[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined 01] - Battlestar Galactica

by Jeffrey A. Carver - (ebook by Undead)

  “You mean, wave the flag at them?” President Roslin asked, cocking her head.

  “Almost. You have to observe the protocols and traditions of the service. And… you have to be the president. All the time. Every minute. Stand up to them. No, make them stand up to you. Don’t lose your temper with them. But demand their respect. Demand that they honor the constitution that put you in office. The constitution they’re sworn to uphold.”

  She was looking at him with very thoughtful eyes now. “I see.”

  “And… one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever let them think they’re your equal. Because the minute they think they can walk over you, or think you’re not really the president…” He paused.

  “We’re finished,” she said. She blinked and looked away for a moment. Then she gazed at him. “Thank you, Billy.”

  Baltar sat at the end of a small wooden table in Commander Adama’s quarters, practically the only place he’d seen on this ship that, while lit in a subdued fashion, didn’t seem oppressively gloomy. He was waiting for the commander and Colonel Tigh—both gruff, no-nonsense men—to talk their talk with him. He was, to say the least, nervous, and trying hard not to show it. He was praying—well, not really praying, but hoping fervently—that Six, or his hallucination of her, would not intrude while he was meeting with the two most senior officers on the ship. On the ship, hell—in the fleet. Most senior military officers left in the entire civilization, for that matter. And here he was, trying to pretend that he was answering the call to civic duty. Ready to help the fleet in any way he could! Just ask!

  He was afraid they would ask. Afraid they’d ask too much.

  And yet… at the same time, a most wonderful thing had just happened. Commander Adama had been attacked by a Cylon man, a Cylon who looked just like a man. They hadn’t come right out and told him yet, but he just knew that was it. The truth would be out soon—that piece of it, anyway—and he, Baltar, didn’t have to sweat bullets trying to figure out how to slip the information out. No, he could concentrate on implicating his fall guy, through whom he could reveal the presence of that insidious-looking Cylon device in the CIC. Now, if they asked him to do what he thought they might…

  The commander had a sizable bandage on the side of his face, near his left eye, but he was sitting apparently at ease at the table; maybe it was because of his son, Captain Apollo, coming back from the dead. Plus, they were in his cabin, his comfort zone. Tigh, on the other hand, was pacing—and the pacing was making Baltar even more nervous. He snatched a look up and over his shoulder as Tigh paced back into sight, waving one of his ubiquitous paper printouts. “Ship’s doctor says, at first glance, everything in Leoben’s body looked human”—Tigh finally slid into a seat (thank the gods!) and shoved the paper over to Baltar—“internal organs, lymphatic system, the works.”

  Which Baltar already knew. While the autopsy had been underway, he had been given samples of hair and skin and one hour to test them in the ship’s limited laboratory. Spectrographic analysis of the samples, both before and during controlled incineration, had revealed nothing of interest. At least nothing that he could identify. Then again, chemical analysis was far from his specialty. He was going to have to fake it if he wanted to be able to “prove” that Doral was a Cylon.

  Baltar suddenly realized that there had been a pause, and they were both looking at him. He marshaled his thoughts and his scientific jargon. Had anyone actually said to him that Leoben, the man Adama had killed, was a Cylon? No. “Right. Well, uh, the tissue sample yielded unique chemical compounds during cremation that revealed the nature of the sample to be synthetic.” He paused, and feigned thoughtful surprise. “So he was a Cylon!”

  “Yes, he was,” Adama said, in a gravelly voice. He paused, then added, “And now we have a problem.”

  “Big one,” Tigh said.

  “If the Cylons look like us,” Adama continued, “then any one of us could be a Cylon.”

  Baltar held his look of shock. “That… that’s a very frightening possibility.”

  Adama didn’t argue. “We need a way to screen human from Cylon. And that’s where you come in.”

  “Me?” Careful, not too eager now.

  Tigh came in with a growled, “Rumor has it, you’re a genius.”

