’ve been gone.”

  Tigh hurried off, looking slightly mollified at the chance to inspect Gaeta’s work.

  “Walk with me a bit, Lieutenant,” Adama said. Kara fell into step beside him, and they strolled the busy corridors of the ship. The hallways were never empty, and the pair kept their voices low to avoid being overheard.

  “It looked to me like you were proud of the magazine, Kara,” Adama said, falling into informal mode. “I never figured you for a publicity hound.”

  “I’m not, really,” Kara admitted.

  “What changed?”

  They made way for a trio of sweaty joggers and for an ensign pushing a small handcart piled high with plastic crates.

  “Colonel Tigh.” Her expression became impish. “I didn’t realize how much I liked those pictures until he started telling me how inappropriate they were.”

  “Right.” They passed a set of carbon dioxide scrubbers mounted on the bulkhead. Adama automatically listened to make sure they were hissing properly. Maintenance wasn’t his personal job, but he couldn’t help checking. “You be careful how you handle this, Kara. The media is a starving jackal. It’ll devour every bit of you and clamor for more.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be careful, sir.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” And they went their separate ways.

  “Ready, Chief?”

  Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol eyed the Raptor, his practiced gaze taking in every scratch, every ding, every repair. This one had a patched wing, its carefully soldered seam just visible. He couldn’t see the internal repairs (scavenged communications wiring, newly cleaned CO2 scrubbers swiped from a dead Viper, deck plating resealed with a compound of his own devising), but he knew every one. These days he couldn’t look at a Raptor or a Viper without mentally tallying up what repairs it had required yesterday, what it needed at the moment, and which ones it might need in the near future.

  “Why don’t I get a vac suit?” he asked.

  Margaret “Racetrack” Edmonson shrugged shoulders padded by her vac suit. Her helmet face plate revealed a pretty face framed by long dark hair. “Regs, Chief. Pilot and ECO wear suits. Passengers don’t need them.”

  “Unless we get a micrometeor puncture or a Cylon attacks or—”

  She clapped him on the back with a gloved hand. “You’re just paranoid because you know all the stuff that can go wrong.”

  “Well, yeah.” He ran a hand over his face, feeling more tha
n a little nervous. “I repair them, I don’t fly in them. As a rule.”

  “This is a sugar run,” Racetrack told him. “Straight to Planet Goop, no stops, no Cylons.”

  “Let’s frakking hope so.” Helo stepped into view around the Raptor, his heavy vac suit boots thumping softly on the deck. “Chief.”

  “Lieutenant.” Tyrol felt a vague tension humming in the metallic air. He shot Racetrack a quick glance. Her face was carefully neutral. So was Helo’s. So was Tyrol’s own. Yes, sir—all perfectly neutral. A silence fell across the trio, and Tyrol’s discomfort grew.

  “Any news about Sharon?” he blurted. Then he mentally kicked himself. He had just mentioned the huge, honking elephant in the room. And to an officer, no less.

  “Not a word,” Helo said. His voice had a thin quality, transmitted over the suit’s intercom, and Tyrol couldn’t tell by the lieutenant’s tone if he was annoyed, upset, or uncaring.

  “Well, that’s… I mean…”

  “Oh, frak it,” Racetrack said. “Look, that Raptor will explode if we get on board right now, so let’s defuse this little bomb right now. Chief, you know that I used to have bad feelings toward you because of your… relationship with Sharon.

  I don’t anymore. Okay? I think you’re one of the best men on this ship. Helo, you and the Chief feel weird around each other because he was boink—uh… seeing the first Sharon before you got involved with Caprica Sharon, the second Sharon. So now you’re both tense. Have you two resolved that or what?”

  Tyrol looked at Helo and unconsciously rubbed his jaw where the other man had socked him in a fistfight over this very issue. Tyrol had given as good as he got, though. In the end, both had walked away from the fight, silently swearing never to mention it again. Racetrack, however, was throwing it back at them, and Tyrol didn’t know exactly what to say.

