by Peter David
“That is only because I’m not making my case to the Quorum itself. Were I to do so, I believe I could make them understand not only why I’m being forced to take this action, but why we should be given our rightful place in the hierarchy of the colonies.”
“I am making endeavors in that direction, Mr. Gunnerson, but they will be completely undone if this is allowed to continue. All we have is your word that the colonial soldiers will remain unharmed. You’ve no way of guaranteeing that . . .”
There was no response from the other end.
“Mr. Gunnerson?” She flashed a look of concern in Zarek’s direction. He shook his head, his face blank. Obviously he had no clearer idea than Roslin of why Gunnerson had suddenly gone silent. “Mr. Gunnerson, are you still—”
“Sorry. Sorry, Madame President,” his voice came back, and he quickly added, “And I’m sorry I interrupted you just then.”
“It’s quite all right.” She kept the relief out of her voice. “Go ahead.”
“I was just thinking: There’s an easy solution to this, other than freeing the suspects.”
“It’s not readily apparent.”
“Allow me to come to Colonial One and address the assembled Quorum.”
She was startled at the notion. Zarek was quickly nodding enthusiastically, but a silent look from her stopped him. She glanced toward Billy, who shrugged noncommittally. “Mr. Gunnerson, we are not going to allow ourselves to be strong-armed into meeting with you.”
“No one is strong-arming anyone, Madame President. I am volunteering myself in what could reasonably be viewed as a hostage exchange. You are asking me to place myself into a weaker position by releasing the suspects. I am instead offering to put you into a stronger position by voluntarily coming over there. Strong-arming? I would be counting on your good offices to allow me to meet with the assembled Quorum rather than, say, turn me over to Adama to be tossed into a holding cell.”
“I could still do that, you know.”
“Yes, but I would believe you if you said you wouldn’t. I would take your word for it. I am that determined to have my chance to speak to the Quorum and make my case on behalf of my people.”
Zarek gestured that she should put Gunnerson on hold a moment so that he could speak to her. Her immediate instinct was to ignore him. It wasn’t as if she needed Tom Zarek to tell her what to do. On the other hand, she had brought him here as the Sagittaron representative, so it probably wasn’t going to hurt to hear what he had to say. “Mr. Gunnerson, please hold on,” she said, placed him on hold and then said brusquely, “What?”
If Zarek was put off by her tone, he didn’t let it show. “What have you got to lose?” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “We both know we’re on the clock. Adama may be—”
“Admiral . . . Adama,” she corrected him. She had been the one who had given him the rank, and she found she didn’t like Zarek simply referring to the fleet’s CO simply by his surname. It struck her as disrespectful.
Taking it in stride, he amended, “Admiral Adama may be willing to wait, but he’s not going to do so forever. If Gunnerson is here, that could well buy us more time. The longer a hostage situation goes on, the better chance there is having it ended with words instead of casualties.”
“And you would know.”
“Yes,” he said crisply, “I would.”
She tapped a thoughtful finger on the desk, and then took the call off hold. “Mr. Gunnerson, are you still there?”
“Still here, Madame President.”
She realized she was rolling the dice with the Quorum. She was counting on Sarah Porter and Tom Zarek, of all men, to make this happen. As president she could call a meeting of the Quorum but she was not constitutionally empowered to force them to show up. It was part of the checks and balances built into the constitution, to guarantee that the president would always have to use tact and diplomacy in her dealings rather than strong-arming the representatives of the people. Of course, the constitution—or at least the original copies of it, preserved from its original drafting—had been blown to bits by the Cylons. Its spirit, however, lived on. “If you come here to Colonial One, I will ask the Quorum to assemble. You will be allowed to present your case to them. But what this will buy you, Mr. Gunnerson, is twelve hours. After twelve hours, barring credible evidence that they have committed some sort of crime, I will insist that officers Thrace and Agathon be released. And by credible evidence, I am ruling out confessions. I am not going to give anyone over there incentive to try forcing admissions of guilt out of them. If the officers are not released by that point, I will indeed turn you over to Admiral Adama, at which point, gods help us all.”