  “Well, I, uh…” He bobbed his head awkwardly, practically shedding humility like cat hair. “I’ll certainly give it my all… Commander.”

  “Keep this to yourself for now,” Tigh warned. “We don’t want to start a panic, or have people begin accusing their neighbors of being Cylons because they don’t brush their teeth in the morning.”

  Baltar nodded. “I’ll be very discreet.”

  Yes, I will.

  As Baltar and Tigh were leaving his quarters, Commander Adama suddenly called Tigh back. “Colonel.”

  Tigh hesitated and returned to the table. “Sir.”

  Adama scratched his forehead next to the wound, carefully. “Colonel, the president is still aboard, is that correct?”

  Tigh snorted. “The schoolteacher? Yes, she is. Shall I have her—”

  “No. No.” Adama turned away from his old friend for a moment, and gazed across the room to a small display case where he kept some of his medals, dating back to the first Cylon war. A long time ago. But the fight to defend the Colonies, and their rule of law, had never ended. With his back still turned to his friend, he said, “Saul, whether we like it or not, Laura Roslin is the duly sworn-in President of the Colonies. She was the forty-third in line of succession, and she stayed to do her duty.” Adama turned to face his XO. “She stepped up to the job, Colonel. And as long as she’s legally in office, it’s our duty to treat her as President. Is that understood?”

  Tigh’s face was strained as he held his emotions in check. “Yes, sir.”

  “That’ll be all. Let me know when the magazines are ready.”

  “Sir,” Tigh said, and turned smartly and left.

  Adama watched him until the door was closed, then sat down, grimacing. His forehead and ribs hurt like hell. And so did his head. He wished he felt as certain as he had just sounded to his XO.

  CHAPTER

  43

  Port Hangar Deck

  Kara Thrace sat in the cockpit of the Viper, completing the pre-launch checklist. The Viper she’d flown last was still undergoing major repairs; this one was still shiny and clean from the museum floor. It too bore the call-sign “Raygun” on its cockpit. But it would be flying as “Starbuck” this trip.

  It was going to be a very short trip.

  “You understand the mission?” Lee Adama asked, walking up beside the cockpit.

  Of course, you dipstick! We just went over it about five times! Grinning to conceal her irritation, she signed the checklist, handed it to the deck hand on the other side of the cockpit, and recited to Lee, “Put my head outside the storm, look around, listen for wireless traffic, come home.”

  “No heroics. This is strictly recon. Look, listen, return.”

  She rubbed her eyebrow. “You don’t have to worry about me. My taste for heroics vanished about the time I engaged that first Cylon fighter.” She looked over at Lee and met his gaze straight on.

  Lee nodded and turned away. On the other side of the craft, the deck crew removed the access ladder. Kara straightened in her seat, ready to close the canopy. Suddenly it just came out; she wasn’t planning to say it, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Lee—” Still staring straight ahead, she waited until he turned. “Zak failed basic flight.”

  Lee came back to stand under the cockpit. “What?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Or at least he should have. But he didn’t.” Kara finally turned her head to look at him. Why are you telling him this now? Now, of all times? “Because I passed him,” she continued. “His technique was sloppy, and he had no feel for flying, but I passed him. Because he and I… because I felt something, and I let that get in the way of doing my job. And I could
n’t fail him.” This was so hard to say, but not as hard as it had been to keep it inside all these years.

  Lee gazed at her in stunned disbelief. “Why are you telling me this? Why… why now?”

  She stared at him as long as she could, until finally she could meet his eyes no longer. “It’s the end of the world, Lee,” she said, in a hard-edged tone that was intended to be sardonic, to mask how much it had been weighing on her. “I thought I should confess my sins.”

  Before he could think of anything to say—indeed, he was speechless—she clamped her helmet down over her head and secured it. “Set!” she yelled angrily over the wireless to the controller. As Lee continued to try to absorb that bombshell, she grabbed the canopy and slid it back into the shut position.

  Lee had no choice but to step back out of the way, as the crew began to move her into launch position.

