“We’re not barge-lice,” Wolfe growls.
“Or grid-rats,” Thane says softly, but with menace.
“Oh yes we are,” I say, stepping between them and Apollo. “Lice and rats. Better yet, just bodies. We were picked for this drop because we’re expendable.”
“Nobody’s expendable,” Apollo says. I resist commenting, no, you probably aren’t—as the commander’s son you’ve probably already mapped a way out. Actually, Apollo’s presence is comforting. So long as he’s with us, and alive, we can be sure Adama’ll dispatch a rescue force. Anything happens to him, the commander’s not likely even to drop us rations. “You were picked,” Apollo continues, “by a computer that didn’t give an electronic damn about grid-barges, rats, lice, or warriors.” Well, at least he’s got us all neatly classified. “You’re here to do a job on the Cylons”—he hands Thane back his kit; Thane replaces it in his pocket—“and not on each other. Stow your gear. And fasten your harness. We’re on countdown.”
A comforting rumble goes through the ship as we near launch point.
CHAPTER NINE
“Killer” Killian was not the type of colonial warrior who ever contemplated his own death in battle. A tough thick-muscled man, he looked like the grizzled veteran of many combats that he was. Nobody ever noticed the shrewdness in his eyes because his face was so dominated by a bushy mustache.
He pressed his shoulders back against his seat as he awaited the signal to launch his viper. If anyone had told him that this was his last launch and that in a few moments he would be dead, he would have just touched the end of his mustache with a stubby finger and shrugged. He might have commented that if his number was up, it was up, and then gripped his throttle a shade more tightly.
Over the commline the command came: “Let’s fly!” Killian’s viper, escort to the expedition shuttle, slammed down the launching tube with a great roar.
First Centurion Vulpa was beginning to doubt whether any information of value could be extracted from Cree.
So far the human vermin had been able to stand up to torture well, responding only with his name and an interminably large amount of numbers.
“Entry tracks,” a technician announced.
“How many?” Vulpa asked.
“Two.”
“Describe.”
“One large. What the humans call a shuttlecraft. The other a fighting ship, a viper, flying escort for the shuttle, it appears.”
“Any indications of their origin?”
“No.”
Vulpa considered allowing the ships to land, but there were too many unknown factors. If the shuttle contained a rescue force or an assault team, the possibility of losses to his own understaffed garrison of troops was too strong. He would order the cannon to annihilate them, to wipe—no, that was impossible. Dr. Ravashol and a crew of his precious creations were up at the pulsar installation for repair and maintenance. It would be a mistake now to alert Ravashol to Vulpa’s modifications of his invention, even though he suspected Ravashol already knew about them. No, better to destroy the intruders through more conventional means.
“Activate a destroyer shell-fighter with full warhead.”
The shell-fighter was a variation of the new type of Cylon pilotless craft that could be guided by personnel in ordinary fighters. The difference in the warhead-equipped model was that it was constructed from the barest minimum of components. Since the entire ship exploded along with its target, there had been no need to waste material. When he had still been a member of Imperious Leader’s general staff, Vulpa had ordered the development of the destroyer shell-fighter because of the heavy losses that were being sustained, losses that were out of all proportion to the firepower of their under-equipped human adversaries.
He ordered his command pilots to guide the warhead fighter toward the shuttle, while themselves engaging the escort viper and destroying it.
* * *
To Apollo the dense cloud cover of the planet below them looked spectral. Gray and smooth-surfaced, it seemed to conceal eerie mysteries. Its appearance only increased his natural caution. Looking over his shoulder, he crisply gave orders to Boomer:
“Get a navigational fix before we penetrate the cloud cover. We don’t know what to expect on the surface. It could be pitch black, as it was when you and Starbuck went after Cree. No telling what the ground surface is like. Snow powder, pack ice, perhaps more di-ethene clouds than—”
Starbuck, in the copilot seat, interrupted:
“Cylons low on the starboard quarter!”