There was another pause, but this time Roslin said nothing, allowing time for a response to come.
“Very well, Madame President,” said Gunnerson finally. “Your terms are acceptable. I will take a transport to Colonial One. You will assemble the Quorum and I will speak my piece over allowing my people to be given official representation. In return I guarantee the safety of the colonial officers for twelve hours, as of which point they will then be returned, hale and hardy, to the Galactica.”
It still didn’t answer the issue of Boxey, but her priority at that point was ending the immediate situation without bloodshed. That was especially important to her. She knew to what extent Adama was willing to ensure the safety of his people. Furthermore, although she knew Adama didn’t place higher priorities on some lives than others, she was aware that there was a particular bond between Adama and Kara Thrace. If anything happened to her while she was in the hands of the Midguardians, Roslin didn’t even want to think what the ramifications might be. She was reasonably sure that Adama wouldn’t simply turn the big guns of the Galactica on the Bifrost and blast it to pieces . . . but on the other hand, she wasn’t interested in finding out.
“Very well. I will see you shortly. Colonial One out.” She hung up the phone, looked over to Billy and said, “Send a copy of that recording to Admiral Adama immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Billy headed out, and Tom Zarek was promptly on his feet. “Madame President . . . we’ve had our differences . . . but I just want to say, I thought you handled that quite well.”
“Tell me, Councilman,” Roslin said, “in your honest opinion . . . what chance do you think there is that the Quorum will vote to give the Midguardians a seat on the Council?”
“There’s always the chance that—”
“Honest. Opinion.”
He hesitated and then admitted, “Very slim. Almost negligible.”
“Yes. I agree. And do you think that Wolf Gunnerson knows that?”
“I think he’s hoping otherwise, but I think he knows that, yes.”
“Then why risk his personal liberty to pursue such a hopeless cause?”
“There are some people,” said Zarek, “who consider the hopeless causes the only ones worth pursuing.”
“Hmm. Yes,” replied Roslin, sounding distant. “At the same time, pursuing a hopeless cause can mean someone feels they have nothing to lose. And people who have nothing to lose can be very . . .” She turned her attention back to Zarek.
He was bleeding out his eyeballs again.
“. . . dangerous,” she sighed.
CHAPTER
20
Saul Tigh had commandeered a private room and sat there for hours upon hours, listening to the tapes that had been made by the recording devices he’d implanted in various rooms. Aside from the matter involving President Roslin that he had brought to Adama’s attention, he had absolutely nothing to show for the hours of time invested. Not only that, but he had come to a depressing realization: Most people, when left to their own devices, were astoundingly boring. The amount of time they spent discussing completely trite and trivial subjects—it boggled the imagination.
It almost made him wonder what it would be like to bug get-togethers of Cylon agents. Did they spend it discussing far-reaching plans of gala
ctic domination? Or did they just hang out discussing fashion, hair styles, and gossip? He was starting to think that scientists were wrong, and hydrogen was not in fact the most common element in the universe. No. It was banality.
The only one who seemed to spend any time at all concentrating on important matters was Mr. Gaeta, which was ironic considering he was one of the key people under suspicion. He didn’t seem to have any social life at all. Instead he spent his off-duty hours in his quarters, going over calculations, making new ones, planning, always planning. He’d spend hours muttering to himself while he worked things out. Tigh might have been inclined to think that Gaeta was actually conversing with other Cylons, except that he was alone in his room. His room could have had a Cylon listening device in it, but Tigh—as he had done with every other room—had already swept it to make sure it was clean of bugs before he had placed his own in.
Tigh leaned back in his chair and removed the headset he’d been wearing to listen to the recordings. He rubbed his eyes, feeling the fatigue.
