Battlestar Galactica-04-Rebellion

by Richard Hatch

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  Battlestar Galactica Rebellion by Richard Hatch

  Chapter One

  FOR A man who lived almost all his life in space, Apollo had a planet-bound dream. Imagine a planet tearing itself apart; a glowing rock heart melting and bursting from continent-sized cracks. All that was, sinking.

  Volcanoes exploding. Molten magma running brilliant red down black mountains.

  Apollo dreamt this. The lava licked at his heels as he ran. If he paused for a micron, it would swallow him whole.

  He'd wake, covered in sweat, breathing hard, legs cramping. How could a man run so hard in his sleep? Why would a space-flown man dream of what destroys great planets? You'd think a battlestar, or a Viper or a Cylon basestar, better still.

  But it was planet-bound, not flying, but running. Feet, not a Viper's magic wings.

  Every time Apollo woke from this dream, he felt like he'd escaped that danger as if it were real. He'd outrun the volcano, something no man could ever do outside of a dream. And as the frantic, desperate need to run faded, Apollo would take a deep breath, feeling the sweet, real air filling his lungs, and hold it for microns. Then let it out, and feel his heart expanding with relief. You made it this time, he'd think. And then came the joy: You're alive.

  The planet was Kobol. And the destruction was real. Iblis meant to make Hades real and take his revenge; out of their hope for the future, he'd trapped them all. But this one time, they were all dreaming together in that potential moment of complete destruction; the Cylons were blasted into oblivion, and victory had been snatched in the last moments of desperate struggle.

  The Light Ship had risen from Kobol's ashes like a phoenix. But the dream remained; the nightmare was over. Apollo was running; they were all running, because they were men and women, not immortal birds or beings of light. Their ships were made of metal worked by their own hands.

  They were free, because their hearts had led them to this place. And the same as Apollo felt free when he woke from that dream, the survivors of the Battle of Kobol gathered on the bridge of the Galactica in freedom and celebration.

  A real battle, the greatest they had ever fought. Part of it was won in a dream. Because Apollo reached out, and found he was not alone. Athena was there, and like a miracle, she heard the coordinates that led the fleet free.

  It was beyond any one man's thoughts; maybe this dream was the way that Apollo could make sense of it. Not all of time and space, but just one planet. Not every human who ever lived, but just him. Just his feet, carrying him as fast as he could go.

  But they were all safe.

  In that moment.

  "To Apollo!" Tigh cried, raising a glass of ambrosa, his dark eyes shining.

  Apollo shook his head. They were celebrating! Escape—victory! He wasn't in his quarters, and he wasn't on Kobol, and he wasn't…

  "I'm back now," he told everyone.

  The glory of victory still shone like the Light Ship, but there were spots of darkness in it still. They had lost so much. There were faces that should have been around that table that would never be seen again. One face, one heroic soul—maybe he sat there in spirit, Apollo thought. Cain. You ran fast because someone helped you, Apollo thought. Someone who gave his life and his battlestar, and all of the others on the Pegasus. Cain, never thinking twice, rammed the Pegasus straight down the Cylons' throats.

  That was a meal that Iblis' had never planned on eating; and maybe Cain had bought them all time and bought them all a real chance at a future.

  "I'm running," Apollo said.

  "What?" Starbuck asked, taking Apollo's arm. "Have a drink! Are you crazier than you look? We did it!"

  Apollo shook his head. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was lucky. He hadn't outrun the danger; somebody else had taken it for him. Cain. Nothing comes without a price, Apollo thought. But the truth was, he thought as he looked over at Athena, her hair and face shining in joy, neither he nor Athena had really paid the price.

  But nobody else thought that. The joy was real. The love was real. Suddenly, Apollo felt his eyes stinging. There was Bojay, telling a joke, then Sheba running toward him, grabbing his waist and whispering something in his ear. The look on Bojay's face was worth surviving the battle.

  "Now we can go on!" Tigh cried, raising his glass again.

