"Yes," said Sheba. "If it's possible, I would do anything."
"Sheba," Starbuck said, "you don't know what you're saying. These creatures could—"
"They're people, Starbuck," she said.
"You're delirious."
"No, I mean it. They are people. They're not unlike us. They don't . . . feel different to me. They know what we are, who we are."
"That gives them a pretty big advantage."
"It doesn't matter," she said. "If it's possible to bring him back, if they can do it somehow, I think . . . yes, all right. I will trade my life for Apollo's. Is it possible?"
"Many things are possible. What about you, Starbuck? Did you not say inside your ship that you would gladly trade places with Apollo?"
"How could you know that?" said Starbuck.
"Step away."
They were urged back from Apollo's body by a gentle warmth. As they watched, a fine mist seemed to grow around Apollo's body. It emanated from below and above him, gradually cloaking his body and growing thicker. It had a stark purple hue, in violent contrast to everything else around them. The tiny particles washed over Apollo's body, moving with great speed until Apollo was completely hidden from view. There was no sound.
Gradually, the mist began to ebb and fade, falling away from him like the last remnants of a brief summer shower. Apollo's eyelids fluttered. His chest began to rise and fall.
Starbuck and Sheba stared with disbelief as he began to regain consciousness. Slowly, he began to rise up to a sitting position. He did not seem to be puzzled by his surroundings. Starbuck thought that the expression on his face was one of complete tranquility. He looked serene.
Sheba cried out and ran to him. They embraced.
Starbuck turned to the shining aliens.
"I don't know who you are," he said, "but whatever you want from me, you can have."
"We want nothing from you."
"Then, why? Why have you done this?"
"Because we fight a common foe."
"I don't understand," said Starbuck. "You mean Diabolis? I feel like a fool talking to you. It's like a drone in the presence of its creator. You're playing with us. We're like toys to you."
Starbuck sensed amusement from the beings.
"No. You are wrong. We are not your creators. We are more like your parents. You are barely born, barely able to move about. You are as capable of harming yourselves and others as you are of giving love."
"Then why bother with us?" Starbuck said.
"Because we love you. We want you to grow and learn. And to help others as we have helped you."
Sheba and Apollo approached and Starbuck turned to them with tears in his eyes. He looked at Apollo and smiled, wiping at his eyes.
"It must be all this light," he said.
The two men embraced, holding each other tightly as if to assure each other that they were real.
"I don't think I've ever felt anything like this before in my entire life," said Starbuck.
"I know," Apollo said, smiling. "It's like love. Pure love. And we've been in its presence."
"Who's going to believe this?" Sheba said.
Starbuck began to laugh. Sheba and Apollo joined in, feeling uncontrollably giddy and overcome with joy.
The shuttle settled to the deck of the landing bay aboard the Battlestar Galactica. As Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba climbed out, they were met by Adama, Athena, Cassiopeia, Boxey and his droid and Boomer. It was like a family reunion.
"Boomer!" said Apollo. "I don't believe it!"
"I hardly believe it myself," said Boomer, hugging his friend.
"I thought we'd lost you," said Apollo. "The other pilots? Any sign of them?"
"All safe," said Adama. "And apparently the victims of the same thing, some kind of navigational pilfering at the hands of Count Iblis."
"I don't understand," said Starbuck.
"Their ships started sending out distress signals from that burned-out planet where you found Count Iblis," said Athena.
"We sent out a patrol and, sure enough, every one of our warriors was there, waiting," Adama said. "They were out of fuel, but otherwise perfectly fine. We also picked up Sheba's Viper. But what about you? We'd almost given up hope. You were the ones we expected to find on that planet, not the missing pilots."
"It's been quite an experience," Apollo said, "and it isn't easy to explain. I wonder if we could tell you about it a little more privately?"
"Of course," Adama said. "You must be exhausted. We'll have some food. We'll have a feast!"
They sat around a table in Adama's quarters. The lighting was subdued as they drank ambrosa. Adama raised his goblet in a toast.
"To the return of our children," he said, "and the end of Count Iblis, whoever he was."
Apollo frowned. Sheba and Starbuck, likewise, suddenly appeared confused.
Adama resumed his seat after they all drank.
"According to Doctor Paye in the life station," said Adama, "you found Count Iblis back on the surface of that planet. Was that correct?"
"That's right," said Apollo.
"Yet, you don't seem to know where he went."
Apollo shrugged. "Father, it's like those ships of light that come and go in the wink of an eye."
"That's right," said Sheba. "One micron, he was standing there and the next, he simply vanished."
"Then what happened?" said Athena. "Why weren't you there when we found the rest of the pilots?"
"Yes, why?" said Boomer. "We didn't find any sign of you and if you had headed straight back toward the fleet, how did we get here before you?"
"Something happened down on that planet," Starbuck said slowly. He tried to remember, but it wasn't clear. The memory seemed to hover somewhere on the edge of his consciousness, but he couldn't dredge it up. "Something happened and I just can't explain it," he finished lamely, wondering why he could not remember.
Adama looked to his son. "Apollo?"
Apollo shook his head. "I don't know. I can't remember anything after challenging Count Iblis."