Apollo ordered a quick scan. There was a Cylon patrol formation just in back of another ship which the scanner indicated as unpiloted. The ship also lacked most of the familiar features of the normal Cylon fighter.
“What is it, do you think?” Apollo asked Boomer.
But the odd hollow sound of Thane’s voice answered:
“It’s not really a ship at all.”
“Thane! How’d you get there?”
“I got tired of being harnessed back in that cabin. Thought I’d visit.”
“You know you’re not allowed—”
“This isn’t the time to quote your stupid regulations at me, Captain. That ship out there, what your inefficient scanner describes as a ship, is actually a weapon. A guided device whose nose contains a solenite warhead, with sufficient power to blow this shuttle to bits. Tiny bits disintegrating to nothing. I would assume that its guidance system is set on a course for us.”
Thane spoke all this so calmly, so dispassionately, that Apollo was not sure whether or not to believe him. He was describing their deaths, and he did not seem at all to care about the fact that he would die too.
“Employ evasion maneuvers,” Apollo ordered Starbuck, who immediately reset the shuttle’s course.
“You can’t evade that weapon,” Thane said. “It’s one of the Cylons’ best technological achievements. I respect it. You can’t evade it no matter how sophisticated your evasion procedures are.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Destroy it before it destroys you.”
Apollo wanted to ask Thane how he proposed to destroy a strange new weapon, but the man had disappeared as oddly as he had materialized.
Killian, alerted by Starbuck to the sudden attack, arced his viper into a long curve, heading on a line toward the trio of Cylon fighters that flew just behind the ghost ship with the lethal warhead. One of the Cylon ships peeled away from the tight formation and headed for Killian.
“Starbuck!” Killian shouted into his commline mike. “Dive for the cloud cover!”
“Won’t work. They’ll outrun us.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll block for you.”
Even as he said that, Killian pressed his firing button and placed a dozen quick laser shots in a small circle that first ripped off the rear section of the Cylon plane, then transformed it into a blazing fireball. In reaction to the loss of a ship, another Cylon fighter swerved toward Killian’s viper.
Everybody in the shuttle was hurtled backward in their seats as Starbuck accelerated. The sound of the engines was, to Apollo, like a shriek of fright.
“Starbuck!” he yelled. “This isn’t a fighter! You’ll overrun the turbines!”
“Tell that to the Cylons,” Starbuck yelled back.
The shuttle plunged into the cloud cover. The only light in the cockpit came from the scanner which displayed Killian’s battle in the skies above them. They saw the second Cylon fighter shatter under Killian’s cool and accurate firing. The last fighter and the warhead ship had altered course to pursue the shuttle. Starbuck tried to find more power in the shuttle’s engines, but all that he could discover was a louder shriek.
Killian zeroed in on the last fighter but it evaded his fire and came in under his viper. His ship rocked as the Cylon’s shot hit him amidship. He checked his scanner for damage report. The lousy Cylon had destroyed the lowside engine. Before Killian could pull out of the spin he was now in, the Cylon fired again and knocked a b
ig chunk out of Killian’s ship. Employing all the piloting instinct he had at his command, Killian pulled his viper out of the spin. Damage report showed a fuel line had been severed. The viper would blow up at any moment.
The Cylon fighter was streaking toward him. Killian tried to shoot at it, but his laser did not respond to the touch of the firing button. So that was out, too; it had been hit. Veering his ship to the right, he escaped the next burst of Cylon shots. But he knew that he could not evade for much longer. This time he had, after all, drawn his number.
Starbuck’s voice came over the commline:
“I can’t get this wreck going any faster. There’s no way I can maneuver out of that warhead’s way. There’s no—”
“Shut up, Starbuck,” Killian cried. “That thing’s my job.”