  We can go faster, Apollo thought. But as Starbuck said, you got what you paid for. And what a price it had been. Kobol lost. Cain and the Pegasus: gone. But thanks to what they had found on Kobol, they had learned to use the QSE technology and they knew that their journey had hope. They knew where to go. They could outrun the devastation. His feet were still moving. They were all running together.

  You're not alone, Apollo. You're the least lonely man who ever lived, he told himself.

  Nobody ever had better friends, he thought. Tigh was even starting to sing. If that wasn't joy, Apollo didn't know what was. Starbuck grabbed Apollo's shoulder.

  "We're free," Starbuck said. He moved his furaarello to the other side of his mouth.

  Apollo looked into his friend's face and thought, "You'll never know the nightmares I have, buddy," but what he said was, "Yeah. We did!" Then he put his arm around Starbuck's shoulder and they both began to grin and then laugh.

  "Wait! Wait!" Tigh said, interrupting his song. Suddenly Tigh's expression changed. His eyes grew serious, and he waved his arms to get everyone's attention.

  Apollo saw Cassi in a brief flash, her lovely eyes focused on Tigh. Athena joined in, moving close to Tigh, and linking her arm with his. She gestured toward Sheba and Bojay with her free hand. Bojay looked confused, but Apollo saw that Sheba realized what Tigh and Athena meant to do, and who they didn't want to forget.

  Tigh raised his glass. "We can't forget," he said. "To Cain!"

  The uproar faded. Sheba drew her hand through her hair, and the wild joy that had been on her face faded. Apollo saw a flash of Cain in her feminine features; she wouldn't cry—not Sheba. But she reached up and snatched Tigh's glass from his hand with her warrior-quick reflexes.

  Then in a flash, she turned, hurling it across the room, where it crashed at Dalton's and Troy's feet. Dalton's eyes went wide, and then she turned to Troy and laughed out loud, kicking at the shards of glass.

  "To my father!" Sheba cried.

  "To Cain! Cain!" everyone cried.

  No matter how they cheered, they could never bring him back, Apollo thought.

  But he raised his glass, too. "He did not die in vain," Apollo said.

  "We're free!" Starbuck cried.

  And the uproar began again. Sheba, her face a mixture of grief and pride. Bojay, grinning, amazed at his luck that Sheba had chosen him. Apollo saw her look at him for the briefest moment, but he didn't understand the expression on her face. Starbuck, looking at Athena like she was more desirable than vast stacks of cubits. Cassi, her hair shining, face full of wonder and joy. Apollo saw the strangest, most fleeting look of worry darken her soft features, but he thought, she's just remembering Cain; they were very close. Troy, hugging Dalton, then lifting her into the air as she laughed. Trays, knocking back something dangerous-looking in a narrow flask, reaching for a fumarello sticking out of Boomer's pocket. Boomer, slapping Trays' hand away with an ominous expression on his face.

  You're the luckiest man in the world, Apollo thought. These are the best people in the world. The Lords let you survive. They gave you a…

  The lights flickered.

  Then, for a micron, they went out. When they came again, they were dim.

  Boomer's voic
e was loud enough under normal circumstances, but everyone stood in confused silence, so his voice echoed when he said, "That's not right."

  Apollo turned instantly to the Galactica's readout banks. And everything shrank to a pinpoint.

  "That can't be," he said.

  "What in Hades?" Starbuck said, leaning over.

  Soon, Tigh and Athena were there. "Every Tylium reactor in the fleet," Tigh said slowly.

  After a micron, Athena said the word they were all thinking. "Dead," she said.

  "No fracking way," Starbuck said. But his eyes were wide with alarm and disbelief.

  How are you going to outrun anything now, Apollo thought, even as he sprang into action.

  Tylium ran the engines that moved the fleet across and through and beyond the stars, the life support that let them breathe and thrive, and it powered the matter rearranges that fed and clothed them all. The fleet was already pushed beyond its limits—food, manpower, fuel—the Tylium was their last source of renewal. And all the celebrating aside, Apollo knew that they had to regroup and renew food, supplies, material—every single thing after they'd foiled Iblis' plans and escaped the destruction of Kobol.