  * * *

  Deck B Passageway

  The armed security team marched quickly down the passageway, automatic rifles at the ready. Captain Kelly was in command. The order had just come, straight from Colonel Tigh, and they’d been told to be fast about it.

  Their quarry was supposed to be somewhere in this corridor. And there he was, coming around the bend. Aaron Doral looked bewildered as he saw the team coming his way—with weapons pointed straight at his heart.

  “Halt!” Kelly shouted. “No sudden moves!”

  Doral extended his hands. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Guys, what—?”

  Captain Kelly, while his men fanned out around Doral, leveled a Previn handgun at the suspect and shouted, “Get down on your knees and cross your ankles—now!”

  Doral raised his hands and began to sink toward the deck, stammering in fright. “Just, just—wait a minute! What? Wh—what do you want?”

  “Hands behind your head.”

  Doral complied, and the men moved in with handcuffs. And with that, the first suspected Cylon was in custody.

  In the brig, manacled to the bars, Doral could only fume helplessly as Tigh and Baltar conferred over his case, just a few meters away.

  “If he’s really a Cylon, why hasn’t the storm radiation made him sick by now?” Tigh asked, hands behind his back.

  Baltar hesitated, knowing that the explanation he was about to give would have a short shelf life. He would have to come up with something better, quickly. “Well, I can only theorize that it takes a while for the storm’s effects to become really apparent on Cylon physiology. By the time you encountered Leoben, he’d been here a lot longer—”

  “I don’t suppose it matters to you that I am not a Cylon?” Doral shouted from his cell.

  “The smartest thing you could do right now would be to shut your mouth,” Tigh growled. After glaring at Doral for a few seconds longer, he turned back to Baltar. “Are you sure?”

  Baltar tried to sound reassuring, while acknowledging the natural fallibility of his remarkable findings. “One can never be a hundred percent sure. But the evidence…” And here he stuttered a little, glancing at Doral, conveying as profoundly as he could his deep humility in the face of pure scientific evidence. “The evidence seems conclusive. Basic—uh, basically what I did was, I expanded on—on your doctor’s analysis of Leoben’s corpse.” He nodded briskly, trying not to appear hyper and nervous. “I then went around the CIC—discreetly!—taking random hair samples of people who’ve been working there, and subjected them to a special form of spectral analysis that I’ve been experimenting with for quite some time now, and…”

  As Tigh fidgeted, glancing over at Doral, Baltar thought to himself, My God, could I possible lay this on any frakking heavier? Nevertheless, he continued, “I then wrote a clinical computer subroutine to screen that for synthetic chemical combinations.” He handed the computer printout to Tigh, who was scowling in obvious incomprehension. “His ones—his samples”—and he pointed directly at the appalled-looking Doral—“were the only ones to register as synthetic.”

  Tigh looked briefly at the printout with raised eyebrows, then handed it back to Baltar. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  At that moment, Six, still dressed to kill, sashayed into view and murmured in a sultry voice that only he could hear, “And just… like… that, Doctor Baltar invents the amazing Cylon detector.” She touched his chin, caressed his cheek. Whether the gesture was admiring or teasing was hard to tell.

  “Look, gentlemen,” Doral protested, from behind the bars. “I understand your concerns here. This is a very difficult situation.” His words started to speed up, as he became more and more frantic. “But I think you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and really look at what you’re doing here!”

  Tigh stared darkly at the prisoner. To Baltar, he said, “I want everyone aboard this ship screened. No exceptions.”

  Baltar acknowledged with a nod.

  Doral stood up, pleading, raising his hands, which were manacled on the outside of the bars. As he did so, the guards stationed across from him raised their weapons and took aim. “Whoa. Whoa! I, I—I don’t know about anybody else, but I can tell you that I’m—I’m human.” His voice became more and more desperate. “I’m from Moasis—you know, it’s a hamlet a couple of stops outside of Caprica City. I grew up on the south side. I went to the Kobol colleges on Geminon, I studied public relations!”

