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, Starbuck 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.
The first scan looked good. Or did it? Squinting at the dradis screen in front of her, she felt a sudden chill. The rotating hoop of the scanning sensor had been showing no contact of any sort. But now, there was a flickering of something there. Not clear, but …
“That can’t be right,” she muttered. It should be clear.
But it wasn’t.
The dradis screen was coming into sharper focus now—and what it showed was a blizzard of small contacts, and a strange shading behind them. Looking up through the canopy over her head, Starbuck saw the last of the clouds dissipate. She cut her engines to idle. She would coast in a suborbital trajectory while she checked the situation.
“Oh frak!” she yelled, looking up and left and right.
She had emerged just below a huge swarm of Cylon raiders. “Lords of Kobol,” she breathed, trying to get a rough count. It was impossible; they were everywhere. Instinctively, she flicked on her weapons systems. Then, upon deliberation, she shut them down again. She wasn’t here to take on a flock of raiders; she was here to discover and report.
As she looked up again, she realized she had not seen the worst of it—not by far. Shockingly close, so close overhead that she’d almost missed it, was the vast, menacing, starfish shape of the worst enemy she could imagine: a Cylon base star. Not just an almost invulnerable dreadnought, which it most certainly was, but the mother ship to hundreds of raiders.
Frak, frak, frak …
There was only one reason that base star would be here. It was lying in wait for its prey to emerge. It was lying in wait for Galactica.
CHAPTER 44
GALACTICA, CONFERENCE ROOM B
Commander Adama strode toward the conference room door. The two armed guards saluted. “As you were,” he sa
id. One of the guards pulled the hatch door open, and Adama stepped over the lip of the coaming and into the room President Roslin and her aide had set up as a temporary office. Colonel Tigh had practically made this a prison for them, but Adama had loosened the restrictions and allowed her to conduct business here.
The young aide was sitting at the conference table with his back to the door, apparently going over a list of concerns with the president. Roslin herself was behind the table, facing the entrance, with a lot of papers spread out in front of her. Her eyes shifted enough to note Adama’s entrance, but her attention never wavered from her aide, who was in the middle of a report: “Medical supplies running low in the outer half of the fleet. The disaster pods never made it that far, Madame President.”
“Not surprising,” she said. “What else?”
“Three of the ships are reporting engine trouble and want to know when they’ll be getting engineering assistance from Galactica.”
Roslin’s eyes shifted to Adama. “That’s a good question. Hello, Commander. Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a moment.” To the aide, who had started to rise to give up his seat, she said, “Keep going.”
The young aide—Billy?—looked uncertain for a moment, then sat back down. There was a certain tension in the air. Is she trying to make a point? Adama wondered. He said nothing, but took a seat beside Billy. All right. I’ll play along.
Billy cleared his throat. “Ah—the captain of the Astral Queen wants you to know he’s got nearly five hundred convicted criminals under heavy guard in his hold. They were being transported to a penal station when the attack happened.”
Roslin’s face clouded. “Oh, great.”
“He wants to know what to do with them.”
Roslin leaned forward. “What to do with them?”
Billy shrugged, twitching his pencil. “Well, with food and medical supplies being what they are, I think he’s considering just—”
“No—no.” The president’s gaze sharpened. “We’re not going to start doing that. They’re still human beings.” Roslin drummed her fingers for a moment, glancing only momentarily at Adama, who was doing his best to maintain an impassive expression. He didn’t appreciate being placed on hold, but neither was he going to reveal any annoyance. Nor did he have any intention of being drawn into a political debate.
Roslin continued, “Tell the captain I expect daily reports on the well-being of his prisoners. And if there are any mysterious deaths, the Astral Queen may find herself on her own, without Galactica’s protection.” She glanced again at Adama, perhaps checking for a reaction; he refused once more to betray any emotion.
“Yes, Madame President.”
“Thank you, Billy.”
The aide rose to leave, taking a sheaf of papers with him. Roslin tapped a pen against her hand, following Billy with her gaze until he had left the room. The hatch clanged shut. President Roslin turned at last to Commander Adama.
Laura Roslin knew, as she and Commander Adama met each other’s gazes across the table, that the power struggle was not over, just because he had acquiesced to waiting while she finished less urgent business with Billy. But neither of them wanted to say so. There was a dark suture line near his left eye, but the wound was no longer bandaged; he looked strong, recovered, and fully in command.
Maybe the best thing was to come right out with her biggest concern. “Are you planning to stage a military coup?” she asked.
Adama was no doubt taken aback, but he hid his surprise well as he studied her. “What?”
“Do you plan to declare martial law? Take over the government?”
Adama maintained an expression of military dignity. “Of course not.”
“Then”—she hesitated to be so blunt, but she really had no choice—“you do acknowledge my position as President, as duly constituted under the Articles of Colonization?” It was a mouthful, but it needed to be said.
