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Battlestar Galactica Parasdis by Richard Hatch
Prologue
So long as the music was in his head, he knew what to do. He could fly any mission and become one with his Viper. It was natural to put away those parts of himself that might make him hesitate for that crucial micron separating life from death.
It was impossible for a civilian to grasp what drove him. He had a knack for letting go in that special way where he saved his life because he didn't care.
Cylons did not understand a human warrior any better than a civilian would understand him. Cylons were part of a true collective. A Colonial warrior was an individual who chose to be part of a greater whole to serve and defend every person's right to be free.
Personal survival meant nothing to a Cylon, but that was as much a weakness as a strength. They had nothing to sacrifice.
This warrior was in love with life, as many women could testify. But he was also ready and willing to throw that life away if he could damage the enemy. That paradox enraged Imperious Leader. Mankind was made up of creatures that could not be predicted.
Mankind produced warriors like Starbuck.
The women in his life ached to put music in him. But the music was already there, a song of clear horizons and empty space; the beauty of a blank radar screen after he had done his part emptying the sky of Cylon fighters.
Starbuck had become an even more dangerous warrior as he grew older. His love for his daughter, Dalton, made him braver, not more cautious. Now he had more for which to fight!
The twenty-five yahren of suffering and dying in the long quest put steel in his soul. He felt a greater appreciation for Apollo as his best friend grew into the grueling responsibility of commander of the fleet after the death of Adama.
Apollo had to worry about everyone in ways that Starbuck did not.
Apollo had to make decisions about those who would live and those who would die. Starbuck only had to fight and be willing to die, if necessary.
Across the great divide of leadership, the two men faced each other and accepted their different duties. They both heard the same music—which is not always true of leaders and those who must carry out orders. Apollo would always have his warrior soul.
If Imperious Leader ever saw into the minds of these two men, he would want to exterminate them before all other humans. He would understand that they were even more dangerous than he first imagined. Not all human beings would struggle to the end because of the love they felt for their friends and their species. Only heroes do that.
The hardest kind of love pays any price for freedom. These men are heroes. The tragedy is that they are not meant to live in any kind of paradise.
Chapter One
There were too many eyes. That's what Baltar hated most about the nightmares. The eyes followed him everywhere, like a skyeye. But these things were all wet and living, not a robot camera. They were the many cold eyes of Imperious Leader, followed by the watery eyes of Count Iblis in human form. And finally they were the eyes of every person who had ever died because of Baltar's betrayals! There were even the sorrowful tear-filled orbs of his long dead parents.
Every single one of them judged him, again and again. But since there were no ears to hear his protestations of innocence, only he could hear himself. Baltar judged Baltar.
Each time he dreamed the nightmare, it lasted a little longer. And there were variations, always for the worse. The dream sometimes began in the past when he first stood before Imperious Leader and schemed against his own kind. Although humanity had grown weary of a war stretching out over a thousand yahren, the Cylons had no problem. They only functioned well if provided with an unyielding purpose. Time meant nothing to them.
In the dream, Baltar was told more than the Cylons had ever revealed in his actual experience of their peculiar hospitality. His sleeping mind was every bit as curious as his waking self was when it had information. Did the dream mean something? Had he uncovered the key to their alien philosophy, and was trying to tell the secret to himself? Or could the dreams be some form of communication from the Cylons?
"Baltar!" a voice thundered from the head of the Cylon leader, his myriad eyes pulsing with malice. "You were the perfect ally against your own people and do you know why?"
Baltar preferred not to answer. Instead, he fled down corridors without end. He was cold. The corridors were dark, except for a sickly illumination revealing jagged edges of a gray, metallic world. Then the Great Traitor fell and tasted blood.
Lifting his hand to his face he could discern crimson droplets on his fingers. The light became stronger and he could see the red spots rise from his hand to form red eyes floating in front of him—the eyes of Imperious Leader that would not leave him alone.
Again the other eyes, the damnable vast quantity of other eyes, gathered around until they were as many as the stars in space.
He staggered to his feet and prepared to run some more. But then something changed. Even in the dungeon of his sleeping mind he finally refused to be intimidated.
He stood his ground. Baltar demanded that his own nightmare make sense or go away! One by one, the eyes winked out until all that remained were those belonging to Imperious Leader, whose monstrous head formed silently around these little, dancing points of fire.
"Why was I the perfect traitor?" Baltar finally asked.
"Because you never loved," came the dry, sad answer.
The three-lobed brain of Imperious Leader could not abide human love. No matter from how many directions the brain analyzed the problem, co-existence was impossible with beings corrupted by such an emotion.
Love was unpredictable. It put the loyalty that one individual felt towards another ahead of the group.
Love was anti-survival. Love was death. Love was hatred of any species stupid enough to practice it.
"Cylons find you evil, Baltar, because you are dysfunctional—a special case. You do not serve your own species, but you do have one Cylon virtue. You do not let concern for any individual detract from your larger purpose."