The pressure was getting to him. In trying to track down Cylons, he was starting to feel as if there were no safe haven. Cylons were invading peoples’ lives, their very minds.
It made him start to wonder about . . .
“Anything?”
Tigh started slightly and looked up to see Adama standing in the doorway. He shook his head. “Nothing. Not since the earlier things we discussed.”
Adama pulled up a chair and sat. “Getting to you, isn’t it.”
“I think it’s getting to all of us.” He rubbed his eyes. “If Roslin thinks she hasn’t been sleeping well, she should get a load of me. How about you?”
“I sleep like a rock.”
He opened his eyes narrowly and stared at Adama. “Technically, rocks don’t sleep.”
“There you go.”
Tigh chuckled, but then grew serious. “What if . . .”
“What if what?”
“What if we find Earth . . . and it really isn’t a safe haven? What if the Cylons track us there? Hell, what if the Cylons are waiting for us? What the hell is our Plan B, Bill?”
“Finding Earth is Plan B,” said Adama. “Plan A is keeping humanity alive. Everything else is open to negotiation.”
“That’s a hell of a thing.”
“Believe me, I know.”
Tigh wrapped the wire around the headset and placed it in a drawer, along with the recorder he’d been using to listen to the recordings that were stacked neatly on the table. “Speaking of negotiations . . . what’s happening with our people on the Bifrost?”
Adama told him what Laura Roslin had just relayed to him. Tigh’s eyes widened as he heard about Gunnerson’s heading over to Colonial One. “In fact,” said Adama, glancing at his watch, “he’s probably already over there.”
“My gods, what are we waiting for?” Tigh demanded. “Let’s go get him. Let’s take charge of the bastard and start issuing some ultimatums of our own.”
“Not yet,” Adama said coolly. “We’re going to see how it plays out on both ends.”
“Both ends? What are you . . . ?” But then he understood. “Oh. You mean the Cylon and the lawyer.” He shook his head, a grim smile on his face. “There’s poetic justice in that, you know. A Cylon and a lawyer in a cell together. I’ve dealt with a lawyer or two in my time. Hard-pressed to see the difference.”
Adama didn’t share the amusement. Although he addressed Tigh, he seemed as if he were looking inward. “It’s an evil thing I’ve done, Saul. Tossing Freya Gunnerson in with Sharon and looking the other way. Gunnerson is right. She broke no laws.”
“She’s up to something,” Tigh said darkly. “Something about her interest in the Cylon stinks to high heaven, and we both know it.”
“So she deserves what she gets?”
“Abso-frakking-lutely.”
“I wish I were as sure as you.”
“You could be,” said Tigh. “You just choose not to be.”
“And you don’t let yourself get dragged down by uncertainty?”
“I try not to.”
“You know something, Saul?” said Adama after giving him a long look. “You are more full of crap than any man I’ve ever met.”
Tigh looked stunned a moment, as if he were wounded by the comment. But then he put his head back and laughed. Adama didn’t join him, but he did allow a smile to play on his lips.
There was no hint of amusement, or annoyance, or pleasure, or any expression vaguely human on Sharon Valerii’s lips. Her mouth was drawn back in a tight, tense manner, as if she were doing heavy exercise and was trying to focus.
Freya Gunnerson was lying on the floor. Sharon was standing over her, straddling her, a leg on either side. Freya was curled up in a ball, her arms encircling her head. She was whimpering, her body trembling.
There was not a mark on her body. Not anywhere.
A professional torturer would have been astounded at the quality of the job Sharon had done on Freya. To simply pound information out of people was . . . well, it was ugly. It was inelegant. It also presented the problem of being counterproductive, especially if the subject died from the questioning.
Sharon had not resorted to that. She hadn’t needed to.
The truth was that she had not realized what she was capable of until she had started. It was as if she possessed certain capabilities, but hadn’t accessed them until now because she simply hadn’t needed them. Now that she did, though, they had come to her with as much ease as if she were to climb upon a bicycle after many years of not doing so and pedal away.