Adama, to her disappointment, didn’t answer the question. Instead he looked exasperated. “Miss Roslin … my primary objective at the present time is to repair the Galactica and continue to fight.”
How noble. And how futile. Roslin pressed him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Commander, but isn’t Galactica the last surviving battlestar?”
“We don’t know for sure how many other elements of the fleet may have survived,” he said.
“Come on now. Do we have any reason to think there are any other survivors? The rest of the fleet was being systematically destroyed, was it not—because the Cylons were infiltrating their computer networks?”
Adama stirred, his eyes betraying nothing. “That was how it appeared, yes.”
“Commander, the only reason this ship survived—the only reason any of us survived—is that you refused to allow any computer networking on Galactica. Despite the efforts of some people to change your mind.” Roslin paused, allowing a hint of genuine chagrin on her face. “For which we owe you incalculable thanks. But at this moment, there are fifty thousand civilian refugees out there who won’t stand a chance without your ship to protect them.”
“We’re aware of the tactical situation,” Adama insisted. I’m sure that you’ll all be safe here on Ragnar after we leave.”
“After you leave?” Laura cleared her throat and suddenly felt very much like a schoolteacher once again—trying to help a student who misunderstood a question. “Where are you going?”
“To find the enemy. We’re at war. That’s our mission.”
She struggled to keep her expression neutral—resulting, she knew, in a strained smile, more like a grimace. “I honestly don’t know why I have to keep telling you this,” she said with painstaking deliberation. “But the war … is over.”
He narrowed his gaze, and she could see an iron hardness settling into his craggy face. “It hasn’t begun yet,” he growled.
She refrained from throwing up her hands. “That’s insane.” It’s your testosterone talking. I wish you could see that. “You’re going to fight a war that’s already been lost … with one ship? Our last warship?”
“You would rather that we run?”
She answered instantly. “Yes. Absolutely. That is the only sane thing to do—exactly that. Run. We leave this solar system and we don’t look back.”
Adama looked down for a moment, then back up at her. “And we go where?”
“I don’t know. Another star system, another planet. Somewhere the Cylons won’t find us.”
His back was clearly up, despite his calm, military demeanor. “You can run if you like. This ship will stand, and it will fight.”
Lords of Kobol, she thought. Right sentiment for another time. “Commander Adama, let me be straight with you here. The human race is about to be wiped out. Yesterday we numbered in the billions. Today we have fifty thousand people left, and that’s it. Now … if we are even going to survive as a species …” She paused to let that thought sink in. “Then we need to get the hell out of here, and we need to start having babies.”
Adama raised his eyebrows. Start having babies? she could see him thinking. He didn’t seem to have an answer—but it was clear that this conversation had gone too far for his taste. He pushed himself up from his seat. “If you will excuse me,” he muttered.
Laura nodded. “Think about it,” she said, as he pushed the hatch open.
After he was gone, she sat a while and wondered, Did I get through to him? Or did I push too hard—again?
CHAPTER 45
COMBAT INFORMATION CENTER
The signal from Starbuck was coming out of the overhead speakers with a lot of static. Adama had to listen carefully to make out her words: “I didn’t get an accurate count, but it looks like two base stars with at least ten fighter squadrons and two recon drone detachments patrolling the area.”
Colonel Tigh was on the comm with a headset and mic. He replied, “Starbuck—were you followed?”
“Negative. No sign of pursuit. By the way they’re deployed, I’d say they’re waiting
for us to come to them.”
Adama called to Dualla, “Bring her home.”
Dualla’s voice came from the speaker much more clearly, “Thank you, Starbuck. Continue present course. Return to visual contact, then stand by for instructions.”
“Roger, Galactica. Starbuck out.”
“Captain,” Adama said, beckoning to his son, who was also listening closely. “Lieutenant Gaeta, stay, please.” Adama, Tigh, and Lee joined Gaeta at the plotting table, where the most current chart of the Ragnar storm was laid out as a backlit transparency.
“How the hell did they find us?” Tigh growled as they gathered around the chart.
“Maybe that thing we found on the dradis display was some kind of transponder,” Gaeta said darkly.
“Or,” Lee suggested, “either Leoben or Doral might have gotten a signal out.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Adama said. “They’ve got us.”
“Why aren’t they coming in after us?” asked Gaeta.
Tigh answered in a cynical voice. “Why should they? They can just sit out there and wait us out. What difference does it make to them? They’re machines. We’re the ones that need food, medicine, and fuel.”
Adama turned from looking at the nearby vertical situation board and looked around among the three of them. “I’m not going to play their game. I’m not going to go out there and try to fight them.” He paused for a moment, then looked at Gaeta. “Can we plot a Jump from inside the storm?”
Tigh looked incredulous. “With all this EM interference mucking up the FTL fix?”
“I tend to agree, sir,” Gaeta said. “I don’t think we should even attempt a Jump until we’ve cleared the storm threshold.” He indicated one of several concentric circles on the vertical board.
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