The dream sometimes ended there, with Baltar reliving his audience with Imperious Leader aboard the Cylon base star, surrounded by Centurions just waiting for the command to execute the lone human.
He got dizzy watching the searching eye in their helmets scanning for enemies and then settling on him, pulse rifles pointed at his head.
Sometimes Baltar wished that he could reach out and blind the universe. Then he could hide forever.
Beginning in the Ur cloud, the nightmares became increasingly more bizarre. Now that the battlestar Galactica orbited Paradis, it felt as if someone had pulled back a curtain to reveal more of the world that had been left behind. While all the other Colonials prepared to explore a new planet, Baltar was forced to look back. He didn't want to see what was there, leering at him as if to say that he could never escape.
The voice from his past—the voice of Imperious Leader—haunted his present: "Our purpose is no longer clear! We are nothing without one purpose. There is a breed of Cylons that would choose another purpose! This cannot be. There can be only unity in the Cylon Empire. Choice is anathema! There cannot be a revolt of Cylons. It's as if we're dying from a disgusting human cancer. Biological Cylons must not oppose technological Cylons!"
There was despair in a voice that had never before expressed such an emotion. "Not even a cogitator can solve the insoluble," it wailed. "The problem is beyond the scope of ten Lucifers. What is this new force that would rise up in a biological Cylon to resist the absolute supre
macy of a three-lobed leader? Can it be something you infected us with, Baltar? Were you a carrier of love?"
"How could I be," he defended himself, "when only a moment ago you were saying I have a Cylon virtue? If I'm a carrier, then hatred is my virus!"
"Explain!" demanded Imperious Leader. "There are contradictions, paradoxes, ironies. We do not appreciate such mental torment. Explain!"
Baltar didn't want to answer. It was his dream and he didn't have to answer if he didn't want to! Especially not when another face was forming to harass him with wicked questions. It was Count Iblis as the man had been thousands of yahren in the past. He was stroking a loathsome reptilian creature, his pet.
"You are not the greatest traitor to your kind," announced Iblis.
"That honor belongs to me. I found the planet Cylon and with genetic engineering and advanced cybernetics gave birth to the ultimate enemy of Man. How do you possibly compare to me?"
"I've never been in competition with you!" Baltar screamed. "Get out of my mind, damn you. Find someone else to haunt!"
Each time the dreams became more detailed and he woke up feeling worse, in cold sweats or with severe headaches.
This time he thought he was still dreaming because Athena was standing by his sick-bed—Athena, whom he'd rather dream about than a Cylon civil war!
As if to reinforce the feeling that he was still in a dream, Athena said: "We have good news for you, Baltar. When you're fully recovered, we have a job for you. You're going to be a teacher."
"It's a red sun," said President Tigh, peering into a scanner on the bridge of the Galactica.
"An old sun," echoed Athena, checking out her monitor on the bridge of the Daedelus.
The battlestars were having a conference call. They always did when something was important. There was nothing more crucial than finding a temporary home for the exhausted and damaged Fleet.
"One day I will write a poem dedicated to hydrogen," said Dr. Salik wistfully, surrounded by his favorite scientific equipment.
Omegas, a bridge officer, exchanged glances with Rigel who took a break from keeping track of the many ships converging on this quadrant of space. Lately, the top science officer was behaving oddly. He wasn't as boring as he used to be when he just did his job.
Tigh was in a poetic mood as well. "What do you mean, doctor?" he prompted the older man.
Salik studied the screen showing the planet Paradis. The battlestars were moving into parking orbits that matched the planet's period of rotation. The period of analysis had begun, the fun part for the scientists.
Salik took advantage of his captive audience: "Paradis is a habitable planet, with evolved life forms, but the odds are against that. You see, when a star becomes a red giant, it swells up to many times its original size and routinely devours any planets close to it. Before it swelled, the planets closer in would have been in the habitable zone, and this planet would have been too far from the star to be congenial to life. So it has only become habitable since the sun entered its red giant phase, which means that life evolved here quickly. Or, it evolved elsewhere and traveled here, or was brought here, after the initial solar expansion."
"So what does this sun have to look forward to?" asked President Tigh.
Salik finished the impromptu lecture. "Impossible to say. Red giants can be extremely stable and last for a half-billion years or more. Or, they can go through cycles, shrinking down to the white dwarf stage, then expanding again to the red giant. There can be many of these cycles before the star ends its life. Given its size, I would say that it will end as a black dwarf—cold and dark. However, it might be more energetic than that, and end its life as a neutron star—impossibly dense and heavy."
"Let's not hang around for that," volunteered Troy, coming onto the bridge of the Galactica.
"We always find interesting planets," said Athena. "Maybe that's a good omen—maybe it means that ultimately we'll find Earth!"
Salik nodded. "When we do, I'll write my epic poem about hydrogen." Now Tigh and Athena exchanged glances. There was nothing to do but let the eminent scientist get it out of his system.