She knew every joint, every muscle, every pressure point in a human being’s body. She knew just what to do with each of them, just how to play them against one another to induce mind-numbing agony. With absolute facility and efficiency, she could do something as simple as pop the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles in the calf, causing a small contusion inside. It didn’t sound like much, but the agony that resulted in the recipient of the treatment was just overwhelming.
She was capable of inflicting agonizing little scenarios like that all over Freya’s body. And she had been doing so.
And Freya had been screaming. Screaming and writhing and begging for mercy that seemed as if it would never come. Whenever it did—whenever Sharon appeared to be letting up—it was simply because she was working out some new thing to do to her.
Part of Sharon was repulsed by what she was doing. But another part of her was simply able to shut herself off, disconnect from it altogether. She found it vaguely disturbing that she was able to do that, but tried not to dwell on it.
She had taken a break, shaking out her hands, loosening up the fingers before she went back to work. Freya continued to lie sobbing upon the floor. Finally she managed to gasp out, “Okay.”
Sharon had become so engrossed in her endeavors that she didn’t have the slightest idea what Freya was saying okay to at first. Her eyebrows knit. “Okay . . . what?”
“Okay . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell you,” Freya managed to say. “I’ll tell you what I did. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll do anything you want. Just stop, please . . .” She choked on the tears that ran into her mouth. “Stop . . . please . . .”
“All right,” Sharon said dispassionately. “Tell me . . .”
“No,” Freya was suddenly vehement, motivated by anger and fear and unbridled loathing. “I want Adama here.”
“Why?” Then she answered her own question before Freya could. “Because you’re concerned that, once you’ve told me what I want to know, I’ll kill you. So you want someone here to ‘save’ you from me.”
Freya said nothing, but merely glowered instead.
She raised her voice slightly and called to whomever she knew was watching or listening in, “Please send Admiral Adama down. Thank you.” Then she stepped back and settled down onto her bunk, her hands resting on her legs. She sat perfectly upright.
Freya managed to look up at her with pure hatred. “Yo
u’re . . . you’re not human.”
“That’s what everyone else was saying,” Sharon reminded her. “Why didn’t you listen?”
“Because I thought I . . . I could make a better life for you. Because I thought an injustice was being done, and I tried to fix it.”
“And now?” asked Sharon, interested in spite of herself. “What do you think now?”
“I think,” and a cold fury grew in her voice, “I think I wish . . . that you had a soul . . . because then it could burn in hell.”
“How do you know I don’t have one? How do you know it won’t go to hell . . . or even heaven? Or maybe there’s a different version of heaven that only allows Cylons?”
“There’s not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“There’s not,” Freya repeated, and suddenly, totally unexpectedly, she lunged at Sharon. Sharon’s arm immediately crossed her belly to protect her unborn child as she lashed out with a boot, slamming Freya right between the eyes. Freya stumbled backwards, blood covering the lower half of her face. She fell heavily. Sharon continued to look down at her without the slightest change in expression as Freya lay there, clutching her nose, trying to stop the bleeding. After a moment, Sharon removed the flimsy pillow case from the pillow and tossed it down to Freya. It draped itself over her head. She snatched it off and applied it to her face, pressing against the bleeding, and moaning as she did so.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” said Sharon.
“Frak you,” grunted her erstwhile attorney.
They remained that way, neither addressing the other, until Adama arrived in response to the summons. Two marines accompanied him as they came around to the door of the cell and opened it wide. The marines kept their weapons fixed on Sharon. It would have seemed ludicrous to any unknowing onlooker to see burly, heavily armed combat men aiming at the placid pregnant woman who was sitting empty-handed and seemingly harmless on her cot. What possible threat could she have posed? The problem was that they didn’t really have an answer to that question, and thus they were determined to be safe rather than sorry.