  "Engineering! Get those Tylium reactors back online! Do it now!"

  Athena touched his shoulder. "Look out the forward port. See for yourself."

  He looked up and to his left, saw the majestic and imposing spacescape before them. His lips moved. He looked back at Athena. Her eyes were narrow. Everyone began to gather around.

  The stars were gone. Space wasn't black. It was white and… well, almost like milk. "Where in the halls of Hades are we?" Apollo asked.

  Athena couldn't answer. Nobody could.

  Whatever it was, it had caught Apollo's heels. It had cut off his legs! They'd faced down the Cylon and Chitain fleets. They'd escaped the destruction of Kobol; Iblis hadn't won. They had the QSE technology. The Light Beings had shown them the way. There was hope.

  But where were they?

  The milky stuff before them looked like clouds of space dust, debris, and primordial plasm. Apollo realized that they were completely dead in this… whatever it was. Some unknown force had stolen their inertia; at the same time it had stopped the Tylium fire that drove the fleet's engines.

  If it had not, the fleet would have foundered in the clouds exactly the way a fleet of wooden sailing ships might founder on an unexpected shoal of rocks at sea.

  The audio comm crackled.

  "Bridge, this is maintenance. I'm in the Galactica's main Tylium reactor—it's stone cold dead, Apollo. The reactors haven't shut down, or even failed in any ordinary sense: The Tylium reaction has just stopped."

  "We'll be right down," he said, his heart pounding. He looked over at Starbuck—he didn't have to ask to have Starbuck follow.

  Athena and Tigh remained on the bridge to calm the others and keep watch over the fleet. Before they left, Athena turned and said, "Daedalus too." Everything in the fleet. Wherever they were, they were all dead together.

  The power core aboard the Galactica is a series of subdivided chambers, arranged in a chain so that they can only be accessed in sequence. This is mostly a function of security design: It would be unfortunate to have civilians—or even inappropriate engineering staff—wander into the control terminal array, much less the power cabling clusters. And stars forefend anyone accidentally finding themselves in the Tylium reactor bays: Tylium is a safe, clean fuel, producing no excesses of radiation, but all the same the raw gigajoules of energy that course through a Tylium reactor are enough to vaporize anyone unwary enough to stick a finger into the wrong socket.

  Under ordinary circumstances, getting to the ultimate door that opens onto the Tylium reactor bays can take half a centar, or more. The doors are set to give long and interesting safety lectures to one and all before opening—command personnel not excepted.

  The chief engineers can bypass the threshold homily in the event of a serious emergency, but doing so causes a shrill alarm to sound on the bridge.

  All of that because the Tylium reactors run mostly without servicing; they have no moving parts and rarely need the attention of an engineer. The reactor bays are designed specifically to discourage unnecessary access.

  And that is why, when Apollo reached the ultimate door in engineering and found it propped open by a chair, he couldn't believe it.

  "What's going on?" he demanded.

  Starbuck, at Apollo's side, went more directly to the point. "Are you people trying to kill yourselves? Or set off a chain reaction?"

  The senior engineer, Nilsen, snorted at him.

  "Not a chance, Starbuck," he said. He was kneeling beside the reactor. He had the shielded and armored door open, and was looking into the reaction chamber—the chamber that should have been siphoning the raw light and force of the Tylium's controlled explosion down into energy transducers that powered the Galactica —its engines, its life support, everything aboard the ship came ultimately from Tylium.

  "See for yourself. It's gone cold. No reaction. It's almost as though something's transmuted the Tylium into lead."

  "'Transmuted'?" Starbuck asked. "Alchemy? Be serious."

  Nilsen shrugged. "I'm no scientist," he said. "Just an engineer. I'm not the one to explain it, but I can tell you what's happening: not a damn thing." He reached in and tapped the Tylium sphere with his thumb. "Stone cold—the transducers have siphoned them down to room temperature. We're in a universe of trouble."