Evading the Cylon fighter one more time, Killian aimed his ship at the warhead-equipped shell. Engaging the turbos at full thrust of the remaining engines, he aimed his viper directly at the warhead ship. He shouted a curse that had a long-standing tradition aboard the Galactica. Killian’s viper and the warhead ship collided just above the cloud cover of the ice planet. The explosion that resulted from the crash spread across the sky in a massive fireball that rushed toward the remaining Cylon fighter. The Cylon ship tried to curve away from it, but before it could complete the arc, it was sucked into and enveloped by the widening flame.
The shuttle lurched violently and Starbuck’s gloved hand came off the throttle as if the device had suddenly turned red-hot.
“What is it?” Apollo screamed.
“Either we got hit by a stray shot or this speed’s too much for the shuttle. I don’t—”
“Captain Apollo!” Leda cried from the entranceway to the passenger compartment. “Everything’s flying around back here. The wind’s terrific! Something’s split in the side of the ship, I think. Can’t identify where in all the debris, but—”
“Try to hold control, Starbuck,” Apollo cried. “I’ll check this out.”
“I’ll try, but the ship’s maneuvering like a balloon that’s come untied.”
Apollo rushed back to the passenger cabin. He spotted the dark split along the ship’s side immediately.
“The skin’s ruptured! Grab your breather gear!”
Everyone clamped on their breathers in quick motions—except for Croft, whose moves were methodical, and Thane, who attached his breather to his face slowly, looking as if he didn’t care whether he wore it or not. Starbuck’s voice came over the intercom:
“The ship won’t respond. We’re dropping down into a blizzard! Visibility zero. Surface coming up on all instruments. Counting down! Three! Two! One! Zero! Heads down!”
A loud rumble went through the ship, sounding like a warning that the shuttle was about to shatter into a thousand pieces. Buffeted by the violent winds, the shuttle went into a spin that made its passengers grasp at the air, looking for something solid to cling to. Suddenly Starbuck pulled the nose of the ship upward just before it made ground contact and skidded across the surface. Whirling snow created a fierce small blizzard inside the vehicle. The ship’s sudden stop was thunderously loud, had all the bone-breaking power of a three-G force, and felt to the shuttle passengers like death.
The bridge crew of the Galactica fell silent as the monitoring screens blanked out suddenly. Adama, alerted by the silence, looked away from the reports of Cylon pursuit and into Tigh’s tense eyes.
“We’ve lost signal from both ships,” Tigh said.
Adama, recalling his conversation with Apollo about expendability, felt cold pain at the pit of his stomach.
“Any reception at all?” he asked.
“The viper channel is dead. No lights. Telemetry indicates total destruct.”
“Who was it?”
“Killian.”
Adama remembered the mustachioed officer vividly. His experience and combat instincts would be missed.
“And the shuttle?” he asked Tigh.
Tigh paused before answering:
“The emergency channel kicked in. All reds. Telemetry indicates heavy structural damage. We could reach for them on high band.”
“No. Maintain silence.”
“But—”
“I want to try to reach them as much as you do, Tigh. But we can’t. We can’t reveal our position.”
If he could have talked to his son now, he would have told him that expendability or nonexpendability had nothing to do with the fact that Apollo had been programmed out of the mission computer search. It had more to do with the fear of having to deal with the exhausted emptiness of this moment.
Vulpa hovered over the communications panel, where his operator studied the action in the clouds above Tairac.
“One ship destroyed,” the operator said. “One probable.”
“The patrol with the warhead ship?” Vulpa asked.
“All contact lost. They may be destroyed.”
“Contact Rearguard Patrol Leader.”
“Garrison Command to Rearguard Patrol Leader.”
Vulpa considered the possibility that the advance patrol had been completely destroyed. He did not like it. Because of what had been termed important matters relating to the war with the humans, he had been denied a full contingent for the garrison on Tairac. The general staff had argued that, after all, it was extremely unlikely that the humans would attempt to break through that particular defense perimeter. Now they were here. Not only that, but the general staff and its Imperious Leader had guided them here. Further, they expected Vulpa to counter any assault in spite of his understaffed situation. He wondered if they relied too much, perhaps, on the awesome power of the laser cannon with its annihilative strike capability. It was, naturally, true that the pulses from the cannon could easily destroy the Galactica and the ships of its fleet. However, before it could do that, those ships must be located.