  Baltar had started to leave in the middle of Doral’s plea, but then he swung back, attempting to be casual. “Oh—by the way, I—I don’t know if this is important—might be important, might not be important—but earlier, when I was in the CIC, I noticed that Mr. Doral seemed to be doing, um—” As he talked, Six cozied up to him, putting an arm around him from behind. “Well, I’m not exactly sure what it was he was doing, but he seemed very interested in this odd-looking device on the bottom of the… overhead dradis console.”

  “What?” Doral burst out.

  Baltar looked at him and nodded vigorously. “Yeah.”

  As he did so, Six was nuzzling him from behind, stroking his temple. “We should really make a copy of your brain patterns at some point.” She nibbled his ear.

  “What device? What are you talking about?” Doral was on the verge of becoming incoherent with rage. He pointed at Baltar. “He’s lying! He is frakking lying!”

  Baltar looked sad, aggrieved.

  Tigh was on the phone already. “Combat, this is Tigh. Isolate the dradis console—”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Doral shouted.

  “Nobody comes near it until I get up there,” Tigh said. He hung up the phone and headed for the door.

  “No, Lords of Kobol, this isn’t happening to me!” Doral pleaded.

  Captain Kelly called out to Tigh, “Colonel, your orders, sir?”

  Tigh answered over his shoulder, “If he moves, take him out.”

  Doral was practically in tears as he shouted, “You mixed the samples up! I’m human!”

  But no one was listening.

  Combat Information Center

  Colonel Tigh watched as Petty Officer Dualla probed the mysterious device with a rad counter. “It’s not hot, sir,” she reported.

  “Very well, remove it,” Tigh ordered.

  Lieutenant Gaeta was studying some papers on a clipboard. “I don’t see anything in the maintenance records, sir. But I’m pretty sure I first noticed it about a week ago.”

  Tigh shook his head, pacing with his hands clasped behind his back. “And you didn’t say anything? Didn’t investigate a new piece of equipment that just appeared in CIC?”

  “No, sir,” Gaeta answered somberly. “I… just assumed it was part of the… museum.” As he spoke, Dualla removed the device from overhead and turned it over in her hands, before placing it into a metal carry case. “I’m sorry, sir,” Gaeta continued. “There’s… no excuse.”

  Tigh grumbled in a low voice. “You’re not alone, Lieutenant! Any one of us should have seen the perfectly obvious, staring us in the face.” His voice dropped still lower. “Especially the ship’s XO.
”

  Dualla locked the carry case. “What should I do with it, sir?”

  “Take it to Doctor Baltar. I’ve given him clearance. He’s become our resident Cylon expert. Have him take it to the lab, figure out whether it’s a bug, or whatever the hell it is.” He stopped pacing and fixed his gaze on Lieutenant Gaeta. “In the meantime, I want this ship searched for any other pieces of equipment that just ‘appeared’ in the last week….”

  Viper, Outbound from Galactica

  The Viper streaked upward through the billowing green clouds of Ragnar, through the layers of turbulence and lightning and fuming, toward the calm blackness of space. The real calm, Star-buck knew, would come only after she rocketed out of the uppermost layers of atmosphere. Until then, she had to hold onto her ass and fly with care. It was a complex passage, out from Ragnar Anchorage.

  “Starbuck, Galactica. You should be approaching turn eight.” The reassuring voice of control in her headset was becoming more and more frakked with static as she penetrated the upper clouds.

  “Copy,” she replied. “Starting to lose wireless contact.” As if on cue, a flash of lightning crossed her path. Ball lightning danced along the trailing edges of her wings.

  The next transmission from Galactica was indecipherable.

  She called her report anyway. “Making the final turn now.” And ahead of her, she saw the wonderful dark of space. She was almost out. “Galactica, Starbuck. I’ve reached the threshold.” After a moment, she called, “Galactica, do you read me?” Pause. “Galactica, do you read me?” No answer, only static.

  Never mind. She focused her attention on the task at hand. Make a good thorough sweep of the area, and verify that they had not been followed by the Cylons.