  He chuckled at the little joke he'd made—strictly speaking, the place between a starship's jump coordinates was another universe—think of it as an Ur universe, a river under time. In most contexts it's irrelevant, and little thought of. For the most part, a starship will spend only a few nano-microns at a time in that place between jumps.

  Nilsen was still laughing.

  "It's not funny," said a familiar voice—it was Lorrins, the physicist, standing in the doorway. "This can't happen. If there's Tylium in there, the reaction should still be hot, even with the door open. I'd close that door if I were you. If it can stop for no reason, it can start for no reason, too."

  Apollo closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He reached into his heart, and deeper than that, into the commanding light of the universe that guided him and his family in moments that made demands upon them.

  Something . . . someone . . . who?

  "Tell me more," Apollo said. "I need to know everything—consequences, prospects, options. We're still in subspace, right? Transitioning between our former coordinates and our destination? Can we get out without Tylium power?"

  The engineer shook his head.

  "Not a chance. We're going to have a hard time with life support in a few centons if I don't switch us over to battery reserve power we'd used to maintain orbit in drydock."

  Starbuck chimed in. "Who cares if we can't breathe! If we can't move…"

  Apollo had to smile, even in the crisis. Starbuck… who needed to breathe as long as you could fly?

  Nilsen blinked. He was as scared as anyone else. "If we can't get the reactors working, well, we could die here," he said.

  Lorrins, the physicist, didn't contradict him.

  Something from that sense of the universe and time and space told Apollo that the engineer was right. They wouldn't be able to fix the Tylium reactors in this place. The fleet was falling apart. The civilian ships had already been pushed to the edge and beyond; most of them were nearly out of fuel.

  He reached deeper into his intuition. There, that was the insight, the image of a countenance shrouded in a chiaroscuro of the soul. Baltar!

  Was this Baltar's doing? Some evil scheme he'd put into play, a plot only now come to fruition?

  No. This is no plot. It is Baltar who can lead us through this wilderness.

  And that was the most amazing thing—not just the impossibility of the moment that had come upon them, not just the broken shape and nature of an unknown place in the universe that could puzzle a brilliant physicist l
ike Lorrins. What was amazing was the whole notion that a blackguard like Baltar could lead them from this disaster.

  "Get me options," Apollo said. He was starting for the door, his feet on the move, running again—half in a dream and half out—heading for a place he did not yet fully and consciously realize.

  "Switch over to reserve power. Then get me an understanding of what's gone wrong, and what we can do about it."

  It was an order issued more for the benefit of the crew than it was for Apollo himself. He already knew their circumstance in his heart: It was his family's gift to come to communion with the infinite. His father, Adama, possessed that gift, and his grandfather before him; it ran through generations of grandfathers back into the dawn of memory.

  And now that gift, in this place beyond anything they'd ever known, was coming to full flower in Apollo.

  In that moment, Apollo knew in his heart where they were and why they were there. There was no safe, easy way out of this situation. In their moment of victory, bought at such great cost, they had all been thrown into something much worse.

  And in his heart, though he never could have voiced it, in his heart he knew with a foreboding that passes certainty that there was a revolution coming. He had the sense that people had been pushed beyond their endurance, and it wasn't a situation where speeches or pretty words would help. People would die. The thin shred of hope that they'd somehow made it safe beyond the Cylon menace was all totally changed. And… Baltar! Baltar, the answer? How could it be?

  "Come with me, Starbuck," he said. "We need to find Athena and pay a visit to an old… friend."

  Starbuck looked quizzically up at Apollo. "Who?" he asked. "Apollo, do you really think now is the time for visiting?" Apollo's stern expression told him that he'd better follow, and there'd be time for questions and answers later.

  They met Athena in the hall outside engineering. Apollo was still in his haze, moving at the direction of things unknowable, unthinkable, powerful, and strange. He saw her and he said, "Athena, come," and she looked at him like he was out of his mind. "Come with us to see Baltar," he said.