"Life has made a bargain with hydrogen, as well as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. My point is that it would be a bleak and empty universe without the hydrogen atom."
Tigh returned to the subject at hand. "Speaking of empty, Paradis is anything but!"
"There seems to be an equal amount of water and land," said someone's voice, deep in Salik's laboratory.
"That's promising," said Athena. "Maybe we won't have any more problems with hunger. There's been too much privation among our people. I'd rather face a thousand Centurions than starvation."
After their recent troubles, she spoke for all of them. Tigh pondered his screens. "There is life on Paradis. And now we will add ourselves to that biosphere."
"There is no evidence of high technology," said Abhug, a recent addition to Salik's staff, an eager youth who spoke with a certain smugness.
"We are still scanning for different life forms—flora and fauna," said Athena. "Aren't you a bit premature with that assurance?"
The young scientist was unfazed. "The important thing is the lack of evidence that anyone's down there who could resist us. There are no satellites in orbit, no artificial spheres or visible architecture of any sort! There is no evidence on the surface of cities or weapons systems."
Troy got into the act. "You're still jumping to conclusions. They could be underground."
"Unlikely," countered Abhug. "With a hospitable environment, they would have no reason to go underground. Seems to me this planet is ripe for the picking, whether it's inhabited or not."
Tigh sighed. "Inform Commander Apollo of our current results. I hope no one needs to sleep any time soon. Our work is just beginning. I want to know everything that's down there."
"You mean before we check it out in person?" asked Athena with a smile.
Tigh had enjoyed a reputation for vigilance ever since he'd been a colonel. He added, "We know we can live down there. I want to know about any microorganisms that might threaten us. I also want to know if the place is as damned pristine as it appears because I don't think we should import any diseases we can avoid with proper treatment first.
"Basically, we need to do yahrens of work in the next few days. Anybody got a problem with that?"
No one did. "I appreciate your dedication," said the president. "And cheer up. Sleep is overrated."
This was one of the good times for the Viper pilots—they all had a job to do. Starbuck and Boomer and Bojay, Troy and Trays, Dalton, Sheba, and all the rest—now had a chance to show their mettle in atmospheric flight. Although they had racked up many more hours in space than in atmospheres, the long quest for Earth had led them to several planets where they'd had to hone their aerodynamic atmospheric flight skills.
Viper pilots adapted to anything and everything.
Apollo didn't begin the mission alone, but he wanted to go solo more than any other flyer. He was ambivalent about his emotions when it came to this. The responsible thing in a military operation was to hold functioning units together. The man in charge had a special responsibility to reign in the "loner" tendencies of all good fighters.
But those were rules for other times and places, before the Colonials were reduced in numbers and set adrift in the universe. Now there were only so many brave, able professionals to go around.
With Apollo giving the order, the Viper pilots split off from each other and began the exploration of Paradis.
With the constant hum of his apex pulsar engine penetrating into his bone marrow, Apollo grasped his navi-hilt and flew into the depths of the atmosphere. It felt good.
The last time he flew, it had been to do battle in the Ur cloud. Maneuvers in the cloud were the same as operating in space. Then he had accelerated toward battle, convinced it was all over for him when he saw the number of Cylon fighters bearing down.
Now he remembered that day in a place with n
o days. Whatever Paradis had to offer, the dangers couldn't begin to approach the level of risk in the Ur cloud. Paradis just had to be a vacation after that.
Apollo had promised himself that he would never be blinded in battle. When he had flown into the cloud, hundreds of flashing spots in front of his eyes suggested that fear of losing his sight was the least of his problems. Each spot had been a Cylon fighter!
The odds of survival had been small. When the Chitain attacked in force and inadvertently saved the Colonials, Apollo again appreciated what his father had taught him long ago.
"Don't believe that the enemy of your enemy is your friend," Adama had said when Apollo was only fifteen. "Wisdom lies in recognizing what makes someone your enemy in the first place. If they wish to destroy you even if you have done them no harm, they will be equally unjust with others. They will make other enemies because it is in their nature. Form your alliances on the basis of self-defense, not self-delusion! And don't make the ultimate mistake of acting as your enemy does."
These were good words to carry with him as Apollo checked out this new world. Adama had spoken thus to his son before the Great Betrayal forced him to lead his people across the universe.
Apollo tried to live up to Adama's standards as the burden of command came to rest on his shoulders. The Cylons taught a stern lesson. There was no moral confusion in resisting an enemy that sought genocide.
Adama faced the harshness of life when he'd lost his son, Zac. The loss of Zac had hurt Apollo as well, but the current Commander of the Fleet had lost his father as well as his brother. With each loss, his commitment to his sister grew. For Apollo, resistance to evil was entirely personal.
The Cylons made it easy to treat lesser opponents with a certain degree of fairness—to put things in perspective. Adama's advice had served Apollo well when dealing with Jinkrat and a rebellion born of desperation. Starving men aren't the same as Cylons or Chitains.
As he explored Paradis, he hoped there would be no enemies. That would make for a nice change.
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