  In the end, it was Helo who broke the silence. “Yeah, we kinda resolved it.” He held out a gloved hand with a sheepish grin. “We good, Chief?”

  Tyrol hesitated only a moment. “We’re good, Lieutenant.”

  “Good boys.” Racetrack clambered over the wing of the Raptor and stepped into the little cabin. “Now climb aboard and strap in like a nice passenger and ECO.”

  “Since when are you a pilot, anyway?” Helo said, following her. Tyrol brought up the rear. “Last I knew, you were still an Electronic Countermeasures Officer like me.”

  “I’ve flown plenty of Raptors,” Racetrack said defensively. “You’ll be up for it next, just watch. Besides, this is just a sugar run.”

  “You say that over and over like you’re trying to reassure yourself,” Helo said.

  “Shut up.”

  Tyrol quietly strapped himself into the copilot seat beside Racetrack as Helo pulled the Raptor’s hatch shut. He felt oddly naked in just his orange deck uniform. The cabin was fairly small, big enough for maybe one more person. Helo took up his position at the rear, by the ECO console. Ahead of Tyrol, clear Plexiglas (three scratches, two pockmarks, no cracks) looked out over the deck. He closed his eyes and tried to doze as Racetrack and Helo went through the pre-flight, though he was sure he was too uneasy to sleep. It therefore surprised him to wake up with a small snort when Helo said, “How about some radio time?”

  Tyrol wiped drool from his chin. His dark hair felt mussed, and he blinked bleary brown eyes. Sharon had always said his eyes were his best feature. He pushed the thought aside. Ahead of him lay the perfect blackness of space. Suspended in the center of it, Planet Goop turned slowly on its axis. Wispy white clouds chased each other across deep blue oceans and piled up over brown masses of land.

  “Radio?” he said. “What’s playing?”

  “Dunno,” Helo replied. “It’s always hit-or-miss out here, but luckily you have me on the communications board.”

  Crackly, uncertain saxophone music filled the cabin.

  “No jazz!” Racetrack hollered.

  “Sorry. I forgot.” Helo fiddled with the boards some more and this time clear voices filtered from the speakers.

  “…the success of your concert,” said an interviewer. “What was the song again?”

  “‘You’re the Only One’. I rewrote the lyrics. It seems to be catching on.”

  “An understatement, to be sure. You’re making some waves about your new spirituality. I’ve heard the word ‘heresy’ thrown around here and there.”

  A light laugh. “Not what I intended. And it’s not really heresy. I just maintain that all the gods are merely faces—different faces—of a single loving entity.”

  “Who the frak is this?” Tyrol demanded, affronted.

  “Shh! It’s Peter Attis,” Racetrack said.

  “Isn’t that the definition of heresy?”

  “There are Scriptural passages that support it,” Peter countered. “Though not explicitly. There’s certainly nothing in the Sacred Scrolls to deny it.”

  “Since when?” Tyrol exploded. “The Book of Pythia specifically states—”

  “Hush!” Racetrack interrupted.

  “But I’m not trying to become a spiritual leader,” Peter continued. “I’m a singer, not an Oracle.”

  “Damn right,” Tyrol grumbled.

  “You already have people who claim to be followers,” the interviewer said. “What about them?”

  “I haven’t done anything to lead them.” Another light laugh. “I think they’re really fans. It’s always nice to know you’ve touched someone’s life, but I’m just out to entertain, nothing more than that.”

  Tyrol shook his head, trying to imagine how his parents—a Priest and an Oracle—would have reacted to such blasphemy. “Explosive” was the only word that came to mind.

  The interview came to an end, to Tyrol’s relief, and Helo shut off the radio. Tyrol half expected his father to leap out of the shadows and castigate him for sullying his soul with such heretical ideas. Then he wished his father would leap out of the shadows, even to yell at him and make him kneel down to pray as he had when Tyrol had been living with them at home on Geminon.