The patrol leader reported in, and Vulpa addressed him:
“Tracking reports one invader destroyed. One probable.”
“That agrees with what our instruments show. The probable dropped into cloud cover and spun out of control before our instruments lost contact with it. Sector Hekla.”
Vulpa was annoyed that the shuttle’s status remained probable.
“Search for wreckage!” he barked. “Leave no survivors.”
“No survivors.”
The shuttle must have crashed, Vulpa thought. If the humans were not dead, his task of destroying them became infinitely more complicated. The unstable weather conditions on Tairac’s surface caused too much interference and distortion in the Cylons’ monitoring equipment. Blizzards could hide the intruders, ragged terrain offered them places to crouch out of sight, darkness made visual discernment of them near to impossible. If there were any survivors, they must be discovered immediately, before they had a chance to become aware of the conditions that could be turned to their advantage.
CHAPTER TEN
Croft:
During the disoriented moment after the crash, I see stars and fire. That’s dreadfully wrong, I tell myself. Doesn’t jibe with the cold in my bones. I feel like a statue of ice. A statue to what? To my own stupidity at leaving my rotten-smelling, claustrophobic, painful—but warm, always warm—cell aboard the prison ship? I’ve felt cold before, even cold this intense. I’ve been on mountains whose violent cold winds nearly blew me away. Been inside a snow pile from an avalanche that took me centons to dig out of. Experienced wet-cold that caused cracks in my clothing, made ropes split unexpectedly, left corpses whose eyes still expressed a live disbelief in their own mortality.
When I come to, all I can see first is snow whipping around the passenger cabin. The temperature’s dropped so fast I can’t work the breather right. My eyes adjust and some of the snow subsides. We’re all entangled. Supplies have tumbled upon us, we’ve tumbled upon each other.
Light. Apollo has a working lantern in his hand. The lamp shines on a gaping rent in the fuselage of the ship. Outside, a dense bli
zzard is howling around us. I don’t want to go out there. I’ll freeze to death here. Still, I want to choose here.
Starbuck crawls out of the front end of the ship, a thin trickle of blood seeping from a wound on his scalp.
“Just the kind of landing you dreamed of,” he says. “No instruments, no engines, no field—”
Boomer, crawling out behind him and immediately standing up, says:
“Grab a light.”
Starbuck staggers to his feet, grabs a light, and mutters:
“You did a great job, Starbuck, mastering an out-of-control shuttle, keeping us from crashing head-on. You’re one fine pilot—”
“When you’re through feeling unappreciated here,” Apollo interrupts, “help check the wounded. We lost half the ship back there.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Apollo is being tough. Taking charge. I don’t know how much of him taking charge I’m going to be able to stand.
Boomer claps a hand on Starbuck’s shoulder and says:
“Don’t feel too bad. Anyone else would have lost it all.”
“Don’t worry, I—” Starbuck says as he shoots an angry glance at his captain. I gather that Starbuck doesn’t always see eye to eye with Apollo. “I’ll be all right, Boomer.”
Pushing a couple of heavy cartons aside, I make my way toward the rear of the shuttle, where I see what a real wreck looks like. Metal that used to be separated by intervening materiel is now securely interlocked. The materiel itself is unrecognizably crushed. Wolfe is leaning over Voight. Apollo moves toward them.
“How is he?” he asks Wolfe.
Wolfe looks for a moment like it’s an imposition for him to answer any question, then he says:
“Just a rap on the head. He’ll come around in half a centon.”
“Apollo,” Leda says from the other side of the passenger cabin. She’s crouched over Vickers. “I can help them if you can find my case.”
[Battlestar Galactica Classic 02] - The Cylon Death Machine Page 9