"You challenged him and won," Adama said. "That confirms he was a charlatan."
"No, Adama," Sheba said. "Apollo challenged him and lost."
"Lost?" Adama stared at her, not comprehending. "But how do you mean that?"
"What she means," said Starbuck, "is that Count Iblis tried to kill Sheba and Apollo got in his way."
"That's the last thing I remember," said Apollo.
Adama was confused. "Sheba? Starbuck?"
"No, no, wait," said Starbuck. "I remember a little more. I remember Sheba and I taking Apollo's body aboard the shuttle and leaving the planet."
"And next you landed aboard the Galactica," Adama said. "Obviously Apollo was merely stunned and you frightened Count Iblis off."
"I guess that must be it," said Starbuck, "except for—"
"A white light," said Boomer.
Adama glanced at him. "What?"
"A white light," said Boomer. "There was a brilliant white light and some kind of incredible pressure—"
"Yes," said Sheba. "Then you felt it, too!"
Boomer looked puzzled. It was as if, all of a sudden, there were lapses in their memories. The more they tried to think about it, the more difficult it was to recall exactly what had happened. Their food and wine remained untouched upon the table as they looked at each other, wondering why none of them could remember what had happened to them.
"Starbuck?" Boomer said.
Starbuck got up from the table and walked slowly to the observation port. He looked out at the stars, a faraway look in his eyes.
"Yes," he said, "there was something. A light. An incredibly bright light . . ."
Adama looked toubled. "Don't try to remember now," he said. "It was obviously traumatic. You've been through some kind of horrendous experience."
"No," said Starbuck. "It was beautiful."
Sheba nodded. "Yes, it was."
Apollo got up and walked to the observation por
t to stand beside Starbuck. For a moment, they stood looking out at the stars in silence.
"There's something out there," said Apollo. He shivered and held his shoulders, folding his arms in front of him. Adama rushed to his side.
"Son, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Apollo said. He looked at his father and smiled. "Just a little sore, for some reason. Anyway, I guess we're all suffering from a certain amount of battle fatigue. Maybe we're a bit disoriented, but at least we're together and we're alive. And we know where we're going."
"Earth," said Adama.
"Sector Beta," said Apollo. "Nineteen million sectars by—"
"By epsilon vector twenty-two," said Starbuck. "On a course reckoning of 0000 point nine."
"In a star system containing nine planets and a single sun," said Sheba.
"What is this?" said Adama. "How do you know these coordinates, all three of you, practically in unison?"
They looked at him and he saw that they were as mystified about what they had said as he was.
"I don't know, Father," said Apollo. "I have no idea." He turned back to stare out into space.
FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:
Part of being a leader is knowing when not to tell the people under your command the truth. Count Iblis, whoever or whatever he was, remains a hero to the people in the fleet. We told them that he kept his promise to lead us to the planet Earth by giving us the coordinates that Sheba, Starbuck and Apollo supplied. Between us, we made up a story about those white ships calling him back out to wherever it was he came from. In retrospect, it all sounds pretty foolish, but when people want something badly enough, they'll settle for foolish. Everybody wanted an answer and there was no one around to give them one. I want answers and all I have are questions.
I want to know what sort of creature it was we took on board our ship. It was not human, of that I'm certain. However, knowing human nature as I do, I must admit that I have to consider the possibility that if Count Iblis wasn't human, he was at least related to us somehow. That is not a thought that sits well with me. That thing, whatever it was, knew us and knew us well. I have no doubt that it had spent time on Earth. I only hope the people on Earth were stronger, better able to deal with it than we.
And what of Earth? How did Sheba, Starbuck and Apollo learn of its location? That question, more than any other, troubles me. Something happened out there, something that affected my three warriors in a way that has changed them profoundly. There is a greater degree of introspection in them now. Even in Starbuck, there is less manic intensity. They share more silences together and I sometimes see them exchanging looks that speak of things I'm not sure I would understand.
I had resigned myself to losing my son, to losing all of them. I had done something I had sworn that I would never do, an oath that dates back to the destruction of Caprica and the other colony worlds. I had given up hope. I am not ashamed to admit it, it's what happened and I am responsible for it. I allowed my own fears to stand between me and what I believed. When Iblis said that he would punish me by taking Apollo's life, I had offered up my own, selfishly. And it was a selfish action.
I spoke before of heroism. There was no heroism in my offering my life in exchange for Apollo's. Had it been Starbuck or Sheba or Boomer making the offer, the action would have been heroic, but had my offer been accepted, it would have been an act of cowardice. What makes me different? I acted out of fear.
I had lost my wife, my home, indeed, my world. I could not bear to also lose my son. To die in Apollo's place would have been easier for me than to live with the fact of my son's death, knowing that I might have prevented it. And I had to live, because of my responsibility. My duty to the fleet came first, but in that moment, I had forgotten it and would have forsaken everything, even my life, to save my son. To save myself from having to live with grief and guilt. I could make it easier on myself and say that I did it out of love. It would be true, since I do love my son, but it would not be the whole truth. My duty may force me to lie to the poeple in the fleet about what happened to Count Iblis, since they need to have their heroes, but I will not lie to myself.