  “Looking forward to your stint on Planet Goop, Chief?” Helo asked. The planet in question had now filled the entire view with blue, brown, and white, giving Tyrol the unnerving feeling that he was falling toward the azure ocean. Technically, he supposed he was.

  “Not really,” Tyrol sighed. “It’s not like I don’t have enough to do on the Galactica. Now they want me helping with harvest equipment on Planet Goop? I have four engines to overhaul and a Viper that’s missing a—”

  “Now, now,” Racetrack admonished. “Everyone has to do their bit for the harvest.”

  “Yeah? What’s your bit?”

  “Delivering you.”

  Half an hour later, the Raptor hit atmosphere. It bucked and jumped for a moment like a recalcitrant horse, and Tyrol swallowed his stomach. Then Racetrack smoothed out. They plunged into a misty white cloud bank. Droplets of condensation gathered and ran across the Plexiglas, chasing each other like quicksilver fairies. Tyrol stared at them, realizing how long it had been since he’d actually been off the Galactica and in a real atmosphere, with real clouds. Too bad he couldn’t breathe the atmosphere. But Planet Goop, with its useful, edible algae, was a hell of a find. A planet fully inhabitable by humans—that was a dream almost beyond imagination. Tyrol loved his job, loved puzzling out what was wrong with a ship, loved straightening bent struts and sealing cracks so the vessel could fly again. It was like being a doctor, in a way, and it was immensely satisfying to watch a Viper he had repaired dive back into a fight, guns he had repaired blazing away. But it was also a fine thing to walk through a forest, smell green leaves, feel a fresh breeze, and it had been so long since he had done any of that.

  The Raptor broke free of the cloud and dropped steadily down. Below, Tyrol made out the long, rounded shape of the Monarch. It sat on the dark, rocky shore of an ocean. From this low height, the water looked more green than blue. Three long, flat arms protruded from the ship, thrusting themselve
s outward into the gently rippling waves. As the Raptor grew closer, Tyrol could see the arms were actually enormous conveyor belts with giant scoops spaced evenly along them. According to the briefing he had read and the schematics he had studied, the scoops hauled algae into the Monarch’s main processing area. Once an area was denuded of algae, the arms would pivot a few degrees and start work on another section of the algae bed. Eventually, the Monarch would pick up and move to a different site.

  Racetrack landed the Raptor a few yards from the Monarch. Helo handed Tyrol a full-face mask connected to a square unit the size of a beer mug. Tyrol clipped the unit to his belt and donned the mask. It fit tightly over his entire face and smelled like old plastic. Tyrol also connected one end of a corded earpiece to the unit and fitted the other in his ear.

  “The unit is a scrubber,” said Helo’s voice in Tyrol’s ear. “It’ll extract enough oxygen from the CO2 in the atmosphere to let you—”

  “I know how it works, sir,” Tyrol interrupted. “What’s the air pressure like?”

  “Only a couple millibars under what we’re used to.” Helo opened the hatch and a hot, humid breeze swept through the cabin. It was like being licked by a whale’s tongue. Tyrol’s ears popped. “Have fun, Chief.”

  Tyrol gave him a sour look and exited the Raptor. The ground was rough, the rocks jagged. The planet hadn’t had an atmosphere long enough for any real erosion to start. The Raptor fled back into the cloudy sky, and Tyrol turned his attention to the Monarch.

  The ship looked a lot like a low factory building that had dropped straight down from the sky. The dull roar and steady clank of machinery rumbled beneath a constant wind that plucked at Tyrol’s clothing with moist fingers. Already he was sweating. Beyond the ship seethed the great green ocean. Tyrol inhaled, half expecting to smell salt water, but all he got was plastic air. He sighed. Two people were visible near an enormous open hatchway. Tyrol made for them and introduced himself.