Where there is no data and the questions overwhelm, the mind seeks answers in the most frenetic way, often overlooking facts. I wanted desperately to believe that Count Iblis was a charlatan, that he had duped us all, because to have believed the converse would have been too frightening. I wanted to believe that my son had bested him back on that burned-out red planet. Yet, Starbuck and Sheba were witness to the fact that he did not and I, even with the faith I have in Apollo's abilities, knew that it was true. Apollo would have been no match for Count Iblis.
Yet, Apollo had returned.
Starbuck and Sheba remembered, although they remembered little else, they claimed, seeing him fall. I wish to God I knew what really happened. Because I am certain that someone or something intervened.
What happened to those warriors that we lost and later found on that desolate planet? They all claim, to a man, that they were there all the time, waiting for us to come and pick them up. Yet, why is it that we did not start to receive their distress signals until centons after they had disappeared? If they had been there all the time, why did they wait? And why weren't Starbuck, Sheba and Apollo with them? That was where they had gone.
Questions. Questions with no answers. But everything does seem to have one common denominator.
The white lights.
We all saw them. They swarmed around the Galactica like insects, moving with impossible speed. Count Iblis seemed to be afraid of them. And each of our pilots remembered seeing an incredibly bright light before they disappeared. And between the time we lost them and the time we started to receive their distress signals, they could not account for what had happened to them. I can speculate about what they might mean, but it would merely be an endless circle. I would never know for sure. I do, however, have my suspicions. The story would have ended there, except there was one grace note.
The night Starbuck, Sheba and Apollo returned to us, there was a feast in my private quarters. It was a small, intimate gathering. My two children were there, Athena and Apollo, along with my adopted children, Starbuck and Sheba. Boomer was there and later, when she got off duty, Cassiopeia came to join us, bringing little Boxey with her. We all sat around the table and I was anxious to hear their story.
Except they had no story to tell.
I could see it in their faces. They wanted to tell me what had happened, but it was as if the memory of it all were taken from them somehow, blocked off. At first, I thought that it was shock. The experience had been a traumatic one and they were not quite ready to deal with it yet. In time, it would become easier for them and they would tell me. It seemed a simple, logical answer. It satisfied me until they told me the way to Earth. There was no way they could have known that. Some sort of psychosis as a result of what they had been through together? Possibly.
We sat together for a long time that night, much of it in silence. It just felt good for all of us to be there. By ones and twos, they eventually drifted off to their own quarters and to their own thoughts, leaving me with mine. I was weary and wanted nothing so much as to sleep.
That night, I had a dream.
The Galactica was once again surrounded by the swarming lights. They darted around the ship, hurtled through the fleet like some ghostly meteor shower. I knew that they were there, but I was powerless to act. I heard Colonel Tigh calling me from the bridge, but I could not open my eyes, much less get out of bed. Powerless to move, I heard the red alert claxon reverberating throughout the ship. I heard the pilots rushing by outside my door, running to the launch tubes, but by the time they were ready to launch, the white lights were gone. They did not come back. I was never to see them again.
Sometime during that surreal vision, I heard a voice. At first, I thought someone was speaking to me, but then I realized that the voice I was hearing was in my mind. I wasn't hearing anything at all. It was as though I wa
s thinking someone else's thoughts.
The voice spoke of human fallibility. It spoke of revenge and of how not even the avenger is immune from that which he exacts. It spoke of making a bad bargain, of owing something to a force which did not forget debts that were incurred. And it spoke of order and of balance. I do not recall the words it used if, indeed, it did use words. I only know that after I experienced having that presence in my mind, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When I awoke, I learned that we were short one prisoner.
CHAPTER TEN
Baltar sat alone upon the floor in a solitary confinement cubicle and wept. It was over, finished. His glorious dream of ruling a world for the Cylon Empire would be nothing more than that, a dream. He had sacrificed everything, everything in order to achieve his goal and now it was out of his reach forever.
He had helped the Cylons to destroy twelve worlds in order to get what he wanted and he had thrown it all away. Why? What had possessed him to leave the safety of his base ship and fly to Adama? What made him think that his worst enemy would even consider a truce with the one man he hated above all others? He was a traitor to the human race. He had become so willingly. He had planned to sell out the Council of the Twelve so that the Cylons could conquer. What madness induced him to believe that they would ever forget what he had done? He, Baltar, honored nothing, held nothing sacred. Why should they have honored his offer of a truce?
He could not blame Adama. Ironically, for the first time in his life, Adama had acted as Baltar would have acted. Had Adama come to Baltar with an offer of a truce, Baltar would have done exactly as Adama had with him. No, Baltar thought, perhaps not. Probably not. He would have made sure that Adama died. Slowly and unpleasantly.
They had put him in solitary aboard the prison ship. To risk putting him in with any of the other prisoners meant his death. Those thrown into the brig by Adama and the council had no reason to love either, but they had even less reason to love Baltar. They would have torn him to shreds with their bare hands. When he was brought to the prison ship, news of his capture had already reached the inmates. As he was being taken to his cell, he heard their cries and threats and it had chilled him to the bone. They had yelled for blood. His blood.
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